Food costs

During the month of August, I kept track of every food or drink expense that I incurred. (I used a Google Docs spreadsheet on my phone, which worked pretty well.) As part of my life goal of thoroughly over-analyzing everything, I present the following findings:

• I spent $697.94 on food and drink in August. This is a couple hundred dollars more than I would have guessed -- many of these transactions are in cash, and thus easy to lose track of.
• More than $200 of the total was during a three-day trip to New York early in the month. So, New York is expensive, and my budget estimate might have been fairly accurate otherwise.
• Omitting purchases of alcohol, I divided my total costs for eating out by the number of meals it represented, and then divided my grocery costs by the number of remaining meals. Meals out cost an average of $15.19, while meals I made myself cost an average of $3.51. While meals in has a slightly unfair cost advantage because of the many breakfasts that were just a granola bar, banana, and tea, that's still a pretty big difference.