Another February Gone By…
I have to say that March 1 is one of my favorite days of the year. Not only will Spring be here soon (ya hear that ya meddlin’ snow!), but it mainly means that February is over.
We’ve made it through another $56 in February with…drumroll…$2.90 to spare! Well, at least according to my calculations, which, this year, did not count oil, because I was lazy. Or spices, because I never count spices during this thing (one little jar lasts all year!). So, I suppose if we counted the oil or the spices, we were probably actually over budget by a few dollars. I, however, don’t care. We made it, and once again, were viscerally reminded of the difference between want and need.
I certainly want that chocolate bar during some stressful times. But I absolutely do not need it. I went through my most stressful week at Halfaker during the first half of February, and there was no comfort food, no stress relieving candy, no cookie breaks. I still got the job done, and well, without the instantly gratifying reward of whatever I happened to be craving at the time (chocolate!)
A couple of shout outs to the food that got us by this month: 2 roasted chickens at $0.89/lb turned into somewhere around 30 meals (soups, stews, and chicken pies). No knead bread is always a winner a $0.07 per wonderful ‘artisan’ loaf. The wonderful snickerdoodle is a lifesaver at $0.04 per 2 inch cookie. Finally, the most important thing we ate all month, and my lifesaver when it came to making sure dinner was on the table on those weekday nights when no one had any time to cook: the empanada. Wonderfully flaky and stuffed with nutritious and delicious chicken, black bean, and spicy tomato chickpea fillings, the empanada kept us sane, and kept my evenings free of the stress of planning a cheap meals. All that and just $0.33 cents each. Fantastic.
Health-wise we’re all good. Chad lost 7 lbs and I lost 6. Hopefully we’ll get some of that back in muscle since Chad can start running again, and daylight savings quickly approaches. Sunlit evenings mean I can start biking to work again in a few weeks. I’m very excited, poor Adelaide hangs forlornly in the garage, waiting for me to take her out again. Soon!
Maybe next year, depending on what we’re doing, I’ll improve my blogging frequency during February and write more about it. We’ll see, that’s a whole ‘bother 11 months away, and I’ve got other things to do between then and now.
