What I Spent, What We Ate | It's bruised peach season!
What I Spent
Let's see. First, I made an official shopping trip earlier in the week and spent $130.
Then I went to Costco and dropped $80.03 on pistachios, frozen fruit, butter, and coffee.
Plus, it was a produce box week, which cost $32.
And finally, I stopped by the product stand and happened upon a box of marked-down bruised fruit for $10.
This means I'm at $252 for the week, which is definitely higher than usual.
These things usually average themselves out, though, and I imagine that the coming weeks will probably not all be $250+.
What We Ate
Monday
I made some shrimp and fish tacos (fish for Zoe, who is allergic to shrimp). I basically used the fish taco recipe, but put the rub on the fish and on the shrimp.
I cooked the fish first and set it aside so that it wouldn't touch the shrimp. Poor Zoe gets an itchy mouth if there's any cross-contamination at all, so I gotta be pretty careful.
Tuesday
I made BBQ chicken legs and we also had applesauce from the freezer, and no-knead batter rolls.
Wednesday
We had Teriyaki Chicken, plus cornbread (I know. That's a weird side for teriyaki chicken. But it's my house, and I will make weird meals if I want to.)
We had watermelon too.
Thursday
I grilled some sausages, and we ate them with veggie chips and fresh peaches.
Friday
Pizza, because, of course! The weather promises not to be stiflingly hot, so I think I'll opt for an oven pizza, and save the grilled pizza for hotter days.
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What did you eat for dinner this week? And was your first week of grocery shopping this month on budget?
(Unlike mine!)
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P.S. Joshua and I got another installment of our 52 project up.
It's actually encouraging for me to see you have weeks like this! Deaoite our garden finally yielding measurable quantities of yummy food we are still averaging $800-1000/month on food. Our budget permits this so I'm rolling with it because we have little to no food waste around here and what little does go bad is given to our chickens or composted for more gardening!
Side note: a friend of mine mentioned an article she read (of course I can't recall the journal) that discussed average household food spending now compared with the pre-1950's convenience food boom. It basically said that just 65 years ago average households didn't blink at spending 20-25% of their income on food compared with the average in 2009 at just 6%. I couldn't believe that but it rings true when I see how many people around me are willing to drop big bucks on fancy clothes or cars but cringe at the thought of spending more than $500/month on food. Just interesting...
What your friend read is true, and the difference was even stronger in the 1920s and 1930s. We think of housing as our biggest expense, but for our grandparents and greatgrandparents, the biggest expense was food rather than housing.
Another difference is that there was relatively little heath care available, so that was a small part of spending. As a result the percentages spent on other expenses will be greater.
Our summer eating is based around our farm share. I buy broccoli and peas from the grocery store for my kids, who are not yet the most adventurous vegetable eaters, but my husband and I eat what comes in the share.
Sunday - corn on the cob, grilled zucchine, kielbasa, cucumber salad, rice
Monday - toast, hardboiled eggs, yogurt, sauteed swiss chard, broccoli for the kids
Tuesday - pasta with tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes, kale
Wednesday - corn and beet salad, sauteed chicken, rice, cucumber salad, broccoli
Thursday - pasta with chick peas and tomatoes, sauteed leftover broccoli, cucumber salad
We've had a crazy busy week, so I have yet to look at my total grocery spending for July. It could go either way. In general I think I spent less, but last weekend we had a car (we don't normally) and my husband stocked up on some heavy items like cans of beans.
Do you do anything particular with the bruised peaches, or are they good enough to just eat as regular peaches?
They are almost always just very lightly bruised, which means we eat them like crazy! We cut around the badly bruised spots, but there are very few of those.
Gosh how I love fish taco night here - I have one dedicated anti-fish person and the rest of us chow down hard on them.
Let's see if I can remember what I cooked...
Monday - Made a one skillet pasta meal with veggie farfalle, cooked and crumbled bacon, dibs and dabs of several cheeses, and some homemade pasta sauce from the freezer.
Tuesday - Quesadillas to include a rotisserie chicken I found at HEB for $3, and some carmelized onions from the batch I made a while back. (I got enough chicken for two meals and made stock - score!)
Wednesday - Shredded pork tacos with a chopped salad. (Pork, lime juice, chipotles in adobo, garlic, and seasonings cooked in crock pot. Very yum.)
Thursday - Shrimp and quinoa, with a zucchini medley
Friday - Tonight is Taco Salad night
Saturday - Hubby will grill fish
Sunday - I will either order pizza for us, or pick up Chinese
I spent $175 this week, not including a lunch out each for Hubby and I.
