Breaking Down the Budget: Food

As I have stated before FOOD is one of the hardest parts of our budget!
It requires ALOT of planning. 
Some of the best tools out there are (I was not in ANY way compensated by any of the links I have added to this post)
http://www.emeals.com/
http://5dinners1hour.com/
I have looked into them from time ot time
Also my sister participates in
http://dreamdinners.com/
I have not done any of these offically but I use them all for tools.

I try to keep what I need in the house at all times.
We are Carnivores in our home.  We have meat with every dinner.  Which adds extra cost.

We choose to buy our meat at Costco.  We then come home, put them in food saver bags and freeze them.


This way as long as we pull meat out the night before, we can make dinner.   Beyond that we eat alot of rice, pasta and veggies.  Overall these items are not expensive.
We are quiet simple but my hubby always can throw a gourmet spin on it.

One of the best things for a Food budget is to PLAN..  Also keep the necessities in the house, and TRY to only go the the grocery store 2-4 times per month. Each trip will cost alot.

I break down our Grocery bill and Dining out into 2 categories. 
I tracked this for about a year.  Estimated what we spent in each.  As months change, needs and wants change, but if we can keep a plan it isn't too hard.

I hope to inspire some of you to build a plan.  I work on a weekly plan, and rather then putting
Monday: spaghetti...etc..
I list 7 items and we can choose the night before.

Our averages change, but knowing where we are and what we are spending is key



How we eat!

Breakfast: Since the boys eat at daycare, this normally consists of coffee and a fruit on weekdays.
On weekends, I buy the BIG bags of sugar cereal.  I loved it as a kid, and I still love it now, so we normally have that or toast.

Lunch: I hope to get better at this one, but once again the boys eat at daycare, and HH and I either eat leftovers, frozen dinners, soup or go out.  We try to limit going out to once every other week on payday, but we are not always good about this.
On weekends: Lunch is much more difficult.  We normally snack, and let our Liam pick what he wants.

Dinner: Where the REAL fun comes in.  My HH is an AMAZING COOK!!! I don't even feel that AMAZING is a good enough word to explain how yummy his cooking is.  He makes gourmet meals that are to DIE FOR, but that requires planning.  Of which I'm not so good at.  We eat Mac and Cheese (Blue Box) about once a week and decide not to cook at least one night a week.  Honestly out of LAZINESS.  (working full time is exhausting and sometimes a pizza delivered to the house sounds GREAT).