I am really lucky because my CSA is just a store credit to the Farm Stand and they have all kinds of things. They even make baked goods and sometimes they have milk and eggs. So I might be cheating in this whole thing!
Last night I changed my dinner to eggplant scampi instead of stir fry. I hadn't used eggplant in a scampi recipe before but it turned out good and I got to use a tomato from my garden too.
I also made egg salad and potato salad (with purple potatoes from the CSA!) so I could eat that for lunch today. I loved getting that done the night before.
Today
breakfast- cereal and coffee
lunch- eggsalad sandwich, potato salad, and fruit
dinner- I'm working late so Cesar salads and leftovers
Tomorrow
Breakfast- cereal and coffee
lunch- eggsalad and potato salad
dinner- I'm working late again and they're providing dinner this time- DH will have any other leftovers
The day I will probably cheat is Thursday. I go to a meeting straight from work and most of the time I stop somewhere for food. I'll see if I can resist or maybe at least get a cheap meal. Friday I'm planning on making a whole chicken that I have in the freezer by cooking it in the crock pot. I also have some frozen Tuna Steaks in the freezer that I hope to grill this weekend with maybe a side of baked beans and some veggies I'll get this week from the farm. I am so excited to see how much room I'm making in the freezer![/QUOTE]
Oh, man, I would be in heaven if we any CSA options that worked that way! Ours is delivery and we can adjust to our preference or wishes to an extent, but not outright pick everything out. We do have the options for baked goods and such as well, but with the exception of tortillas, I have excluded those during our clean out.
I've never cooked with eggplant before, but I like it and I have one in my fridge so I need to bit the bullet and learn
I'm loving all the freezer and pantry space too. I was going to make potato salad today with dinner! I love it. The problem is I forgot I was planning to make it and accidentally used all the celery I had in some beef stew over the weekend. Oops! So instead we'll just have smashed roasted potatoes with dinner.
Tuesday Menu
Breakfast: DS made himself a corndog before I could protest
I had breakfast tacos - one egg scrambled with spinach and onion served on two corn tortillas, with a side of grapes (very filling and only 5 points!)
Lunch: DS will have frozen chicken nuggets (or the waffle he was supposed to have for breakfast) with grapes. I will have the last serving of white bean soup from the freezer, and I'll mix in some fresh spinach while it's hot.
Dinner: Burger patties from the freezer, wrapped in lettuce instead of buns, topped with some avocado and MAYBE bacon since we didn't use the whole package over the weekend as usual. (We'll see how generous I'm feeling at dinner time
), smashed roasted potatoes with garlic powder and olive oil on the side.
Snacks: apple slices with cinnamon for both DS and I.
I'm also loving clearing out space in the fridge - it's given me the chance to deep clean each shelf without having to have any food sitting on the counters while I do it
Corndog for breakfast sounds exactly like something my kiddo would do
That sounds amazing!
One more trip to brag camp for me...In the last three weeks, I have shed 15 lbs! Don't be alarmed, I wasn't starving by any means, just exercising and eating right for the first time in a long time. Saved money, lost weight, Disney in our sights!
Now a confession. I ate out for lunch yesterday
But it was a Subway salad, still in the diet, not in the budget. I instantly regretted it, and realized how expensive eating out is. 1 salad, no sides or drinks, almost $7! All I could think about was what I could have purchased at the store for that. 2 loaves of bread and a gallon of milk, or a box of cereal and cheese....Oh well. Back on the wagon today with my salad made at home and brought to work.
Please brag away, 15 lbs down is an amazing accomplishment
The prices they charge at restaurants is insane, especially when you calculate how much less it would cost you to make the same foods at home
We have a standing deal with my son that every time he completes a week at school without falling from the top spot on their behavior chart then he gets a McDonald's happy meal. I don't count it as cheating since it was a previously negotiated situation. But he fulfilled his end of the deal last week, so after school on Friday we went through the drive-thru. That was all I ordered and it came to over $5
for a kids meal. We typically would go out to eat (for all 4 of us) a minimum of 3 times a week. No wonder our food budget was busted every single month!
