Operation don't eat out

Today my hubby and I are starting operation don't eat out in our household. I love to cook, but I also have a million excuses as to why I don't cook every day. Even when I go to the grocery store, buy everything for dinners for a week, and cook all of them, I end up eating out for lunch.

My husband and I spend roughly $300 a month (probably a lot more) on eating out. We also spend almost $100 a week at the grocery store (which is ridiculous). Today, not having a lot of money to get through the rest of the month, I went to the grocery store with $53 in cash, a short list, and without my precious husband (who likes to go to the grocery store when he is really hungry and buy on impulse without a grocery list).

Originally I was only going to pick up a few necessities to get through this week with my $20 left from vacation. However, we have 2 more weeks until pay day and I saw a TON of great sales at Kroger, so I decided to shop for 2 weeks with the other $33 I had from selling something on ebay.

We are extremely lucky to never have to buy red meats. We have a deep freezer full of yummy deer meat which we use for different things; steak, ground beef, roast, sausage, etc.

Basically I just have to be really creative and cook a lot. During the school year it is REALLY hard to work all day and have the desire to cook when I get home. I found this blog http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/ that I hope will help me out. This past year I did a whole chicken in the crockpot several times and deer roast wrapped in bacon in the crockpot (really delicious) almost every week.

Brandon loves a good sandwich and chips for lunch, so I bought bread. We have 8 pounds of lunch meat left over from our wedding that is in the deep freezer ready to be pulled out. So no need to worry about lunches for a while...just need to buy bread and maybe cheese. I made a huge thing of pasta salad for me to eat for lunch, since I am not a sandwich eater.

Breakfast- well I love cereal and oatmeal and Brandon doesn't eat breakfast. That is not the meal we have trouble eating out for.

This week I bought all the necessities for the next 2 weeks for just under $40 ($39.96 to be exact). I'm not going to go out and cut a ton of coupons (because this leads to spending where we do not need to), but I'm going to stick to my list and leave my husband at home.

So this is what I got-

5 chicken breasts (we already had 3 at home and I seperated them into baggies w/ 2 each)
4 boneless pork chops (seperated into baggies w/ 2 each)
2 ears of corn
1 head of lettuce
1 bag of butter beans
1 jar of chicken bullion cubes
6 boxes or rice a roni long grain rice (which has no "roni" and is healthier than the regular and it was only 49 cents today at Kroger)
1 box of mac n' cheese
1 box of rotini pasta
4 large gatorades
1 box of active lifestyle granola bars
4 cans of pringles
1 loaf of bread
1 bag of hamburger buns
1 tub of butter
1 jar of spaghetti sauce
1 gallon of milk
(I'm sure I've forgotten something)

I know you are probably like- what about your fruits and veggies? In our refrigerator we already had 4 plums, a pound of fresh cherries and lots of apple sauce. We also have this wonderful garden with tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers and squash. We also have a bag of potatoes and lots of cereal. So...hopefully we'll be good for the next couple of weeks. I have $13 left over that I'm planning to go buy the necessities for next week- more milk, bread and probably an onion, maybe another pound of cherries (I<3 fresh cherries)

We'll see how this goes, but I think we could probably save around $500 a month by doing this. So this month, we will not eat out any more. And next month, we will be eating out once, but someone else will be paying (I <3 my birthday). This is the goal for us! I'm excited!