What I Spent, What We Ate | Plus last week's spending
I missed last week, so I'll add that spending in here as well to wrap up September!
What I Spent
My total for the last two weeks was $297.66 which is riiight on target. Phew.
Week three was a little crazy with the spending, but I made up for it by hardly shopping this week.
September Spending
Week 1: $121
Week 2: $109
Week 3 and 4: $298
Total: $527.66
That puts me at just $131 per week in September, which is quite excellent. Yay!
What We Ate
Monday
Chipotle chicken kebabs. So easy! So tasty! You should so be making these!
I had some hamburger buns in the freezer, so I thawed those and broiled them with garlic butter.
And I know we had some sort of produce, but I cannot for the life of me remember what it was. Hmm.
I know I sliced up some cucumbers, but there was something else too.
The world may never know.
(!)
Tuesday
Cheese tortellini from Aldi (love that stuff!) topped with tomato sauce. And then I also steamed some fresh broccoli and topped that with the last of a package of cheddar cheese.
Wednesday
I thawed some ham from the freezer, cooked up some bacon (left from a partially used package), and added cheese, onions, and mushrooms to make panini.
I also made braised cauliflower with white wine and garlic, using a head of cauliflower from Hungry Harvest.
Thursday
I wasn't feeling too hot (I caught a cold), so I got out some chicken, some naan from the freezer, and a jar of prepared Tikka Masala sauce from Aldi.
Easy, cheap, and quick.
Friday
I might make pizza, if I start to feel more like myself. If not, then we may be frequenting one of our local pizza shops for takeout. 😉
____________
What did you eat this week? And how did you fare with your September grocery budget?
Monday: Goulash (the stew kind with beef chunks, not the ground beef kind) with lots of carrot chunks, rice, part of an enormous roasted beet re-heated with butter for those who eat beets. The two that don't ate the carrots and I called that the vegetable for them.
Tuesday: Lamb liver for the two that eat it, leftover goulash for the rest of us, leftover rice, cheddar cheese, and cucumbers.
Wednesday: Pork spareribs on the grill, sauteed mushrooms, tomato salad, more of the enormous beet, bread and butter.
Thursday: CHICKEN! Caps and exclamation point because I don't buy chicken at the grocery store, but I found some pastured chicken at a farmers market I'd never been to before, so this is the first chicken we've had in probably about five months. Such a nice break from the never-ending rotation of beef/pork/lamb. I roasted it over potatoes, carrots, onion, and garlic cloves. So good. And I sauteed some green beans.
Tonight: Cool weather means another ram lamb has been slaughtered, so tonight my husband is planning on cooking the, um, sweetmeats (what we call the testicles, because I just can't deal with adding more fuel to the fire when it comes to three small boys and their delight in anything scatalogical or anatomical) with a sauce made from the sun-dried tomatoes he made this week, some of the chicken stock I made last night from the carcass of our exciting chicken, and some heavy cream. I will be eating some of the leftover pork ribs, I guess. I suppose I'll also make some potatoes and maybe the rest of the green beans. Or something. Testicle dinners don't inspire me.
Oh hey there, thanks for the belly laugh... it was very much needed
Boys (of all ages)...gotta love em
LOL...
Now to go out into this big bad world with a smile on my face
Hugs..
I hope your husband enjoys his dinner. Heh.
Yeah, enjoy! Just curious, are you in Australia or NZ? Your foods seem a little different from what we are used to in Illinois. I am thrilled to hear the saga of the BIG BEET! We do love beets! There is a funny story about a girl and a big beet in the Beverly Clearly "Ellen Tebbits" books- your kids might like that.
Ha, no. We live in upstate New York on the Canadian border. Our foods are different because my husband likes to raise sheep (mostly because you can buy them as lambs in the spring, raise them more or less on lawns all summer, and slaughter them in the fall, thereby not having to deal with livestock in the winter) and I like to have a vegetable garden. The sandy soil and growing conditions here appear to be perfect for root vegetables, hence the enormous beet.
Cool! Thanks!
Monday: Scrambled eggs with sausage
Tuesday: Kielbasa and rice ( was supposed to be mexican rice but couldn't find some ingreds)
Wednesday: Fried chicken drumsticks (bc why not? 🙂 )
Thursday: Homemade pizza pockets
Friday: Date night, so packing dinners for the kids to spend a few hours with the grands!
