My goal for the week was to make it through without any meals out, via planning my meals well, and we did it. I'm rather proud of myself considering eating out is generally caused by personal laziness on my part and not a planned thing. I want to make it through this week, too, without eating out, but it will be harder because DH comes home on Wednesday and it is always harder when he is home because he loves eating out. Still, the kids and I are getting into a routine now and the great thing about DH is that even if he wants to go out, he won't grump about it in front of the kids. He'll grump about it privately to me, but he won't make it so that the kids start whining about it, too.

We've had some talks this month about our goals and he really wants to get the credit card debt gone by the end of the year so he has agreed "in theory" to eat out far less. Maybe one nice meal out a month and possibly go get a bag of the cheapy double cheeseburgers and freeze them for "emergency" purposes. I am hoping to eliminate it altogether, but realize that is probably highly unlikely. And what he agrees to abide by when he is 3000 miles away and having all his meals provided for him by work and what he agrees to abide by when he is at home and might have to cook for himself may not be entirely the same thing.

I used the last of the frozen beef pot roasts I got on sale a couple months ago for $1.99 a pound today. I'll have to be on the lookout for another good sale. Threw it in the crockpot and it got nice and tender. We had that with leftover potatoes and gravy from yesterday which we used up but for a little gravy, green beans (will have what's left tomorrow), some leftover biscuits from earlier in the week, and my little splurge of fresh dark red cherries for desert. We each got twelve. So delicious. Mom ate with us tonight.

There was enough pot roast left for another meal, but my kids don't like warmed up pot roast and neither do I unless I can make some sort of hash from it, so I put it into a baggy and froze it for when DH comes home. He loves making sandwiches with leftover potroast.

Tomorrow is going to be an odds and ends day for lunch and dinner since it is a school holiday. I actually got the kids to agree to it. We'll use up the green beans and the leftover broccoli and corn from earlier in the week. There are 3 pieces of chicken left, 2 biscuits, 3/4 cup of gravy, 1 pancake, 1 cut up orange, half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, half a can of chili, 1 slice of frozen pizza, salad fixings, and a cup of macaroni and tomato sauce. This will actually be the first time in ages we won't have thrown out any food in a week. Let's hear it for leftover management.

I added $20 to my new laptop fund to reward myself for not eating out all week. That's about a third of what we would have spent if we'd gone out this week as much as had become normal. The rest went to the grocery budget and whatever is left at the end of the paycycle will be saved.