Day 9: Jolts of enthusiasm

In case this is your first time reading The Dollar Diet blog, my family and I are on a quest to go the entire month of February without spending any money. No kidding. We'll pay the monthly bills, put gas in our cars to get to and from work and spend just $10 a week on milk and produce, but that's it. If it's discretionary, it's off limits. Click here to read the introductory post.)

There's all kinds of frugality going on in the online and print editions of today's News & Observer. I don't know about you, but there's nothing like a jolt of enthusiasm and new ideas to make the frugal journey go a little more smoothly.

As usual, you can find the best grocery shopping deals for the week on Sue Stock's Taking Stock blog. What's even sweeter about Sue's Wednesday's deals list (click here) is that she spells out which coupons make the deal even better. With Sue doing the heavy lifting, there's no excuse not to use coupons and score good deals.

And Andrea Weigl, our food writer, offers up her Frugal Feast for the week over on her blog, Mouthful. Click here to check out this week's recipe for Slow Cooker Buffalo Chicken Sandwiches. At just $1.33 per serving, it's definitely a budget-friendly meal for the family.

I just might have to scour the pantry to see if we have the ingredients to make them during February's Dollar Diet.

If that's not enough frugality for you, be sure to check out today's Life, etc. section.  Andrea has written two stories that really get to the nuts and bolts of how to eat well while being thrifty: making meals from ingredients you already have and how to avoid throwing food away.

In her story, "Waste Not," which you can read here, Andrea offers up readers' tips on how they use up the little bits of this and the little bits of that we all end up with in our pantries and freezers. Recipes are included!

And in her column, "Goodbye grocery aisle; hello, pantry!," Andrea writes about her decision to take the plunge and do her own eat-from-the-pantry challenge, spending as little as possible and concocting meals from what she has on hand. Read about it here.
I can't wait to hear what she comes up with because she's a much more talented cook than I am.

I'll be back later today or Thursday with some ideas (and a recipe or two) on how we are attempting to make do as we find ourselves running out of things...