Overall, no idea what to expect this month.  It's going to be a weird one.

I think MH should mostly be fed on set.  Though he doesn't expect to be well fed and we presumed he would buy dinner every night at the hotel restaurant.  

In theory, I'd expect to spend less on food at home.  But we are already up to $450 spent on groceries this month.  This amount includes MM's monthly grocery allowance.  & MH did a grocery shop around the last day of January.  We had spent the January grocery budget and I think some of that was to stock up before he left, so that is also why it is so high already.  I just pushed it to February, presuming it would be a lower spend month with only 3 people to feed.

Note:  This includes $208 groceries purchased this week so far.

On Monday MH encouraged me to go to the store to pick up chicken on sale.  My first reaction was, "Like hell."  This was going to be a work hell week and I was scrambling to meet a deadline.  In addition to adding all the cooking and dishes to my plate.  But I finally decided a work break would be nice, to save a bajillion dollars. Chicken was $14 for 2.5 pounds.  Bought on sale for $5.  Bought 3 packages.  Spent $15, saved $27.  

I refused to let MH cook ahead for us.  DL(18) is the more picky one who does his own thing a lot of the time.  & MH always makes way too much food when he does that.  But he's insisting on going through the sales and clipping the electronic coupons or whatever.  I personally made my grocery list before looking at the sales, and there wasn't anything that swayed me or looked interesting.  Except I noticed we were due a free cake mix, so I picked that up.  & I guess MH will remind me if random one-day deals pop up.  He had got some email about the chicken.

Shopping List:

Notes on shopping list:  It's an unusual shopping list because I can't eat any hard food re: ortho treatment.  So it's skewed to the softer side of things.

Clearly MM(20) eats most of the bread.  We struggle not to waste bread, without him.  But anyway, all the bread was old and stale and so I started anew.   

The grocery run was $150.   I ended up picking some other produce and breakfast pastries.

Menu Plan:

With the busy work week, I just turned off my brain and went with all the stuff I can make in my sleep.  I might want to try new recipes or dig out stuff MH doesn't care for as much, during the next couple of weeks. 

I started with burritos (old family recipe) because it makes a lot of leftovers (for lunch during the week, or if I want to skip a night of cooking.)  I don't think I have ever made the crockpot lentil recipe but it makes a *lot* of leftovers. 

Note:  We don't generally eat out.  So there is no eating out expected or planned.  

Things went askew on Tuesday.  DL(18) ended up sick on Tuesday and requested a bag salad from the store.  I picked up a couple and I grabbed some popsicles while I was there.  (He had mentioned only cold food sounded good and he had a sore throat).  & I bought the smallest bottle of tylenol I could find.  It will expire before anyone uses it again.  I didn't expect DL(18) to want our use the tylenol, but it beats scrambling in the middle of the night because there's no meds in the house. 

DL(18) didn't want chow mein, and salmon no longer sounded good.  Which is fine.  I usually view a weekly menu as more of a 'food we can make' list and am not that set on the days.  Just didn't expect it to get so out of whack so quick.  I ended up making chow mein for lunch on Wednesday (had leftovers on Thursday).  & I made potatoes for dinner on Wednesday.  I ended up finding some leftover meat in the fridge I had forgotten about and that only had another couple of days left.  So I ate that with the potatoes.  DL(18) decided not to eat potatoes after telling me they sounded good.  So we had leftover potatoes on Thursday and I made a half batch of pancakes.  I thought Friday would be a good leftover day (it was) and salmon was Saturday dinner.

On Wednesday I went to the CU to deposit some cash, next to the grocery store.  There was already 10 people in line before they opened.  Nope!  I think while I was there I was going to see if I could get salmon for the weekend, or I don't remember what I was going to do.  But I just turned around and didn't bother.

Thursday I asked the sickie if anything sounded good.  He requested baby carrots, so it was drive #5 to the store.  While there I picked up the salmon and some muffins.   I usually do homemade baked goods but I am exhausted after nightly cooking and dishes, and shopping (in addition to a very busy work week.)  Also, I am not going to make baked goods for just 2, and so there is also that.  Too used to baking for a bigger crowd.  I can revisit when I have more brain power, but for now the baked goods section is a nice treat.

Note:  Tried the CU at 4pm Thursday (while there) and there was no line.  

So that's how I spent $208 this week already.   Today I will regroup and plan for a new week.  Or maybe not.  I am very behind schedule (work was too crazy) and so I may just menu plan during the week and shop on Wednesday morning.  I've got one meal left to cook and 3-4 'already have stuff on hand' meals that I was thinking about.  & then the planned lentils leftovers...  & still haven't finished food from this past week.  But I'd like to do a small grocery run on Wedneday a.m. versus a very big run next weekend.  The theme this week might just be 'getting through what we have.'  

I looked at the credit card.  I was going to say that I thought MH was too busy to spend any money.  But after radio silence for a few days, I see that he made a Walgreens and a Office Depot purchase.  I am guessing the Walgreens thing was personal (who knows) but I know the Office Depot thing was props for the movie.  I expect very little personal spending but he may be contributing here and there to movie props or whatever is needed.  They started filming on Wednesday.