Make sure you read the introduction prior to reading this post.
I can’t say that I learned any great lessons this week. I still do not have a good source of go-to meals, although I now do have several boxes of pasta and a few jars of sauce on hand for a quick and easy meal in addition to leftovers and chili. I’m still packing my lunch every day and I’m not bored of that yet (full disclosure: I rarely go out to lunch during the week but my family is big on going out to lunch on the weekends. We did not do this…we ate at home instead). I did not have a “cooking day” but I did learn that picking meals that take about 1/2 hour to make is not so bad (Rachael Ray was really onto something with that!); it’s not really stressful to make a meal that takes 1/2 hour. If I did learn anything it’s this: having a few extra dollars on hand to build a small stockpile of staples is a blessing and that those individual packets of Crystal Light are quite helpful when you’re tired of water and tea (I found 2 boxes in the back of our pantry closet…I was very excited).
What was interesting was watching my husband’s mindset start to change. While I was at the grocery store on Saturday (he came to Aldi with me on Sunday), he took advantage of the nice weather and grilled some chicken and some hamburgers. He also went to allrecipes.com to find a recipe for homemade french fries! Usually, he would just call me and ask me to pick up a bag of the frozen ones. He asked that I make cookies so we didn’t have to spend the money on premade ones, he made our leftovers from dinner on Saturday night stretch through 2 lunches for himself (they were all meat dishes so he got to keep them all to himself) and he was the one who suggested that we just go home to eat lunch after grocery shopping. I’m really happy with how he’s coming around. He’s realizing that the food quality is quite high, we still have a lot of variety in our food choices and now that he’s starting to see the weekly savings, he’s getting really excited to see how much we can save from week to week. He experienced a lot of trepidation at the beginning of the experiment but now that we’re 3 weeks in, he’s changing his mind. It’s actually quite a relief.
With my husband now fully onboard, the experiment is becoming significantly easier. I’m looking forward to see what is learned in Week 3!
