I have never been good at keeping to a budget. I am stellar at writing up a budget. I am great at seeing exactly what we need to allot to what parts of the household funds, but I cannot seem to keep on track with a grocery budget. For that matter, the little things that peek out at me through store windows used to eat up my sense as well. But that was old Tabitha and times have certainly changed. They say that nothing changes you more than having a child but I can honestly say that it pales in comparison to having a child with health concerns.
I have reached out and had to find new cook books to help me change my way of thinking. I spent 29 years working on my perfect beer mac n cheese, my homemade bbq bacon and chicken pizza, my feta cheese and spinach chicken spirals over pasta with a homemade pesto sauce....I could go on for hours. When we realized that gluten was definitely out forever my husband lamented that he had finally after 4 years of serious effort managed to perfect his sourdough bread recipe and technique. On the bright side, he is kind of a baking expert so that helps make translating gluten free recipes a cinch.
I started buying cookbooks that were allergen free. Not knowing exactly which products were the culprit, we simply removed the top 8. Sadly, we didn't really make progress because I was still eating processed food that had gluten. Once we figured out that gluten, diary and soy were our culprits, I was able to tweak my cookbook searches. I found a few Paleo books and now I am on a mission to make our weekly budget work with our dietary needs. I will be writing a few reviews of the cookbooks I find along the way in future posts.
I am starting with Week 6's menu which includes cooking mahi mahi, steaks, chicken breasts, and scallops.
For this our grocery bill totaled $111.71. I learned a few things after scouring the bill to figure out why it was so darn high. I used the book which cooks for 4 people. My appetite isn't THAT big. I could have shaved $20 off the bill by knowing that. Still, that leaves me with a $90 bill that doesn't cover breakfast or lunches. Time to make more out of the money.
As a note for MSPI families: Don't let your kid get a hold of the receipt. Those nasty little buggers are printed with soy ink. While this is supposed to be better for the environment it wreaks havoc on kids. My poor son imitated his older brother the cat and chewed on a receipt while I wasn't looking. I didn't think anything of it (no judging!) until his face got spots. Then he started itching his eyes...then he started screaming. We suspected the ink issue only because the day before he had his way with the newspaper. I only knew it was soy ink because a few years back while working on my garden I read that our local newspaper was not good to use in a garden because of the ink.
I have reached out and had to find new cook books to help me change my way of thinking. I spent 29 years working on my perfect beer mac n cheese, my homemade bbq bacon and chicken pizza, my feta cheese and spinach chicken spirals over pasta with a homemade pesto sauce....I could go on for hours. When we realized that gluten was definitely out forever my husband lamented that he had finally after 4 years of serious effort managed to perfect his sourdough bread recipe and technique. On the bright side, he is kind of a baking expert so that helps make translating gluten free recipes a cinch.
I started buying cookbooks that were allergen free. Not knowing exactly which products were the culprit, we simply removed the top 8. Sadly, we didn't really make progress because I was still eating processed food that had gluten. Once we figured out that gluten, diary and soy were our culprits, I was able to tweak my cookbook searches. I found a few Paleo books and now I am on a mission to make our weekly budget work with our dietary needs. I will be writing a few reviews of the cookbooks I find along the way in future posts.
This week, I am starting with Weeknight Paleo by Amber Beam of Paleo Savvy.
I am starting with Week 6's menu which includes cooking mahi mahi, steaks, chicken breasts, and scallops.
For this our grocery bill totaled $111.71. I learned a few things after scouring the bill to figure out why it was so darn high. I used the book which cooks for 4 people. My appetite isn't THAT big. I could have shaved $20 off the bill by knowing that. Still, that leaves me with a $90 bill that doesn't cover breakfast or lunches. Time to make more out of the money.
As a note for MSPI families: Don't let your kid get a hold of the receipt. Those nasty little buggers are printed with soy ink. While this is supposed to be better for the environment it wreaks havoc on kids. My poor son imitated his older brother the cat and chewed on a receipt while I wasn't looking. I didn't think anything of it (no judging!) until his face got spots. Then he started itching his eyes...then he started screaming. We suspected the ink issue only because the day before he had his way with the newspaper. I only knew it was soy ink because a few years back while working on my garden I read that our local newspaper was not good to use in a garden because of the ink.
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