saturday's dinner cost breakdown

i think it's worth mentioning that both of the dinner recipes i made this weekend (refried bean tostadas and salsa chicken)  came from my hunt for inexpensive dinner ideas!  my rough cost break-down to feed 8 adults and a 3-year old on saturday night:

• salsa chicken: total cost: ~$13.20, cost per adult: $1.65
• chicken: ~$6 (actual cost unknown - had chicken breasts in my freezer, and i have no idea how much they each weigh, but i typically get chicken for around $2/lb and i used 4 chicken breasts)
• salsa: $1 (used 1 jar of generic salsa on sale for $1/jar)
• cheese: $1.50 (shredded half of a large block of cheeddar that i think cost around $3 total)
• green peppers: $3 (might omit these in the future and just get a better salsa, though)
• black olives: $1.50
• sour cream: ~$.20 (bought a tub for about $2.25, but we used a small amount)
• spices: minimal cost, used what i already have at home
• refried bean tostadas: total cost: $5, cost per adult: $.63
• tortillas: $1 (doubled the recipe to make 12 tostadas, used a whole 12 pack of tortillas that were on sale for $.99)
• refried beans: $1 (used leftover refried beans in the fridge and another 1/2 can that was on sale for $1, but i'll use the price of the can since i now have new leftover refried beans)
• salsa: $.50 (1/2 jar of generic salsa)
• cheese: $1 (high estimate - shredded the other half of my large block of cheese, but we have quite a bit of shredded cheddar left over)
• sour cream: ~$.50 (again, used a small amount overall)
• tomatoes: ~$1 (chopped up some roma tomatoes that i had on hand to put on top - have some leftover)
• other sides: total cost: $10.25, cost per adult: $1.28
• guacamole: $6 ($1/ea for 3 avocados, a few roma tomatoes on sale for $1/lb, and some cilantro that i had going bad in the fridge)
• chips: $.75 (we keep these on hand, bag of la favorita costs $2, we used less than half)
• rice: ~$.50 (total guess, we keep rice on hand, and i have no idea what the bag cost or what percentage we used)
• salad: ~$3 (bag of greens with some veggies on sale for $1.50, added some green bell pepper and carrots that we had on hand)
• total cost of the whole meal including sides: $28.45
• total cost of the whole meal per adult: $3.56

and really, the cost per adult is actually high as we have lots of leftovers: 4 of us had dinner from it last night, and scott and i still have a few lunches/dinners left!

for january, i have $2 left in my grocery envelope at the end of the month - which means so far so good on my quest to keep my grocery budget in check! i just went shopping last week, though, and am pretty well stocked up, so i'm going to try to drop my grocery budget to $300 in february to prep for march when i'll have to be feeding both of us 3 meals a day from home.

i'm trying to figure out how to balance stocking up on items (especially meats) that are on a good sale with what we actually need for that week or two weeks.  i guess to a certain extent, the trick lies in making sure that if i stock up on steaks or pork chops, that i plan meals that actually use up those items, rather than buying them and then not using them for months at a time.  (meats we freeze, at least, so i guess it's easier to stock up on them - produce, not so much.)  how much stockpiled loss-leader frozen meat do you really need in your freezer, though, before it's just not worth it?  i think that in general, i still need to work on being more strategic with my menu planning.

weekend via recipe review

we had a super fun weekend: my parents came into town, i had my baby shower, scott and my dad installed closet doors and put together the crib, etc.  with the furniture in and the rug down, the nursery is finally starting to really look like a nursery, which is so fun!  the crib kit was missing one bolt, so i need to contact them this week - we finally got a crib mattress this weekend ($82 after tax at walmart!), but we're waiting until the bolt comes to put the mattress in.  we also played boggle, and not only did i not win, but i lost to scott (and to my mom, i think!).  i blame pregnancy brain.

and, of course, since we had company, i spent a lot of time cooking!  friday night, we had cooking light's slow cooker beef stroganoff and steamed broccoli, saturday for breakfast i made cottage cheese pancakes which were amazing, and for dinner, we had friends over in addition to my parents, so i made guac, cooking light's salsa chicken, and refried bean tostadas.  sunday, we went out for chinese for lunch and had leftovers for dinner.  i'd made the beef stroganoff before and knew that it was a good solid recipe, but all of saturday's cooking was with new recipes - all three were big hits and definitely keepers!

of the three, i think the cottage cheese pancakes were hands down my favorite - a coworker gave me a tip this morning that they freeze well, so you can make them ahead of time, freeze, and microwave them as needed.  you can count on finding some cottage cheese pancakes in my freezer before matson comes!  they're a great way to add extra protein and calcium to your breakfast, even if you're not otherwise a fan of cottage cheese.  the cottage cheese made the pancakes a little denser than normal, perhaps, but in a really yummy, filling way - and the cottage cheese all seemed to melt into the pancakes so that there weren't white chunks as you cut up your pancakes.  the cinnamon in the recipe also gave it a great flavor.  honestly, i can't recommend these highly enough!  we had them on their own, but i think a fruit salad would go perfectly with them.

