My daughter turns 16 on Wednesday, and ugh, we won't get into the driving and dating thing. She left this morning for a week at camp, so on Sunday we had our family celebration. I shopped on Saturday to buy ice cream for an ice cream cake (our local ice cream shop makes great tasting cakes but they are $18 for a small round cake - I think we are done with that). I found out Saturday night that she is tired of ice cream and wanted a regular cake. Okay, so this part about my wasting money on ice cream is not what I am proud of. I am proud, because I did not go back to the store and buy a cake mix. I decided to go the from scratch route. It's not that I cannot make things from scratch, I used to bake all of the time, back when I was single with no kids or husband and both my father and my boyfriend's father yelled at me to stop baking because they were gaining weight. They really were mad at me. Tsk.
Anyway, now that I have a husband and kids, who has time to bake from scratch? Let's face it, the question really is, who wants to make time to bake from scratch. Well, I've been inspired by reading Diary of a Stay At Home Mom and about her grocery budget, and decided I should give it a try and see how much I can save. This is especially helpful because I am not working right now and need to watch the spending. And I spend a LOT of money on groceries. If I get it under control, finally, I will post about how great I am doing and reveal the amount I spent on groceries. But until then, I am just ashamed. I will tell you this: I told a friend once and she told me that it was close to what her husband's paycheck was (and she is a SAHM too). That put it in perspective for me.
Wow, can I ramble. So, I made this cake from scratch (the frosting is canned frosting, don't yell, but I happened to have some on hand, and forgot to take butter out to soften because I was being herded out of the house for reasons I won't get into, and so I used the canned. But the cake came out terrific, and I used what was on hand. Yea for me!
And there are leftovers. Bonus!
So glad I'm inspiring you in some way :)
ReplyDeleteI always Menu Plan and I cook from scratch as much as I can, it's the only way I can keep our food budget so low.
Good for you for making the cake from scratch. I just made a yellow cake from scratch a few weeks ago too and will never buy store bought again, it's SO much tastier :)
Good for you trying to be more thrifty with groceries. Its so easy for it to get out of control. Im a stay at home mom and let me tell ya grocery shopping for 8 to 10 people gets so expensive. I do a combination of cooking from scratch to purchasing somethings for nights life is crazy busy. Things do taste much better when they are made from scratch... that cake looks yummmie!
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