At the end of August, I wrote about starting a money and food diet for September. Anyone joining me? I wanted to update you on the progress now that we’re nearing the end of the month!
Meal Planning and Eating at Home
We gave a perfect score for eating at home. I only had takeout twice, and the foods I did eat were relatively inexpensive, “healthy” fast food. For example, I had a grilled chicken salad from Chick-Fil-A one week and Salad-and-Go another week.
I planned a variety of healthy meals to eat at home. I took a different approach than usual. Instead of planning meals for one week at a time, I planned meals for the entire month of September. This allowed me to think strategically about what foods I might have leftover one week, how I could reuse them later in the week or early the next week, etc.
To give you an idea, I made three separate meals from a large pork loin. The first meal was a crock pot pork loin with baby potatoes and carrots. For the second meal, I took about half of the remaining pork, pulled it, mixed it with barbecue sauce, and served it with baked beans and broccoli as sides. For the third meal, I took the other half of the pork, pulled it, and pan-fried it with some taco seasoning to make it more like carnitas. I served it on flour tortillas for the family (and just lettuce for me since I’m on a low-carb diet), with fresh pico de gallo salsa and a delicious veggie-filled salsa.
I love how crock pot meals make things easier at dinnertime, and I’m also a big fan of the “cook once, eat twice” motto, which is to reuse food after it’s cooked for a second meal. This speeds up dinner prep and saves time and money.
Money Diet
My goal for this month’s total food spending was $750 or less, and even though we still have a week to go, I just placed my last grocery order and we’re barely hitting our goal!
I think having a grocery plan for the month has helped me a lot, as well as doing online pickup orders so I’m not tempted to buy at the store. I will say that I didn’t make a shopping trip to Costco this month, and if I had, I definitely would have. Even though we mostly use Costco for paper products (like paper towels, toilet paper, and paper plates), I still put that into our “groceries” budget. I’m happy with the “win” of hitting our goal… but I also fully acknowledge that I definitely wouldn’t have done that, had I made our usual monthly trip to Costco. It’s progress, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement as well.
Recipes
I wanted to share with you some fun recipes I’ve been using this month, just in case anyone else is looking for new meal ideas.
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Breakfast Meatballs with Blueberries and Sweet Potatoes
This is a new favorite recipe! I got the recipe from a friend and was really skeptical at first. It has too many flavors all together and looks weird. But I’m here to tell you, it’s amazing and delicious! I’ve actually made it twice! I make a big batch and then freeze it so I can just pop out a few balls at a time to reheat for breakfast.
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Hawaiian Shrimp Tacos
This recipe is amazing! It’s great to have something different (we eat a lot of chicken and pork otherwise), and the homemade cilantro lime cream is the star of the show! I have it with cauliflower rice, while the rest of the family eats jasmine rice. I won’t lie, cauliflower rice isn’t quite as good. But it’s a great low-carb alternative.
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Ginger Beef Steak Salad
Technically, this isn’t a Whole 30 diet because of the sugar in the dressings and salad dressings. But I say I’m doing a Whole 30 diet because it’s still healthier than what I would normally eat (like fried chicken or pizza! Haha!), so I’m calling it a success! In fact, we’ve been eating a lot of salads this month. I’m always happy with fresh veggies. And homemade dressing is always better than store-bought, in my opinion.
Has anyone else been on a food and money diet this month? How did you do? Do you have any favorite Whole 30 (or Whole 30-ish) recipes you’d like to share? Share them in the comments!
September Diet Post (Food and Money) – Update was first published on Blogging Away Debt.
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