What I Spent, What We Ate
What I Spent
I knew this week was going to be spendy.
I dropped $111 at Aldi, $60 at Costco, and $39 at another grocery store.
Plus I got a $25 Hungry Harvest box.
So, I'm starting June off at $235!
What We Ate
Monday
I tried a recipe for steak yakisoba noodles (from the Dinner Illustrated cookbook).
It looked beautiful and was pretty easy, but we all felt rather meh about it. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't memorable, and I didn't think, "Ooh, I can't wait until I make this again."
You win some, you lose some.
Tuesday
All of our kids ended up being gone and I started to make dinner and then I thought, "Eh. Forget it!". So when Mr. FG came home, I told him I wanted to go to Five Guys.
So that's what we did. 😉
There are downsides of having older kids (such as car issues!), but this is one of the upsides.
Wednesday
I tried another new recipe (again from the Dinner Illustrated book).
This one was sauteed shrimp and tomatoes with lime quinoa, except I made one bowl with chicken for Zoe.
This was tasty, especially with lime juice squeezed on top, and I think I'll make it again.
However, I might make it when Sonia's not home because the sauteed tomatoes triggered her oral allergies, even though I cooked the tomatoes longer than the recipe called for.
(She has OAS, which gives her an itchy mouth when she eats certain raw produce.)
I suppose it's also possible that the quinoa was to blame, as she's never had that before. So, I'm going to have to try feeding her a little bit of quinoa on its own in order to figure it out.
Thursday
I needed a quick meal, so I cooked some chicken breasts, pulled them apart, added bbq sauce, and served it on buns. With watermelon on the side.
Friday
I haven't decided what I'm making tonight! It's fairly not-hot for June, so maybe pizza?
"Itchy mouth" sounds uniquely awful somehow. Poor Sonia.
Monday: Choice of hamburgers with bread and butter or tacos (with leftover meat), because I didn't have quite enough of either for everyone. Also steamed broccoli, sauteed mushrooms and onions
Tuesday: Pork butt, baked potatoes, cucumbers with salt and vinegar, bread-crumb pudding
Wednesday: Sneaky trout appetizer (because my husband sneaked out in the afternoon to go fishing without telling anyone--benefit of self-employment--and then returned home with two small trout he cooked for the boys), sweet Italian sausage, fried potatoes, fried cabbage and onions, steamed carrots
Thursday: Grilled chicken thighs, spaghetti with tomato/cream sauce, salad, grilled green garlic (green garlic is just immature garlic plants--the garlic equivalent of scallions--and is the only thing we have in the garden right now because garlic is planted in the fall)
Tonight: Pulled pork sandwiches with the leftover pork butt and more salad. Possibly some applesauce if I get to making it from the disappointing apples from the store.
My daughter has OAS! Her triggers are celery and carrots and her reaction to celery is pretty intense. When she was a teen, we went through some bad episodes with her. I had to learn to cook at lot of things from scratch.
Celery is in a LOT of things...
Poor Sonia has a LOT of triggers. Apples, carrots, peaches, cantaloupe, tomatoes, and more that I'm not thinking of at the moment. Luckily she can eat berries and watermelon!
That is a lot of triggers. Mine is mold with cantaloupe, honeydew, and similar melons, but that's it. You mentioned cooking the tomatoes. Can she tolerate any of these items if they've been canned?
Yep! She can do canned peaches and canned tomatoes. So luckily she can still eat pizza, jarred salsa, and lots of other recipes that call for canned tomatoes. Phew.
Wow, bless her heart! My daughter's reaction to celery was so strong that she carried an epi pen for a while. She had anxiety and as she matured and realized that she really could breathe, it got easier. She also had a vocal cord issue, so she would panic and think was suffocating.
I’m so glad you mentioned this...my husband avoids raw apples and peaches (cooked is fine) because he says they make his throat itchy but I don’t think we ever realized it’s an allergy!
I was so skeptical years ago when Sonia told me that the carrots in her salad made her tongue feel weird. I thought she was just pulling a little kid tactic to avoid her veggies. Then when I learned about OAS, I felt kinda dumb. Whoops.
