Budget Concerns – Six Ingredient Challenge
Join the Six Ingredient Challenge hosted by Hobo Mama and Anktangle!
We’re on a six-week path to eat more whole foods, guided by one simple rule: Buy foods with six ingredients or fewer. And we’re blogging about our journey on the way.
This week we’re answering the question: How’s your budget? What money-saving strategies have you been employing?
You can see all the responses to this question on March 7 at the link-up post.
To join in the Six Ingredient Challenge anytime during the six weeks, visit the sign-up page for a list of posts and to link up!
As far as budgeting for food, it is definitely an area that we have to be careful about. We always plan out a week’s worth of meals and buy food weekly. But it is those little trips here and there just to pick up “one thing” that will kill the budget. As far as participating in this challenge goes, that has not changed. We still have to be careful about that. It also seems that those little trips are the ones where we end up with junk food. For instance, Josh ran out of milk so he ran to the store and ended up buying some bagels from the bakery while he was there. And I’m pretty sure they were more than 6 ingredients. 😉
We’ve been having a lot of simple meals for dinner which normally means a focus on fruits and vegetables and whole grains. My big problem has been lunches. I’m just not having luck with coming up with anything other than natural peanut butter with local honey on whole wheat bread, Applegate Farms lunchmeat and cheese, organic canned soup, and fruit and veggies. We occasionally have leftovers as well and sometimes have some canned fish but most of those things are not 6 ingredient friendly. I’d love to break out of my rut and try some things that aren’t so heavy on processed foods. I guess I just know that I can afford those things in my grocery budget for the week and they are easy and quick to throw together. I’d love your suggestions! I got some good ones on Facebook I’m going to try out next week.
One of my big goals was to reduce our eating out. This week we didn’t eat out for dinner at all (whereas we had been going out once a week) although Josh and I individually did each eat out once for lunch. Still, that is an improvement!
