Frugal Friday!

Tuesday, June 23rd: Bonnie and I went walking tonight and decided to hit up one of our favorite restaurants, Sweet Tomatoes, afterwards. We visited Sweet Tomatoes a while back, but didn't have time to stay and eat so we got it to go. Here's how it works: Step 1: Grab a container for salad and build it up however you'd like. Step 2: Grab two small containers (or one big one) for pasta, soup or whatever you want. Step 3: Grab a small paper bag for bread. Taking our food to-go was a great idea, for two reasons.

1. Instead of paying $9.59/person for dining in, we paid $7.89/person just because we were taking it to go. I understand that there are more options that come along with dining in; for starters, you can make as many trips back to the line as you wish. That's great if you're starving and eat a lot of food, but for me personally, I can hardly eat everything I get on the first go around.

2. Taking my food to go allows me to maintain portion control by eating half for dinner and saving the other half for lunch the next day. It's a win-win. I save money, and I get two meals. If I were to dine in, I wouldn't be able to get a to-go box because it's a buffet and that's totally against the rules.

Tonight was a little bit different. Although we took our food to-go, we only ordered one to-go because neither of us were starving. I wanted the salad and Bonnie wanted the soup and bread so it worked out perfectly. Although I didn't have any salad leftover for lunch tomorrow, Bonnie did manage to save some blueberry muffins for her breakfast tomorrow morning!

Regular price for dinner for two (dining in): $19.18. Our price for dinner for two (to-go): $7.89. Total Savings: $11.29 or 59%.