The heat here makes me feel a little ill by dinnertime every night. ): So, a salad tonight will feel better than a hot thing.
Man, those chicken legs look G-O-O-D. I can't wait until we're able to actually grill for dinner. Being in an apartment makes that a little challenging.
This week:
Monday: Stuffed poblano peppers. I stuffed them with ground beef, rice, rotel, and spices. This thing turned out to be crazy spicy! The poblanos we buy are never this spicy; these must have been brought in from another farmer because the taste was very different.
Tuesday: Thai curry cauliflower with lemon basil chicken. This is one of my favorite recipes from you, FG! I like the vegetarian version of the dish, but husband dearest doesn't consider it dinner unless there's meat. So I whipped up lemon basil chicken, and it complemented the dish beautifully.
Wednesday: Nachos with beans, cheese, corn, and homemade avocado crema (I use this as a substitute for a lot of cheese)
Thursday: We were supposed to have lemon pepper chicken with rice, but our work days were extremely difficult, and we decided to get Culver's. We did use a coupon to make the best of our non-frugal situation.
Friday: Hot dogs. Not glamorous or healthy, but a guaranteed solid meal after a long, hard week.
Would you post your poblano recipe? My pepper plants are producing like crazy.
DC1 (age 9) has taken over meal planning and is sous cheffing for the rest of the summer.
Sat (DC2's birthday): Salad, Queso, chocolate fondue with fruit, chocolate cake, ice cream
Sun: Pancakes, Vegetarian chili
Mon: Tortellini
Tue: Stirfry pork with mushrooms and other veggies
Wed: Spanakopita from the freezer
Thurs: Leftovers, cheese and crackers
Fri: Spaghetti with meat sauce (DC2 likes pasta!)
We've mostly been eating leftovers from my father-in-law's 75th birthday party that we hosted last Sunday. Some family left their dishes with us for various reasons....going on vacation, won't eat it all, etc. so we had an abundance! I've also scored slightly bruised discounted tomatoes the last few weeks for 1/2 price at our local farm stands! That means lots of fresh salsa....yum!
"Weird" or "rutbuster"? It's all about the spin. 🙂
Monday we had leftovers from Sunday dinner.
Tuesday I had some painful medical tests, so when a friend offered to bring dinner we happily accepted.
Wednesday was a loooong workday, and I still didn't feel well from the tests. Hubs grilled some fish from the freezer with butter and herbs from our garden.
Thursday was pasta with diced rotisserie chicken leftover from Tuesday, chopped tomato, broccoli, and mozzarella.
I did much better than I have in previous weeks-mostly, I think, because I posted my goals on here last time...it definitely lit a fire underneath me 😉
Saturday: Taco Soup
Sunday: Taco Soup and Chili
Monday: Loaded baked potatoes (with chili)
Tuesday: Quesadillas
Wednesday: Baked curry chicken w/ Quinoa and peas
Thursday: Good Times (this was my one failure this week...I had LOADS of leftovers at home, but was out and about...boo)
Friday: It's date night at our house, so I'm not sure-we might eat leftovers, but we might also go out to a nice dinner or order takeout or delivery...I'll leave it up to hubby 🙂
We actually had a great week this week (mostly because I forgot and missed the order cut off for our organic grocer, but points to me for making do instead of going shopping elsewhere).
Sunday was cauliflower lentil curry with store bought naan bread
Monday was stir fried zucchini and chorizo over rice
Tuesday I felt like spaghetti, but got home to discover there was no pasta sauce in the freezer and no tinned tomatoes. I perservered and mad an awesome batch of sauce out of an eggplant, an onion, three fresh tomatoes and a couple of stray ounces of tomato paste. It was marvellous.
Wednesday was roasted veg over hummus and quinoa
Thursday I got home super late so did noodles with tinned salmon, avocado, and carrot sticks on the side.
Tonight should be zucchini and mushroom frittata
Tomorrow night I'm planning falafal and salads and Sunday something to use up the huge bag of sunburned spinach in my drawer - totally edible, but not very appetizing-looking.
Spinach quiche?
I can barely remember... Lets see:
- pan-fried scallops dusted with flour + parmesan
- half price sushi to celebrate a birthday
- mac & cheese
- scrambled eggs
- Tea Smoked chicken
I really, really, need to get back into the swing of meal planning. Turns out I'm used to my meals being driven by whatever is in the freezer, but right now my freezer is really low. Combine that with being a bit burnt out with cooking and not wanting to serve easy-but-starch-heavy pasta meals, I'm at a loss far too often.
