Friday's Challenge

We made a trip to the store last night, and spent close to $30 on some desperately needed staples:

5 pound bag of carrots ($3.49) 
2 bags of celery - (2/$4)
2 (5 pound) bags of onions ($2.99 each)
Toilet Paper
Hummus ($5 for the biggest container they had - 17 ounces)
Oatmeal - Again, the largest container that they had! 
Yogurt - (1) 32 ounce container of vanilla yogurt.  We can stir our homemade jam and jelly into this. 

The challenge now begins to be figuring out the ultimate cost of items when everything is made from scratch.  I'm going to have to estimate the final cost, somehow.

Breakfast:
Waffles.  (Recipe is in the next post down from here.)  The price breakdown for the waffles follows at the bottom. 
Final cost for the waffle: 23 cents
Milk: 12 ounces, 50 cents.  (I still have a little left in the gallon I bought on Sunday.)
Syrup, 4 ounces: ($3.49/32 ounce container, 11 cents per ounce).  44 cents

Lunch:
The PTA at the school where I was subbing yesterday brought in salads donated by one of the local restaurants.  My cost: free.

Dinner:
Baked Potatoes - about 2 pounds worth, at 40 cents a pound, that comes up to 80 cents
Frozen Broccoli - $1/ 32 ounce bag
Shredded Cheddar Cheese - 4 ounces ($2/16 ounce bag, 50 cents per 4 ounces)
Leftover ground beef from the taco salad.  It turned out that husband had kept out some of the seasoned ground beef from the chili I didn't know about.  The last of this went onto the potatoes last night.  - 80 cents  (Again, I'm guessing on the chili.)
Per serving on the chili?  That's a little harder.  There were 4 of us for dinner last night, so add the numbers up and divide by 4 would be:  78 cents
Shockingly enough, we had absolutely no leftovers after dinner last night.

Bed Time Snack: Yogurt 50 cents.  (This is the last of the containers I bought last weekend at 10/$5)

My total cost for the day:  $2.45, and I believe I did a better job of getting enough dairy and fruits and veggies.

This is well below the limit set by the government for the day.
However, you have to keep in mind that I do plan for leftovers.  I made a huge crockpot full of chili that was used for meals over 3 nights.  The bean soup was used for meals over 2 nights, with enough left for my husband to eat for lunch one day this week.  If you are able to cook and plan for leftovers when you cook, it does save money in the long run.  If you have teenage boys in your house, this is harder - oh so much harder - to do.  The oldest son was a runner (Cross Country, Track and Field) through high school.  We went through tons of bread, pasta, and milk on a regular basis.  He would take 3 sandwiches for lunch every day, and snack on peanut butter and celery by the case load.  I learned how to make hummus from scratch so that they could snack on something healthy that would help fill him up.  Ahhh... those were some interesting days!

Price Breakdown on the Waffle Recipe:  (If you really want to see the math!)

The most expensive part of that recipe is the milk and eggs.  The eggs come up to 33 cents.  We used powdered milk in the recipe, for 26 ounces, I paid $5.64.  For the 2/3 of a cup of dried milk that we used for the recipe, I believe the cost comes up to $1.10  (About.  My math is shaky, at best, on that calculation.  It comes down to 22 cents an ounce, but how many ounces would be in 2/3 of a cup?  1/2 cup would be 4 ounces = 88 cents, and 3/4 of a cup would be 6 ounces = $1.32.  I'm going with $1.10)  I bought the flour on sale for $2.50 for a 5 pound bag.  That comes down to 3 cents per ounce.  At 20 ounces of flour for this recipe, that comes up to 60 cents for the flour.  I'm giving up at this point, and I'm just going to add 20 cents for the cost of the oil, salt and baking soda.   Total cost for the waffles:  $2.25.  With ten waffles per batch, the final cost comes down to 23 cents each.