Food For Thought...

September has always been a month of new beginnings in my mind. For many years, it marked the start of school. A brand new year. Later, with the birth of Buddy, it marked the beginning of my journey as a mom. Every year at this time I get the urge to do something new.

This year, in the spirit of being budget conscious, we finally decided enough was enough and we are trying our hand at meal planning. It sounds so simple in theory, right? Well, perhaps I'm more challenged than most. I found it HARD. And frankly, I've barely started. I'm hoping it gets easier.

The last couple of weeks I have eagerly trolled the internet for new and excited recipes. Of course they need to be vegetarian. And not too time consuming. And, bonus points if I can get one that the kids will actually eat.

So I'm a bit late seeing as it is already September 2nd, however, last night I stayed up until the wee hours and filled in my little meal planning calendar with dinner items. Now, I did cheat a bit as I'm only meal planning Mondays through Fridays. Weekends are a whole other beast. We never know what will be on the agenda so instead of setting us up for failure I've left them blank.

I have my (ridiculously long) shopping supply list for me today. I will actually be buying ALL the ingredients needed to pull off a month of dinners with the exception of the produce which I will buy each week.

We have a budget of $600/month for groceries. The joke is that we have NO FRIGGING IDEA what we spend currently.

I'm going to the bank machine, withdrawing the $600 and using the envelope method. As our Financial Advisor said...."when it's gone, you eat popcorn". Hmmmm....that right there sounds like another nomination for the Parent of the Year Award

Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

In all honesty I'm pretty darn excited to try this out. I hope it helps us save money while reducing stress and guilt of preparing last minute crap-ass meals.

Wish me luck!!!

You Know What Pisses Me Off?

The Grocery Bag Situation. Yes, it deserves to be capitalized because it seems like a full event each and every time I get groceries.

I am fully supportive of the green movement. We religiously recycle, compost and all the rest. We're vegetarians. I pack the kids snacks in reusable containers. Heck, we barely drive anymore. I feel we are doing our part.

But yet every time I go get groceries I feel like a hardened criminal. The cashier liiks at my pitiful stack of cloth bags and then to my heaping cart full of food. She sighs and then asks the dreaded question. "You need bags"?

You see, we have a SMALL place. We have a LARGE stroller. That we have to store in the trunk. We have a small-ish car. And two LARGE car seats. What that all equates to is not much room for other stuff.

So while we have about 25 cloth bags of varying sizes....I can't always get to them. And at 9:30pm after a long day the thought of dragging our double stroller out of the trunk to find the pile of bags is not happening.

So I brought in the 3 bags I could get.

Now on to the real reason I am annoyed.

I have 3 cloth bags. They are large and will hold a good amount of our stuff....but likely not all. Since I'm not some kind of savant at figuring out the ratio of groceries to bags and cubic storage space...I have no fucking idea if I need more bags!!!

So I answer the cashier's question. "I'm not yet sure".

She stares at me for a moment. Blinks. Then asks again. "But do you need bags"?

WTF?

"I don't know. You see, I have some bags here....but I might need more. I have no way of knowing If I need bags until I've filled these ones".

Her reply?

"So what do you want me to do"?

Oh.My.God. I'm about to have a stroke. But I contain myself.

"I want to wait and see if I need bags".

To which she responded, "Oh. Okay".

Seriously? Why is this so difficult?

Next time I will dig the bags out first. It's not worth the hassle.