On a related note, Whole Foods in many areas has Step 5 chicken legs on sale for $1/lb. Step 5 = chickens that live outdoors. Legs are my least favorite part but for that price and quality, I will do some serious stocking up and freezing.
Ohh, the scallops sound delicious!
And easy! Defrost frozen scallops, toss in a bag with a 50/50 mix of flour and grated parmesan. Heat some olive oil in a nonstick pan over medium heat. Dump scallops in, and also the "excess" flour/parm. After a couple of minutes, start stirring frequently. It took 5-10 minutes to cook. The scallops were tiny, from a cheap company, and had the injected liquid that Cooks Illustrated strongly recommends against - and still good.
Update: it's not Step 5 chix. It's chix rated on the 5 step scale - #2. Still not bad. And boneless pork loin chops were also on sale. The restocking on of the freezer continues.
Um, let's see....
Monday I think was sausage, squash, peas and .... something else.
Tuesday was chicken and rice, leftover peas and squash, sliced tomatoes. I used a crockpot for the chicken.
Wednesday was going to be hamburgers, but we went out to eat with a visiting friend. Eating out on a weeknight is incredibly rare, as in .000001 percent of the time, and eating out on a weekend night has become very, very rare as well. What little eating out we do is almost always lunch.
Thursday, the hamburgers we had planned for Wednesday, with fresh corn on the cob.
Tonight, I have a little ground beef left over -- it might be taco soup night, or might be something else. We'll see.
I have an order placed for dairy from a local farm; rich, creamy raw milk, buttermilk and butter. Yum. Other than that, I hope to keep my grocery bill fairly small for this week.
New here.... You've probably answered this elsewhere. What do y'all do on the weekend? Eat out or eat leftovers? I have the conundrum that my family likes to eat 7 days per week. LOL.
Monday - ham, black-eyed peas, brown rice, broccoli
Tuesday - homemade pizza, cantaloupe, strawberries
Wednesday - tacos/taco salad, cantaloupe
Thursday - Italian chicken, roasted cauliflower, green beans, cherries
Friday - stir-fry & rice (chicken, broccoli, red pepper, bamboo shoots, cashews w/gluten-free homemade sauce) watermelon
Saturday - grilled shrimp, salad, quinoa, some kind of fruit
Sunday - burgers, potatoes, baked beans or spaghetti
Usually Mr. FG and I have a date night one of the weekend nights, and often on Sunday nights, we end up having a snacky meal.
However, on Sundays we frequently go out to lunch with friends after church, so that's our rather splurgey meal for the week! We don't ever go anywhere fancy, but even burgers get expensive with all six of us.
Thanks for going into more detail about what you make for Zoe on shrimp night. As a shellfish allergic person myself, I have been curious 🙂
I can hardly remember what we ate this week. In no particular order:
1) Turkey-zucchini-carrot burgers, corn on the cob, spicy cucumbers, and asparagus. Zucchini was from our garden and the cucumber was provided by a nice neighbor's garden.
2) Brown rice pasta with leftover asparagus, ground turkey, yellow and purple tomatoes from our garden plus lots of garlic and olive oil. Probably also a green salad.
3) Grilled chicken, roasted potatoes, broccoli, green salad.
4) Black beans with striped peppers, tortillas, guacamole, plus shredded green and red cabbage for a salad.
5) I skipped cooking dinner one night when I was feeling extra tired, so the kid's had homemade Chicken sausage (from the freezer), black and brown rice, and leftover broccoli. I had homemade Chicken-apple-onion meatballs (also from the freezer), plus some leftover spicy cucumbers.
6) We still have so much grilled chicken left. I will be shredding it use partly for tonight's dinner and will put the rest in the freezer for tacos or something. Tonight will be Shredded chicken mixed with red and white quinoa and whatever diced veg looks good at the moment, plus sauteed kale on the side.
7) Sunday we often pick up something like Jimmy Johns or finish off the odds and ends of leftovers.
$80 for frozen fruit and pistachios???!! Which one was the really expensive item on that group? And is there no way to get those things cheaper? It seems like a really high amount for just a few items.
Well, the three bags of fruit were all about $11 each, but they're 6 pound bags. The three pounds of pistachios were $17.99, the four pounds of butter were $10.49, the fresh strawberries were $3.79, and the coffee was $16.99.
So, it wasn't just fruit and pistachios (you missed the butter, coffee, and fresh strawberries) and it wasn't a paltry amount of anything. And this amount of fruit/butter/nuts will last us for a good deal more than a week.
