What the Hell Did You Buy? (or...Why I'm Here)

The 2 most obvious questions one must ask when starting a blog are:
1. Who are you?
2. Why would anyone want to read about your life?  (aka. Why are you here?)

I'll attempt to answer both.

Question 1: Who are you?
Well, as the blog name states, I'm the Real Housewife of Chesterfield. Ok, I'm not actually a housewife.  I work as a public school teacher, at a job that I LOVE.  Here are the cast of characters in my crazy life:

Me (obviously): The Real Housewife of Chesterfield
My husband (also a public school teacher): Steve (he is headlining Real Husbands of Chesterfield on BRAVO)
My 2 year old son: Will (aka. the Real Son of Chesterfield)
My 8 month old daughter: Emma (aka the Real Daughter of Chesterfield)
I won't tell you everything about myself - I can't give it all up now! You'll have to read on to find out what makes me tick!

Question 2: Why are you here?
This blog was inspired by a $160 grocery bill.  That’s right: $80 at Trader Joe’s plus $80 at Shoprite = major backpedaling when I got home.  Did I mention that we aren’t the Duggars with their 19 kids?  It’s me, Steve, Will and Emma.  That’s it.  Oh, and Emma doesn’t yet eat table food.  So really, it’s just 3 of us.  $160 was way over the top (although now I'm hearing from others that this type of bill is pretty normal.  Well, it's not for us - we budget $75 a week for food.  Plus, without the bill, there is no blog).  So in an effort to be frugal, and see how much we really can live without, we have decided to embark on this strange journey of sorts.

Our self-imposed rules:

1.   We will clean out our pantry. And by clean out, I mean eat our way out.  We have WAY too much food, and it’s going to go to waste if we don’t eat it.  Plus, I can’t find things, and then I end up buying things that we already have. So…we’re going to eat what we have first.

2.   Of course, we will need to buy some foods.  We'll still need to do some weekly shopping: milk, yogurt, bread, peanut butter, fresh fruit & vegetables (unless we already have an appropriate canned or frozen alternative).  Bottom line: Steve and I will try to live off what we have without altering the kids’ diet too much.

3. I'm not going to do this experiment at the expense of our children's health. So we will still be eating as many healthy meals as we can.  What it does mean, is that we might get some kooky combinations.  I'm going to try my best to step out of the box, try some new versions of foods, and still keep things healthy (and edible). The first couple weeks might be pretty normal (read: boring) but I'm sure as the boxes of pasta become few and far between things are going to get VERY interesting.

So that's about it. I'll also write about my life from time to time, and what's going on in it, but I'm going to at least attempt to have the food vein running through this.

I hope you enjoy coming on this gustatory voyage with us!