o, hai there. (a parentheses heavy post)

Hi friends and readers (who are friends I just haven’t met yet). How have you been?::stares at computer screen like Dora, waiting for your answer::Good!¡Bueno!I’ve missed you!¡Te extrañé!Hey, remember how we quit cold turkey from spending money on food from restaurants (or fast food joints (or coffee shops))?Yea, I do remember. So, how’s that going AllisonO?I’m glad you asked! It’s going well. It’s not going perfectly, but it IS going well.My first slip up occurred on the 11th of this month, when I bought a $3.05 chai tea latte at a cafe downtown.First slip up AllisonO? As in there have been multiple slip ups? And I thought you said it was going well?Ok, so maybe let’s back up to the successes then, before cataloguing the failures, shall we?I did successfully do “Once A Month Cooking”, or a subset thereof. I made 15 meals in one day and stuck them all in the freezer. It worked incredibly well, actually. I grocery shopped the night before (after bedtime to so I could go by myself without burdening DanO), did all of the chopping and prep in the first half of the day, and then assembled all the meals during nap time. It means that I have meals on hand and (permitting that I remember to take it out of the freezer in the morning to thaw) all I have to do is heat them up (via grill, oven, microwave, or crock pot). This has been the most helpful thing I’ve done to help us (mostly) succeed.Packing a lunch (straight out of grade school: pb&j, a nectarine, oreos and wheat thin crackers) has saved me 3 times. It’s not a glamorous life, but it’s an on-budget one.I have also needed to be flexible with my concept of dinner, meaning left overs, breakfast for dinner, or sandwiches are all fair game. It’s food, eat it and be sustained (again with the glamorous life thing).Ok, so about those other failures. They were actually two in close conjunction, because I was out of my house for 14 straight hours. (True story.) I DID eat breakfast before leaving, pack a lunch and even copious snacks, but it’s darn near impossible to last that long without more sustenance. (This is the part where I skip over the tiny little detail that I was “forced” to tag along on a shopping/girls’ night adventure during which I “had to” eat Swedish meatballs at Ikea and then “pressured” into ordering a ($4) appetizer pizza at a nice restaurant. It’s a rough life, but someone has to live it.)So, in all that, we (and by we I mean I) have spent almost exactly $15 on eating out this month. To be fair, DanO and OBaby ate out on Friday (while I was gallivanting around Ikea and stuffing my face with lingonberry sauce) but DanO’s brother picked up the bill. (Thanks, Paul!)But, y’all. It’s the 21st of the month, and we’ve only spent $15 on eating out.THAT DESERVES APPLAUSE.(Or maybe that deserves Chipotle burritos being delivered to my front door. I’ll let you decide.)(Carnitas, extra rice, black beans, cheese, sour cream, guacamole, and lettuce.)(Please.)