Grocery Budget

So, those of you who've been with me the last few months know that we've put Wee 'Burb in a new, more expensive daycare, thus requiring some financial magic and finally resulting in the loss of my data plan and some unfortunate dealings with my cell phone company and ebay.

Anyway, I came across this article about typical grocery budgets and started wondering if maybe we can't cut a wee bit more in this area.

But I am also wondering if it's even remotely realistic. The article says:

According to the USDA, in 2011 it should cost me $523.70 per month to feed my family of two adults and two children ages two and five a nutritious diet on a thrifty budget. To feed the same family on a low-cost plan would cost $667.20; a moderate-cost plan would cost $823.60; and a liberal plan would cost $1,018.80.

In fairness, I would say we're between the moderate cost and liberal plan.

But then again, we only have one kid. Does Cous Cous count as a kid?

The key focus of this article is not over-buying, which is something I admit I am guilty of. In our house, we consider certain things "staples" and that usually means sweet peppers, onions, garlic, and yogurt. Unfortunately, some of those items get ignored for a little bit and then we have soft peppers, melted onions, sprouty garlic, and chunky yogurt.

Wonh wonh wonnnnhhhhh.

I'm hoping our three-week meal plan will help this. We should have a decent amount of recipes on hand should we have extra produce.

Where in this budget do you fall? Have you taken steps to reduce your grocery budget at all?

You Don't Know Me! Death By Chocolate Chip

Since I have doubled my readership in the last few months (thanks for coming to see me!) I've decided to do a little experiment. On Thursdays I'll be posting some items from the first year of blogging under the title You Don't Know Me!
Posted originally in May 2010.



Oh my gosh, I almost experienced ACTUAL death by chocolate! You hear about it, but you don’t think it’s true. And then, it happens to you.

So, my girlfriend and I get together once a week or so and have movie nights. We pick completely random movies at least one of us hasn’t seen and we take turns hosting. It’s all very low key and relaxing: the host provides dinner (usually Chinese) and the guest provides dessert and booze.

So it’s my turn to go to her house and I am having a bad week. Like just record-breaking blahs. And while nothing cures the blahs like a good old-fashioned movie night, the idea of getting in the car and getting there just exhausts. So adding extra stops for booze and dessert? Forget it. So there’s a liquor store nearby that I know keeps champagne cold and I am in a cheap champagne mood.

Next door is a little Mexican gas station/taco stand. Yup, you read that right. In the middle of the country…in a gas station. Anyway, I get the lightbulb that I can just go ahead and buy the “dessert” right there in the gas station. So I go in looking for a bag of cookies. I’ll say this: bless my friend for loving cheap cookies and even cheaper booze. I’ve cooked for her and she’s graciously eaten it all, but I swear nothing makes the girl happier than a bag of Milanos and that’s why we’re friends.

Only this isn’t exactly that kind of gas station/taco stand, know what I mean? They’re selection isn’t exactly vast. But for some reason in my exhaustion, I find this funny and so end up purchasing the rather festive-looking cookie box you see here. Cute, right? She’s making a little Russian dish for me so I figure I’ll bring her a little Spanish dish of my own.

So I pay and leave and go get my champagne. I’ve parked between the liquor store and the gas station/taco stand, so about 20 feet from both. I am in my car, about to shut the door when I hear this little voice call out to me in a thick Mexican accent “hellooooo?” So I turn around and a Mexican man wearing an apron is waving at me. But he’s not moving off the sidewalk by the store. He’s just like yelling to me, which kind of weirds me out.

I start to stress a little because this is a small parking lot and it’s empty. And also, irrationally, I’m freaked out about speaking Spanish. I hate when I do this! The thing is: I know Spanish. And I know in situations like this, where he’s gearing up for a big conversation, I could probably speak Spanish and cut through it all much quicker.

