January Dinner Menu

One way I cut costs (and make life easier) is to plan my meals a month at a time. When I make my menu plans I make shopping lists at the same time. I do one big trip at the beginning of the month for all the staples I'll need. Then I do small bi-weekly trips for perishables.

Here's January's menu. Notice all the salads. We're on a big-time post-holiday diet this month.

1. Leftovers (from New Year's. I'm making a huge bunch of chinese food)
2. Leftovers (I said a huge bunch....)
3. Pizza (homemade. I make the dough, buy the cheapest cans of spaghetti sauce and use the humongous blocks of mozzarella and cheddar cheese from the superstore)
4. Pizza
5. Salad with oat and orange scones
6. Cauliflower stir fry and rice
7. Salad with sliced mangos
8. Salad, potato soup
9. Salad with bacon bits and sliced boiled eggs
10. Garden of Eden soup, rice and veggie stir-fry
11. Pitas with salad and turkey bits (I chop cooked turkey and fry it up with soy sauce, curry powder, garlic powder, cumin and coriander)
12. Salad with bacon strips, cheese rolls
13. Tangerine stir fry with turkey
14. Salad, veggie corn chowder
15. Hoisin turkey stir fry on soba noodles
16. Spring rolls (rice paper rolls with salad veggies inside and peanut dipping sauce)
17. Turkey curry with rice
18. Baked chickens, potatoes, green veggie
19. Salad with chicken, veggie and rice soup with lime
20. Teriyaki noodle soup
21. Panzanella
22.
23. Salad, cauliflower and cheese soup
24. Spaghetti and meat balls, green veggie
25. Burritoes with chicken and beans(I make my own tortillas)
26. Tabbouleh
27. Salad, dill cottage cheese biscuits
28. Pitas with salad (I make my own pitas)
29. Salad, cheddar drop biscuits
30.
31. Salad, oatmeal bannocks

All right; that's a lot of salad, even for us! You'll notice I left a few blanks. That's because there's always a few meals that end up different than I plan. We got out to a friend's house or to a restaurant. The Super Bowl is in there somewhere. We'll probably do a big potluck with neighbors and friends....So I leave room for "life" to happen.

I currently have 8 bags of turkey in our freezer for meals. I could probably get 10 -
12 dinners out of that. The baked chickens will provide most of the rest of the meat we eat. I try to cook meat so that it gets sprinkled on the meal at the end - almost like a condiment. Often I won't even eat it. I have a son who's verging on vegetarian. This method of serving meat gives us a lot of flexibility.

When I base a meal around a salad I serve the greens in a huge bowl and our portions cover our dinner plates. Then we add the eggs, bacon bits, meat or whatever else I'm serving as an addition. Often I serve either rolls or a soup on the side. Again, it all adjusts to the appetites and caloric needs of the people eating. My kids can eat as much as they want (they're all pretty skinny and growing). Dh and I go heavy on the greens and light on the extras. It works for us.

And just to give you a rough idea - there are six of us in our family. When I serve meat in a salad or stir fry I use the equivalent of one to two boneless chicken breasts, or one small steak, or one to two pork chops. About a half-pound of meat.

I'm Growing, I'm Growing!

Older and wiser, that is.

And my dh is growing vegetables!

After four months, I decided it was time to share my dream of "Halving It All" with my family.



That's right; I hadn't told my family yet I was doing this. Oh, I hinted around some about it, and they did notice when I got rid of half the books, but I never sat down and filled them in on the big picture. Why? First, because I'm a control freak and the minute you tell someone else about your project they start...infringing....on it. Second, because I knew my family is capable of going even crazier than I do about these things.

So today we discussed gardening (and mini-houses, but that's a whole other topic). Dh has said that he'll go crazy with gardening this year. We will try to eat as much homegrown produce as possible. We will then aim to eat as much locally grown produce. Failing that, we'll buy BC grown produce at the grocery stores. Only after all other options are exhausted will we buy the regular stuff. We should eat healthier and save a little money. We will split the money we save.

Of course this will all be carefully documented. I'm off to do a little research right now!

I'm excited about getting dh involved because dh is a mastermind at frugality. Plus I've been dying for home grown tomatoes!

We're Almost There!

