Local families are feeling the pinch from high gas prices and forcing many of us to look at ways to trim from our budget.  We found a Facebook post with a creative idea that is about more than just eating-at-home and brown-bagging your lunch.

A local woman is trying a two-week experiment that essentially began with ‘shopping at home’ before she went to the grocery store.  Andrea Myers lives in Claremore but drives daily to downtown Tulsa for her job. She says the price of gas and her family’s desire to save more money has her looking at ways to save more money.

Myers says she already cooks on the weekend to save time during the week so her family can eat dinner together but over the weekend she took inventory and shopped in her kitchen before going to the store.  She says she had stuff in her freezer that she had forgotten she had.

"I had to buy chicken.  I think that was the only meat I had to buy.  I already had two kinds of roast.  I already had some hamburger meat but I was able to spend $40.  Hopefully for the next two weeks we won't have to buy anything but milk," says Myers.

She admits she’s bad about buying stuff and then having to throw it away.  “I would go to the grocery store and buy a bunch of produce and then not have any plan for using it.  I would end up throwing out really good vegetables that kind of made me sick to have to do.  So, by planning I am definitely being more efficient and able to use what I buy,” says Myers.

She says the website Allrecipes.com helped her plan 10 meals.  Myers says the site allows you to plug in your ingredients, even the random can of marinated artichoke hearts, and has recipes for you.  She also plans to have leftovers for lunch.  Myers says it takes some planning but she is tired of throwing the food out and wasting money.