Some of this week was thrown together in an attempt to stay in our grocery budget and not have to run to the store. Luckily, my kids eat what I make (generally).
I just have to laugh at Kristin @ going country.... the sweetmeats....hilarious!!! I love it!
Also, do you as a family eat out often? I've never really seen it, but I just wondered if y'all did that as a treat on occasion.
Could it be allergies? We're really suffering up here in New England
Two of my girls have fall allergies, but what I have is definitely different. Sudden onset, slightly achy, super exhausted...and after one day of feeling really bad, I'm much improved today. Which doesn't seem like allergies to me.
(Kind of good, because colds go away faster than allergies!)
I hope your allergy season comes to a quick end up there.
It's so amazing that you could keep your food budget at such a reasonable level! I'm starting to have a panic attack about our food expenses for Sep.
It was $850 last month, and I'm afraid we will have $1,000 in food expenses for 3 adults and one toddler this month. A huge frugal fail!
In awe over that budget as well. Three adults and a toddler in my household as well, and I'm nowhere close to that. This month, I blame the last fresh blueberries of the season -not cheap, but my favourite of all-, but it seems there's always something to blame.
We've had skillet potatos about three times this week and pasta just as often. Potatos with onion, potatos with eggs, potatos with a tiny touch of minced meat. Pasta with eggs, pasta with sausage.. some apples and bananas a side. Today I boiled some beets. To go with pasta and onions. I've spent about 20 euros for food so far this week. Last week our food-money was 24 euros. We're a family of three.
I finally got my motivation back to finally start cheapskating and saving again. I LOVE the simple food and simple life.
Curious where you live? If you don't mind saying- It's so interesting to hear how people do this all over the world!
I'm in Europe, Estonia. I live in the capital city Tallinn. We have so many different grocery stores really close by. Some people have quite a little money, others have a lot. Some people really think that food and good food is super important (maybe our communist/soviet past about 30 years ago, where the stores were emty and food variety was little). I find that I like simple food just as much as fancy food, and simple food saves me money 🙂
(And I bet that it's actually "potatoes" not "potatos". Lol. I repeated that mistake a lot.)
That's really interesting! Thanks for answering. I live in Illinois, USA, north of Chicago. There are many Finnish people around my town- I think that is near Estonia?
Finns are our neighbours 🙂 even our languages sound similar 🙂
Don't you really miss those $80 grocery weeks when your kids weren't eating like teenagers? 😉
As for us, we've had an interesting situation here in that our freezer was figuratively overflowing with large cuts of meat (3 turkeys and a turkey breast, 3 whole chickens, 2 hams, a pork shoulder plus an assortment of smaller cuts.) The problem is that we were generally in a state of Old Mother Hubbard's cupboard when it came to basics and stuff like that. We had no chips or crackers. We were low on veggies but at least had some potatoes.
To compound our issue, our local Aldi seems to be having trouble keeping food in stock so we've had to resort to going elsewhere for a few other things. I don't remember exact amounts but we're still well under budget for the month.
We're doing a big cleanout of the freezer and fridge this week and trying some new things.
Monday: We had some pork scraps in the freezer that we put aside and made a stir fry with it. We ate it with rice, veggies and sweet and sour sauce.
Tuesday: Pork tenderloin: Another bottom of the freezer find and this was really quite good. I also made homemade rice pilaf with it (with orzo in the mix.) Due to an allergy I left out the onion the recipe called for and it came out fantastic! My daughter especially liked it!
Wednesday: I was working out of state so we ate leftovers when I got home.
Thursday: Our fridge still had a lot of leftovers so we ate them as well.
Friday: Tonight we're having London Broil, tossed salads and either baked potatoes or tater tots. My daughter really likes the latter and she's been good about eating some food lately so I figure a treat might be nice for her.
Oh and this coming Sunday we're planning on consuming one of those turkeys as it's been thawing in my fridge all week long. I may brine it tomorrow but I haven't decided.
They WERE cheaper to feed back in the day!