Halving my Car Use Update
Tuesday is the last day of my "month without a car", and I'm amazed at how fast it's gone. As I posted before, I did use the car once - but only once! I'll save the celebration for Wednesday, but I think that I've turned a new leaf in my car usage and it's been nice not to have to fill up the tank.

Halving My Grocery Bill Update

As for groceries, so far this month I've spent $174.79. That's all right, but I was beginning to get nervous. There's still 2/3 of the month to go and at the rate I'm spending, that number will reach at least $436.00 when all is said and done. Half my previous months' grocery bills would be more like $392.00. I would say that I need to re-tool the next few weeks' menus, except....

My food spending is just fine! The big culprit is the "miscellaneous household" category! If I compare my average food spending for the first five months of this year with this month's food spending I'm coming in way under budget. It's only when I add in the miscellaneous household spending to both numbers that it looks like I'm blowing it.

Hmmmm. What's up with that????

Well, my "miscellaneous household" category is a catch-all for everything from shampoo to chamois cloths, stuff for kids' science experiments to scrub brushes. It's a lousy category, all in all, for analytical purposes, but it's still a necessary one. The money I spend on these things comes out of my grocery budget, after all. From now on I'll examine my totals in two ways: one with the miscellaneous spending included and one with it taken out.

So, what have we learned so far?

I am halving my food budget by preparing bread products and snacks from scratch.

I am NOT halving the spending I do on miscellaneous items for my house and kids.


If you want to follow along with my monthly grocery budget, you can click here. I update my spending every couple of days.

My goals for the rest of this month include adding some recipes to this blog for our homemade goodies, and tackling the "stuff" in the rest of the house!

Tortillas, Anyone?

In my last post I related that bread products counted for a large part of my grocery budget. So today when I discovered we were out of tortillas, I bit the bullet and made them instead of buying them.

Making tortillas is a lot like making naan, as it turns out, although you do try to roll it a bit thinner. The recipe I used was pretty basic, and it called for regular oil instead of lard, which I believe is more traditional.

Ds had calculated how much a cup of flour costs us. I'll have to ask him in the morning. I don't think this recipe could have cost me more than $2.00. Probably less. The tortillas I buy at the store cost $4.00 per 10 pack. That's half price, baby!

Tortillas (24 small/12 or so large)

4 cups flour
3 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cups water
4 tbsp. canola oil

Mix together the flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Mix the water and oil in your measuring cup. Add it to the flour mixture a bit at a time and stir thoroughly.

When the dough comes together (it will be a little sticky), turn out onto a floured board and knead for 5 minutes, adding flour as necessary to keep it from sticking. When it turns into a soft, smooth ball put it in a bowl and cover it with a cloth. Let sit for 20 minutes.

Divide it into the desired amount of tortillas. If you make 24 they'll be pretty small ("taco" sized). If you make 12 - 15, they'll be burrito sized. Put on a tray and let sit, covered, for an additional 10 minutes.

Roll out into very thin circles. Heat a thick frying pan until quite hot - you don't need to grease it - and cook the tortillas one by one, about 30 seconds to a side, checking frequently. You'll see the tortilla turn a lighter color, with brown spots, when it's done. Keep them warm on a plate with a cloth over it. Serve immediately, or refrigerate or freeze.

Planning Ahead

My 15-year-old son came into the kitchen yesterday and plunked himself down on the rocking chair that sits in one corner. All my kids have been a little bored and out of sorts. It's the last week before school starts and they're ready for something new.

"Mom, how much does that bag of flour cost?" he asked.

"About twelve dollars," I said.

He grabbed his Triple E - a wireless mini-computer - and starts typing. He asks about sugar, butter, chocolate chips....

Turns out he's calculating the cost of one of his homemade cookies. When he's done, he compares it to the cost of a storebought one. His is cheaper. Not by much, but by a few pennies.

"If I cut back on the chocolate chips I could get the cost down to half of the store-bought ones," he says.

I must say I'm totally surprised. I didn't think we could beat the store price. He does another calculation for bread and beats the store price per loaf there, too. I'm shocked - I buy really cheap bread, LOL.

"All right. Next month you can help me do some real experiments," I say. "We'll find out the exact price of the ingredients and do this a little more scientifically, okay?"

He's in. So that's what's coming in September, folk. We're going to go through the packaged foods we buy and try making homemade alternatives. We'll find out what's cheaper and what's not. And we'll discuss what's worth it and what's not.

I hope you'll join us then!