30 Day Project - Day 1

The hubby has started doing 30 day projects. He chooses something to work on or do for 30 days. The first one was not watching any TV for 30 days. Now he is onto writing a game in 30 days. He told me I should do one. Well we had already discussed being super tight on our budget this month and he informed me that could be my 30 day project and I should blog about it, so here goes.
My 30 day project is to spend no more than $100 in groceries this month! Although, realistically it's more than 30 days, because I'm starting the 1st and going until the first payday in October which is the 5th, so I guess it's 34 days. Crazy, huh? For those of you who might not know our family, we are a family of 5, and usually I try to keep my food spending to under $200. The best way for me to keep our food spending to under $200 is to only use cash when I'm at the grocery store, plan my meals out based on what's on sale, use coupons, and rarely, if ever eat out (we've started a new family tradition of going out to eat once a month to a sit down restaurant, and rotating who chooses, so we'll see if that fits into this months budget).
So how in the world do I plan on doing this? I've taken an inventory of all the food I have at my house, and tried to plans meals around that. (I love that I can search for recipes on Allrecipes by ingredients I want to use) So we are going to be trying a few new recipes so hopefully it goes well, if not, there is always tomorrow. Luckily when it comes to breakfast we have a stock of cereal and cooked cereal. For lunches for the kids we usually just do sandwiches and I have plenty of jam to last a while, and I make my own bread and have enough supplies on hand to cover bread. So for the most part the money will go towards a few ingredients I need for each dinner and perishable things like fruit and veggies (that we don't have in our garden), milk, and eggs. Part of this will be hard on me, because I love stocking up when there is a good deal and but I'll try to resist my temptation I hope and pray there are no killer deals! So I have the menu planned for the month, and the things I need to buy for the meals. So here goes nothing. I hope that I can still be successful on my attempt to loose weight with the lack of money to spend.
It's September 1st and what's on the menu tonight is chicken pot pies, which I have in the freezer. They are based on this fun idea . And have the filling from our family cookbook that was shared by my wonderful sister-in-law Amanda. We are having corn on the cob on the side, which we got from my cousin.

Pot pie filling
1 family size cream of chicken soup, or I used 2 small ones
1 pkg frozen veggies
Cooked shredded chicken

Combine filling together and fill pie or jars that have pie crust in them.



So out of pocket for this one for September is $0.00