Budget Girl to the Rescue

Starting this month (November), I am the one in charge of our budget and bills. This is not something that comes remotely naturally to me, so I had to make some adjustments in our life. I will talk about those some other time, because they are a little bit ingenious and comical at the same time--good qualities in a blog post, you know. But the reason I'm thinking about it right now is that I must (must must must!) get our grocery budget under control--it was already dicey with our recent extended house guest situation, but then Thanksgiving weekend blew it all to hell. It's our biggest expense (besides, you know, housing) and one of the only ones we actually have any control over, so I'm going to put all my problem-solving skills to work on it.
Starting right now! What with leftovers and a few other options in the freezer/fridge, I think we can keep the grocery bill very low this week. But I have to plan.* Thoroughly and boring-ly. Sorry.

Monday

Breakfast: Peanut Butter/Banana smoothies
Lunch: Soup; peanut butter sandwiches
Dinner: Out (my brother's coming to town and there's nothing we can do about that; this kind of unexpected--and totally welcome--expense is exactly why I need to be smart about our bills!)

Tuesday

B: Cereal
L: Leftover sloppy joes
D: Broccoli spaghetti squash (intriguing? Possibly disgusting? It's gonna be an experiment). Leftover turkey/stuffing/sweet potatoes are my insurance policy in case the squash is awful.

Wednesday

B: Oatmeal
L: Soup; peanut butter sandwiches
D: Breakfast for dinner: sausage & egg bagels; hash browns.

Thursday

B: Smoothies
L: P can go out; I'll scrounge something--can of soup, toast + egg, whatevs.
D: Tuna noodle casserole (from a box! I know, but this is also part of the budget plan: we have the box for reasons I won't go into; it's much cheaper to use what we have than to go out and buy all the various individual ingredients--they do add up).

Friday**

B: Oatmeal
L: P can go out again; I will maybe have leftovers or toast or something.
D: Roast chicken; rice; cabbage of some sort (there's a head of it in the fridge right now) spinach salad (with goat cheese! And glazed pecans! And red onions!)

Saturday

B: Pancakes, maybe? We have nowhere to go this weekend, which is nearly unprecedented. Whatever we do, it will be very relaxed and lovey and yay for weekends!
L: Chicken salad? Maybe we'll do last night's spinach salad with chicken, or maybe sandwiches on toast. Celery.
D: Maybe we'll go out. Or have chicken tacos with refried beans made from the cooked cranberry beans I've got in the freezer. Salsa ingredients; lettuce; tortilla shells; cheese.

Sunday

B: Oatmeal or bagels or eggs and bacon
L: Soup--we'll have chicken stock for sure, and I have a boatload of frozen corn from Thanksgiving: corn chowder it is! Onions; milk or cream; potatoes.
D: Spaghetti and meatballs (from the freezer--P's favorite, for sweet nostalgic reasons, Sunday-night dinner); salad; bread (made while I was making the soup).

*We eat breakfast together every single day, plus P's lunch expenses snuck up on us last month (when I was tracking these things for the first time); I have to plan for those meals too or else what's the point?
**This will be the grocery store day, I think...

OK--see how I did that? The orange words constitute a shopping list! This is, or would probably be, really dull if you were a person who existed in the world, but it's totally working for me! And the list is pretty minimal, so it gets December off to a cheap start. Hooray!

I'll tell you all about our awesome camera later. For now, please know it's awesome and that's all.