Sunday, March 1, not-cooking and shopping

With the way the sales went this two weeks and my own lackadaisical meal planning, I wound up not having a solid plan in place for this first day of the new plan. Luckily, I had some stuff in the freezer, between one thing and another, so we ate frozen processed Italian all day. Not that I'm exactly complaining. We had an On-Cor lasagna for lunch, a filling meal that at 2.29 for a family-sized pack was quite a good deal from Aldi. In fact, I picked another one up when I went shopping. Supper was those two personal pizzas lingering from my 10-for-10 binge of two weeks ago. They were okay, and M really liked his, but the brand we bought, something that starts with a J whose name I can't remember, didn't compare favorably with the Totinos Crisp Crust pizzas we used to get for a dollar when we lived in  Chicago. 

Interesting thing  about processed Italian food, once your body stops being used to it, it doesn't like being fed nothing but that. After some pretty severe gross-stomach-feelings late in the evening, I've decided that from now on, there will be only one processed food meal at a time, when there are any. Doing my own cooking is healthier than eating frozen if for no other reason than it has a lot fewer bizarre chemicals creeping into the mix. 

Sunday was also our big shopping day. I did better this time than last in the food sins department, though I did have M with me, who talked me into a couple of things, and in fairness, out of a couple of things. I picked up a lot of the same staples as last time, pastas, milk, eggs, cheese, margarine, oatmeal, spaghetti sauce, apples, onions, flour, ground turkey, rice, bananas, pretzels, and cereal. In the non-food department, I got cat food, a cuttlebone for the birds (Pigwideon has turned herself bright red on the artificially colored calcium treat I got last time, so I went with plain), and some toasted coconut-covered marshmallows that M wanted, but I am not sure actually count as food. I also went with the tea again, which was on sale for 1.90 a box, the lowest price we've seen. I stocked up, which pushed up the total bill, but should hopefully last us the whole month. 

In the end, with the tea but excluding the cat food and such, we spent almost exactly as much as we spent last month without thirty-five dollars worth of tea, so I think that's pretty good. It's also good because I found some really good deals on meat, so the food we're eating is getting better. In the first two weeks, we had spaghetti twice, tilapia twice, tuna three times, and chicken breasts twice. This time we'll have spaghetti, yes, but also chili, pizza, spicy chicken legs, pulled pork, turkey breast, and tuna helper in our menu. I feel like I'm getting better at looking for deals. This month I'm also going to try making my own granola again, with more ingredients, and also turn my hand to shortbread, which I love but hate the expense of. I think this is working. 

Also, those marshmallows? Not as vile as I thought, but still not exactly food.