So to kick off my new 28 Days of series (check out the intro post here!) I’m challenging not just myself but also my husband. For June we will be eating at home…for an entire month! Seriously, it is crazy. We eat out so much & spend so much money that this has actually become a problem in more ways than one. Keep reading to find out more about the money savings, rules, & what you have to look forward to!
Let’s talk about what hit us the hardest: the unnecessary expense. I’ve been in a home cooking slouch. I’ve been reaching for “easy” recipes even when I have the time & we’ve been eating out (both expensive restaurants & take out) so often. On the weekends there were days we’d eat out all 2-3 meals just because we were too lazy to cook. & by that I mean me because Ryan barely cooks anything…ever.
When I realized I had gotten into a rut I was angry. With myself. I am actually kind of a great cook (by our standards anyway!) & we honestly don’t have the best restaurants around us here. From the bad service to the poor food quality we are very rarely happy when we leave in entirety. Being stationed here, we’ve had the worst customer service of all time so it isn’t always even a pleasant experience. What a waste!
How about we get to the crazy money issue though shall we? We’ve been eating out so much & still grocery shopping like we weren’t What does this mean? We were letting food waste at home while we went out & ate other food. Ridiculous. On top of that when we go to a restaurant & have good service we usually vastly overtip. People are so rude to servers here & we’ve seen so many look close to tears that we try to really let them know when they’ve done a good job. We constantly say no matter your age (because apparently younger people tend to not tip well) you need to go into a restaurant prepared to tip really well. You never know what will happen.
The second money related expense is the excessive amount we’ve been eating out & the amount we’ve been spending. I’m not saying we weren’t hitting up fast food joints here & there (because that would be a blatant lie!) but we also eat at a lot of nicer restaurants. I went through our bank account (because we normally use our debit card) & added up all of our eating out expenses for the month. This doesn’t count grocery shopping I might add. Before I tallied the results hubby guessed we had spent around $300 & I guessed around $400 because I obviously knew we had a problem. We weren’t even close. Our total for the month was $787 spent on eating out or fast food. I know we tip well but obviously that’s a crazy number for us. Remember, we don’t have kids so that is for only 2 people!
Food Waste + Good Tipping + Excessive Eating Out + Not Paying Attention to Frequency = Why 28 Days of Eating at Home is Happening!
So here we were spending tons of time, money, & frustration on others when I could have successfully created (usually) great meals at home. The biggest draw is definitely money because wow was that shocking for us. We honestly sat in silence for awhile! I had originally planned another 28 Days of month before this & quickly changed it up. This is a terrible habit especially when I know how & actually enjoy cooking! No more! Here’s how this month is happening!
The Rules of 28 Days of Eating at Home:
1. No fast food or eating out at restaurants. Period.
2. Create at least 5 meals per week.
3. Eat a lot more salads & veggies.
4. Ryan has a work lunch every week on a Thursday so that’s fine. He gets to eat out that day.
5. We can still buy popcorn when we go to our discount theater since that is our date night & it costs less the $5
6. I have some “quick” dinner meals which I either have pre-frozen or are packaged from the grocery store. I was tempted to not include this but I think it is important for success. Sometimes you just don’t have the time & that is okay.
I think that is everything! If I’ve missed anything I’ll update this below. I hope you’re ready for 30 days of recipes this month! I’m so excited to get everything into motion & to get started eating meals we know we’ll be happy with! If you have any recipes you[‘d like to share, comments, or questions please feel free to leave them below!
I’ll update this page after every day so you can use this post as a home page for links to updates & recipes!
28 Days of Eating at Home Recipe/Post List:
1: Recipes: Marinated Steaks, Lemon Butter Green Beans, & Edamame Feta Salad + New Grill!
2: Recipes: Fresh Homemade Pasta with Roasted Broccoli & Lemon Garlic Shrimp
3: Recipes: Easy Ginger Beef with Green Beans Stir Fry
4: Recipes: Baked “Fried” Cornflaked Fish + Tacos!
5: Recipes: Cauliflower Mac N Cheese ( Kid Friendly! )
6: Recipes: Low Fat Wheat Flour Tortillas (No Lard!)
7: Recipes: Crescent Ham & Cheese Roll Ups
8: Recipes: Easy Orange Chicken
9: Recipes: Easy Healthy Turkey Cheeseburger Meatloaf
