No more eating out.
This may be my hardest challenge yet. We LOVE to eat out. Mostly me. I think it's because it's a break from mom duties. Dinner in our house, with 8 people is a lot of work and a huge mess. Prep, cooking and eating leaves me with 2 loads of dishes plus an hour of clean up. While I'm in the kitchen doing that the kids are destroying the rest of the house so then I have to do that (or get on them to do it which is equally exhausting). Then our 2 yr olds basically cry and scream through every dinner because they're tired and cranky, I'm up and down getting new forks for kids who dropped them, filling drinks, getting little kids more food and always holding someone on my lap. It's an exhausting meal. So I love going out for dinner. The girls usually behave better out, someone else preps, cooks and cleans. They serve me and my kids! BUT, my favorite places to go are hibachi and mexican. Which means I eat rice, noodles, carb filled yumyum sauce. Chips, tortillas and who knows what is in all those yummy sauces!
So I told my husband last night that I think we need to break ourselves of it, or at least cut back to once a month. He likes to go out too, and lately with our older kids able to watch the younger ones, we've been able to go on dates and that's been really nice but we do even worse because then we might get dessert and sushi and we aren't sharing with the 2 yr olds so we're eating even more.
Plus it's expensive. Yesterday my husband took 3 kids and went to his dr, then took them for lunch. I took the other 3 roller skating then to lunch. We all had hibachi. My bill was $50 + tip, so it was over $60. I'm sure his was similar. That's $120 for lunch for our family. That's almost a week's worth of groceries, in 1 meal!! So no only will not eating out save our diet but also our bank account. Win/win.
Just so hard because I get tired of cooking. Hubby had to work swing the other night and I don't cook on those nights, I'll throw some frozen pizza or sandwiches together for the kids and then I'll just eat something like - lunch meat with some random veggies or whatever we happen to have. It's easy, very little clean up. So I think I need to plan a few nights of easy meals like that all the time. Then I won't feel so worn out every week with the hour and half work that comes from a regular meal.
And I did plan for that this week, on our menu is tuna melts - we'll do it on a night when our oldest works because he is the only non-tuna-eating child. The other 5 LOVE tuna! And it's easy - buttered bread on the griddle, tuna mix on that, cheese, slice of tomato. Boom. Meal done. Hubby and I will do ours on romaine. I got chips to go with it (cheese chips, <1 per serving for hub and I). I also have a RIDICULOUS amount of eggs (thank you, Chickens!!) so we are going to do a egg-salad night, kids will have it on bread, hubby and I in a romaine wrap. This is loved by all. The hardest part of that is the egg peeling but I can do it in advance so I'm not doing it at a hard time of day (ie: dinner).
I also got some frozen pizzas so if I don't feel like cooking I'm going to throw those in the oven for the kids and hubby and I will just have to "wing it". he's not a fan of that, but I don't mind it. I'm happy to just eat left overs or have some lunch meat and cottage cheese.
So that's my plan. Staring today. Our next "meal out" will be around the 23rd of July, because that's our sons 17th birthday (omg!!! how did he get so old?!) and we always celebrate bdays with dinner out! We cut out fast food so I KNOW we can do this, it'll be hard. We'll wanna cave. But we can do it!!
So I told my husband last night that I think we need to break ourselves of it, or at least cut back to once a month. He likes to go out too, and lately with our older kids able to watch the younger ones, we've been able to go on dates and that's been really nice but we do even worse because then we might get dessert and sushi and we aren't sharing with the 2 yr olds so we're eating even more.
Plus it's expensive. Yesterday my husband took 3 kids and went to his dr, then took them for lunch. I took the other 3 roller skating then to lunch. We all had hibachi. My bill was $50 + tip, so it was over $60. I'm sure his was similar. That's $120 for lunch for our family. That's almost a week's worth of groceries, in 1 meal!! So no only will not eating out save our diet but also our bank account. Win/win.
Just so hard because I get tired of cooking. Hubby had to work swing the other night and I don't cook on those nights, I'll throw some frozen pizza or sandwiches together for the kids and then I'll just eat something like - lunch meat with some random veggies or whatever we happen to have. It's easy, very little clean up. So I think I need to plan a few nights of easy meals like that all the time. Then I won't feel so worn out every week with the hour and half work that comes from a regular meal.
And I did plan for that this week, on our menu is tuna melts - we'll do it on a night when our oldest works because he is the only non-tuna-eating child. The other 5 LOVE tuna! And it's easy - buttered bread on the griddle, tuna mix on that, cheese, slice of tomato. Boom. Meal done. Hubby and I will do ours on romaine. I got chips to go with it (cheese chips, <1 per serving for hub and I). I also have a RIDICULOUS amount of eggs (thank you, Chickens!!) so we are going to do a egg-salad night, kids will have it on bread, hubby and I in a romaine wrap. This is loved by all. The hardest part of that is the egg peeling but I can do it in advance so I'm not doing it at a hard time of day (ie: dinner).
I also got some frozen pizzas so if I don't feel like cooking I'm going to throw those in the oven for the kids and hubby and I will just have to "wing it". he's not a fan of that, but I don't mind it. I'm happy to just eat left overs or have some lunch meat and cottage cheese.
So that's my plan. Staring today. Our next "meal out" will be around the 23rd of July, because that's our sons 17th birthday (omg!!! how did he get so old?!) and we always celebrate bdays with dinner out! We cut out fast food so I KNOW we can do this, it'll be hard. We'll wanna cave. But we can do it!!
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