Back from vacation and on with the program

We got home from an amazing trip to Alaska on Sunday evening and went shopping on the way home. Warren did some more shopping on Monday. Total spent on food that's supposed to get us through Saturday lunch: $79. So, we're ahead of our $98 per week budget, right? Not really....

Officially, that $79 only covers from Sunday dinner through Saturday lunch. We're 3 meals short. We're also haggling over things like, is it OK to use the rice we have on hand? What about the Pop Tarts that Sean left behind? Or the wine? Frozen leftovers? How about the jams and jellies people have given us? Hmmmm.

It feels wrong to eat things we have a supply of, but it would be silly to buy more rice or butter or eggs rather than using what we have. On the other hand, beer and wine and Pop Tarts are not something we should be buying with our limited dollars, so it doesn't seem fair to use those. It surely seems within bounds to use the gifted jams and jellies.

What's the solution? I think we need to estimate the cost of anything we use and charge it against our budget. Warren's not convinced, but we'll continue to sort it out this week.

So, what kinds of stuff did we buy (don't worry, I won't go into such detail every time we shop)?
Fresh: carrots (same price for peeled, cut as for whole bulk--go figure), bananas, apples, broccoli, tomato, spinach
Frozen: peas
Dairy: milk, yogurt, cream cheese, Swiss cheese
Canned: green beans, pinto beans, kidney beans, soup, pasta sauce
Dry: spaghetti, penne pasta
Baked: bagels
Beverages: OJ, box wine, 6-pk beer
Meat: thin sliced ham lunch meat

The bagels and cream cheese were for Warren to take to share at work, so maybe that makes up for some of the use of pantry supplies.

And what have we pulled from the pantry?
Bread, tuna, one bottle of wine, one beer, mineral water, Pop Tart, butter

And I'm drinking about 15 cents worth of Taster's Choice each day.

A really good thing has come of this already. This morning I was desperately trying to track down containers to pack my tuna sandwich and carrots, but couldn't find anything in our messy cupboard. I was motivated to clean out said cupboard. Found all shapes and sizes of containers. Things we never use: donate. Lone containers or lids: trash. Cupboard is neat and everything has a matching lid.