Food - best before dates

I've previously posted about wasting food.

One thing I tend to waste a lot of is Yoghurt and similar - buy it and then never eat it before the best before date. Anyway, yesterday I ate a Fruche which had a best before date of 2 weeks ago. It was fine - still tasted as good as ever. I've always been one of those people that as soon as something is at the best before date I throw it out - without even looking to see if it is still good.

Another fun weekend planned

Another fun weekend of study in front of me. I mentioned back at the start of the month that I had 7 assignments and 2 exams in May. I've completed both exams and have handed in 4 of the 7 assignments. Have two more assignments due Monday and my final one on Wednesday. Then, have 3 weeks of freedom from assessments before having 2 final exams in mid to late June.

The only good thing about having to spend the weekend studying is that it means I'm not out spending money - as long as I can resist fast food. (Which I seem to eat an awful lot of when studying). Going to cook a bit stir fry tonight which should do for a lot of the week.

Grocery shopping

I really need to go grocery shopping - I made my lunch today and as I made it realised I have nothing left for the rest of the week for lunch. Pain in the you-know-what as I have a lecture tonight so won't have time to go shopping.

However - fate intervened and there was a lunchtime seminar at work today which I had forgotten about until I got into work and checked my calendar. This meant .... free lunch! So I can eat the lunch I brought today tomorrow, and can go grocery shopping tomorrow night so will have lunch on Thursday and Friday.

I really need to organise my life. I didn't go grocery shopping on the weekend because I was sick, and because I still have food in the house for dinners (frozen vegies, meat etc), I thought - oh, I'll be fine for the week.

Monthly challenge - bought lunches

I’ve been spending too much money on lunches/snacks etc. (I really need to go grocery shopping again).

Krystal (one of my favourite PF Bloggers: Give Me Back My Five Bucks), has in the past had “monthly challenges”, one of which was go for a month without buying lunch/snacks etc.
Today is the 23rd March, and I want to start the challenge now, so my challenge is to get through March and April without buying any lunch or snacks while at work. I live so close to work I don’t have to leave very early, so there is really no excuse for me not making lunch in the mornings.

I do have one exception – my work isn’t really a “let’s go out to lunch together” place. I’ve been here 7 weeks, and my boss has asked me to lunch once. If that happens again I will go, because last time it was her and some other “higher-ups” so in terms of the benefits for networking and my career outweigh the downside of paying for lunch.

Wasted money

What do you waste money on? And I don't even mean things you spend too much money on, but actual waste.

I spend a few minutes cleaning out my fridge this morning, and threw out:

• Full punnet of strawberries
• 1/2 loaf of bread
• 2 peaches
• Salad I made last week (lettuce, tomato, carrot)
• A carrot
• A few green beans (kept most of them but a few were too far gone)
• Yoghurt

With food prices the way they are these days, this is over $10 worth of food - completely wasted.

I'm not alone in this, according to www.savefoodstopwaste.com, Australian's waste 3 million tonnes of food each year, at a cost of $5 billion.

So what can we do? Well there are a lot of tips of the Save Food Stop Waste website, but here are the ones I'm going to try to follow:

1. Plan ahead - plan my meals each week so I am only buying what I need, and make sure I'm go to the supermarket with a list!

2. Freeze more food - this one is a bit hard for me as I live with a flatmate and we have a small fridge, our freezer is usually pretty full. But I'm sure I could have squeezed in some of the bread.

3. Be wary of "specials" that require you to buy in bulk - buying in bulk is a great way to save money - if you are actually going to use the food! Lately I've noticed a lot more specials where you have to buy 2 or 3 of the item to get the saving. Particuarly if you only are cooking for one (like I am) - you may end up throwing these "specials" away - it would have been cheaper to only buy 1, even at the "regular price"

Benefits of being sick

I felt pretty awful most of yesterday. However, I discovered one benefit - not spending money! I went to work (it's only my 2nd week so it's a bit too early to be taking sick days!) but left at the dot of 5, came home (10 minute walk) and went straight to bed! I even saved money on food because the only thing I ate yesterday was a slice of toast.

I did spend $13.90 on posting my Ebay parcel, but that doesn't really count as it was paid for.

Dieting

Apart from trying to get my finances in order this year, I'm also trying to get fitter and lose some weight. In the 3 years at my previous job, I put on 15kg. (That is a lot when you are only 150cm tall!) There were two simple reasons for this: 1) I was eating crap; 2) I wasn't exercising.

It took me an hour and a half to get from my front door to my desk (and the same going home). I was working long hours so I would usually leave home ridiculously early without eating breakfast, buy something evil on the way to work, buy lunch because I hadn't packed anything, and often if I was leaving work late buying something to eat for dinner (which more often than not ended up being the McDonalds at Central Station as it was the only thing open).

I shudder to think what I was spending on food every week.

Madame X (the author of http://www.myopenwallet.net/ - I highly recommend visiting), posted a link on her site to the article: Dieting? Put Your Money Where Your Fat Is - about people making bets to see who can lose the most weight in a certain time period - and how such bets are encouraging people to lose weight.

In my case, saving money and losing weight should go hand in hand anyway. It is so much cheaper to cook at home and bring your own luch to work, not to mention healthier. By stopping eating fast food, I should be saving money and losing weight!

(PS - I left my job in late December and have lost 6kg - not bad considering there was Christmas in the way!)