The Food Challenge is still going great guns and I am enjoying coming up with new recipes and stuff to eat when I see something on sale for a really good price. Like, this past Saturday, I had already planned on buying some kind of rice, as it is one of my gluten free substitute standbys for pasta. I also occasionally buy gluten free pasta. I digress. A box of rice was on sale for $2.00 and it had one of the sticky coupons attached to the box for $1.00 off. You can bet I made a b-line for that box. Wow. I had actually worried a little bit about how I was going to make the grocery dollars stretch this week, as the amount left in our checking was a little skinny. But because of this and other fabulous on stuff I was going to buy anyway, it's all good and I actually spent about 1/2 of what I normally do without a lot of effort! Woo-hoo! So, now I ask myself, why am I worrying about it? It always seems to work out somehow.

Here are my meals for the coming week:

3 meals of gluten free pasta salad with gluten free/preservative free/msg free ham, black olives, fresh tomatoes, 1/2 of a yellow onion, and mayo

6 breakfast meals of oatmeal with cinnamon, honey, almond milk, and flaxseeds

2 meals of gluten free/preservative free ham sandwiches on gluten free bread

3 meals of leftover ham and bean soup

This is going to be great week!

I saw this article about creative ways to save money on the Smart Spending Blog at MSN.com. I find that I save a lot of money by keeping an insulated mug at work that I make tea in every day. And I take my own tea bags and stevia to sweeten my tea. Those two things alone keeps me from going to one of the campus eateries every day to buy a Coke or cup of tea. Also, if I did buy anything (I try to stick to cash for my purchases of iced tea, etc.), I put the change into a special box for the purpose. Once a week or so, I take the box to the Coinstar and cash in my coins and deposit them to a savings account. At different times, I have different goals I am savings for, but I deposit it somewhere for a later use and it adds up so fast! It's really cool and it feels great knowing that my money is going to buying future windows for my house or help me to weather some sort of unforeseen emergency.