Had an intense Vinyasa yoga class down at Dharma this morning…they’re usually pretty good but today I walked out drenched in sweat, and if you actually know me, you know I don’t sweat easily at all.After class, I headed down to Whole Foods for lunch.  I’m such a sucker for the salad bar…the Austin store is the flagship so everything is huge and well-stocked (that’s what she said).

$92.65

Yay!  Except for last week, we did pretty damn well.  Actually having a specific budget helped to cut down a lot of excess food costs and reinforces the fact that you can eat all the right things and it doesn’t have to be expensive.

For this next month, since the holidays are going to mess with our schedules and we’ll be gone for larger chunks of time, I’m planning on doing a meal-by-meal cost breakdown instead of a weekly grocery total.  I’ll see what works better as a measure of value and go from there.

For example, here’s tonight’s dinner…

Baked salmon with steamed green beans…

Atlantic Salmon Fillet:  $7.96
Salad with Spinach, Tomatoes, Mushrooms, and Pepper:  $1.00
Homemade Tahini Salad Dressing:  $0.50

Total cost per person:  $4.73


I just estimated the cost of the salad and dressing for this example, but I’ll actually do a breakdown so I have a good cost baseline for salads and veggies.  We go through A LOT of salad in this house…