Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Sticking to the menu

Yesterday at work we received our bonus checks for the 2008 fiscal year. It wasn't a huge sum, but it was enough for me to at least make a dent in my medical bills. Of course one of the first things I thought about though was that we should go out for supper. By the time I got home I had talked myself out of that. When I started fixing our spaghetti supper I actually started to feel pretty good about sticking to the planned menu for the week.

We have become very accustomed to eating at home. We do sometimes go out for a meal. Every conversation afterwards goes something like this:

Layne: I really didn't need all that food.

Liz: Think of the groceries we could have bought with that $25 dollars. We could have ate for about a week.

Layne: Why do we go out?

Liz: I know, every time ends in us having this conversation. And the food usually isn't even great.


These meals out usually left us disatisfied, yet we continue to go out to eat. We used to eat out quite a bit, a couple times a week anyway. We have cut back tremendously. Now we may go out about twice a month. Usually it involves a buy 1, get 1 free meal or another great coupon.

The main reason people eat out is because of convenience. It's not always easy to work all day then come home and cook a meal. It does help though if some of the prep work is done ahead of time. Maybe cut up veggies for stir-fry ahead of time or brown some hamburger for tacos. These little steps can cut significant time off the amount of time you need to spend in the kitchen preparing a meal. If you know some of the leg-work is done ahead of time it won't seem like such a daunting task. Also, if your like me, you'll want to use these things up so they don't go bad.

Today's tip: When you are cooking one of your families favorite meals make a double batch. Throw one batch in the freezer to reheat on one of the nights that you are feeling tempted to eat out for the sake of convenience! You and your pocket book will be very glad you had this meal stashed in the freezer for such an occasion!

1 comment:

Miriam said...

I know what you mean, I always feel "bad" for spending that much money (however much it is) on 1 meal, thinking in my head how many and what kind of groceries I could've gotten for that money!