<$Thursday, April 10, 2008$>
Food, revisited
| I picked up some Naan bread the last time I was at Whole Foods, and last night I had it on my mind as I did some mid-pay period grocery shopping. Knowing I had to eat it soon before it went moldy but not quite knowing what I wanted to do with it, inspiration struck in the organic frozen dinner section in the form of a frozen Chicken Tikka Masala. I snatched it up, took it home, nuked it while my Naan heated in the toaster oven, put it all together and, oh, wow. So good. I wish I could remember the brand of the Indian dinner -- it had the word "Ethnic" in it, that much I remember, and the box was dark red with gold writing -- because it was as good as any I've had at Indian restaurants. It was filling, too, which means I got to put half of it up for today's lunch, and I've been looking forward to eating it all morning. It was a bit of a splurge at $3.95, but cheaper than a restaurant visit, and I don't regret it one bit. Speaking of which, back on the subject of the food problem: we've pretty much "solved" it by agreeing to cut back in other areas so we could increase our food budget to keep up with our standards plus inflation. It's not a perfect solution, but I don't have the patience/attention span to consistently do the coupons & sale fliers thing, and good, healthy food is one area where we're not willing to compromise. I think part of being frugal is learning to pick your battles. Decide what's important to your ability to enjoy life, and allow yourself leeway to spend in those areas. Cut back and scale down in the areas that don't matter as much. For us, this means we both had to give up a portion of our personal spending allowances, which was only painful until we realized that we usually spent that money on food anyway. I still expect, though, that our food bill will decrease after we move and we have a real kitchen of our very own. While I think life without the occasional Tikka Masala is hardly a life worth living, I'm also pretty certain that buying the ingredients to cook it ourselves will be less expensive than buying it pre-made. And that goes for the vast majority of what we currently eat. Labels: budgeting, cooking, food problem, shopping |
Great to read your informative post ,
Keep it up , supporting you all the way,
Tracy Ho
wisdomgettingloaded