Tightening my Belt, Financially Speaking!

This post is mainly me rambling, so bear with me!

I'm usually quite a frugal person, but after Dan and I had our budget talk yesterday, I think I need to find a way to tighten the belt even more. In order to accommodate our need to spend less, we are probably going to get rid of our cable tv, eliminate eating out for the remainder of the year and I am going to somehow avoid the scrapbook store like the plague. I told him I could cut the grocery bill a bit, but I am going to challenge myself to see if we can get by on $50 of groceries a week. (That's more than half of the normal bill)

Now I'm not talking about going on the top ramen diet that was familiar to us in college, but rather shopping smarter and using the food more efficiently. It is also important to me not to fall into the trap of buying processed foods that seem to always be on sale. That being said, I went grocery shopping yesterday and spent about $45 on milk, yogurt, cheddar cheese, cottage cheese, 2 whole chickens, applesauce, 4 boxes of cereal, bread, baby Tylenol, teething gel, and marshmallows (to make rice crispy treats, yum!). I think we will be able to make it this week, but I will be itchin' to go to the store on Monday.

The only way that I could imagine spending only $50 on groceries per week is that when I look at my pantry, I still have a pretty good "stockpile" of goods from the spring when I did the Grocery Game regularly. I've not been as good about using coupons lately...well, since the big move. When I used the list from the Grocery Game, I would save about 40-50% on my groceries by just clipping coupons. Now, mind you, I bought a bit of processed stuff that may have saved me $$ in my pocket, but it added pounds to my waistline. This time I am only going to clip coupons for things I feel good about feeding my family.

If you haven't tried the Grocery Game, go to www. Grocerygame.com. (If you try it, let them know you heard about it from me as I would be grateful for the referral credit.) Basically, the site gathers info about what's on sale in your local area, and combines them with the coupons from the current cycle to give you the best savings. You will get the rock bottom price this way because they have researched when the sales cycles offer the greatest amount of savings. This allows you to avoid phantom sales.

Thinking about ways to cut costs must have been weighing on my mind, because I woke up this morning at about 4:30 and couldn't get back to sleep. Finally when Dan left for his accountability group just before 6 am, I got up and cleaned out the refrigerator.
I found some interesting things in there. See the picture of the day for proof. After tossing out a couple containers of leftovers gone bad, I tried to think of ways to prevent this from happening again. I looked in at the leftover tuna-noodle casserole and tried to figure out how to recycle this dish. As a child I had my fair share of tuna-noodle casserole, so I didn't want to burn my kids out on it, so what to do? Then I thought of an idea I had seen hundreds of times in magazines:

Simply take a flour tortilla and cut about three smaller circles with a large round cookie cutter. Place the circles into muffin tins and bake for about 8 minutes. When they are done, fill with whatever. Even leftover tuna-noodle casserole looks good with this new twist. To my surprize, the kids gobbled them up and even asked for more. We have a winner!
I took the leftover tortilla scraps (from cutting the circles) and cut out little hearts with a cookie cutter. Then I sprinkled them with sugar (I used fructose) and cinnamon. They look burnt, but I used whole wheat tortillas, so they are a bit brown to start with. I gave them to the kids when they finished their lunch and they loved them.