Ham Steak

The twins are better now. They were pretty sick there for awhile. I hope I can take them to pre-school tomorrow.

Today I had them helping me with some meals. I made a spinach and ham steak salad. It was surprisingly very good. My in-law recommended it and it's a nice, cheap healthy meal. I taught thing 1 and thing 2 how to peel the the oranges and pull them apart to put in the salad. They picked it up pretty quickly.

This brings me to one of the first things I cut. Groceries. Like any budget I have fixed expenses and non-fixed expenses. I can only control the non-fixed expenses. Groceries is one of them. Dr. Evil (that's his name now since he shaved his head, view his pic on facebook) would frequently shop at Sobeys. Now I'm not gonna knock Sobeys, it was a terribly convenient place to buy groceries. It was open 24 hours and had everything from a deli counter to a pharmacy in it. But you did end up paying for that great convenience.

Instead, I've made Dr. Evil go to either Food Basics or No Frills. Both are cheap, cheap, cheap for groceries although you don't have as much convenience. That's fine by me. Dr. Evil said that he didn't want to go to the No Frills because there were too many skid rows in there. I told him fine, then Food Basics it is. For the same amount of groceries I've slashed my bill from $320 to $200 with the same amount of things I normally buy. That's a pretty good start.

I went a step further and joined Costco. Now, Costco is not cheap for everything but for some things it is. Buying things like toilet paper, paper towels or soy sauce in bulk saves me even more and it allows me to have a variety of items to use for cooking. Since I've also cut out going to restaurants completely.

Other things I've done are giving up alcohol, which is just too expensive and taken up teas. I realized that Dr. Evil had to be into something so tea is a happy and healthy medium. He gets to be into something and we get to save. Although he has that too much enthusiasm for it as he did the wines.

I've given up all types of juice and pops. For me at least, I'll still buy thing 1 and thing 2 things here and there. Frozen juices for instance and this has also helped me to save.

Given up the grocery bags too. They were too expensive at 5 cents a piece and so flimsy. Instead, I've gotten those collapsible crates from Canadian Tire. Now I can feel good about helping the environment too!

I'm happy to have taken all these steps on the food front, hopefully this will still allow the family to eat and save me a buck or two in the process.

Here's an excellent blog for tips, it's American but most of it can be applied to Canadians! I also stole my pic from it so you know. . .had to mention. . .