Instead, I panic. I do this totally circular self-fulfilling prophecy when it comes to my fluency in Spanish. I am, in fact, half Puerto Rican. And also, in fact, am fluent in Spanish. But you get me around native speakers and I just melt into my little Irish girl half. I don’t know what it is. Well, that’s not true, I do. I am self-conscious about sounding stupid so I won’t speak it in front of native speakers. Which means I don’t speak it often. Which means when I DO have to speak it, it sounds awkward and I stutter and then that makes me not want to speak it in front of native speakers.

Ok, so all of this is going through my mind as I stare blankly at him. So he asks “how much did you pay for those cookies?”

So, remember I’m tired, right? Bad week? A million things are going through my mind like “did I overpay? Underpay? Is he going to tell me I got ripped off? Does he have some sort of cheap cookie connection he wants to introduce me to?

Side note: this is why I can’t do yoga anymore. My brain REFUSES to slow down and make sense. And it for sure won’t stop to concentrate on my breathing. The classes were TORTURE for me. The whole time, my mind would be going a mile a minute: “that girl shouldn’t wear such short shorts; I hope nobody is behind me, if they’re behind me they’ll see how fat my ass is; I wonder what would happen if I fell over right now? Would they laugh or are they too zen for that? Because I would laugh, but I also can’t do a perfect tree pose without falling over, so they’re all better than me.” And then the worst part is the end when you’re just supposed to lay there and like reflect on the beauty of a dewdrop on the water or whatever? Yeah, then I go into overdrive: “Okay, so just turn off, brain. We won’t think about anything. Is thinking about not thinking about something thinking about it? I should stop. The person next to me looks very serene. Crap! I’m supposed to have my eyes closed. But so is the instructor so if she calls me out, then she’s just a phony, right?” And then all of a sudden it’s like “Namaste” and I feel totally gypped.

Anyway, so I told the man I paid $3.99 for the cookies. And he says “too much, they’re really bad, you should get your money back.” And I’m like, wow, there are lots of things in life I don’t like, but I can’t think of a time that I’ve actually stood outside to persuade someone not to do it. I mean that’s ballsy! So I shout back “well, I don’t mind giving them a try” because I can’t imagine going back in and explaining to the man behind the counter that the other dude who sells tacos told me these cookies sucked and could you please return my $3.99, thank you? It’s just too awkward.

So I see him turn and look at someone, who I later realize is the dude who sold me the cookies, and then he says “they’re old!” And again, stupid brain goes, old, like old school? And I start thinking about pop rocks and other candy I haven’t seen in awhile and maybe he’s just letting me know that his generation is smarter about these things and therefore knows that they’re total crap cookies.

And he’s getting more and more riled up. And I’m getting more and more weirded out because, dude, no matter what you say, I’m not getting out of my car to return the cookies. The whole reason I got them at your gas station/taco stand was because I was too lazy to go down the street to the multiple grocery stores or gas stations I could encounter that would have had Milanos instead of your, apparently, crap cookies.

And for some reason this like rebellious teenager in me comes out and I’m thinking: “well, now I will try the damn cookies and I will love them. Who tells me not to like cookies?” The gall! And again while I am doing this he is frantically whispering to the dude who sold me the cookies and finally as I am putting my seat belt on yells “expired! They expired! It would be better for you to return.”

And now I’m just embarrassed. And guilty because maybe if I had just spoken Spanish to the guy we would have been on the same page. Only I don’t know the Spanish word for expired. Crap, my fluency is fading.

So I’m feeling bad in general because I was all “I should speak English, it’s better” and made him struggle to explain to me the cookies I purchased were bad. And also feeling bad because first I’ve pegged this guy as some sort of back-alley cookie connection, then as some sort of anti-cookie crank, when in reality all he’s doing is trying not to poison me. I’m too embarrassed to reply so I just wave and take off.

I stop a ways down the road. And sure as hell: expired June 2009. Think about that. Think about the shelf life of a crappy generic cookie. I think that cookie could have been made while I still had braces on!

But don’t think for a second I wasn’t still tempted to try the cookies. Instead, $3.99 down the tubes.

