Food budget update

We have been on the new system of food for about a month, and I can say that...yeah, we blew this month's budget pretty severely! oops.

Although, I WILL say that most of it was poor choices and the fact this this is BBQ season, Rob discovered  he loves charcoal grilling and meat is expensive. So I think that we can stay at least near budget with a bit better planning.

The twice monthly organic club is going great and offering up a bit or random interest in our meal planning, and also bringing home things we wouldn't always buy (organic blueberries are so good, but expensive!). I am already formulating my winter bulk order, I think i will get a bulk bag of chick peas and a bulk bag of red lentils, and then I think I will have a good collection of legumes.Variety is key.

My goal of two bean recipes a week is working out nicely, and combined with re-thinking meat as a seasoning rather than a main in many meals has gone a long way too.

But in general, we have a good variety of healthier whole foods to work from and we're doing well, and the hard part is done. From here on out it's all about refinement, more recipes for weekday meals and regular food management stuff.

NEXT on the hit list: home heating systems and general maintenance and energy conservation planning. Our furnace and water heater are very old, well past expected age. We have $5000 sitting in trust from the house deal to pay for heating work, so I have started researching heating systems. We have an oil forced air furnace and the bones from a wood stove (chimney, cap and pad but no stove) to start with. Our choices are: oil, propane or electric forced air with or without wood stove back up. for wood we can choose between cord wood and pellet.

It's a complicated thing to parse, part of it is pretty personal in terms of work needed and price guessing and so-on. Up front costs and ongoing costs etc. But I'm working through it and it's coming on time to get estimates and see how things shake down. So far I'm enjoying having the luxury of time to figure out choices, rather than doing this in December in a panic.

Otherwise I'm looking up maintenance planning and figuring out what kind of stuff we should be doing. For instance, we got a lot of rain recently and I watched water pour off the side of the gutters in a coupe spots, so heading up there to scrape them out seems like a good idea :)

Tips from home owners always welcome!
xo