My First Attempt

Before I get in to that, I wanted to share something I read today in my bible reading. I have a leadership Bible and it had an interesting quote in one of the side notes:

    "Adversity makes a person choose one of two paths: character or compromise" Now, that's a different way to look at adversity!

Ok, back to my first attempt at menu-planning. Keeping it simple: Tonight we went out to eat! Now, before you think I have gone all crazy against my new goal, this dinner out was, in fact, on the menu. :) Planning for those nights out not only gives you relief from cooking, but also gives you something to look forward to when you have a weak moment. That is, if your like me and cooking is not your favorite thing to do. 

Saturday starts our vacation, so here's our menu plan for Tuesday through Friday:

     Tuesday: Beef stew in the crock-pot with whole wheat dinner rolls. 

     Wednesday: Spaghetti and caesar salad, whole wheat rolls

     Thursday: Dinner w/ Dad (Happy Birthday '50') 

     Friday: Chicken, Scalloped potatoes, Broccoli

In case you were wondering, for our vacation we're going to spend a week in Orlando at a resort; from Saturday Oct. 4th to Saturday, Oct. 11th. My in-laws are letting us use one of their time share weeks. It should be really fun. The room we will have does have a full kitchen so I AM planning on bringing down groceries to deter us from going out for every meal. 

Along with my attempts to change our budget, I am working to change our eating habits, too. We are trying to eat more whole wheat instead of white pastas/breads and I am going to try to incorporate a vegetable with every meal. (Now, I am really trying to be super mom, huh?)

I bet you are wondering how I did on my first shopping trip for this week's menu..

I stuck to the plan and bought very few items that were not on our list. One of the extra items was because I needed to use a coupon that was about to expire in a few days. It was for baby wipes, an item we use all the time and can never really have too many of. Plus, they were already on sale and I got to use the coupon. Go me. :)

Sounds like I did pretty good... but as I was writing this, I realized that I don't think we have any brown gravy mix, and I forgot to buy ground beef for the spaghetti. Oopsie!

I will get the hang of this eventually. I guess another grocery trip is in my future.