Last summer, I embarked on a grocery challenge. Hubby and I were spending a whopping and ridiculous $948 a month on groceries and eating out.

I'm happy to say we have put ourselves on a budget and for last three months we have spent no more than $550 a month for groceries, eating out AND GAS! It's a miracle.

In part, I have Aldi to thank. I still can't believe I can get a cart full of groceries there for only $38.

Since it is going well, we are also reorganizing our food priorities. We are eating less meat and the meat we do buy is organic, grass fed, free range. It's more expensive, but we think it's worth it. Plus, when you are eating less of it you can afford to buy nicer varieties when you do eat it.

I am THRILLED to write the grocery challenge update. If you remember, we were spending about $900 a month to eat out and get groceries for me, hubby, and the baby.

I hoped to cut that to $600 or less a month by December. Well, I tallied up what we spent in November, and it's a grand total of $176.50, and that includes Turkey and food we're cooking for family Thanksgiving.

I didn't think it was possible. I do need to buy butter and milk this week, but that won't cost me $400!

I just looked at our credit card bill (we put everything on the card and pay it off at month's end). we're doing REALLY well at cutting our expenses. The bill is about 1/4 what it usually is. Yay! I wanted to sock some money away before Christmas, and cut back so we can boost the EF in case the hubby loses his job.

We have been eating at home most nights, bunching errands into one car trip to save gas, and just overall not buying anything that isn't a necessity.

I don't know if we can go on like this forever, but this is a good start.

Well, the grocery challenge wasn't too bad. We finished $11 over budget for the month. Not too bad considering our goal was to cut food expenses by 25 percent AND we had an unexpected week-long power outage that wiped out all the food in our freezer and fridge.

Despite losing all of our freezer and fridge food in a 4 day power outage, it looks like we might actually meet the grocery challenge this month.

My goal was to reduce my grocery bill by 25 percent, to $715.47 a month. Which is about $238.53 less a month than we had spent on groceries and eating out each month in the past 4 months.

Yes, I know that's a huge food bill for two people and a 5 month old.

From August 20 to Sept. 20 is the first month of the challenge. So far we have spent $622.19 on food. That leaves us $93.28 left until Saturday.

We just might make it!

The long-term goal is to reduce the bill by 50 percent, to about $500 or less a month.

Well, we just got power back at our house. The remains of Ike blew through here at 75 miles per hour plus Sunday night, and knocked out power to all of central Ohio. Even I was surprised. Our power just came on this morning.

I'm upset because I had just stocked the freezer with homemade pasta sauce from my garden, shredded fresh garden veggies, a whole lasagna I was planning to make later. Basically, my grocery budget and grocery challenge are blown this month because of this storm.

We had to drive 40 miles south to find an open restaurant yesterday, then we camped out at our sister's, who has power, for dinner. I have been living on bananas and peanut butter with crackers and water since Sunday. I'm over it.

It reminds me that I either need to get a generator OR I need to get a gas stove so I can still cook when the power is out.

I'm officially 2 weeks through the first month of the grocery challenge. Goal, to reduce grocery bill and eating out by 25 percent, to $725 a month.

Two weeks to go. And EEK, we only have $244 left in the grocery budget. Eating out has really killed us this month.

Every time my mom babysat, we went out to eat as a date, plus throw in some restaurant breakfasts for hurricane evacuees, and then a MLS soccer game that cost us $34 in concessions, and well, you see how it adds up.

The good news. The challenge is kind of fun. It's given me something new to think about financially and it's made me focus more attention on what we're eating and whether or not it's good for us.

Tonight, I made two eggplant / spinach lasagnas, and I froze one for later. This week, I also froze 2 2-cup bags of zucchini (for bread, this winter) and made and froze 3 large bags of homemade spaghetti sauce from the roma tomatoes in my garden.

So, on the food front, all that is positive.

At the grocery today, I actually did pass up a decent meat sale, with steaks and pork chops deeply discounted. We're tyring to cut back on meat, and I still have 3 roasts in the freezer and a pack of chicken from BOGO sales. I figure we should eat those first.