These were all from Costco, and I carefully choose my purchases from Costco. If it's cheaper at Aldi, then I buy it there. But even the larger bags of frozen fruit from Aldi are not as cheap per pound as the fruit from Costco (trust me, I checked!)
Costco always FEELS very expensive when you go there because it's a lot of money up front. But what's more important than that is the cost per pound, and that's what I pay attention to.
I feel for your little girl. But I am pleased to see you help her deal with her allergies.
As usual I am having the hardest time remembering what we had. There are days when we eat left overs. They seem to go on forever. I managed one meal this week with all my children visiting and no fighting. My son is a chef and he helped me prep the vege for our roast chicken dinner. I am still so pleased about that. Even with the extra serves we still had leftover chicken and vege.
Monday -Breakfast for dinner featuring cooks country French toast (my fave), scrambled eggs with ham and cheese, cheese grits, breakfast potatoes and fruit. My kids' favorite night.
Tuesday - We hosted our neighborhood National Night Out block party. It was a potluck. We had hotdogs for our family and brought a cabbage/kohlrabi/broccoli/ carrot slaw that was yummy. There was so much food to go around and we had a great time with our neighbors. We provided plates, utensils, napkins, cups, cold water, ketchup and mustard for all and have plenty leftover for next year.
Wednesday- pizza night for the kids and my husband served with snap peas and watermelon. I ate at a friend's house and brought a colorful salad with homemade Asian peanut dressing.
Thursday- My kids and husband were at my in-laws' as my mothrr-in-law often watches the kids when I have a full day of consulting work. They had hot dogs there and I had a Salami-Lettuce-Tomato sandwich. This is my new favorite and may even rival the BLT.
Friday- we were at a local county Fair and ate at the 4H building I used to volunteer at when I was a young student. We shared cheeseburgers, fries and hotdogs.
With my (relatively) new consulting job, I've not been keeping track of my food budget. In July, we are spent $150 over our $400 budget including eating out. In August, I'm committing to tracking our budget closely (instead of seeing the damage at the end of the month). We've had a great start - $32 including our planned $22 meal at the 4H building. I will be shopping from the freezer and using our grocery funds to stock up on bath products/ ingrediens for freezer meals to prep for our third baby arriving in late September/ early October.
Your night out party sounds fun!
And congrats on your soon-to-arrive little one.
On vacation this week with 3 other families so we shared meals. Unfortunately we will go over budget because we are eating out 3 nights this week. One thing I learned is that in Arizona price of food is almost half of California. For example a gallon of milk is $1.98 in AZ while in CA I pay $3.98 a gallon. I was amazed at how inexpensive groceries were. I always feel bad as I can never keep my groceries at $125 a week. We spend more like $200 per week. We spent $125 for 4 1/2 days while in AZ that includes paper plates and other supplies, 8 cases of water plus 8 gallons of milk, etc...
Sunday: pizza night at a restaurant
Monday: taco night
Tuesday: spaghetti night
Wednesday: terakayi chicken with garlic bread and Caesar salad
Thursday: Fajitas night
Friday: eat out. Ate at Shake shack in Las Vegas and it was $62 for the 4 of us. Very expensive.
Saturday: eat out
We had one fancy day if breakfast where we made egg burrittos and the rest of the week had cereal or took advantage of the hotel's free breakfast. Lunches mostly sandwiches or leftovers.
Why are groceries so much more in California? You must have SO MUCH local produce, dairy and meat. What causes the price hike? Taxes and regulation? Or maybe a case of "everything is expensive so everything is expensive"?
We are in Indiana and blessed with an amazing cost-of-living.
Good question. Produce, dairy and meat are even more expensive at the farmer's market. A dozen eggs are $10. Beef is at minimum $7.99 a lb for ground. So as you can see I have to selective in what I buy organic and what I don't. Very frustrating when I see prices in other states. Honestly I don't know how some people survive here
I splurged on some Rancho Gordo beans so my remaining grocery budget for the last two weeks has been $30 per week (for one person). I only went $2.50 over so I am super excited about that.
This past week was a lot of leftovers for dinner and a lot of sandwiches with fruit for lunch.
Sat/Sun/Mon - Crock pot pepper steak with differnt veggies each night including artichokes, zucchini and green salad.
Tues/Wed/Thurs - chicken tacos with zucchini one nght, and grapefruit 2 nights.
Fri. - Went out to dinner with my spending money (not food budget),