January Food Spending Week 4, Meal Plan February Week 1

*I am taking part in Precious' MONEY SAVING CHALLENGE again for 2012.  You can find her blog FRUGAL MAKES CENTS and a list of other participants and their blogs  HERE.

Check it out.  You might find some new ideas for incorporating frugality into your life there!*


I love searching around for old photos and advertisements featuring kitchens from years gone by.  These are mostly the kitchens from my youth in the 1960's or earlier.  

Today's kitchen......

This is from a 1953 KitchenAid magazine ad.  While it's before "my" time, my brothers were around during that year.  I seriously doubt this was anything like the kitchen in my parent's house at that time, seeing as my parents were very poor when my siblings were born and they didn't own a house until shortly before I made my appearance into the world.

 

But for 1953, this was cutting edge in kitchen technology--metal cabinets, a stove in the center of the room with a recessed range hood, a breakfast bar with stools, a stylish linoleum floor with a yellow accent stripe(which matched the formica countertops!).  The laundry room was right in the kitchen too, with built in ironing and drying racks.  And did you notice the little rolling dirty laundry hamper/bin with the yellow counter top on it, in front of the iron board?

Now the oven position & style is a little odd, the fridge is pretty ordinary for the era, but the television set sitting in the kitchen in 1953!?  This family was upper middle class for sure to even own a tv in 1953!lol

Enough of that, onward to the Meals and Food Spending. 8-)


Last week's meal plan is in the books.  Here is what actually happened....
SUNDAY--homemade Pizza, carrot & celery sticks w/dressing

MONDAY--Leftover Chili or Burritos or both

TUESDAY--Denny's for Birthday Grand Slam

WEDNESDAY--Soup and Sandwich or leftover Sloppy Joe

THURSDAY--Chicken & Dumplings with carrots

FRIDAY--Chinese take-out
SATURDAY---Red Robin for Birthday Burger

I used up the last of the frozen pizza dough.  I had some odd pieces of chicken getting old in the freezer so I made Chicken and Dumplings out of it.  I tried a different dumpling recipe(the one in the Joy of Cooking with calls for egg as an ingredient), which gave a lighter/airy dumpling.  I didn't care for it much, preferring my old recipe which makes a heavier/gummier dumpling.  

There wasn't much other cooking last week, just more using up leftovers, heating up canned soup, opening canned/jarred fruits and more Birthday eating out.

I also didn't step foot into a grocery store all week...AGAIN!.  Hubs picked up milk one evening and #2 and I went to the Ollie's closeout store and bought some foodstuffs on another night.   The weekly spending was $46.75.

4 Weeks in and I spent $207.68 of my $300 January food budget.  $92.32 leftover for the month. I'll roll this amount into February's food budget, giving me $392.32 for this month.

I don't plan on spending it all in February, the extra will cover if I go over my usual $300 in the coming month.  Any leftover amount at the end of February will get thrown into my Savings Challenge fund and I'll start at $300 going into March.

For February....

Going into February Week 1, we have a little bit of Chili leftover and a couple of helpings of Chicken & Dumplings from Week 4.

This week's menu.....

SUNDAY--Italian Sausage Sandwiches, Cauliflower

MONDAY--Taco Bell(I'm having leftover Chicken & Dumplings)

TUESDAY--Homemade Pizza, Fruit Salad

WEDNESDAY--Tacos, Corn

THURSDAY--Tilapia, Rice, Brussel Sprouts

FRIDAY--Lasagna, Tossed Salad
SATURDAY--Leftovers

This menu gives us I night of take-out(except for my dinner), 1 night of leftovers and 5 home cooked meals this week.

Items needed for this menu are...pizza dough(getting from Price Chopper tonight), fruit and salad greens. I've got all the proteins I'm serving and all the dairy and noodles for the Lasagna here already. 

I'll pick up extra salad greens this week, some fresh produce and fruit as well as any good deals I find this week.  I haven't checked the sales ads yet so I don't know what I'll be picking up, if anything in the way of good deals.

Before good deals, I'm figuring on $30 spending this week for immediate menu food 'needs'.

 

With my leftover cash, I'm starting February with $392.32 in the food budget.

So what is everyone else eating this week?  

Sluggy