Susie's Leaning Tower of Chocolate for 2008 July 1

I've come to realize that I love grocery shopping. Maybe it's because I shop at Wal-Mart now. Maybe because Maggie is so well-behaved and kind of fun to take. I think it has more to do with my 3-month food storage supply organizing, and my bargain hunting/budget staying-within. I try to make my list up ahead of time, with things we want to eat during the week, ingredients for new recipes I want to try (I've been trying a lot of new recipes lately) and things I need to bring to any events coming up (this is the hard part). It takes me about an hour to do all the shopping.

I love coming home with groceries to unload, and putting them away in my neat, organized (and full!) pantry. Maggie usually plays on her car in the garage while I'm bringing them in; she also likes to take things off the bottom shelf of the pantry and put them back on. Today we went to the store much later than usual because we went to the PO and the library first, so she fell asleep in the car on the way home.

After everything is put away, I got to Mommysavers to record how much I spent vs. my budget. I was under budget $5 last month. Not so impressive considering my budget keeps going up!

As I have been making more and more things from scratch, some rather experimentally, I created a spreadsheet to help me calculate the cost of making an item at home. (I'll admit I got the idea from the Tightwad Gazette, just about the only thing I got from the book.) I put the cost-per-ounce and weight of ingredients, and formulas to show me cost-per-cup, per tablespoon etc. It is about 40 cents for me to make chocolate pudding from scratch (plus milk). Even the house brand pudding is more than that, and my pudding is much more delicious.

Also, it cost about 1/6 as much to mail Leonard's birthday present as it did Rachel's.