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's SuperCooks!

When Scott and I were living in his condo together, and we both had office jobs, we were pretty good about sharing food responsibilities.

At the time, I had approximately four go-to dishes. Two of which I recently found out he was less than fond of, and had only been pretending to like for certain selfish reasons I imagine you all can figure out on your own.

When it was his evening to cook, I would continually be amazed at his lack of plan.

Me? I had a recipe, I checked off said recipe to make sure I had all my ingredients. When I was ready to cook, those ingredients were lined up on the counter, in order of appearance in my dish. I pretty much viewed said recipe as navigation instructions from the flight deck: you ignore them, someone dies.

Now, Scott on the other hand, he’s flying without radar and buzzing the tower like Maverick in Top Gun.

Watching him cook was both the most exciting and most nerve-wracking experience. He just threw some stuff in a dish and while that simmered, he’d hunt for something else to throw in the dish, and then he’d top it off with a little something else and toss it on a plate.

Delicious, every time delicious.

I’ve grown some since those days in the sense that I now know more about substitutions, I have general ideas of how long each item should cook. But I still use a recipe as a guide.

This growth has come mostly out of necessity. With me working at home, it just makes sense that I handle the meals. Also because I have been trying to lose weight and eat healthier, I’ve become an obsessive meal planner and it’s easier for me to cook the meals I know I can eat rather than letting him go willy nilly and me trying to figure out the nutritional content of “um, I think I threw some tequila in, mighta been a cup, mighta been like a few tablespoons? I was kind of in the zone, Babe.”

In the last six months for money and weight loss purposes, I have become an obsessive meal planner. Sadly, winter has ruined a good chunk of my best-laid plans so far this year.

You see, when snow is about to hit Suburbia, people flock to the grocery stores like they’re stocking a bomb shelter. And guess what they do after snow hits? Yeah, the same thing.

Recently, this became a big problem when we had invited some friends over for brunch. I, of course, had planned to make a quiche and some elaborate sides that would make Rachael Ray turn spinach green with jealousy.

Then it snowed. And snowed. By the time the snow stopped and Scott had fired up the snowblower, it was mere hours before my friends were to arrive. And I was in full panic because all we had in the fridge was some eggs, milk, and less than stellar cheddar cheese.

But I was NOT about to go shopping. If I had to serve them egg on toast, I was not going shopping.

Suddenly I remembered this website a friend of mine had sent me. SuperCook is a GREAT site to help you figure out how what to make with what you have in the house. MAGICAL!

I began crazily entering any random item we had in our fridge and freezer, and it was giving me lists and lists of recipes I could make. I ended up making an egg bake with frozen potatoes o’brien and bacon and some cheddar we had left over from a cheese and cracker night, pumpkin muffins (thanks to Itzys Kitchen I always have those ingredients on hand), and banana bread.

I have to say, it looked like I had spent a ton of time coming up with these elaborate recipes, when in fact I had just whipped these things up.

So to look like a total superstar, I highly recommend Super Cook.

Have you used this site before? Do you have go-to recipe sites you use when you need to make something on the spot? Are you good at creating things or do you need a recipe to guide you?

Tuesday Randomness

So, Scott and I went to Costco today. Because, you know, we're a hot young couple with a kid. That's date night, people!

Anyway, we had Wee 'Burb with us because our roommate had the AUDACITY to leave and go visit her family. I don't think we realized how reliant we had become on her pitching in when we had quick errands to run. Turns out, Wee 'Burb has her mommy's patience. Which is to say, less than zero.

So we're walking and we're price comparing and discussing what we're going to make for New Years Eve (we've long ago decided not to bother going out: I never like the fixed-price menu options and neither of us enjoy being on the roads or going to the built-up parties that always end up super boring).

Those of you who go to Costco or Sam's Club know that every few aisles there are sample carts. I usually try to avoid these because they're not friends to the ole diet. But today I was feeling fancy free and decided to try some frozen pizza. Pedestrian at best, sigh.

