October went by so quickly, I don’t even know what happened! We ended up at 220.55 for groceries and 110.18 for restaurants for a total of $330.73. This equals to about 5.33 per person per day or 1.78 per meal. This was an ideal month for us! So what did we eat?
In the middle of October, I switched from paper planning to digital planning. My husband and I have a shared google calendar, so I began a weekly meal plan where I kept track of our dinners together. This made it easy for my husband to know what to expect, and it was easy for myself to check the calendar and create a solid grocery list based off of the meal plan.
I also began with a themed day per week! Here are some of our favourites:
Breakfasts:
- Pumpkin Pie
- My Husband’s Sourdough Bread (with butter, jam, or apple butter)
- No Bake Energy Bites (or Lactation Cookies)
- Homemade Chai Tea
- Breakfast Tacos – corn tortillas, scrambled eggs, black beans and cheddar
Lunchs/Dinners:
- Stuffed Pepper Soup
- Eggplant Mushroom “Meat”balls prepared various ways
- Hilary’s Veggie Burgers – bought on sale, 2 for 3$
- Tuscan White Bean Soup
- Sweet Potato and Red Lentil Curry
- Protein (Salmon or Chicken) and Sun Dried Tomato Cream Sauce
- Wendy’s
- Gotta be honest on this one! This is the fast food restaurant that we will go to most often simply because of their offered deals. We’ll normally get 2 of their chicken sandwiches with their BOGO free deal. 4$ for 500 calorie sandwiches for both of us. Only 2$ per person for a meal.
Once you find meals that you enjoy, cooking up a batch meal makes things a lot easier in the long run. I love the Tuscan White Bean soup, it’s comforting and the slight citrus with the lemon juice is just fantastic. Because of this, I had it for lunch quite a bit. Quick meals like the premade Hilary’s Veggie Burgers or Wendy’s also make things easier.
My eggplant “meat”ball recipe will be posted eventually, but I want to work on it more. Currently I quite enjoy the flavour but I would like the texture to be a bit more firm. I use it in multiple applications such as a “Swedish meatball” with pasta and brown cream sauce, as a meatball sandwich, spaghetti and meatballs, etc. I’d also like it to be more firm so that I can freeze and vacuum seal it without the meatballs smushing.
A note for this month, November, we are not doing as well. We will probably be ending this month 100$ more than October, but this is due to more family gatherings and foods that we have had to provide than usual. Hopefully December will be lower with all of the Thanksgiving leftovers!
Laughter and Cooking 