You know what I want to do when I’m at home and don’t have milk for my coffee? I want to leash up the dog and stroll ten or so blocks to the coffee shop where I can have a skim latte (with an extra $.50 shot!) and look at semi-interesting people and feel like I’ve gone somewhere.

But because I’m hard-core (hard core!) back on my budget this week, that just wasn’t an option yesterday. But I did go somewhere. I went to the grocery store. And I bought a bottle of milk, a box of cereal I probably wouldn’t have purchased had it not been for the $.75 coupon, some dog treats that don’t count toward my $50 a week and, yes, a jar of peanut butter. Still, I left the store only $2.59 in the hole and pretty dam proud of myself. How?

On weeks I don’t get milk from my CSA (or when I’m craving a little flavored, fattening treat) I pick up some Shatto milk. It’s a local brand (recently voted the third best chocolate milk in the world) and just plain delicious (for that dinner party I threw a few weeks back the dessert was root beer flavored milk with Kahlua).

Because it doesn’t travel far it’s cheap, but each time I buy it I pay a $1.50 bottle deposit. Yesterday I noticed I had six bottles waiting to be returned—which amounted to a whopping $9 refund. Since I hadn’t paid much attention to the fact that I was paying the deposit and always included it in my weekly grocery totals, I could consider the $9 a rollover (if I hadn’t gone over budget, a lot, during the past few months) but I won’t. Because I’m honest like that.

So my real grocery bill was $11.59. Take away the $1.59 dog treats and I’m up to $10 for the week. (My CSA pick-up/Honeycrisp apple binge was Monday and my ‘fiscal week’ begins on Wednesday). So far, so good. Let’s see if I can keep it up this time. Remember: I’m HARD CORE!

Image via BRSphotography’s flickr.