:bigear: We're tracking our spending this month and I'm already :blink: nearly hyperventilating looking at the actual spending on paper. Prices keep going up and the actual grocery items are shrinking to smaller and smaller packages. We need to cut, but I want to keep it as healthy as possible.
We don't eat a lot of meat here (one vegetarian and I only eat fish) and that saves a lot on meals. I do cook three meals a day; I do not love it btw, but it is pretty much how we eat. (We deal with allergies, the different likes dislikes and some days I'm a little nuts pulling it all together.) Everyone can cook around here, but that seems to boost the grocery bill.
I like cooking in big batches and often freeze a number of meals that dh can take for lunch or someone can heat up if they don't love what's on the menu. Some dear boardie recommended once a week cooking way back when and I do all of the meat on the weekend, while it's fresh from the grocery store. Thawing meat and then cooking it creeps me out, and it just takes more effort than I like. Each week a number of our meals are vegetarian, but the guys deal with it; sometimes they don't notice I've made vegetarian chili phased out any meat in our pasta dishes a long time ago..
Reading the different ideas and tips is helping my find my happy place again. Cooking, grocery shopping and meal planning in January is dull and as depressing as the weather.