November is a month of beginnings for us this year. Which is weird, usually November is the beginning of the end.

My resolutions this month.

1. Start budgeting
2. Cook once this month for the rest of the month
3. Shop once this month for the rest of the month

So I started this journey, and am bound and determined to make this work. But a bit of planning error happened with this as I attempted it after traveling for 10 days. And Halloween.

So this is how I recommend not doing this, although the individual parts of the plan were sound, the overall execution was in fact, not.

Initially I intended on shopping on Saturday, prepping in the evening and cooking on Sunday. B/c of halloween, just getting back from traveling and Jon’s unusually fully client load on Saturday, shopping and prep didn’t happen on Saturday. So I took full advantage of daylight savings time, got up early and went shopping on Sunday morning, then went to church, then took my girls over to get their pictures in their costumes and pick up our freezer, sent Jon out to finish up some of the shopping, got the 11 month old down for a nap, and then proceeded to start prep and cooking. SO NOT A GOOD PLAN!!!!

And all would have worked out wonderfully if my stupid back wouldn’t have started killing me around 7pm.

Anyway, Jon completely picked up the slack and knocked out quite a few meals for us.

All in all, the meals look delish, the girls were drooling over the pumpkin pie, I was drooling over the pumpkin coffee cake, and I would like to say thank you to Once a Month Mom for the fab, no thinking cooking for once a month.

The nice thing about this menu, is that she thought ahead for the holidays.  My pies are done, I have a couple of cheese balls, side dishes to bring to dinners, brunch type stuff for Thanksgiving morning, and all for about $150 per family.  It was a little more this month as I got started up.  The other COMPLETELY fabulous note about this system is that she puts everything together for me.  Shopping list, podcast, instructions for day of, recipes.  I literally didn’t think about it.

And the other note is that on the recipes she mentions medium size apples or onions or potatoes.  I didn’t realize that everything in the grocery store is super sized, so I ended up with quite a bit extra of certain things.  But I would say success overall.  Having the first meal tonight.  Meat pie…  yum.