I spent $138 on groceries today, mostly so I have meals to cook for the New Orleans folks who are camping out here until Gustav is gone. They'll be here about a week. This is going to be a budget buster, but I feel like there isn't much I can do about it.

I am cooking a spinach eggplant lasagna, sweet corn from the farmer's market, and grilling chicken out on the grill. I also have fixins for a gourmet spinach salad.

So far, the grocery challenge is going well. Of course, it's only been a week! but hey, baby steps, right?

Today I went to the grocery store. I bought ONLY what was on my list. And the list was basics. My total was $28.16.

Much better than the $60-70 I usually drop at the grocery.

Today I am making vegetarian chili so we have something quick, healthy, and easy to eat.

Removing that shelf from the fridge is also working. Now that we can see the food, it's actually getting eaten.

I never would have guessed taking away storage in the fridge would actually work out better. I guess it was the more is always better American attitude that was holding me back.

Also, I checked out a bunch of cookbooks from the library. I plan to photocopy the recipes I really like and put them in a plastic sleeve in a new binder. It will become my unofficial cookbook.

I have found an interesting recipe for veggie burgers that will solve two problems. First, using all of the darn zucchini from the garden and giving me a cheaper option than store-bought veggie burgers. They are about $5 a pack, which is way too much for 4 patties!

We put all of our expenses on the credit card. (Calm down,we pay it off every month.)

So, for the last two statements the average we spent on food was

Grocery: $567.30
Restaurants: $386.84

A total of $954 a month. For two people and a baby, and this doesn't include formula. This does include things like shampoo and TP, and it will continue to. I obviously need to spend less on those as well.

Jeepers. If we can't cut that down. We're out of control. I know we aren't eating it all, because I threw out a big bag of spoiled food last night!

So, goal number one is to reduce these amounts by 25 percent for the next two months. That means a total of

Groceries: $425.47 ($141.83 less)
Restaurants: $290.13 ($96.71 less)
Total food bill: $715.47 ($238.53 less)

The long-term goal is to cut those amounts by 50 percent, by December, for a total of
Groceries: $283.65
Restaurants: $193.42
Total food budget: $477.07

The first goal is to cook at home more, reducing restaurant expenses. The second is to reduce grocery expenses by cooking more from scratch and from shopping at Aldi's and other discounters, and by using sale flyers and coupons to plan menus. I should have been doing this already. I guess I didn't know how bad it had gotten.

I picked 12 pounds or roma tomatoes today and made them into sauce tonight. It was fantastic.

So good, it inspired me to clean out the fridge. I couldn't find a spot for the sauce leftovers.

When I threw away an entire grocery bag of spoiled food, I realized something had to change.

We spend A LOT on food. I don't even know how much. It's a category where we have no spending limits.

Well, that's going to change. We're obviously wasting a lot, and that is unacceptable, for many reasons.

So, I am going to institute a grocery challenge. I'm not sure exactly how it will work but I have a rough outline.

Step 1. Tally up how much we spend each month on dinners out and groceries.

Step 2. Reduce both of those amounts by 25 percent for Sept. and October, with the ultimate goal of reducing it to 50 percent of current spending within 6 months.

Step 3. A cook at home challenge. This may help accomplish step 2, and help us eat healthier. I have been wanting to make more home-cooked meals and have lately, but I can do better. I will start looking for healthy, possibly vegetarian cookbooks at the library.

Step 4. Plant a wonderful garden next spring. My plans were derailed this year due to being too pregnant to bend over. Hard to plant seedlings that way. I will focus on foods we eat often and items that we use that are expensive. Third, specialty varieties and items we can freeze for winter.

I do most of the grocery shopping, so I shouldn't need to enlist the hubby's help in this. Plus, he loves home-cooked food, so he'll be on board.

The money we save (compared to our current average monthly food expenditures) will go into our savings account, which frankly could use a boost because we just spent $7200 on a new roof.