Portion Control

We mentioned in our initial blog post that we are keeping two spreadsheets to account for our spending.  The first spreadsheet is relatively simple.  It is simply what we've bought to eat during this 30 days whether it be from the store or from what is already on hand.  The second spreadsheet attempts to quantify the value of each meal so that we stay within the $4.50 per person per day.  We know that SNAP recipients don't do this, but our goal is to see if we can actually eat reasonably for that figure, since we aren't eating all of what we purchase each week.

For instance, we purchased a 5 pound bag of potatoes on week one.  We won't eat the entire bag at a meal.  So, we determine the cost of the potatoes eaten when they are served.  The hardest part of this task is determining the number of servings a recipe prepares.  We have been using the number of servings on the recipe if we have it.  We learned that this isn't always accurate with the chili recipe, as we mentioned yesterday.

Tonight, we had mashed potatoes for supper and we don't really have a recipe for that.  We weighed the potatoes to get an accurate value of those and then measured the butter and milk to get that cost.  Typically, we don't actually measure the milk but just pour some in a bit at a time until it gets to the right consistency.  We overestimated the amount of milk used and wound up with potatoes that were a little runnier than typical.  They were fine but not worthy of sculpting.

The more important issue is that when we were trying to decide if we had funds to have the mashed potatoes we used a figure of 4 servings per recipe.  It was clear after both of us having eaten normal servings of potatoes that we will get 8 servings rather than 4.  It was OK, we just halved the cost we charged ourselves for this meal.

Going forward, we don't want to chase ourselves in circles re-costing due to getting more servings than anticipated.  We will charge ourselves the higher cost per meal until we reach the number of servings used to calculate the cost.  Any servings beyond that will be 'free' and we will not add the cost to that day's menus.

For example, we have charged ourselves $1.04 per bowl of chili based on 8 servings.  If we eat 10 bowls of chili from this batch, bowls 9 and 10 will cost us zero since we've already accounted for the entire cost of the pot of chili for the previous 8 bowls.

If we don't get as many servings as anticipated, we will add the cost to the last serving so that we will have 'paid' for all of the food eaten.

For the record:
John ate
*Breakfast 2 eggs, two slices of toast and 1/2 serving of ham  & coffee for $0.82
*Lunch banana sandwich & tea for $0.35
*Snack 1 package of crackers & peanut butter with tea $0.30
*Supper beef tips with gravy, mashed potatoes, broccoli with cheese sauce and lemonade $2.62

Lori ate
*Breakfast two slices of toast with butter & apples $0.31
*Lunch two slices of toast with butter & apples $0.31 (she really likes this new taste combination!)
*Snack lemonade $0.05
*Supper beef tips with gravy, mashed potatoes, broccoli with cheese sauce and tea $2.63

Total eaten for 3 days $19.46.  SNAP allows $27.00, so we are doing very well.