well, duh

one of my goals for the year was to become a true coupon lady

and i think i'm off to a good start

besides success at cvs last weekend

i also had mad success at harris teeter yesterday

113.82 worth of groceries for 53.98 

i saved 59.85!

highlights include:

2 packages of Martha White muffin mix: $.05 (reg price 2.36)

10 boxes of Barilla pasta: $6 (reg price $15)

7th Generation dish soap: free (reg price $2.99)

3 boxes of Hamburger Helper: $1.50 (reg price $5.55)

Bic Multi-Purpose Lighter: 1.29 (reg price $4.29)

that was with very little effort, so i'm excited to see what will happen as i begin getting into it a little more!  some coupon gurus save as much as 90% on an average trip.  over the last month or so i've been averaging 50% or so...i'm going to try to up it to at least 75% over the next month or two.

now onto my duh! moment, which does strangely correspond to the above :)

it occurred to me the other day

that my jobs (which i'm loving)

while by nature are "set my own hours" type gigs

are sometimes scheduled a little too tightly

for me to eat healthy meals

and definitely no time to cook them

and yes,

my clients are *wonderful* about saying

"please help yourself to anything in the fridge"

and i do

gratefully

but there are days that there's nothing in the fridge that i like

or there's not much of whatever meal is left

or i don't want to open a whole new package of whatever freezer meal looks good

or there's a ton of junk food in the house and i wind up eating IT because nothing else appeals

this sometimes causes me to hit the drive-thru harder than i want

either between jobs because i'm starving

or after a job because what i had wasn't filling

so here's my future solution

i'm spending one afternoon a week in the kitchen

(besides cooking on other occasions)

where i'll make one from-scratch awesome recipe

that i can divide into a meal for that day, a meal for later that week, and a portion to be frozen

and at the same time

i'll make one "convenience food"

also to freeze into individual portions

so that i can stick it in the car on my way to a job

and if i get there and they have awesome options: fantastic

i have a meal for another day that week

and if they don't?

well, thawed out hamburger helper made with organic beef

is still much better than a 10 pm trip through mcdonalds.
(and cheaper too!)