How not to handle grocery shopping/menu planning.

I didn’t spend much money this week, but I was quite the opposite of efficient.   I went into the week with no plan, which meant I had no grocery list, which meant I didn’t go grocery shopping except for two last minute-ish runs.

(Read: we were out of milk.   And/or butter.)

And it also meant I spent way too long figuring out what we were going to eat each day.

I spent $9.64 at a local grocery store, $71.88 at Aldi, and $33 on my produce box.   So I came in at $114.52.

The running tally for December:

Week 1: $215.55

Week 2: $114.52

Monday

I really didn’t want to take time to go grocery shopping, and I knew I had a bunch of ground beef in the freezer, so I was all, “Hmm.   What could I make with that?”

So, I made a pan of The Pioneer Woman’s BBQ meatballs.

Then I had the bright idea to make a quick batch of buttermilk biscuits and some mashed sweet potatoes to go along with that, which would have been great, buuuuuut….

I’d used up every scrap of butter in the house when we made cookies.

So then I had to run out to the store in the middle of making dinner because you really cannot make biscuits and mashed sweet potatoes with no butter.

At least, I didn’t WANT to.

There are times when you can substitute olive oil for butter and there are times you can’t, amirite??

Tuesday

I made chipotle chicken kebabs  with cilantro lime dipping sauce.    Except I had no limes, so it was just cilantro dipping sauce.   No one seemed to mind, though.

I didn’t have time to make much in the way of side dishes, so I pulled some valtrompia bread tube bread from the freezer, sliced and spread it with garlic butter, and then broiled the slices.

And we had a salad to go along with that.

Also, please know that the kebabs look much more appetizing in real life than they do in the above photo.

See:

Darn winter light….

Wednesday

This is the day where the lack of my grocery shopping/menu planning came to bite me.   We were out of milk, so I stopped at Aldi and wandered around the store trying to figure out what to make for dinner.

I bought a somewhat random lot of stuff, and ended up bringing a spiral-cut ham home for dinner.

($12 and it was big enough for several meals. Love Aldi.)

To go with that, we had a green salad and whole wheat rolls.

Thursday

I made Baked Potato Soup, because my produce box gave me Russets this week, and also because I had green onions that needed to be used.

I made no-knead batter rolls to go with it and we had fresh pineapple too.

Which means this meal was kind of lacking in green veggies aside from the green onions.   Good thing we had a kale smoothie for breakfast….

Friday

I’m making pizza, as usual, and I’m going to poll my kids to see what they want.   Last week I thought for sure they’d vote for deep dish pizza, but they all wanted the regular variety.

I swear I am going to plan a menu for next week because this was pretty not-awesome.

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How were the eats at your house this week?   Hopefully you were more organized than me!

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P.S.  Don’t forget to pop in this weekend to win $50 to spend at Amani Ya Juu!