I have OAS, also. I'm not sure if you used avocados but they are a strong trigger for mine, unfortunately. I love them so this kinda sucks. I used to be able to eat them then all of the sudden they began to bother me. I also have trouble with carrots, grapes, and bananas. Living without avocado and bananas is the worst!
Raw celery has always made my tongue feel numb. I've never heard of OAS, and I now wonder if this is what causes the numbness. I've just learned to avoid it!
We know my husband cannot handle walnuts.. if he eats them his tongue immediately cracks and bleeds... we are noticing more lately that it is happening with sauces and spices also.. so random and odd.. like a particular restaurant BBQ sauce has something in the sauce that burns him, but we use many of those spices in other foods.. so we have not figured it out!
Thursday night- I had not pulled anything out.. was planning on grabbing a protein at grocery store after work.. but got very delayed.. so we went out for chinese and it was worth it!
Wednesday-breakfast for dinner-because the chickens are all running at full speed... so I fried up a bag of hashbrowns, added diced ham from easter a dozen eggs and some cheese.. served with a package of biscuits and some fresh fruit!
Tuesday-grilled some chicken breasts I had marinated in bottled italian dressing! Actually a teen did this and served it with a bag of frozen tots and green peas...
Monday- I grabbed ground beef at the store and made it all into patties! So husband grilled burgers and we served with leftovers! a HUGE sweet potato I reheated with cinnamon and brown sugar and smashed! the last of the green salad, a random jar of chili from the depth of the freezer.. the last of the fresh fruit before I shop...
For tonight.... our weather looks the warmest for a while so might be grilling again.. I have some steaks in the freezer I can defrost. Homemade pizza sounds good for the rainy weekend ahead!
Yay pizza Friday! Or maybe you can make fried rice? It's pretty easy and you can use up any leftovers or odds and ends you have in the freezer too 😀
Saturday- DD 10th birthday, family party, we had pizza, and sausage and pepper, meatballs, salad, of course ice cream cake.
sunday- Shrimp in garlic sauce over noodles, I think I also had salad.
Monday-Taco ring for dh,ds, dd had left over stuffed mushrooms, I had chicken, veggie, salad. (I don't care for taco, upsets my stomach)
Tuesday, Chicken Cutlet, stuffing, veggies, (I think I had some salad.)
Wednesday- Breakfast for dinner- Cheese omelets, breakfast potatoes, Pork roll, toast, (ds, had scrambled)
Thursday-Chicken Cordon blue/chicken stuff with broccoli/cheese/ mashed, veggie, DD/Ds had left over pizza)
Friday- think its hotdogs on the grill, mac n cheese (ds has baseball practice....) nicest/warmest day of the week.
No one at my house has a food allergy, which is pure luck since there are 6 of us. But the youngest has a strong aversion to seafood, which crimps my style sometimes!
Monday - Grilled Chicken Salads
Tuesday - Tacos Night (because we didn't end up doing this a couple weeks ago)
Wednesday - Spicy Fresh Corn Quiche (with bacon!), cantalope
Thursday - Nashville Hot Chicken on buns (crockpot), coleslaw, quick pickled onions
Friday - Hamburger Helper*, leftover cantalope and coleslaw {because I forgot to buy the tomatoes I needed for Swiss Steak ):}
Saturday - TBD
Sunday - (stovetop) Simple French Onion Chicken, Loaded Mashed Potatoes, broccoli and cauliflower
*my people love this and will cook it and eat it so win-win-win, esp. since I can keep a couple of boxes of it in the pantry for those times I goof up on the menus.
It does make things complicated! Especially when there's a dish that has shrimp (Zoe's allergy) and also things Sonia is allergic to. I end up setting aside various parts of the dish at various times so that I have non-contaminated food for each kid.
I spent $53 last week on groceries, but I'm not counting on spending so little this week!
We had a roast from the pressure cooker, twice, this week. I made butter-braised cauliflower, ginger carrots and um, something else to go with it. The something else was made the second time I served the roast.