Have you ever salted a turkey? I spatchcocked and salted one a few years ago and it was really good! Plus, it baked up so fast due to the spatchcocking. http://nomnompaleo.com/post/66597843666/butterflied-big-bird-spatchcocked-turkey
I'm over budget by $58 due to re-stocking pork from the farm, then re-stocking some of it again the next week after feeding about $60 worth of it to family running from the hurricane to my house. And of course, the hurricane came up my coast instead of theirs after all. Our budget is too high, but since we eat almost entirely organic and pastured, it's a challenge to bring that down. My sister has TWO Aldi's close to her on the east coast. Here near the state capital on the west coast, NONE. This injustice must be rectified, I tell you!
So, what did we eat? Good question. As usual, I only remember some of it.
We had eggplant parmesan, which I fouled up by forgetting to cook the eggplant first. It's okay, but my husband has refused to eat any more of it, even after I cooked it more. It's just not the same. I won't let it go to waste; I'll eat it.
We had fried drumsticks too. With potatoes and gravy but I was bad and didn't add anymore veggies. I was tired.
We had steak and salad one night. We don't eat steak that much anymore, but this was on sale.
We had mashed oriental sweet potato, fried squash n' onions, and fresh lima beans last night, no meat. Now that, my husband ate up.
Tonight is still a mystery. It will probably have meat, since we've been meatless two nights this week so far.
Kristin, one of the farmers I buy from locally is now offering lamb testicles for sale. I immediately thought of these posts...
You know, they're really not bad. My husband and sons love them. I don't hate them, actually, I just don't really like the texture. It's similar to scallops, which I also don't care for. The taste is quite neutral. More so than the actual lamb meat, as a matter of fact.
I don't know how much they might sell for, but I bet it's pretty cheap protein.
Nothing exciting this week, but I did cook more!
Monday: Pei Wei (used a Living Social deal- $9 for two meals plus leftovers!)
Tuesday: Chicken strips
Wednesday: Tacos and rice
Thursday: Chili
Friday: Pork Loin in the crockpot
Kristen,
Question: Do you have many full time working Mom who follow your blog? Are they cooking every night? By the time I get home, I'm exhausted. I do cook on the weekend, simple stuff like making hard boiled eggs to last for the week, making yogurt (thanks to Kristen!), making and freezing oatmeal in individual containers so I can take it to work during the week. I still do a lot of take out during the week, which I to reduce. Am I the only Mom out there who doesn't make homemade food every night?
Maybe I should pose this as an Ask The Readers post on Monday for you. I've always worked part-time, except for a small stint before we had kids, and usually my work is from home, which does make dinner-putting-together a little easier.
But I know there are other working moms here in our FG community, and hopefully they'll have some great advice for you.
I work full time, always have and I solve the dinner problem by cooking on the weekend. I have several dishes in rotation that reheat well and we usually eat the same thing twice. So maybe chili on Mon/Tues and then rice with a stir fry or so on Wed/Thu. Friday is usually pancakes/omelet/leftover night. Salads work well too, since you can prep separate ingredients the night before and just toss them together when you get home. Budgetbytes has lots of recipes that work well, if you don't have any yet.
I work full time and the exhaustion is real. With kids schedules dinner can be a squeeze for time as well. I try to cook a lot of the meats on the weekend then throwing the rest together. Crock pot meals are usually good for two or three meals, and there's no shame in scrambled eggs, grilled cheese, or quesadillas for dinner.
I work full time. I posed this same q to my sister in law once and now we both work an 'all of the above' strategy. Some freeze ahead, some meal planning, some back-pocket meals, and there is always Breakfast For Dinner.
I don't use prepackaged foods and we don't eat out, but at the same time, I'm not optimizing the grocery budget like some of you girls. I just kind of show up, keep it simple, and do my best.
Another full timer here. Exhaustion is real and my kids are adults but now but I help care for 3 seniors. I still buy some packaged foods but on the weekend I usually cook at least 1 or 2 meals that are large enough for leftovers during the week. Another time saver is I keep cooked hamburg and partially cooked sliders in the freezer so tacos or spaghetti are quicker on weeknights. Sliders can double as meatballs.
Monday -Kirkland Tortellini
Tuesday -breakfast eggs hash browns
Wednesday -chicken salad sandwich
Thursday -ham paninis
Friday -Yay pizza -had company so I made a salad to go with the pizza. Company=keep it simple! They brought over leftover donuts and cupcake so desert was taken care of ! Double Yay!
