January is a restaurant heavy month - it contains my city's Restaurant Week, plus my husband and my brother's birthdays. Restaurant Week is a ton of restaurants doing set menu $15 lunches and $30 dinners. Depending on the restaurant, that can either be a rip-off (local pizza deli where it's hard to spend $15 for lunch), or a really good deal (homemade pasta trio tasting + ceasar salad + dessert that would normally run ~$30), and I like to use it to try new places too. I took my brother for sushi, and my husband to a very pricey old-timey steak house that we love. Spendy month, but no regrets.
I declared February "Cook At Home" month as a sort of reset. Well, that, and when I did a thorough pantry/freezer inventory I "found" so much food that we could literally eat for months. I'll eat at other people's places if I'm invited, and I'll eat free food at work when it's offered, but other than that, zero eating out. So far, so good. Eating homemade lentil soup and an orange as I type this, having turned down 2 different offers to meet for lunch. I balance it out by inviting friends over for dinner or board games or super hero movies and providing copious amounts of oil popped popcorn and an open beer fridge (which people contribute to sometimes). I've been using Google Drive to good effect to capture recipes to try, track my inventory, do meal planning, and compile my own sort of "cookbook" of recipes that are worth repeating. Tried a crockpot pork recipe with maple syrup and beer, and a pressure cooker mushroom risotto recipe this week that are both keepers. I'm doing 52 weeks of crockpot recipes this year - I've done 6 so far!
I spent $482 in January, and so far $0 in February. If I end February <$50, I'll consider it a success.