Best of luck staying back on the wagon
It was yummy, and it got my 4 year old to voluntarily eat lettuce. Win!
Yeah on the weight loss!
I just finished up my first week of Weight Watchers. 3.5 lbs down! What kind of exercising are you doing?
It's all a learning process. Good for you for making a salad at home instead now. Even with eating right, I will add up the points on something and be like
You know how much XYZ I could have eaten for that many points?! Haha. Mistakes we won't make often anymore.
Yay for your little one eating lettuce! And double yay for the weight loss!!
Thanks! Congrats to you as well! We started walking 1 mile every night with the family, and I try to get on our elliptical for 15 mins at night. We have had that thing for two years, and its been used a total of 1 hour so far, all within the last two weeks
I am still trying to change my mind set when it comes to food. Why do I have to love it so! As the great Dr. Leo Marvin said, baby steps...
We need to get on the exercise and weight loss bandwagon, too. But if we try to take all that on with the food stuff I will just get overwhelmed and become obsessed with numbers (monetary, grocery bills, the scale....). Great job on breaking in the elliptical
Yesterday went well, no speed bumps. This morning I threw out half a bag of spinach because it started to go slimy. Sigh. It seems impossible to finish up a bag of greens around here, it's like they're never ending! And the kind that only comes in those big tubs? Forget it. I think no more of those pre-washed kind. If I really feel like we need spinach or kale, then I have to get the small bunch. I'd still have to wash and trim the stems myself, but it'll be worth the money saved.
Wednesday Menu
Breakfast: 1 fried egg, fried leftovers of potatoes from dinner & grapes for me. DS had a waffle and yogurt.
Lunch: leftover pasta with red pepper sauce, chicken and parmesan for me. DS will probably want a corn dog and grapes.
Dinner: Refried beans on corn tortilla tostadas, with lettuce, avocado, salsa, and cheddar.
Snacks: Apple slices with cinnamon
Can I be a downer for minute? We like to go to Disney in September for the low crowds, but we aren't this year. Next year my DS starts kindergarten so we won't be able to go then. So I priced out a vacation yesterday for the first week in February 2016, another low crowd time. It was so expensive, even renting DVC points at AKL (the cheapest I could find on DVCRequest.com). The flights aren't bad, but the park tickets are insane, and the food is too. We talked about going even cheaper and staying offsite or getting a grocery order and making most of our meals. But that's not the kind of vacation we like. The restaurants and the Disney bubble are part of the reason we love Disney so much. I couldn't believe our "budget" Disney vacation was the same price as our 1st anniversary stay at GF in a turret room with deluxe dining and the wine package add on from back in 2008.
DH and I are planning a 2017 10th anniversary trip for F&W without DS. I'm saving every penny I can until then to pay for that. But after that, it looks like our days of plentiful
Disney vacations are over since we won't go in the summer. We'll probably go at least once on a Christmas break and brave the crowds. But we really want to see it all done up for Christmas. Kinda sad. Feels like the end of an era.
LOL!! We were just discussing this with our spring mix salad. I was telling DW that it seems like it replicates itself in the container! I have promised that I will eat it all before it wilts, thus the salad today and most likely tomorrow.
We also love going September. I think its the best value season because you get full use of the pools at the resorts vs. Feb. This is also the first year we aren't going. We can't get excited about off site, even though I know you get so much more for your money in terms of room size. I can't wrap my head around $100 for POP, and there are 5 of us now, and <300 sq ft for 5 seems scary. We also looked at DVC points for a studio at AKL. It would be around $150/night, I believe, but with tickets and travel, it was outside of what we could truly afford. This is kind of what prompted us to reevaluate our spending. In the past we would just go, and then deal with the financial repercussions later. This habit has caused some financial troubles, so we are determined to start being a little wiser in that area. So in a way, Disney raising prices has helped, even though we won't be spending any money there this year. We also looked at going Feb, but I don't like that we might not be able to truly enjoy the resort that we are over paying for. I grew up in FL, and know that Feb could have nights in the 30's, or in the 80's. There is no way to predict. We figured we would save every penny for the next year, and see then if we were comfortable paying for a Disney trip. Food was the area that really stood out to me that could have the biggest impact quickly. I'm a little scared, however, that once we do finally amass the savings for the trip beforehand, that we will have a hard time letting it go. I am the Disney lover in my family, but with rising costs, I'm not sure that I will be willing to fork over $3,000 + for a week's trip. We shall see....It is definitely an end of an era for us, I have already resigned to the fact that Disney will no longer be a yearly trip, starting this year.
