Day: December 30, 2017

Thrift Food Plan report December 2017

I’m feeling rather conflicted about this month’s data.  I’ve got December down for five weeks, per the rules (December 30 and 31 fall in the fifth weekend, thus five weeks). However, when it came time to go shopping that weekend, I’d already spent my allotted $220 dollars, so I did an accounting trick and made it as if the purchase happened on 1/1/18.

I spent a lot of time deciding if I should do this or not.  Much more than was probably necessary.  In the end, I justified it thusly: nearly all groceries bought will be used to make food eaten in January.  I was shopping for two weeks, not one, so how to account for that? And finally, I wanted to “win.”

I didn’t, though I came close.  It’s a hollow victory through, because I know I skimmed off the Christmas budget this month.  For example, I hosted Christmas Eve Eve (celebrated on 12/13 this year) and made two kinds of soup, plus bread and dessert.  There was a lot of leftover soup.  It fed me breakfast for most of the rest of December. It’s not reflected in my groceries budget because years ago I made the decision to wrap holiday cooking into the Christmas budget.
One of the problems with December’s shopping, and the reason I essentially spent five weeks worth of groceries in four weeks, is cheese.  I’m a great lover of cheese and good cheese at WinCo is incredibly affordable. Thus, at the beginning of December I bought Parmesan. And feta. And goat cheese. And blue cheese. And mizithra.  As of December 31, I still have half the goat cheese and feta left and I haven’t even cracked open the blue and mizithra. I also impulse bought lunch meat (ham AND turkey) and had to work to get that eaten up before it went bad.

Not a good use of my grocery dollars.

I’m going to continue the Thrift Food Challenge into next year.  I’ve decided to cease this pantry-type shopping at WinCo, as it leads to cheese and other excesses.  Instead, I’m going to shop twice a month a WinCo having planned already what I will cook for the next two (or three) weeks.  I’ve been meal planning all along, but never with the intention of buying the majority of meal fixins at WinCo.

We shall see if that makes a difference.

2017 Photos of the Year

This mobile bartender, the most rock-and-roll guy at the concert.

One of our many crippling snows.

Container ship in fog over from the Steel Bridge

Blue sky and the White Dove of the Desert

Tourists at White Dove of the Desert

Pride 2017. Portland.

Portland Actors Ensemble

Total eclipse 2017. (No filter)

Seaside sunset

Minnesota State Fair

Paul at the Minnesota State Fair

SkyGlider, Minnesota State Fair

Spoonbridge and Cherry, Minneapolis Sculpture Garden

Three sentence movie reviews: Intolerance

Do you know what D.W. Griffith is in favor of, aside from white supremacy? Fun!*  If you’ve got three hours, this is an exercise in marveling at immense sets and hordes of extras, and if you have a scratch-off movie poster, you will have the reward of seeing what that grasping hand changes into.

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home

*In the modern story, it is clearly very bad that social reformers outlaw dancing at cafes, drinking at saloons, and also prostitution.** Griffith was getting a half-side-eye with his overwrought portrayal of women social reformers, until I got the title card that said something to the effect of “women who have ceased to become attractive to their husbands turn to interfering in other people’s lives.”  From that point on, I was full side-eye.  I get that some parts of the social movements run by women in the early twentieth century went too far.  Prohibition is a good example.  But the temperance movement was partially fueled by the fact that alcoholic men could easily wreck havoc on their families and there was no recourse for the women or children involved.  The reforms of the early twentieth century improved a lot of lives, and were run by women with no political power.  That’s impressive.

**And that part bugged me, too.  We’re supposed to be sad that women can’t prostitute themselves anymore?  Given the long, lingering shots of men drooling over the prostitutes as they were escorted from the brothel, this was a terrible, terrible turn.

Here’s our scratch off  for this movie and the two others I’ve already seen.  That Snow White one is one of my favorites. poster from: http://www.impawards.com/1916/intolerance.html

Do you want to scratch your movie poster itch? Get the scratch off poster here.