January = No Eating Out

Because we are trying desperately to get on top of our finances and eliminate all debt, we have set aside January as our month of no eating out. Before, hubby and I would have date night on Friday nights, then maybe grab pizza on Saturday after working on the farm all day. Then Sunday after church, we would all be starved so we would grab some sandwiches. All of this would add up to over $100 just on the weekends. Then there would be times during the week when we would need to be in town around lunch or dinner time and we would grab something quick. That would equal quite a bit of income spent on something that wasn't doing our bodies any good. Ok, I must admit that SOMETIMES I do enjoy not having to cook something and having a restaurant clean up and wash the dishes but lately I have gotten to the point that I just don't want to spend the money on food that may or may not be healthy/tasty when I can make all kinds of goodies right here that I know taste good and are good for us. So January is our month of no eating out. That being said, I already had to break that rule. The kids and I went to a town 35 miles away to do our monthly grocery shopping. I thought that I had planned the timing right and we would be home in time for lunch. Well, that just didn't happen and the twins and I were starved (note to self, NEVER grocery shop when you are hungry!) so we made a swing through Chik Fil A. Not going to beat myself up about it, just gonna move on!
I do actually have a point to this post. If I am going to be cooking 3 meals a day, everyday, then I need to have a stash of recipes. I get bored with food very easily and do not like to have the same things day in, day out so I am constantly ripping out recipes from magazines. Until recently, those 100's of recipes were in different areas around my kitchen , dining room, bedroom, bathroom (don't ask). Whenever I wanted a certain recipe, I would spend half the day searching for it. Then I came up with, what I would call, a pretty doggone good idea.

This is simply and old milk crate that we no longer used and hanging file folders. Now, all my ripped out recipes have a place to go. I still need to work on the categories because some are too big and too vague but you get the idea. Now when I want to make Pork for dinner, I just go to the pork file and see what looks good. I had thought about scanning all the recipes into my computer but honestly I haven't figured out how to do that yet I just don't have the time and I usually have the laptop off when it's cooking time so paper recipes are the way to go for me! Usually, before the monthly grocery shopping, I will look through several files and make sure that I have the ingredients on my list so, during the month, I can make a wide variety of food and not be stuck making the same things over and over again. Now if I can just get the twins to do the cooking and the cleaning up and maybe the bringing it out to the table for me, I would never have to eat out again!


This is being shared at theprairiehomestead.com blog hop