This is what we have all of a sudden started mulling over. When we have $4000 in savings, will we really want to clear that out? Would we instead choose alternate vacations for $1-2k and instead pay down debt? We could put that in a college savings, or pay off debt more quickly. Being an adult sucks! Maybe we really just need to sell ourselves on off site, and shorten our stays...Who knows. Lets just get that $4000 in savings first!
We also had to give up the packaged greens, I don't know why it is, but I swear they never lasted beyond day 3 in our house (because they went bad not because we consumed them)
September was our favorite Disney visiting time as well, but we have a kiddo that started school this year and had to cross it of our travel agenda. But I concur with the pricing insanity. We are DVC owners and it still puts a serious dent in the budget to make the trip
And I agree completely, a Disney trip would absolutely not feel the same staying offsite and cooking all our meals etc. Though I will say that on our last two trips we started going to one character breakfast and making all the rest in the room and ended up LOVING it! We weren't spending $25+ day on breakfast meals, one of us cooked while the other got the kids ready for the day, and it really made the start of the day feel so much less chaotic. And one last (hopefully helpful) tip, you might try dvc rental store dot com to see if you could get a better rate. They have a specials page for people that are looking to rent out their points quickly and I've seen points for anywhere from $8 to $11 a point. The only caveat is you have to stay at Saratoga Springs for the specials. I don't have direct experience renting from them, but I have rented out my points through them twice and everything went quickly and smoothly on both transactions. Just my two cents
I could have written exactly what you wrote! We would always put the trip on the Disney Visa and get the no interest deal and then pay it off before the interest hit. We justified it as saving for it backwards. Now I have a different outlook on finances. And we're the same about the trip savings. We recently moved and there's a lot of work to be done to get the house looking the way we want it. Will I be comfortable handing over that cash to Disney for a week's worth of fun, when it could go towards a kitchen remodel that I will use every day for the next 20-30 years? We're saving for that separately, but adding that Disney money to it would really shorten the wait.
I like how this thread keeps me motivated and cognizant of how I use our money. I have a comfortable grocery budget, but being mindful with our food is helping me cut what I usually spend in half. And the extra goes straight to savings!
I'm constantly living in the battle between "splurge and live a little" and "be smart and save for the future"
We were doing Disney (World or Land or Cruise) annually. But between the aforementioned cost and school schedule to keep up with now, we have decided our trip next summer (that we've already been saving for) will be our last consecutive annual trip. Going forward we are going to "branch out" and visit places outside the world of Disney during our off years
I know. It's funny in a way that a Disney forum is keeping me more accountable than the facts that my finances present me every day! Whatever works. We are on week four of our good habits, so hopefully 1 month will turn into 1 year! We could save close to $5000 vs what we used to spend on food (there is no real way to know as we never tracked our food expenses well before, but this is a close estimate I think). It seems so simple, but I'm hoping that we truly stick to it, and I hope this board continues to motivate me and keep me accountable.
As long as I stay away from the trip reports board I the Disboards totally keeps me motivated to stay financially frugal
You should be super proud of your one month status of good habits, I imagine the longer you do it the easier it gets since it should become second nature. Keep up the great work!!
Thanks for the inspiration. I went through the freezer and there is a ridiculous amount in there. 6 packages of ground beef...18 burgers...really?
Making skinnytaste sante fe zuchinni boats tonight, using beef instead of turkey. That uses my big zuchinni, a pkg of ground beef, and a can of black beans. It's a start! Also took down some frozen zucchini muffins to eat this week.
I keep seeing the zucchini boats on Pinterest, but have yet to try them. Please let us know how they are
Way to go on making the first step and getting started!