One night we just had veggies, mainly slow cooked green beans seasoned with smoked pork, and mashed potatoes. We had something else, but I can't remember what.
One night was the easy night -- hard-boiled eggs, cottage cheese and fruit, celery and carrot sticks with homemade ranch dressing, with a few chips on the side for those who wanted them.
I forgot to thaw out the main course last night, so I defaulted to bacon, fried okra and sliced tomatoes from our tomato plants. I ended the meal with some of that frozen bananas with cream "ice cream." The okra was frozen, sliced okra from the store, but I was able to add one little pod of okra picked from our plants in the garden, which are just starting to produce.
We spent about $50 this week on groceries, mostly because I was too tired to really do a real grocery trip! Last weekend we replaced our roof and I cooked big batches of food. We fortunately had leftovers and salad greens from the garden to get us through this week. That did mean we ate some boring meals, but you can't always be wowed by fancy cooking! This weekend I promised my husband fewer radishes and more interesting food.
Monday - We were still roofing so I made spaghetti
Tuesday - Leftover taco soup from Sunday
Wednesday - Salad with garden strawberries and grocery store peaches
Thursday - Homemade hummus and veggies, with a side of popcorn (yep, we were so tired)
Friday - hopefully I'll be motivated to cook something good again tonight 🙂
I hope Sonia is feeling all right! Food allergies are so tough. I love the idea of just pulling chicken and adding BBQ sauce. Some nights you need easy meals; we had hot dogs for lunch over the weekend and they were perfect, if not unhealthy. 😉
This week we ate:
Monday: DIY night. We started doing one dinner a week where we get to cook whatever we want. I did breakfast for dinner and hubs did steak with squash.
Tuesday: Frozen pizza. Work was nuts and it was all I could muster.
Wednesday: Scalloped potato loaf / tacos. I fudged today's dinner (raw potatoes are no good!), so we grabbed tacos on the way to Costco.
Thursday: Italian sausage rigatoni
Friday: I'm eating a TV dinner tonight and hubs is picking up takeout. I'll be at a writing retreat so this works best!
Sunday: chicken broccoli rice casserole with strawberry pecan salad
Monday: squash ravioli with garden salad
Tuesday: went out
Wednesday: homemade chicken tenders, sautéed mushrooms, corn on the cob
Thursday: leftovers
Friday: chef salad (chicken, hard-boiled eggs, cheese, olives, carrots, etc.)
Saturday: probably leftovers
So sorry to hear about Sonia's difficulties and hope she is feeling much better.
Our dinners last week included:
1. Spaghetti with homemade marinara and meat sauce
2. Cod fish cakes and corn fritters (one of my childhood favorites)
3. Pizza (a weekly request from my HH)
4. Skillet Kung Pao Shrimp w/rice (a new to me ATK recipe that was very mediocre)
5. Tuna fish sandwiches
6. Leftovers
7. Leftovers
Now that the weather is warm I plan on making more grilled recipes, sandwiches, pasta salads, and crock pot dishes.
Monday- Salmon, baked potatoes, applesauce, lettuce salad
Tuesday- Chicken taco salad
Wednesday- Jimmy Johns veggie sandwiches
Thursday- Salami, cheese, tortilla chips, hummus, black olives and cucumbers
Friday- Hamburger and chips
I, too, am glad you shared Sonia's story. My youngest developed an allergy to raw carrots, onions, celery, apple peel, & potatoes (could tell the spuds by the contact). But she can eat all of them cooked. Article in Readers Digest years ago that people with seasonal allergies (she has them) are likely to have food allergies. It makes sense now. Anyway, I appreciate all the menu ideas this particular blog gives me--expanding my menus. I tried Cook's Country Korean lettuce wraps, a big hit (minus all but 1/2 t. of the spicy stuff). Also tried Addictive Sweet Potato-bean burritos from Allrecipes Dinner Tonight cookbook. Pretty good, made a lot, froze some for later. Also tried Grilled Lime Salmon w/avocado-mango Salsa & coconut rice from cookingclassy.com. Excellent!! Made another batch of the Avocado/Mango salsa late last night. It's that good. More salmon now needed. Also tried Cuban Midnight Sandwiches (same Allrecipes book), also good & fast.. Leftovers from all of the above, plus dinner out once. Working very HARD to use up Hungry Harvest stuff, it's challenging.
