I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about food. Between food and budgets and wondering what my kid is going to decide on for college, that’s got to be a good 95% of my brain power these days.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the food/budget dilemma I was facing. Having blown a nutty amount of my self-inflicted financial limit on way too many trips to the grocery store, I was determined NOT to shop until after Vermont.

Minus a trip to Trader Joe’s to buy the beer my Mom loves and can’t get where she is, that is.

The fridge got progressively emptier. I used up all the fresh veggies and fruit (other than onions and limes) - I even went through every last clove of garlic I had. The horror!

We ate soup and grilled cheese. Lettuce rollups with spicy fragrant ground beef. Nibbles for dinner with cheese and sausage and crackers and olives. We did have one night when we took ourselves to a local pub-style spot and had a beer and shared a plate of chicken wings as our dinner, but other than that? Bring on the creations. We had an omelette. A Mexican-flavored casserole that netted us leftovers for the freezer.

I didn’t even resort to rice and beans, or pasta with sauce. No doubles (those will come!). I did do one night of a jarred curry sauce with diced chicken from the freezer.

But I am here to report we ate superbly well, threw out ZERO food, and even had enough to bring road food (I made a chicken salad with some leftovers and the very last (fairly wilted but good in salad) celery.

And my food costs last month? $531.81, including that beer.

Sounds like I have a new challenge for April. Can I do better than this???