FeedTheFam.com

Already Over-Budget

Ah…Feeling low. I just checked our accounts and it seems as though we’ve already spent $890 on groceries and restaurant purchases this month (we are aiming for $800/month for our family of four). We would only be at $800 if we hadn’t treated a couple of relatives to lunch a few weeks ago but considering they had driven all the way up to see our child get a high-orange belt in hapkido it would have been rude not to pay the lunch bill (plus, you always feel good when you get to treat!). Of course, I could have made a lunch at home and saved money and now I realize that’s what we should have done. But at the time I couldn’t see myself dealing with the stress of cooking that day what with the fact that I was still a bit sick with a cold/fever and was trying to spend most of the weekend writing my book.

So now I have to figure out what to do. I mean, it isn’t as if we are going to go broke or anything, it just is disheartening when you don’t meet your goal, you know?! The only thing I can do now is damage control. That means no more food purchases for the rest of the month, of course. I just went to the store yesterday and got 4 dinners worth of food and some lunch and breakfast stuff.

So I think I can stretch it out for the next 9 days. I’ll make that my new goal. The dinners I had planned are: spinach crepes (recipe here), beans and rice (recipe here), honey-lemon chicken (recipe here), and bbq lobster tails (recipe here). We also have a side of fresh green beans with almond-butter to prepare at some point.

Now, believe you me I realized that the lobster tails were going to be expensive but I didn’t know how much until I got to the store. $10 a piece, frozen! I only bought two. They aren’t a frugal item in the least but I bought them a) not knowing that we were over-budget and b) because I wanted to surprise my husband, who told me the other day that he’d never eaten lobster before.

As far as the recipes go, I have made the spinach crepes and honey-lemon chicken tons of times so they are both tried-and true favorites in my family. The beans and rice recipe will probably not get eaten by my kids but all 71 reviews for the recipe are good so I am confident that at least my husband and I will like it. We’ll see about the lobster tails!