eat out only once a week

Even though I was pretty hungry, I decided to wait until I got home to have lunch. My son was with me so we would have easily blown $10-$15.

on food that is not as good as what I can make at home! I just realized that what we spent on eating out this week could have been used to fulfill my goal of “buy a good bbq grill”. I need to get serious about this so that I can spend money on more worthwhile things.

Goal not met by any stretch of the imagination. I ate out 7 times. I can’t get too much further off of reaching this goal. So I went to the grocery store and bought more food that I think I will actually enjoy. Also I’ll be packing lunch for work, an obvious step!! Here’s to next week.

I blow my food budget every single month because:

I don’t cook

I eat out

So I decided to give up this goal in exchange for a more specific one: eat out once every two weeks.
Let’s see how it goes!!

I need to start this for 2 majors reasons:
*Health
*$$$

I go to Hawaii on Sunday, so it’ll have to wait until after that though.

Week 1 was a short week, but that’s ok for starters.

Tuesday: Black bean and corn quesadillas. Excellent. Might try putting some brown rice in there next time to get a full protein. Made good lunch in the microwave the next day, too.

Wednesday: Cream tuna over biscuits. This is an old standby in my house – it has protein (both fish and dairy), carbs (baking powder biscuits) and vegetables (frozen peas). Probably not enough vegetable. Spare biscuits make great breakfasts, snacks, etc.

Thursday: Sesame pasta. This recipe needs work. I’d like to try it with soba instead of whole wheat pasta. It needs more vegetable matter (maybe broccoli?). But I was amazed at how nice my apartment smelled for the next few days…but I like the smell of sesame oil.

Friday: Annie’s Mac & Cheese. Yeah, this is a total cop out. But I had 20 minutes to get out the door, so it worked. And I ate lots of carrots on the road.

Mom found me the Moosewood cookbook of “Simple Dinners” that looks fantastic. The goal is all the recipes consist of items a well stocked kitchen should have on hand. There are a few things I should get, but it looks like a really great book. And it’s pescatarian, like me.

I’m going through and planning next week’s menu.

Made a nice big grocery list. Snooped around the internet for some meals for this week. I bought a vegetarian cookbook while in Connecticut, too, it’s super funny…from the ‘70s. The goal is to make weekly menu plans, and then I can have all the ingredients on hand and not have to think about making the food, just make it dammit. I was supposed to do that last night, but I got a bit distracted. At least I washed dishes, though.