Grocery Budget

We recently revised our budget for groceries down a bit, and I am happy to report we are staying on budget.  Last week, we came in at $59 for the week.  The next two weeks are a bit different, as we will be traveling on the weekends for family functions, so I sketched out a menu and grocery list for 9 days.  Nora and I went to the grocery store and CVS yesterday, and we spent $68 - including a small bag of gummy worms.   I think I've even got all of my staples covered.  I will probably buy a gallon of milk at some point; if we have any kind of cereal in the house, it disappears fast.

Part of staying on or under budget has been making some of the foods we used to buy from scratch.  Tortillas, syrup, and croutons all turned out very well.  I think we're going to start baking bread ourselves, too.

The other (major!) part of our grocery-store-economy is that we have a freezer full of venison.  Working that into meals sure drives the cost down.  My plan (hope?) is that we will be under budget so consistently that when we do finish using the venison, we will have a kitty to spend on a side of beef or some other comparable large amount of meat for the freezer.

Now if we could just be more disciplined about our entertainment budget, we'd be doing great!