So, I went on a bit of a hiatus for the end of March, April, and May... I was finishing my doctoral thesis, defending, and recovering (I passed! Yay!)
Looking up on totals in Mint, I'm somewhat surprised to find our grocery totals were $337, $366, and $483 respectively...and that last is after I assigned some grocery spending to Travel (we used Splitwise to reconcile expenses for a group of 9, which included some groceries various people bought). I think the conclusion I have to make is that we spend less when I/we are not cooking, although a caveat to that is that I don't have full takeout values because BF was bringing me food a lot. It's all a haze. I think there's some truth to the numbers, in that I'm more willing to eat boring food when I'm stressed/busy, but want to get more creative when I'm not. That said it's also likely not as healthful, even if I remember a vegetable here and there. I had a lot of frozen dinners at work...
May was weird...we were traveling for 2 weeks plus Memorial day weekend, but for the first part some was defense travel (my lodging plus meals are reimbursable, I just haven't gotten it back yet), some was staying with friends who fed us some of the time, and of course some was eating out--more than usual, less than expected. All this travel time, plus the fact that our first full week back I got leftovers from a lab group lunch that made SIX portions for us (when combined with some old-but-fine soyrizo and cheese), should have resulted in much lower grocery bills, but between coming home to an empty fridge and the foggy head/lack of motivation I couldn't shake for 2 weekends after returning... we managed to get in 4x $100 grocery trips, and a few smaller ones...eep! And I can't for the life of me remember much of what we got (foggy head...).
Ahem, anyway. New plan for June: I realized that for some reason whenever I think of tracking grocery spending I think of saving paper receipts...but whenever I need to remember who ordered what at a group dinner bf or I pay for, I take a picture of the receipt and send it to everyone. So, this month I'm going to try and photograph all my grocery receipts! Then when I have the "what the hell is this total?" moment at the end I can at least analyze retroactively. I also think it might be more effective since it will highlight if anything is a more regular splurge than I thought...
Grocery related, not sure if cost-saving: I dehydrated some lemons and limes last night and threw them in my water at work this morning. They did an excellent job of flavoring the water (and rehydrating themselves, but slowly). I think I might pulverize the remaining dessicated citrus and put them in spice jars, but I'll have to report on that result later. In the meantime, if you have extra citrus and a dehydrator and are wondering how to preserve...I recommend.