Alright, folks … Here we are at the end of Week Two of My Spending Diet. How’s it going?

The Plan: No spending from Saturday until the following Saturday. Cash in wallet can only be used in a true emergency.

What Happened: Planning-wise I did much better this week. At no point did I feel deprived or like we were missing something important.We had plenty of food for all our meals and used a good portion of it. If anything, I may have purchased a little too much.

Now, when it comes to my menu, I totally stuck to it all week — but we did switch up the days. That’s okay though. The important thing about a meal plan is to have the right number of dinners planned. So what if Friday’s dinner was served Thursday and Tuesday’s became Fridays?

As of today, we are running low on toilet paper. I also discovered a few baking ingredients that we’ve been out of for apparently awhile. All in all though, that’s small beans … we ate well this week. Read the rest of this entry…

Let me run you through a normal week in my eating life:

• Saturday: Glance through cooking magazines, cookbooks and notebooks to try to decide what to make this week. Ignore all of it and make a rudimentary meal plan … write a grocery list, trying to remember everything I need. Go grocery shopping with the kids and fail to buy everything on the list (thought process: “Eh, we don’t really need that.”) Inevitably forget a key ingredient (or two … or three).
• Sunday: Cook 3-4 recipes, mostly testing new recipes for work. Share with family and friends. Things are off to a good start.
• Monday: Defrost appropriate meat per meal plan. Decide at 5:30 that I am too busy to cook dinner and order a pizza instead.
• Tuesday: Don’t feel like cooking dinner, but force myself too so the meat from Monday doesn’t go bad.
• Wednesday: Stick to the meal plan. Feel good about it.
• Thursday: Forget (ok, maybe it’s a semi-conscious decision) to defrost ingredients for dinner. Make a quick pasta in a pinch after going to the grocery store for the ingredients.
• Friday: Decide that I am so stressed out over food and need a pick me up. Buy a sandwich at the deli and feel better. Remember to defrost everything for dinner but realize that I never bought the ingredient I forgot on Saturday. Hit the grocery store too, and am ultimately seduced by things we don’t need. Make the dinner that was supposed to be eaten on Tuesday. Realize that I skipped two days of planned meals.
• Saturday: Feel awful about the fresh ingredients that I didn’t use during the week. Wonder how I can use them. Some end up going to waste. Start the whole process over.

It’s stressful, since I rarely stick to the plan and often change my mind. But those things are unnecessary. I make last minute menu adjustments because I can … That doesn’t mean I should. So, I decided to do something about it. I decided to go on a Spending Diet. As a result, this week was 100 percent different.

The Plan: No spending from Saturday until the following Saturday. Cash in wallet can only be used in a true emergency.

What Happened: In any given week, I go to the grocery store at least three times. By the third run, I hate it and think how absurd it is that I can’t consolidate all the shopping into one trip. But until now I haven’t really done anything to shop the cycle.

This week I did. After several trips into the city last week for work and a dinner party on Saturday, I felt like any more spending this week would be way too much. I needed a spending break … so I took one. I haven’t stepped foot into any stores all week and although I have done some heavily online window browsing, I haven’t bought anything. This week was a $0 output week.

I described it to a friend in an email how this week was turning out to be awful and wonderful all at once. It really was. My house is always pretty well-stocked with food, so we did have everything we needed on hand. Plus, by following the meal plan I wrote, I actually was never left dreading a decision about dinner. Also, since I knew that the grocery store wasn’t an option, I didn’t forget to defrost anything.

Ultimately, we ended up being a lot more efficient and I got a little more creative. It was really a great experience.

Challenges: The biggest trouble came yesterday when hamburgers were planned for dinner. Originally when I planned for this week, I intended to hit the grocery store for the rolls so they would be fresh, but once the spending diet kicked in I couldn’t. That’s how I ended up making rolls. And you know what? It was totally worth the effort — not only did I save $3, but they really tasted great.

There were other spots of imperfection too. Since I didn’t make the plan to stop spending until after my last grocery shopping trip, we did run out of a few things: peanut butter, bread, milk … but Shawn picked up some milk to supplement. Obviously, I need to work on the planning aspect of things, which I have been. I started a running list of all the things we need and I feel like my shop tomorrow will be way more successful than any other one.

Benefits:

1. We used pretty much everything we bought/purchased for the week. Leftovers became lunches. Pantry items supplemented for convenience items.
2. We used up several perishables (like the sundried tomatoes in the pasta above) that would have otherwise gone to waste after being forgotten.
3. We were able to get a clearer picture of what we really need to buy. It’s easy to overlook needs when you make a bunch of mini trips to the store.
4. The money in my wallet has stayed there. My bank account has grown.
5. I, personally, ate fewer calories. Also, instead of losing hours to trips to the store, we spent more time outside this week (which the good weather clearly helped with).

What’s Next?

Tomorrow is Saturday – the day when I can officially shop again. I plan to take my list and meal plan and pick up all the things we need, get some gas (I am down to about a half tank — which is fine, but this is about curbing mid-week spending) and do any other errands that involve money. On Sunday, I will start week two of my Spending Diet.