the refried bean tostadas were also really good, super easy, cheap, and reheated well.  (i think they're intended as a main course, but i'd probably need to add a little ground beef to them to get that one past scott.)  you bake tortillas in a muffin tin for a few minutes, throw in some beans, salsa, and cheese, and put them back in the oven to heat up - no actual cooking involved!  the most challenging part of that recipe was making sure that the tortillas (which you stuff into muffin tin holes) had enough of an open bowl in the middle before you heat them up, to make it easier to get beans and salsa once they're a little crispy.

the salsa chicken seemed to be well received, and it was so easy (brown up chunks of chicken breast, throw in a pyrex, cover with salsa and cheese, and bake for ~10 minutes) i'll have to experiment with it some more.  i didn't think it had a ton of flavor, but i use my own spices rather than a packet of taco seasoning, and i think that i just didn't use enough spice for the amount of chicken i had.  plus, i used super generic mild salsa - i think going with a medium spiciness rather than mild would help, in addition to maybe getting a better salsa.  (or using a fruit salsa, as they recommend!)  worth playing with, for sure.

am i really so demanding?

answer: probably, yes.

for our fourth wedding anniversary (yes, way back in 2009), i had the brilliant idea of creating an anniversary memory album for us - a book that would have, for each year, a spot for a photo, note on how we celebrated the anniversary, and memories from that year of marriage.  i am a huge lover of tradition, so i thought this would be an easy project leading to years of happy tradition of filling out our memory album on our wedding anniversary.

my general vision (in a microsoft paint mockup - probably without a wedding pic on our one year anniversary):


not so easy!  at first i tried prefab anniversary albums, and was soundly disappointed.  they were either completely and utterly hideous, had lots of awkwardly specific categories rather than room for us to detail our own memories, or skipped through later anniversaries by decade. 

then i thought of making a photo book that we could paste pictures and write in in later, but found them pricey, or using a "self-publish" site to make a book with the same thought ... but realized that in either case, pasting a picture a year for 50+ years would probably not work too well with a hardbound book.

i turned to scrapbooking/photo albums, and love kolo's albums so i browsed their website.  i was considering the trivino, which is a glorified binder - i could just design and print what i want on 8.5 x 11 pages and slip them into sheet protectors.  problems: it's an inelegant solution (but a potential), and they don't say how many pages will fit in the binder ... i don't want to get to 30 years and have our binder filled up.  i like the newport, and with the larger size could fit the picture and memories on one page, but the formatting and headers would all be by hand rather than printed since their pages are bound.  and inserts to add extra pages add up quickly - $18 for another 10 sheets/20 pages.  (yes, you can create a digital photo book version of the newport, but that gets really pricey really fast - especially that larger size, yikes!)  i saw the geneva and thought that if i was going to compromise and do handwritten rather than printed, it was perfect!  blank spot for a picture on one side, lines for writing on the other ... but i don't like their album color options, and it's a 30 page max.  sigh.

end result is that we're now rapidly approaching 6 years of marriage and i still haven't gotten an anniversary album together for us.  any other brilliant ideas on where to look?

how to sleep well while pregnant

so the bradley method of labor is largely about relaxation - relaxing your body through contractions rather than fighting against them, which apparently helps to minimize pain and help you keep energy to make it through to the birth without needing pain meds to get rest.  the book we're reading gives you a certain position to lay in (on your side, one leg propped up on pillows, one arm in front of you the other behind you), and has your "labor coach" guide you through relaxing all of your muscle groups while giving you a lower back massage.

i really hated the position at first and thought it awful and forced.  not going to lie, though - we've been practicing our relaxation techniques the last few nights right before bed, and i am sleeping better than i have in months!  i had been waking up probably 2-5 times a night on average (sometimes to go to the bathroom, but often just to sit up, look at the clock, and go back to sleep) since about 23ish weeks.  on the nights that we've done our relaxation practices, though, i have slept soundly straight through the night, not waking up at all until my morning alarm.  it's wonderful!  and i hope scott doesn't mind, but we'll be practicing every night until this kid comes.  and maybe continue afterwards.  (i like the backrubs.)

thoughts on groceries

we sat down a few weeks ago and set a budget for life with a baby - goodbye, dink-hood.  (i'm taking maternity leave in order to not burn the bridge of my awesome job before we need to, juuuust in case something happens to scott's job, but we're planning that i'll stay on at home as a full time homemaker.)  since we have two more full months before i start maternity leave and matson joins us, we decided to start enacting our baby budget now.  it's honestly not too terribly different than our current budget, mostly things like smaller allowances, vacation budget, and monthly entertainment budget.  in discussing how much we want to alot for grocery in the future, though, it came up that one of scott's biggest pet peeves of late is how much food we waste, most of it either leftovers or uneaten vegetables going bad in the fridge.

