Legumes are cheap and tasty but not as pretty as the Oregon coast.

$69.66. Not per person. Total. We spent $69.66 so far this week (including $13.00 for two lunches Billy had to buy at work because he forgot his lunch once and I forgot to pack one for him another day), and there’s now just the weekend to go* and plenty of food in the house. And no, we’re not hungry. Nor are we eating bark chips at the playground. (Okay, maybe a few, but only for the fiber.) How did we do it? Cooking ahead, and legumes. Go ahead, say it with me: Legumes.

In Week One of our grand experiment, I made a big pot of black beans and froze several meals’ worth of it. In Week Two, I did the same with a big pot of mung bean and red lentil dal. The idea was to stock the freezer ahead of time in anticipation of those evenings when we just can’t get it together to cook. You know, the days when the kid is bouncing off the walls (charmingly, of course) and refusing to nap and it’s a miracle you managed to find time to grab an apple somewhere around lunchtime, much less cook a meal for three people? Yeah. Those days. This week was full of them. But no worries, and no desperate calls to the Thai restaurant. We had the beans, we had the dal. We have a rice cooker so I can set the rice to cook and then go outside to chase the kid around. There were even enough leftovers for our lunches. (Well, enough left over for lunches for me and the kid every day, and for Billy the three days he brought lunch this week.)

So let’s set Billy’s lunch money aside. We spent $56.66 on groceries. What did our $56.66 buy? Short-grain brown rice, peanut butter, eggs, almonds, pears, apples, plucots, milk, soymilk, yogurt, tomatoes, collard greens, zucchini, cucumbers, avocados, whole wheat flour. (Seems like it should have bought more, right? Ah well.) Everything else we needed, we already had, thanks to the stuff in the freezer. I’m a convert. My soup and bean pots will now be bubbling away once a week to keep that freezer stocked.

I might be turning into my grandmother, but I guess she was on to something with her freezer full of split pea soup and blintzes. I’ll take a pass on her “Hawaiian Chicken” though.

*Actually, today will mark the beginning of a new week. It was getting complicated, posting my budget reports on Fridays and then still having two days left in the week. So many things can trip up a budget in two days–especially when those two days are the weekend. I’m following Emily’s lead, and will now count my budget weeks from Friday to Thursday, so that when I’m reporting my budget to you, I can tell you what I actually spent for an entire week. No more declaring victory on Friday, only to come back to you on Monday having gone over budget over the weekend. Nope. So this week is a short one, but I think we can all agree that finding myself at $56.66 on Friday pretty much guaranteed I was going to kick ass this week even with a full seven days. Right? Yes, yes, we can agree on that. Hurray for me.