Slashed Food and Gas Budget

So I figured out the mystery. I have tried a bazillion different things to save money on groceries, and it boils down to something so simple I feel like a fool for not seeing it earlier. It's so boring, not exciting, and a bit of a pain in the arse.
Meal Planning, yup, thats it. We are taking a class on finances and I could not find anything to slash but the food bill. So I started just making a list and going to the store, no extra trips, if we are out we make do. I do not vary from the list except about 10% if I have to make adjustments because the store is out of something. There has been a lot of whining. The kids are getting used to figuring out what you do when you don't have processed foods to open an eat, you take crackers and you add something, or you grab fruit. They are rediscovering p.b. crackers and cheese and crackers, etc....Not that we ever had a lot of processed foods but they were eating all the lunch box foods, until they didn't have any Kashi bars to put in their lunch one day.
Our food and toiletry budget was easily running $1200 a month and our gas budget was running around $360. That is roughly $1560. So even though we are black belt frugal anyway, we do have four kids and live below the USDA guidelines for feeding your family super thrifty, I knew we could do better. We also are eating fairly simple meals and at least two vegetarian meals a day and often only a few meat meals a week. Going out to eat only happens a few times a month if that.
Simply plan three meals a day, keep crackers, fruit, p.b., and cheese on hand. Plus we only drink water, milk, tea, lemonade, and frozen juice. We buy 75% store brands, and cheap foods like oats,apples,banana, grapes, and seasonal produce. We have been buying 90% of our meat from a farmer who grows local, humane, and organic animals. The quality is so good that the meat plumps instead of gets smaller so you don't need much. Meat wise we eat about a 1/4 of the average American diet on meat. If we go out to eat we share a meal or eat a la carte, and drink water. The kids don't get to go out to eat, sorry kids. We do take them for ice cream bars one on one, or take them out one on one for a small meal. I will share a meal (nacho's) with one of them. We actually did all of this years ago when we "had no choice" but as we did better financially we lost track of our spending. Now trying to prepare ourselves for kids going off to college, it is nice to have a choice and feel empowered.
We have cut back to $800 or less a month on food and toiletries for a family of 6. That may not sound like a big deal but that is $150 a month for all food and toiletries per person including cleaners, food for four animals, etc...

If anything, if you are reading this and you don't have kids, take heed: They are very expensive.

Gas: We started using the Civic when we don't have to take the whole family. The Civic gets 35 m.p.g. vs my Odyssey which gets 15 to 17 m.p.g. It takes $25 to fill up Blake's car, and $45 to fill up the van. Also I have reduced my driving even less trying to use my car only to run errands that are close by or only running errands on Wed. when I work in town, or every other Friday. We are using much less gas.

Hope this is helpful to someone else out there in the blogosphere.:)