the frugal girl is one of the few blogs that i subscribe to and actually read faithfully, and not going to lie, i more or less want to be her when i grow up.  as it relates to the situation at hand, though, two of the big things in her blog are eliminating food waste and keeping a food budget of $100/week ... for her family of 6!  and they actually eat real, healthy foods, without the crazy couponing.  compare this with a grocery budget of about $80/week for just me and scott - and all of my food from 8am-5pm is provided by my company: breakfast, lunch, and snacks.  when i start maternity leave, we'll suddenly be responsible for that other 2/3 of my daily food consumption, not to mention that i won't be bringing home lunch leftovers for scott like i do now.  fg, by the way, homeschools her kids and packs lunches for her husband, so that $100/week provides all food for the six of them for every meal of the day, seven days a week.  as far as food waste elimination goes, in trying to cut down on food waste both as an environmental and a financial concern, she posts a photo every friday of the food that went bad as a motivation to herself to do better the next week.

anyway, i've been reading about her grocery budget amd food waste stuff for a while thinking that was awesome for her, but not thinking there was much application for my busy life.  with our life already entering a transitional phase, though, i decided that we have a perfect opportunity to make some changes with the way we do groceries.  since we'll be adding a lot of extra food for me to the budget, i don't necessarily want to try to trim our overall monthly grocery budget at this point, but i do want to try to keep it more or less the same as it is now.  so, rather than $80/week feeding scott breakfast and lunch and both of us dinner, i'd like it to provide three meals a day for both of us.  (yes, clearly we'll need to start figuring in food for mats by the fall, but i'll cross that bridge when we get there.)

how are we going to accomplish this alongside lowering our entertainment budget (thus limiting our eating out)?  very good question.  thus far, i have a five part plan:

1. get back in the habit of planning meals.  if i look at the calendar and have a mental expectation of what we'll be having for dinner, i find it a lot easier to muster up motivation at the end of the day to cook it, which drastically lowers the likelihood that i'll say, "screw it, we're getting taco bell."  plus, if i have meals planned out, i can be more efficient with my grocery shopping - looking for sale items or coupons, and only buying produce that we'll actually need, rather than just seeing that bell peppers are on sale, buying a bunch, and then forgetting to use them before they mold.
2. plan simpler meals.  i do love to cook, but i think i get too overambitious in my menu planning sometimes, and after a long day at work end up nixing complicated recipes for something easy to put together or doing take out, which often leads to wasted produce and a boosted grocery/entertainment budget.  (i get the impression i probably won't have too much more motivation or energy for a while with a new baby!)  fg, on the other hand, has lots of simple meals on her calendar.  like one night this upcoming week is asian meatballs, brown rice, and grapefruit halves.  nice and easy!
3. find frugal meal ideas.  my friend lianna is hands down the most intensely frugal person i know - a few years ago, in order to aggressively pay down debt, she and her husband eliminated eating out from their budget for a full year!  i asked if she had any advice on cutting our grocery budget, and she recommended the $5 dinner mom cookbook.  the $5 dinner mom also has a website with a bunch of recipes posted.  i normally am not much of a cookbook purchaser, but i got duplicates of a book at christmas, so when i return the unneeded extra copy, i'm planning to use my credit to get this book instead.  (last night's baked ziti, salad, garlic rolls, and blueberry apple coffeecake was inspired by this goal, by the way.  the plan to host small group sunday night came together on saturday afternoon, and i made it my goal to have dinner for six using only ingredients we already had on hand, with no extra grocery store runs.  i succeeded!)
4. use cash envelopes.  we took dave ramsey's financial peace university class probably about five years ago (one of the best decisions we've made, both for our finances and for our marriage), and he's a strong proponent of using cash envelopes to track your spending.  we did that system for a year or two, but then got back into just using our debit cards for everything.  we were all over the board with monthly grocery spending last year, but in the end hit a $350/month average for groceries, which was our budgeted amount.  entertainment, though ... i think we ended the year with a monthly average of spending that was about 27% higher than we'd budgeted.  ($190/mo avg instead of $150/mo.)  whoops.  since we will be cutting our entertainment budget and are effectively cutting grocery without really cutting it, i think being limited to the cash in an envelope will be helpful for us.
5. eat our leftovers.  currently, this end of eliminating food waste falls primarily on scott since he's the one who eats lunches provided by us every day.  once i'm home, though, i think it'll be a lot easier to monitor the status of leftovers in the fridge and make sure that we're eating stuff before it goes bad - and to make sure scott actually remembers to bring leftovers for his lunch.

so there you have it, my five part plan to keep my grocery budget the same!  i think i need a more exciting thought life.