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Blessings, Darlings!

Since we're still digging out from moving expenses (not only was moving more costly than we had figured, but when you're self-employed all that time spent packing, loading, unloading, unpacking you don't earn a penny!) my choice for February is to either have a working cell phone or food.  And my cell phone isn't that expensive... so it's going to be a very low food budget month.  Like $200 for the month.

So last Friday I did shopping that will get us thru' 2 - 4 weeks, with some fresh food added at times.  I bought 15 pounds of white flour (I grind my own whole wheat flour already, but husband and son aren't yet hungry enough to eat 100% whole wheat everything), two dozen eggs, two gallons of milk, lots of sale priced apples and oranges, two pounds of carrots, a bunch of celery, three pounds of frozen green veggies, cat litter, and a few other things. I do wish I could have afforded more veggies and a few cans of cream of mushroom soup, but I just didn't have the money.

I figure we can get thru' February spending maybe $40 a week on food and such.  That would be $8 on milk, $15 on produce, $15 on meat, and $5 on 'misc'. "Meat" includes eggs and cheese, for those keeping score at home.

Oatmeal with dried milk and raisins for breakfast.  Soup and maybe peanut butter sandwiches for lunch.  Lots of cabbage and carrots featured in dinners.  I've 2 1/2 weeks of dinners planned, and we'll see what meats may or may not go on sale for meals later in the month. Sunday night we had shrimp yaki soba (the shrimp was a BOGO purchase, and we used bean sprouts and cabbage in it), Monday night we had a little sausage with cole slaw and buns, Tuesday pot roast leftovers became a stew that will double as a lunch later this week, tonight is veggie/cheese omelets and home made rolls......

Of course, as this hits it has also become clear that the bag of mung beans I've been using for sprouts are past their prime - the sprouting ratio has dropped.  Instead of getting 3+ cups of sprouts from every 1/4 cup of dry beans I barely got 1 1/2 cups the last time.  I've one more bag that's about the same age - we'll see how that goes - but I also have two newer bags I bought this fall.  They should still be in good shape.