Then there's a ravioli sample and it looks good. I go to grab one and I am about to hand a little bite to Wee 'Burb, who is guppy-mouthing for more food since we're nearing her normal chow time, when I stifle a "sonofabitch" and throw it in the trash.

The word molten could not describe! The woman has the nerve to serve this on a little paper doily less thick and absorbent than the little tray that separates the milanos in a bag. It's CLEARLY soaking right through these little paper things, but she hasn't even bothered to refill her napkin dispenser.

So I am covered in grease and nearing tears my tongue hurts so bad, and Wee 'Burb is burying into Scott's chest and whining because mommy is the meanest mommy EVER not giving her a piece of that tongue-scalding noodle she so badly wanted.

Happy Tuesday, Costco. Thanks for nothing!

Things I Love Thursday: COUPONS!

Do you want to guest blog on Things I Love Thursday? Just submit me your ideas at stephanieinsuburbia@yahoo.com!

So some of you both on and off the blog were amused, and possibly horrified, when I wrote this in my post about losing my mind:

There’s no other way to say this, I am obsessed with coupons. I love them so much I date them. I’m not kidding, I will not cut coupons in a rush or in any atmosphere not conducive to my love for coupons. I light some candles, I settle in with a good TV show, and I tenderly cut at the designated pre-creased spot. I gently place them in my coupon organizer, which coddles them lovingly by expiration date. And said coupon organizer is velcroed everrrr so gently onto the cart so that they are accessible as I check out.

I could not be more serious. The same way I make time to play with Wee ‘Burb and snuggle with my husband and catch up on our day, I make time for coupons.

I think this goes back to when I was a little girl and my mother would sit on Sundays and read the paper. To keep me from bugging the crap out of her, she’d hand over the coupon section and some safety scissors. I don’t think it accomplished what she desired, as I constantly said “Mom, do we need 3 boxes of Cheerios?” until she shouted “NO! Nobody needs 3 boxes of Cheerios!” But it was something I could do with my mom and it always made me feel grown up.

Since then, I’ve always ALWAYS had to have the Sunday paper. And here’s how the ritual has gone since I was old enough to live on my own, and now that I have a family hey, we may legitimately go through 3 boxes of Cheerios!

Step 1: I pull out all the coupons. In our paper, they occasionally sneak some coupons in the front sections of the paper in addition to those wrapped in the Sunday Comics. My philosophy is and always has been “no coupon left behind!”

Step 2: I divide the coupons into piles. I have 3 piles now. There’s the pile I need (these are the store coupons like Target, Kohls, etc. and the generic grocery coupons), the pile my husband rifles through (usually the tool catalogs, Home Depot, stuff like that), and then the toss pile (all the other garbage like the Parade magazine and office supply coupons, etc).

Step 3: Cut first, ask questions later! A lot of people will tell you not to bother cutting coupons that you don’t need because you’ll end up spending money on items that aren’t useful. This is true in some cases. If you don’t use Crest toothpaste, then don’t cut it. But if you use Crest toothpaste, and you just happen to already have a few tubes in your closet (you DO have a closet of extras, don’t you?) it doesn’t hurt to cut them out. I’ll tell you why later. Anyway, I cut out everything we use, or might think about using if the price is right.

Step 4: I keep those coupons handy, and my entire coupon organizer (more on that later, too) around so that I can compare these to the store ads. I’ll compare prices at the different grocery stores and see if anything is on sale.

Know how I know if it’s a good price? I keep a list! I’m not kidding, I have a typed list that I have in my wallet at all times that shows the best prices for products we use all the time.


This allows me to check to see if a deal is really a DEAL or if the store has just marked something up for the sake of marking it down and advertising it. And it also allows me to comparison shop at bulk stores like Costco or Amazon.com to see if I can get a better price (I know it sounds insane, but it took me about 30 minutes and about 3 weeks of receipts to compile a good master list).

