Buy No Food month

This month is Buy No Food month. I really love eating, and though I in particular love supporting direct-to-market, local products, I'll eat almost anything. (I even crave Big Macs about twice per year, but really those are travel food and should be treated accordingly. My parents didn't just take us to MacDonalds; it was a treat that you got on the 600-mile trip to Grandma and Grandpa's farm. And we didn't have dessert every day either. Anyway...)

I keep track of all my spending at mint.com. And the fact of the matter is that between groceries and going out, I spend $500-600 on food. Just for me. I mean, I share it with people in my life, but those people usually share back about equally. But still, even though I grew a garden last summer, my food costs did not go down.

I buy a lot of food, because I love food shopping and discovery. But I don't always eat it all, as I might get busy or sick of leftovers or whatever. So the idea this month is to only eat the food at my house, and to not go out for drinks or dinner. It's partly to eat what I have, and partly to get into cooking mode.

It also means saying no a lot. In some parts of the country, like when I lived in a more rural area, it was trivial to stay home each night. But in the Boston area, my boyfriend and I get invited out multiple times per week. We have favorites and rituals. Or I might stop by for a pre-made chicken on the way home, because I'm hungry and tired and worked 50 hours and went to two classes that week and there's just no way I'm going to cook anything. In fact, I'm guessing that this problem extended the garden. If I spent 10 hours per week at the garden, that's 10 hours less time to cook. And digging and wedding takes energy.

It's much easier to buy less food when two people are cooking in the same apartment. I did this with my sister a couple years ago, and she and I had a merry time of it. At the time we had a glut of CSA veggies, and she could process winter squash like no one else. I am not in a veggie CSA right now, but I am allowing myself $5-10 in veggies each week. So far this has been enough.

So experiment experiment. It would be good to drop the food budget significantly, because I love to cook and have other priorities. It's the sort of thing worth feeling guilty about...what happened to special occasions? Why is there one twice per week? It's embarrassing the amount I let the budget go out of whack against what I want in life, so a month of extreme should help me adjust back to moderate.