You Take the Good, You Take the Bad

It's amazing how one little list  can put some new pep in your step!  All of a sudden I have purpose!  (I know, I'm a little crazy, but I like to think that's part of why you love me, yes?)  I swear my life motto should be:  If you want something done ask someone busy -- because the more I put on my plate the more I get done.  There is no lazier Holly than a Holly with nary a thing to do, trust me.  I have the ability to take more than 2 naps in a day (naps, people!) I have no problem doing lazy.  Now I realize this philosophy is somewhat dependent on inertia, which is sort of counter productive since one actually has to stop sometimes, but today we're not here to talk about my flawed life logic we're here to talk about successes and well, of course, immediate failures.

So I've been tackling all sorts of things around here and one of the  first things I did was plan all my meals this week according to a strategy I call Operation: Fridge Cleanout.  Generally when I plan meals I sit down with Garrett and we talk about what fabulous concoctions we'd like for dinner the following week and grocery shop from there.  It's not always the most efficient for the groceries we have on hand, but hey, it works.  However, since I'm "attempting" to wrangle my grocery budget to under $400 this month (which I realize may sound like a ridiculous amount to some of you since there are only two of us, but hey I've got to start somewhere)  I thought it might be smarter to actually see what meals we can make from the items we have on hand before writing my grocery list.  And we did.  And guess what? No need to go to the store, we have everything we need right on hand!  So success this week goes to our July Week One Meal Plan:

(Apparently our dinner menu is also an advertisement for Sierra Nevada Products.  Not really sure what to say about that besides, uh...YUM.)

So...Success, right?  Dinner menu with no need to go to the grocery store...WOO!  

Except...you knew there was an except, right?

Except last night we went to Trader Joe's (which you can file under 'M' for My Own Personal Kryptonite) to get a few little treats.  Is their any better place to go for treats?  The only product masquerading as dessert in our house right now is some freezer burned rainbow sherbert and a bag of cherries, and although we don't eat dessert every night religiously you must agree with me that this is a Dessert Crisis of Epic Proportions, right?  You Must.  Anyway, so we went to TJ's to pick up two specific things:  Chocolate Covered Raisins (For Her) and Strawberry Licorice (For Him). 

And instead we did this:  

That, my friends, you can file under 'E' for Epic Fail.

So, I appreciate you reserving judgment on the two bottles of $5.99 Prosecco.  I don't know what to tell you about that, or this whole receipt for that matter, except to say it was a momentary lack of all control.  But at the time it seemed like we needed all the items!  After all we are out of Pine Nuts, which I like to have stashed in our freezer, Honey, which I use on greek yogurt for breakfast or lunch.  My almond butter was getting low and plus, the TJ's brand -- has Flax Seeds!  And for half the price of my regular grocery store!  The General Tsao's Stir Fry sauce is AH-MAY-ZING (so is the chili pepper sauce, hence the two bottles of those), and last night we sadly discovered they were out of it (until two aisles later when we found two bottles randomly lying about so OF COURSE we bought them both!)  The Trail Mix and Nut Aisle is always a challenge for Garrett so he picked up a few more "treats" since we hardly ever hit up Trader Joe's so those were easy to rationalize.  The black bean dip is because we have a giant bag of tortilla chips leftover from making nachos last week and who eats tortilla chips plain?  Plus, $1.69?  That's practically giving it away!  Veggie corndogs are cheap at TJ's so I always stock up when I'm there.  Who doesn't need an extra bag of Penne on hand (and our pasta stash was getting low).  The Bacon we incorporated into last nights Breakfast for Dinner (and damn it was good, no regrets on that!) and the string cheese?  WHAT KIND OF PERSON SAYS NO TO STRING CHEESE?  A COMMUNIST, I TELL YOU.  COMMUNIST!  Ok, so the mini hamburger buns?  Well, those I'll admit were an impulse buy -- they were just too cute to pass up. Sliders, anyone?

So as you can see, each and ever purchase was a total necessity, I mean come on. Necessity.   The $75 out of my $400 grocery budget on the 6th day of the month, however?  Well, it remains to be seen what the consequences of that will be for that goal.  You win some, you lose some.