Resolutions

February is a month to celebrate black history, your labor of love in a relationship, and that it's the shortest month in the year (hey, Mr. Popular...but only for cogs in the wheel of Corporate America). Fevrièr is not the month to make a life resolution nor revolution.

But that's what I did. I began the month with a plan which consisted of the following:

1) Map out a meal plan for the month because
2) No more grocery waste is to be tolerated and
3) I need to adjust my relationship with food so I...

A. Created an initially overwhelming and constantly changing spreadsheet tracker for Groceries which had a cash tracker AND a meal tracking tab for each month. Phrew, anxiety attack from Miss Perfection over here.

This was definitely the easiest aspect to creating this file.

Then...
B. Mapped out my month of meals through the end of February. I was encouraged because it (object: February) was about one week shorter than the rest [of the months] so if my plan failed I wouldn't feel too terrible and I...

Boom, detailed. Thank you, Pinterest and my brain for coming up with majority of these meals.

C. Broke down my grocery categories into: Fruits, Vegetables, Meat, Dairy, Grains, Canned goods, and Sundry items. Note: Avocados and tomatoes are fruit, garlic is a vegetable, liquid egg whites are disturbing and contact solution is expensive.

Please note the yellow lines and cue the wop wop noise. That would be some waste of mine [but at least only partial!]. Foiled!

I've learned a lot from this tracker of mine. Let's keep going on the lists, shall we?
I. Fruits and vegetables took about 25% of the overall budget but I purchased double the amount as in any other group.
II. Meat and dairy were in a neck and neck race to the bitter end to become the highest % and $ but ultimately meat won. Organic baby.
III. I wanted to keep my canned goods group small and my fruits and vegetables large: mission accomplished.
IV. Living is espensive. Like. Really expensive. Eating for 1.5 people (Tanner hangs around for a few meals) costs a lot. Yes, buying fresh adds up. Yes, buying organic does too. But these are both okay in my book because I'm keeping my future health costs down (hopefully).

I fully intend on continuing this trend of mine. Mapping out meal plans weeks in advance while still remaining open to spontaneity. Scripting my grocery lists for each Saturday on what I will need for the week and what items I can purchase in advance. I only want to see the friendly faces at Kroger's or Trader Joe's once a week and no more than that!

So far so good! Wish me luck in March (I'm going to be cleaning my crockpot a lot.)

Editor's note: I've now updated the spreadsheet to include a Grocery Lists tab because I was fed up with losing/leaving my lists everywhere and re-writing them over and over!