Five Days a Week

It shouldn't be cause for fanfare that we ate dinner at home for a full week. That we actually managed to come home from work and cook. But as we sat eating leftovers for lunch on Saturday, we both felt a small bit of satisfaction. How very first world, city lazy of us.

As someone who loves to cook, most weeks there's some recipe or another that I gather the ingredients for and then meticulously follow it, we enjoy it for one meal and then by the third day of leftovers we can't wait to throw it out. Or the leftovers are totally forgotten because we come home and want tex mex or thai or pizza.

This is not for lack of meal planning or most weeks even having time to shop. We've just pretended it is easier to go out or order in than actually use our kitchen daily. 

This past week I borrowed a note from my sister's book and built a menu plan based on recipes from relishrelish.com. These are not extraordinary gourmet recipes, but they are reasonably diverse and you can scale the recipe for as few as two or as many as eight.  The seasoning in most of the recipes needs to be dialed up a bit, but easily adjusted as you go.

Start to finish we had dinner within 30-60 minutes of being home most nights. How very Rachel Ray (shudder).

My first swing at sorting through the recipes proved a bit too pasta heavy, so for week two I've tried to balance it out with greater diversity. We'll see a little tex mex, a little korean bbq, a little ode to the south.

I can't see keeping up sourcing all of my recipes from this one site, and I haven't found any that I thought yes, we must make this again soon. However, it's a good way to get back into the swing of actually planning reasonable meals that can be quickly made during the week. Oh, and easily stayed within our food budget.

And the grocery store shopping list app is pretty handy.

The one thing I have made recently that's absolutely worth making again-Immediately- are the Barefoot Contessa Salted Caramel Brownies. Seriously, go make them right now. 

No Good Very Bad Waste

Sticky, icy, mysterious, stinky, and abandoned. All of these could be used to describe food in my fridge at one point or another. Visions of rigorous weekly refrigerator cleanings do not always manifest themselves. As a result, from time to time an unaccounted for container or more often abandoned veggies or fruit in a drawer are extracted and found to be less then edible.

This food waste is a regular red flag for budget keeping. If you spend the money to buy the food, why on earth would you keep wasting it by letting it rot. DH points this out constantly. No one ever goes through the produce section and picks out broccoli with the ambition of not steaming it. I don't stand their and handpick green beans only to extract them frosty from the fridge later, rendered tasteless by the days spent in the veggie drawer.

Yet, my very first world problem keeps rearing its ugly head. And this New York Times piece notes that it could equal $40 a week totally $2,275 a year of wasted food and cash.

As I blissfully wandered through the store this week, I was determined to not only stick to my shopping list, but to also not buy more than we can consume before it expires.

In theory, all of the produce sitting in my fridge at this moment, will be consumed this week. As in the next 7-10 days. No veggie or herb will be left behind.

In addition, my meal planning this week focused on using things I already have in my pantry. I've enacted a self-imposed dry carb purchasing ban for the moment. No more purchasing of dried pastas, grains, legumes, etc. until I've put a serious dent in what's already in my pantry. Why on earth do I keep amassing new types of rice when I have four already on a shelf at home. What are we stock piling for? An emergency 30 person dinner where we can only use what we already have in the house?

Hello Thai Chicken Skewers and the can of coconut milk you'll use up from my pantry and Toasted Israeli Couscous Salad with Grilled Summer Veggies that will clear out some couscous and stock.  And, waiting in the fridge already made for tonight's dinner is what promises to be a tasty Corn Chowder that used up some bacon and onions from the drawer.

Leaving Money on the Table

After watching two episodes of Extreme Couponing I've been shamed into realizing I'm throwing money away at the grocery store. Let's not discuss the fact that I was watching this completely odd show in the first place. As I've mentioned, DH's travel allows a lot of free time for late night TV watching.

To be fair, I still don't quite understand why these individual families need 900 cans of rotel, hot sauce, and years of tooth brushes. I mean, even if the sleep medicine is free with the coupons, what are you going to do with 150 bottles of it? One family mentioned donating some items to a food bank (guessing tax write off), they all have these massive warehouse-style pantries in their houses. I digress.

On a weekly basis we purchase very few brand name products. There are very few coupons for fresh produce. I buy generic store brand a lot. So the end result has been not even looking for coupons, just store card sales. I'm realizing though with a little effort there are likely other savings to be had.

So I'm on a mission to inventory what products we use the most of and to figure out if there are coupons out there. The weekly circular doesn't really have brands we use that often. Any recommendations from other largely organic shoppers out there?

Reframing Microfinance

If you give only what you do not need, it's not giving.

Harumph. This is an uncomfortable idea. One that may be easily dismissed, but caused me to sit bolt up right and grab a pen to write it down. Striving to consume less requires a prioritization of purchases, commitments and giving. Considering what you give to potentially be of limited consequence is not so pleasant.

I've been examining our spending and consumption habits to-date from a save more, consume less point of view. What if the whole point is to save more, give more?

Realistically, I'm going to reach a point where we've run out of books to give to the library; clothes and items to donate to Goodwill; dress clothes to give Dress for Success; unused pantry items for the food drive. These are all things we do not need. Sure we are giving it and others will benefit from it, but the greater sentiment is not moot.

What if the point is reframing our point-of-reference even further?

There's the much repeated story by various members of the Kennedy family about having cereal for dinner one night a week so that the money they would have spent on dinner could be given to charity. A similar sentiment was shared this past week, when our minister Charlie Parker remarked in his sermon, wouldn't it be great if we had to tell our kids, our families, we can't do this or that because we choose instead to give to the church?

Giving does not need to be framed in the context of Christianity or any other belief system for that matter to be meaningful or directed. It need only be authentic, purposeful, life changing.

And I guess that's it. What does that mean for us? How does giving to a cause factor into actual budgeting? After the mortgage, expenses, saving for the college fund, paying off the college loans, and saving for retirement...where's the line item for investing in change? On our own micro, maybe nano level.

Microfinancing isn't something we can do only for Africa. Microfinancing is what we should be doing with our own budgets. We could each be investing in the local, national, and international causes we believe in with the same discipline we pay our bills. That's meaningful, that would be amazing.

Commitment Issues

Travel is a part of our lives. Well, for at least half of us. Here is the conundrum. When one of you flies to far flung places for a living and the other stays put, where do you vacation?

Add to that your new found obsession with frugal and it creates perpetual list of  "well what about..." There are days I want to climb on top of a metaphorical chimney and shout "why don't we just go already? We're freaking kid free let's travel!" This is usually fueled by some sort of discussion that involved me saying, yet again, something about my new passport not yet having stamps. So classy. So thoughtful.

We've been to some great places, but with our new found responsible financial behavior, we're much more reluctant to just book a flight and go. I'm afraid we have vacation commitment issues.

First, we talked about taking out this nice girl Paris. Spend 10 days with her, rent an apartment, take advantage of great flights from Air France, shop the phenomenal January sales, see Versailles with snow, ooo la la.

Then we talked to a more outdoorsy chick Lake Placid. She has a killer lodge. Smores, roaring fires, hiking, down comforters, venison steak. Yum.

We flirted with the seductive Morocco. Oasis, sand dunes, history, the fez. Oh so spicy, but best enjoyed allegedly with a tour guide. We didn't want a chaperone.

There's always the venerable weekend trip, the one night stand of vacation relationships. We thought about picking up a few of those. New York, Charlottesville, Chicago, etc.

We've trolled jetsetter.com like it's going out of style. I discovered wanderfly.com and thought, yes! And then the ol' commitment issues crept back.

So outside the obvious (family obligated trips), how do you settle on where to travel and when?