Interesting to read where your blog readers are from, Mid-Michigan here. Also I wish Aldi and Meijer would venture a little farther across the country. These are my go to stores for best prices. My son is in Savannah GA and milk is $4.00 per gallon...here $1.09. No Meijer or Aldis there.
Oh my stars, what I wouldn't give for an Aldi!!
We are getting one three exits up I-95 sometime..........................
Monday - Baked crispy chicken, smashed potatoes, string beans, plums
Tuesday - Crockpot meatball lasagna, salad, apples
Wednesday - Turkey hot dogs, baked beans, brown bread with raisins, applesauce
Thursday - Roasted chicken atop yellow, squash, zucchini and tomato, long grain and wild rice, bananas
Friday - No idea at all..................................gotta search the depths of the freezer...............................
How funny! I also caught a cold on Thursday; must be the changing of the seasons. Ugh. I've been trying to function but my ears are all stuffed up and all I want to do is sit down. It's so frustrating when you want to get stuff done!
This week we ate:
Monday: Lasagna rollups with salad.
Tuesday: Taco Bell. Don't judge: I was at a conference all day and cooking just wasn't happening. Since we got both dinner and lunch from this meal, our cost per meal stayed at our average of $2.50. I'm not mad about it. 🙂
Wednesday: Leftover lasagna rollups. I wasn't feeling too hot so leftovers seemed like a good idea.
Thursday: Creamy Brussels sprout pasta.
Friday: Creamy pumpkin pasta (using pre-roasted pumpkin and extra pasta).
We were $459 for September's grocery bill out of a budgeted $480, two adults and six 4-legged critters (cat litter and dog food and stuff). I'm afraid we don't eat fancy things, though. We aim for filling meals that are protein- and veggie-adequate.
Friday: pizza (fun night, watched football)
Saturday: omlettes and brocolli
Sunday: Mexican casserole
Monday: Mexican casserole
Tuesday: beans (with veggies added) and cornbread
Weds: beans and cornbread
Thursday: omlettes and spinach
I'm enjoying your blog, FrugalGirl!
The cauliflower braised in wine and garlic sound delicious! Would you consider sharing the recipe some time? Thanks
Sure thing! Next time I get a cauliflower, I'll take pictures and share the recipe. I don't really like cauliflower, but this is a pretty edible way to prepare it.
Battra: This doesn't fall under a frugal purchase but I highly recommend a turkey deep fryer. We cook our turkey that way each Thanksgiving, and use it a bit throughout the year. The oil can be filtered, and saved for reuse. I've never had turkey taste as delicious as a deep fried one.
Kristen: Love these posts! Hope you're feeling better soon.
I am a full time working mom whi cooks every night. It takes a lot of prep and planning on the weekends but is very worth it.
I was having a good month budget-wise, until this week happened. There was one big grocery shop early in the week, and then mid week I had time to take the bus to Market Basket to stock up on gluten free flour and the goat cheese that my younger daughter can eat. None of that is cheap, but it should last me all next month as well.
Monday - pasta with creamy goat cheese sauce, broccoli for the kids, kale for the adults
Tuesday - saucy tofu, rice, salad, peas for the kids, kale for the adults
Wednesday - chick peas with mushrooms and chard in tomato sauce, rice, green beans
Thursday - quesadillas, black beans, tomatoes
Friday - homemade bread, cheese, tomatoes, cream of celery soup
My older daughter has always been a vegetarian and my youngest daughter has just decided to become a mostly vegetarian (meat only for special occasion). My husband eats meat, but doesn't care if I don't cook meat at home. So, my meal planning just got much simpler. Woohoo!
Oh yes! It'll be way simpler for you to just cook vegetarian for everyone most of the time. And probably cheaper too!
I always cooked grd chuck in large quantities and divide for meals. Cooking a large boneless pork loin or beef roast then tossing the leftovers in the slow cooker & turning them into pulled pork sandwiches or carnetas. The beef in beef & gravy or taco meat.I always roast 2 chickens freezing unused mear for chicken & rice or dumplings. I did the above the years I worked and even though I'm retired old habits die hard