This evening, my wife and I bought some bento boxes, so we can take meals with us and avoid buying overpriced, unhealthy convenience food that will make us feel bad afterward. We bought two brightly colored bento boxes for our kids and two black ones for us. We looked for the ones that were reviewed best for being leak-proof.
I've also started tracking our meals. I am going to build three large spreadsheets:
- Shopping / ingredient list. This will be a list of items we buy, where we buy them, the size or weight, the common measurement we use it in, and the price for that measurement.
- Recipe list. This will be a database of recipes using the ingredients we buy. The goal is to know exactly how much, in our local economy, a recipe costs.
- Daily food journal. Aside from recipes which will likely pull in a single value from the recipe database, each item in a meal will be its own row. Recipes will likely pull in a single value from the Recipe list journal. The goal is to find out exactly what are true groceries costs are. I will count the meals when they are made, and not count leftovers. This way I do not have to keep up with who ate how much, how much was thrown in the trash because of picky eaters, and how much went in the fridge, and how much my wife ate two days later for lunch. It will all even out.
