Thursday, August 29, 2013

The USDA Thrifty Food Plan

Another day, another soul-sucking stressful round of job-hunting. *sigh* I'm forcing myself to do one thing at a time rather than looking at the big picture, because otherwise I get overwhelmed and sink into the Despairing Pit Of Doom. Seriously not helpful.

Also, is it just me, or do tiny tasks become much bigger when you don't have enough going on? This morning, I was grousing to myself that I had to fold the laundry AND cook breakfast, which was JUST TOO HARD TO MANAGE AND NOBODY HAS EVER WORKED AS HARD AS I HAVE. I'm sure this is a symptom of not having enough to do in general, so I sort of yelled at myself to put on my big girl panties and deal with it.



Back when we lived Upstate, I used to extreme coupon. In a fit of domesticity, I recently reorganized our cabinet of household supplies. When the apocalypse comes, we will have plenty of soap, that's all I'm going to say. We can barter that and my hand-knit socks for useful supplies, I guess. Yeah, I don't foresee us lasting long in this post-apocalyptic scenario.



I've been looking at the USDA's food plan costs for July 2013. In the interests of keeping the grocery budget under control, I've decided to adopt a little challenge. I'd like to keep our grocery costs of September at or below $380.20, the "thrifty" food plan for a two-person household. I'll use any food in the house (mostly chicken, eggs, greek yogurt, condiments, rice and baking supplies. Note to self: go shopping), but I won't spend any more than that. Since I paid my mother for my share of a bulk order of Italian sausage that will be delivered Sunday, I'm down $50 already. This should be a fun plan. I'm also exempting any meals purchased for business networking purposes because hello, I'm job-hunting here.

The current plan is to go make a giant stock-up trip to BJ's on Saturday night and count that toward the Saturday total, since I have a giant grocery list pinned to the fridge. I'll try to post any good menus or recipes I come up with.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for pointing out the USDA Food Plan costs. Those are neat. I've been aiming for grocery spending of $375, but that was a big fat fail this month. So much fresh fruit and melons tempting me this time of year =)

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    1. Yeah, I blew our food budget this month too, partially due to dining out, which is just inexcusable when I'm out of work and have lots of time. But even with rolling laundry, dry cleaning and household goods expenses into the figure, we're still well shy of the liberal spending figure. Given that those calculations assume all meals are prepared at home, what are people on the liberal plan cooking every night, filet mignon?

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