Budgeting... (ick)

Now that the dust has settled, the final purchases involving moving have been made, and a full month's of adjusted paychecks have started rolling in; it was time to revaluate the household state of the union from our family head of treasury. Better known as "Budgeting." Not everyone's favorite thing, but absolutely necessary since we are now living in the most expensive place on earth.
We quickly found out that the Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) was not only necessary, but entirely accounted for with such things as elevated prices for water, electric, gas, cable, groceries, movies, you name it- it all costs more! So, our family's goal is to actually enjoy living here, so we will be doing creative cost-cutting in the departments of eating out, groceries, electricity, and fuel.
Strangely enough, these major departments are all areas that fall under my passion of living more self- sustained. So, I have built my library wish list to learn as much as I can on these various subjects and how to scrimp and save and pull ourselves "away from the grid". At this point, we won't be installing any permanent fixtures or any of those big changes like solar water heaters or geothermal energy. But, we will be heavily pursuing techniques that basically save money running our current slew of technology.
One area I will take great pleasure in sharing will be how we manage to significantly cut our current grocery bill from the $800 a month it is currently costing us. Although, I do have to take one major factor into account  for the substantial increase is that I am eating for two. Of course, so is the husband! We do have a wide variety of ice creams, salty and sweet things, and tons of fruit. In addition, the restaurant fare is both limited in selection and out of our price range, therefore, we are eating at home a whole lot more. Add to that the fact that the kids have been home for the summer, munching and snacking us out of house and home. So the increase isn't entirely geographic but also circumstantial. Nonetheless, we will be slashing it!
I am looking into affordable, nutritious, and easy to prepare dishes that are rarely the obvious selection when cutting back. It's easy to cut back and eat more processed meats and canned vegetables, but so much nutrition is cut out. Plus, there's only so many pots of spaghetti I can stand making after all! I'd like to focus on whole foods, as close to their natural state as possible with lots of fresh ingredients and without the whole foods price tag. We'll see how that goes!
So today, I'm off to the grocery store. We'll see with my well-planned menu how much I walk out of there spending. With three kids in tow, there will no doubt be some superfluous choices thrown in the basket as well!