The Good:

Got free lemons from a co-worker. I am not much of a lemon fan but I though of an excellent citrus chicken recipe that I have, so grabbed some lemons with that in mind.

One of my retired co-workers basically has a mandarin orchard and so she would bring boxes of mandarins every winter. I miss that!

The Bad:

I took the tofu w/coconut rice to work and it was *a lot* so I decided I better take it home to share.

And... Then somehow I totally forgot that I brought it home. I think that is a first for me. Ugh! (I did not refrigerate it. I didn't realize until I packed my lunch today).

Since we keep our house pretty cool I think it was probably fine. Not that I would have eaten that in summer. But it's winter... So I put it in the fridge when I found it this morning and later called dh to tell him the deal. He chose to toss it. I probably wouldn't eat it because I can't afford to be sick. My gut told me it was probably okay and I did smell it before putting it back in the fridge. But I totally don't blame dh for being cautious about it. We can afford the loss. I just put it back because my gut feeling was that it was just fine.

So I am sure our grocery spending will reflect the food waste this month. Probably a slightly bigger grocery run this weekend.

The neutral:

My friend is up for lunch next week. & my co-workers planned a lunch for the following week. Since buying gifts and going out and yadda yadda pretty much *never* comes up at my office... I am fine with it. In fact, it's the perfect month for something like that to come up.

Usually dh and I try to go out at least every other week but that is not possible to do with his job. So I expect this is of no consequence to our overall budget. Less lunch x2. More lunch x1.

We actually very spontaneously took a co-worker out for his birthday last month (my idea) and one of my co-workers mentioned how we used to often order in, many years ago, organized by some lady that worked with us for a year or two. I think she mentioned because she missed that. I was thinking I did not remember that *at all*. ??? & I chalked it up that was early on in our one-income situation when we were flush with cash and wealth. (Our house was worth an additional $250k at the time and we had all his maternity leave savings we never ended up using. Those were some financially zen times for us). But... Now that I think about it. I was probably going home every day (around noon) to breastfeed. And/Or I was on maternity leave. I probably did not partake.