Grocery Shopping.....

Grocery shopping is a chore that I'd really rather not do. But we've become accustomed to eating, so I have to do it every week. I'm lucky in that Hubby will go with me without complaint most of the time. I try to get the shopping done on Saturday, but the weather was so yucky here yesterday that I put it off until this morning.

I don't follow all the rules of grocery shopping like I should. I do not clip coupons, nor do I usually make a list. I sort of do a mental catalog of the meal ingredients I already have on hand, factor in how many nights I can get away with something like a frozen pizza or a grilled sandwich, and I pretty much know how many meals I have to buy for in the coming week.

This morning I determined that I already had the makings for meals centered around smoked sausage, cubed pork chops, salmon patties, and possibly a frozen pizza. That left me with very little I actually had to buy, because I absolutely refuse to cook on Friday or Saturday night. And some Sundays. With the occasional Tuesday thrown in.

Why, then, did my grocery bill wind up being $107? There are TWO of us. TWO.

I know that I violated one of the main rules of grocery shopping in that I went to the store around 10:30, having had no breakfast. [By the time I got home it was time for lunch, so theoretically I saved those calories.]

I bought several items of "junk" to take to school for our post-lunch chocolate orgy that we have every day. Those items were more essential than you might think.

Then there were the $14 steaks I bought to grill for dinner tonight. And I don't even like steak. I figured we missed our Saturday night dinner date this week, so I thought Hubby might like a steak. Damn it, they come in twos. I prefer chicken and pasta or grilled salmon when we eat out.

Cat food usually runs us about $12 a trip. That's for Big Brutus, the vocal one who knows just what those canvas bags mean and starts yelling for food as soon as I walk in from the grocery store. Little Brutus is content with dry food, and she will sit patiently next to an empty dish without uttering a sound. I don't know if it's because she is patient or because she is retarded.

The construction paper and stencils for school were sort of necessary too. Students ask for those things all the time to do their projects. The last time someone asked me for construction paper, all I had was a couple of different shades of blue and one of green that had a hole cut out of the middle. [Why couldn't the goober cut it from the edge instead of rendering the entire sheet useless?]

I bought the cinnamon streusel to make and take to school tomorrow morning. Then I came home and discovered I wouldn't be going to school tomorrow because mother-in-law is having her gall bladder out, but the mix will keep. We need an occasional mid-morning treat to get us through until the post-lunch chocolate orgy. [I may detect a pattern here about my inability to lose weight despite hours and hours on the elliptical.]

I bought chocolate chips to make the most dangerous cake recipe ever, something you mix up and put in a coffee mug and make in the microwave. But I neglected to buy the powdered cocoa that it also calls for, so I'm hoping I forget that package of chocolate chips is in the cabinet. [See above.]

I bought batteries for my clock at school, because it died on Thursday night and I will look at it 1162 times tomorrow and find that it is no later than 9:35. Shudder. Oh, I forgot, I'm not going to school tomorrow. Tuesday then.

I'm not experiencing buyer's remorse or anything. I have absolutely no problem with any of the things I bought. I just find it curious that I have some internal wiring system that calculates my grocery bill as I go, and it's not happy unless I go just slightly over the $100 mark.

Spending $100 on groceries for a week, even for just the two of us, isn't really that bad.

If only it were food.