I am considering this somewhat of a spending detox. Next week, I will take a look at how things went and decide if I want to continue or allow a little more flexibility.

Have you ever gone on a spending diet? Why? How did it work for you?

Before I headed off to the grocery store on Saturday, I did something I don’t normally do … I planned out our dinners for the week and made a list of whatever we were out of for those meals. Did you catch that? Yep, I meal-planned for the week.

I’ve toyed with meal planning in the past, but it just didn’t stick then. Maybe I wasn’t ready for that level of organization, but I certainly had a treasure trove of excuses … I wasn’t sure what I would want on Friday on the previous Saturday. It takes too much time. It makes grocery shopping harder. Oh yea, I can be the queen of excuses.

But the thing that I found this time was that it was really easy to plan meals, focusing on the foods that I know I have and building from there.

At the grocery store, my bill was about 75 percent of last week’s (not even counting the extra trip or two I made) — and that is with having to purchase dog food for the month, which is not a small expense.

Now we are two days into the meal plan and I have stuck with it so far. What I love is that meal planning takes the mystery out of what’s for dinner. There is no last minute scurrying to figure out what I can pull together … it’s just there and planned. How easy is that? Read the rest of this entry…

On New Years Eve, we had a fun visit from an old and dear friend of mine, and her family. Then we ate Chinese food (Shawn’s tradition) and rang in the New Year watching The Next Food Network Star (I think I want to be the next star!). On New Years Day, Shawn had to work and I had big plans to just relax with the kids — until I realized that no one in the family had planned our traditional dinner.

For my entire life, we’ve had a nice dinner on New Years Day. But for some reason, no one took responsibility for it this year. Bizarre. So I sprung into action at 11 a.m. for the 4 p.m. dinner. First, came the menu – clam stuffed mushrooms, a fruit platter, my amazing Ginger Soy London Broil, mashed potatoes, sauteed spinach, a lentil dish, green beans with brown butter, and hummus for dipping carrots. That seemed like the perfect quick and easy menu for this meal (and I will tell you more about some of the sides at a later date) and it would have been if Paige wasn’t in a HOLD ME NOW! kind of mood. Nonetheless, I was able to prep everything and have it all really for the quick cook when my family arrived. I did have to scrap the clam mushrooms though, but only because my fungus was growing mold. Eww. And I just bought them too!

The funny thing was that Virtual Frolic left me a comment in the past day or two about my time management skills and that was all I could think about as I cleaned the house and prepped the food. Do I have great time management skills? I don’t think so, but I do seem to get everything done. Perhaps it’s time to start taking stock of when I do things and how I fit everything in . . . her suggestion of writing about time management could just be my next big project. (Maybe it will help me too.)

Anyway, the dinner went off without a hitch.

Now, the secret to the quick marinade of this London Broil is to cut slits into the beef so that the marinade really permeates the meat. I like to cut the slits on both sides of the meat too. It also makes it super tender when you go to slice it later.

Ginger Soy London Broil
serves 4

1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp honey
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
1-1 1/2 lb London broil

In a sturdy, medium sized bowl, whisk together soy sauce, brown sugar, garlic, honey, olive oil and ginger until well combined.

Cut slits across the London broil – 4-5 of them – to let the marinade really soak in and then put the meat into a sealable bag and pour in soy mixture. Seal the bag and let sit for 1-2 hours, turning once halfway through.

To cook:

Method 1 – On a George Foreman Grill

Preheat the grill on medium. Remove London broil from the bag and discard marinade. Place London broil on the grill and cook for 6-7 minutes to desired doneness. Slice thinly, against the grain, and serve immediately.

Method 2 – In the Broiler

Remove the London broil from the bag and discard marinade. Place on a broiler pan and into the oven. Set broiler to high and cook for 8-10 minutes, to desired doneness. Slice thinly, against the grain, and serve immediately

No time for a full post this morning, but here’s a nifty little tip. If you have a FoodSaver or a similar device that seals bags while sucking all the air out of them, you can speed up your mid-week cooking.

How?

Chop ingredients like onions, carrots, peppers and potatoes or mince garlic over the weekend. Then use your FoodSaver to seal the bag. Store it in your fridge until you are ready to use it.

Think of all the prep time that will save!

Fresh home cooked meals from the freezer? Ones that you prepare yourself and then freeze until you are ready to use them? Could this be real?

Well apparently it is. I was leafing through the local weekly today and discovered two ads for local companies that provide this service. You choose however many dishes you want to prepare, register for the session (there are several daily) and then they have all the ingredients chopped and ready to go. They instruct you on how to put the meals together and provide storage containers as well as directions for cooking. And best of all, they do all the cleanup.

And you know what? It’s not that expensive either -

The two services in my area both charge roughly $210 for 12 meals that will serve 4-6. Considering how much time I spend on meal preparation and how much I currently spend on groceries for dinner alone, I would say it’s worth it in some instances.

These are the two services I located in my area:

• My Second Kitchen
• Dream Dinners