Yep, exactly! It's definitely tied to the seasonal allergies.
I was thrilled when Kristin posted her no stir granola recipe. It uses maple syrup rather than honey. Honey is also one of my daughter's triggers. She adores that granola! She hasn't had any in about years.
It feels so satisfying to be able to cook recipes and make them work without the allergy causing ingredients!
I can eat eggs cooked into food but just plain eggs, like fried eggs, give me nose bleeds so severe that I have had to have my nose cauterized six times. I'd much rather be allergic to eggs than fruits and vegetables!!
The OAS is very interesting. My daughter had a similar reaction twice within the last year. She is almost 9, but it never happened until the last year. I suspected it was walnuts but it could have also been zucchini. Did Sonia get allergy tested (the skin test) and get a positive result? We took Ellie to be tested and she tested positive for tree nuts, especially walnuts. Now we have to carry an epi pen. However, the reaction she described was that her tongue was itchy.
I managed to remember what the main dish was for the week, I am sure there we had a veggie /fruit/starch etc with our meals.
Monday- Meatloaf- It was chilly for a day in June and wanted something warm and comforting.
Tuesday- I had something quick before leaving for work. Hubby made BBQ chicken pizza for the rest of the family.
Wednesday- Ranch pork chops in the crock pot- no real recipe just made it up as I needed something in the crockpot due to scheduling.
Thursday- I had an omelette before leaving for work, DD was with a friend and DH and DS went out for some guy bonding time at an Indian restaurant.
Friday- We ended up with spaghetti and meatballs. Easy and everyone likes it
I hate to be the bearer of negativity, if it is even that, but I have to ask ... how the heck do you guys do it? I live with my dad and mom and I do the majority of the grocery shopping for the family. I rarely go a week without spending less than 150-200$. Do you guys not buy laundry detergent, softener, toilet paper, paper towel, etc? I mean a big pack of toilet paper can cost $13 dollars (we are NOT fans of the cheap paper) ... all of these amounts add to our grocery budget. But I guess for now I just get to read your guys' awesome posts about spending so little BUT I will not feel guilty for buying the needs we need and managing our food/household budget the best I can. (Yes, my parents give me the budget for groceries and household goods and I make it work)
Hmm. Well, I don't buy softener, and I don't buy a lot of paper towels. I definitely do buy toilet paper, though (at Aldi)! And laundry detergent (at Costco or Aldi).
How much you will be able to cut your bill depends on where you live, what stores are available to you, how big of an appetite the members of your household have, your dietary needs, and many other factors. So, don't get too hung up on comparing your spending to other households. If you're applying all the frugal techniques and your bill is at $150-$200, it's all good!
Thanks, Kristen.
We live in the midwest. We do have an Aldi BUT my dad is not a huge fan of their products and I haven't found anything that I LOVE from there ... yes, I can tell the difference in the flavor of off brand ketchup and my dad doesn't like their cereals. LOL. Oh how tough being frugal can be!
Shame about the noodles - they look good,
I've been eating the freezer & shouted my sis & I to fish n chips on Sat night - sooo good, haven't had that in a long time. Been very lax with work lunches getting a couple a week from the work cafe but hope to knuckle down this week to return to meal planning. I tallied my budget for up to now & over the YTD average $5 a wk over budget which is pretty good as I originally budgeted $25 per wk over what I'm currently spending then revised it about Feb. Life has been so challenging lately but hopefully will settle a bit soon giving me back more time to plan & prep meals I am so exhausted but I have started to buy some staples of whatever brand is cheapest & now it's cold here I'm thinking I might get back in to porridge for brekky which will give me a boost & be really cheap. Good on you for the trouble you take to make more than one meal if required for your kids - that's ace.
Do you get your shrimp from Aldi's frozen foods?