Adjustments to menus and a new goal for myself

I am determined to stick to my frugal food budget this month. While out grocery shopping yesterday I was unable to find a cottage  ham at any of the stores that I went to. I am unwilling to spend any more money this month on groceries and extremely unwilling to spend the inflated prices at the regular chain grocery store where I know I can find this item. I am going to do a bit of digging around in the deep freezer but I think I may have a beef brisket or short ribs still in there in the back, and I know for certain we have cheddar brats and kielbasa. Once I have determined what we actually have on hand I will make a new menu plan to replace the New England style dinner idea. It is definitely time for an inventory of this space in any case.
GF and I now have plans to go out to dinner with friends (parents of youngest son's girlfriend) this coming Friday night so I do have a little leeway on the menu plans there.  And although creamed chipped beef is a very frugal meal I'd have to go in to the high priced store to get this item and my goal is to avoid any and all food shopping for the remainder of the month so I will substitute something else (thinking sweet & spicy kielbasa with buttered noodles and salad ) for this meal too.
I have a Panini sandwich on the menus as well and Aldi did not have the ciabatta rolls I have been able to buy there this time. I did however find a good simple Ciabatta roll recipe online and will give it a go making these from scratch myself. There was no swiss cheese at Aldi yesterday for these planned Panini however I do have slices of mozzarella and cheddar and will just use one of these instead.
 After reading a few blogs and looking at my checkbook balance, one other goal I am setting myself this month are $0 spending days. I intend to set myself 5 days out of 7 as $0 spending. With going back to work this shouldn't be too difficult to do. Working an 11 hour day means very little time to spend money. I will gas up the SUV on Sundays for the next week, starting today. Another upside to the long workdays means most of my driving is only to and from work. The only extra driving I was doing was to pick up college age daughter from her campus and bring her to work the aftercare program with me at my school. College age daughter now has another ride into the job  since her gentleman friend is now on the staff with us. He will collect her from her college campus and bring her in to school with him. I am extremely thankful he is able to do this.
  Weekends are my downfall but I have already had my monthly haircut, will not purchase clothing or books this month ( I have a nice stack of books still unread to enjoy plus I intend to dip into some old favorites such as the Tightwad Gazette in the next couple of months), and have already stocked up on food and almost all of the household items we need. We still need cat litter and Duraflame logs. These will be bought today with the cash left in my wallet.
I will earn some cash next weekend with my cleaning job but I want to be able to stick this in my savings account.
Things I will still need to buy this month include two birthday gifts (youngest son and nephew) and a baby shower gift for oldest son's best friends impending arrival. We also need to replace the set of blinds on our side door. Our black lab-boxer loves to jump up on this door and look out the window and he has really done a job on these blinds. I will temporarily 'fix' the broken bracket on the bottom with some duct tape and a new set of blinds will be purchased later on in the month.
I am certain that I will be able to meet this new goal as well as sticking to not purchasing any more food the rest of January.