Saturday, September 09, 2006

Frugalling along

So far the $50/week challenge for groceries has gone really well. (We still end up eating out at least once a week and I am not counting that in the $50.)

I have found that there are two main tricks to eating well on $50. The first is to plan a menu. This actually isn't that hard so far. I am just writing my ideas for meals directly on the calendar in the pantry. Some people spend a day doing this, I just do it whenever I happen to think of something. For example, I was talking to someone about salmon recently and thought how much I would like to eat some, so the next time I was at the pantry, I filled in a salmon day for a weekend dinner because salmon seems kind of fancy to me. So far I am basically ahead by a week or so which has made grocery shopping pretty easy. I also add any missing ingredients to make the meal onto my shopping list right when I write the meal on the calendar, so I won't forget.

The second key is to buy only one big item a week. Today I bought some frozen Alaskan salmon fillets at Costco. Last week, I bought a large bag of frozen chicken breasts.

Tomorrow, I am going to go to the farmer's market to see if I can finally get some decent produce - yum.

To tell the truth, I think we are eating better on $50/week than we did before.

1 comment:

sunsetandcamden said...

I spent $48 today for my weekly bill. I think it's fun to try to save money on food. Keep posting your ideas and successes.