THIS is where my hint about cutting first helps. So if a store is advertising a sale on Crest, just because you have a few tubes doesn’t mean it isn’t a deal. If it’s a good sale and you can pick it up for a good price, you’re saving money on a product that has a long shelf life and ultimately you won’t be paying full price when you run out and HAVE to buy it or risk your teeth falling out (am I the only one that has that nightmare?). I typically just go ahead and use a highlighter to highlight the deals on the store ad and use that to make my grocery list later.

Step 5: Organize the coupons. This is an intensely personal choice. Some of you may wish to organize by expiration date, some by product type, some by amount of discount (our grocery stores typically cap a double coupon at $1 and only let you use 5 of them, so if you plan on doing a double coupon day, you may wish to organize them that way). I’m not going to get so political as to tell you how to do it. I choose the expiration date method myself. And I just organize it by month. And this is why I LOVE my new organizer that I bought at Office Max. It actually has 12 different sections and little stickers to organize it by month! And it’s purple, you guys, which is so unintentional, but kind of makes me laugh b/c now my purple purse has my purple Blackberry and purple coupon holder. Look at me all coordinated!

Ok, back to the serious stuff. So that’s how I organize my coupons. I mostly use them from the paper; however there are some great sites out there if you want to download coupons instead. Many require you to download a printer application. In the past I have used http://www.couponmom.com/ and http://www.redplum.com/. You can also just Google “download grocery coupons” and come up with a bazillion sites.

I also recommend that you go to the home pages of products you use often that rarely go on sale. For example, we use a lot of Eucerin and Aveeno for Wee ‘Burb and I have had good luck on those sites occasionally finding coupons. If there’s something you don’t find in your paper, I encourage you to Google the product name and “coupons” and see what you can find (and please share with me!).

So, that is my process. For the first year that I did double coupon days with my coupons, the LEAST I saved in one visit was $13.54 (that’s a combination of in-store deals with coupons, for those of you who were doing the math and recalling I said they cap the double coupons at $10). While honestly I think a lot of what I love is the organization, the savings doesn’t suck, either, especially when that’s about what it costs me for a year of a newspaper!

So, share and share alike! What sites do you like for coupons? What tricks do you have for saving money on groceries?

Disorderly Conduct

You know that lingering sinking feeling you get at points in your life when you’re like “wow, I was in the top of my class, I went to a good college, I should feel a lot smarter than I do right now?” Well last week was a continuous week of that.

It started early in the week when I screwed up our passports. Here’s where I confess I got married two years ago and never bothered to change my name on my passport. Unlike Scott’s suggestion that perhaps I was trying to keep an alias and flee the country, I didn’t have a good reason for not doing the name change. It just wasn’t a priority (and, incidentally, when we refinanced, my maiden name came up under “known aliases,” so the whole fleeing the country thing wouldn’t have panned out, anyway). So when Scott’s was up for renewal, I figured it was as good a time as any to redo mine. The DMV suggested we mail them in to avoid extra processing fees. Since mailing crap is my domain, I took over.

I did two things I knew were stupid, and they both bit me in the ass. The first? I told him to make the check out for what the DMV dude wrote on my sheet when I went to get the info after we were first married. Two years ago. I mean, really, if STAMPS go up like 40 cents a year, you can guess passport fees may have changed in two years. And that nagging thought occurred to me, but I figured, “hey, it’s written on the sheet.” The second thing I did that I knew was stupid, I stuck it in a mailbox outside the post office. After I dropped it in I saw a sticker that CLEARLY said anything over a certain weight needed to be weighed in the post office, but I figured “hey, I put two stamps on it, we’re cool.” Neither were cool and now Scott’s passport expired.

Exhibit B.
When we returned from a recent trip, I thought to myself “I will be organized this time! I will unpack right away and do laundry right away, and put the suitcases away right away.” And I did. For the first time EVER, I actually did it, you guys! And it blew up STRAIGHT IN MY FACE! Because a few days later I discovered I was charged for Wee ‘Burb’s carseat, which is technically an assistive device. Only I can’t prove it because I THREW OUT the receipts in my desire to be organized and apparently they have no record of it.

