I've been successful in doing this for the past year and a half.
It started when I realized that we were spending 500-600 a month on restaurants. Our twins were 4 years old (now they are 5) and so easy to take out to eat, and who wants to cook after a long workday? So, I started writing an Out to Eat allowance on our white board in the kitchen. We started with $200
Every time we went out to eat, we subtraced that much from the allowance on the white board. When we were at zero, we were eating in for the rest of the month. Anything leftover went into a vacation fund, so we weren't tempted to spend it all, just because.
It worked great. We're down to an allowance of $125 now.
What does that have to do with groceries? Well, the whiteboard experiment worked so well for out to eat, we decided to do it for groceries.
We put write 400 on the white board. When we buy groceries, we subtract that amount from the 400. When we're down to zero, we're eating from the pantry. We both work full time, and so it takes planning and creativity. Here is this weeks menu:
Sat: Grilled flatbread, grilled shrimp, corn on the cob and oven baked Kale chips. (Flatbread dough is made in breadmaker, shrimp is wild caught Gulf shrimp, so more expensive, but more ecologically responsible). We also had homemade strawberry sherbet for dessert.
Sun: Oven baked bone-in split chicken breasts, salad, mashed potatoes. Nothing for dessert (can't feed these kids dessert every meal because they start to eat less for dinner to save room)
Mon: Rachael Ray's Turkey Noodle casserole (make ahead, bake when home from work, calls for gruyere cheese, subbing cheddar to save $), steamed broccoli with a squeeze of lemon juice for flavor. Homemade vanilla ice cream for dessert (can you tell I got an ice cream maker for mother's day?)
Tues: Grilled pork chops, sauteed asparagus, rice, fruit for dessert.
Wed: Homemade Mac-n-cheese, pack up and take on a picnic. Washington cherries are in season, so that will be dessert.
Thurs: Breakfast for dinner. At least one day a week, we have a selection from the following: eggs, toast, bagels, pancakes, homefries. It's usually on a day when I haven't done the prep necessary for a "good" meal and we're out of ideas.
Fri: We always make homemade pizza on Fun Friday. By this time, we're tired from the workweek, out of ideas and the kids are exhausted from school all week.
I make a lot of things from scratch. We also pack lunches for preschool, they can buy one lunch from the cafeteria one day a week. For lunches I'll often make a batch of pudding for their treat instead of buying the pre-made kind. I buy big bags of chips and divide them into baggies myself. Mitigating factors that make this budget difficult is that I buy only hormone and antibiotic free meat. I buy only wild caught fish from this continent. (altho sometimes if the deal is really good on shrimp, I will get the cheaper stuff). When I see my organic ground beef on sale, I'll buy 10 lbs at a time and process some of it (mix it up into meatloaf mix, hamburger mix, etc) and then leave some of it in it's nice little vacuum sealed 1 lb containers they usually come in. My other meat I prefer fresh for the best flavor. Unless it's an amazing deal on chicken breasts, then I'll buy and vacuum seal.
Breakfast is always oatmeal for my son, and cold cereal for my daughter. Even when offered waffles and bagels, that is what they prefer.
As you can see, a family of 4 can eat very well, with fresh, healthy food. Sometimes I flub the menu and throw together some pasta or peiroghi or whaever I have that is easy. I'm not perfect, and I don't have boundless energy. Generally I'll plan 5 meals a week, and the other 2 are wildcards like breakfast or pasta. The days will sometimes change, like tonight I'm supposed to be having turkey noodle casserole, but I didn't do the prep work, and I don't have the mushrooms, so I'm swapping in the pork chops with the intention of doing the turkey noodle prep work tonight.