It took, oh, 5 phone calls and 2 hours (and one very confused banker who was so nice as I told her “yes, I know you wouldn’t possibly have the baggage receipt number in your records from my debit card but customer service told me you would and I have to make the call) to determine I was boned. Friendly skies my ass.

Exhibit C.
There’s no other way to say this, I am obsessed with coupons. I love them so much I date them. I’m not kidding, I will not cut coupons in a rush or in any atmosphere not conducive to my love for coupons. I light some candles, I settle in with a good TV show, and I tenderly cut at the designated pre-creased spot. I gently place them in my coupon organizer, which coddles them lovingly by expiration date. And said coupon organizer is velcroed everrrr so gently onto the cart so that they are accessible as I check out. In an act of self-sabotage, I did what I always swear I will not do and did the self check-out. Big Mistake. HUGE! I walked out and got into my car a little dazed by how such a quick trip to the store had cost so much more than I anticipated.

Then I realized: I had forgotten to scan my coupons! The entire point of going to this dreaded place instead of Target was double coupon day, and I had failed to use my precious, precious darlings….who were nowhere to be found! And then it hit me, like a horrible punch to the stomach, I had left my coupon holder ON THE CART!! I thought about going back, but I had visions of me frantically searching for the person who DARED abscond with my coupon holder and I felt nothing very flattering or lady-like would come from it. I’m still in mourning. All I can say is thank goodness Wee ‘Burb is almost off formula because I had some awesome coupons in there. I wonder if home insurance covers coupons? Anyone?

Exhibit D.
In an odd way,  it links to both B and C. Scott and I have separate bank accounts, for a lot of reasons that make sense in our relationship. So he had written me a check to cover my ill-fated grocery trip mentioned in Exhibit B, and for the trip I took today to Target to get the rest of the items I hadn’t gone to get on double coupon day.

I lost the check. No idea.

I absolutely know I put it on the edge of the table and my first thought was that Wee ‘Burb had taken off with it. Yeah, because in the midst of my mental meltdown, she thought it’d be a cool idea to learn to crawl. We’ve only been practicing and fretting over this milestone for, oh, 2 months. Since our normally level-headed pediatrician informed us if Little Miss Lazy Pants didn’t get off her fat Huggies and start moving, we’d be forced to take her to a physical therapist. As I mentioned here, we have a high-deductible plan, so while yeah I don’t want to hear my kid is behind, I also don’t want to pay $100 per visit to have them play with her legs and tell me she’s lazy. Is that just me?

Where was I? Right, so I figured she’d made off with the check. Scott was nice and cool about it, but I couldn’t stop beating myself up. Losing coupons is bad enough, losing actual money is just too much.

So I pull into Target today, and to add to my crap mood someone decided after weeks of construction AROUND Target, it’s time to do the entire parking lot, forcing me to park 12 miles from the store on a day where I have a million things to do.

And I pull in and there’s this old dude leaning on the front of a car, his feet halfway in to the spot I want to park and I’m thinking “dude, you BEST not be saving that for someone who’s been circling, because I will run you over” and he just crosses his arms for a second, purses his lips, and then begins DIRECTING me into the spot. WHAH????

As I begin to think about the merits of giving him a piece of my mind (pro: it would release a lot of stress I’ve been building in my week of mental goo; con: I don’t have bail money…there was probably a coupon for that in my lost organizer, now we’ll never know), I pick up my purse and feel something sticky. It’s the tag from one of our suitcases (no, sadly, not the one I needed, wouldn’t that be a happy ending?) and attached to it is the check I thought I lost!

So what’s the diagnosis, Doctor Readers? Am I going insane? Is this the dreaded Mommy Brain I’ve heard so much about and dismissed as myth? Is there coupon insurance??