WIS, WWA | and I'm back at work!
Hello, hello! I'm back on my Friday shift routine after an anomalous Friday off last week. 🙂 But, this is just a one-off shift, and that never feels super overwhelming.
What I Spent
I spent:
- $5.60 at Safeway
- $13 at Little Caesars
Last week, I said I anticipated a stock-up week, but...this was not the week. 😉
What We Ate
Saturday
This was the night I made the chicken fingers with panko crumbs, which we ate on top of green salads.
Sunday
For some random reason, I thought about Little Caesars pizza and crazy bread, which Zoe and I hadn't eaten in probably several years. Soooo, I picked some up for us.
This reminded me why I usually try to eat a little more protein/produce heavy for most of my meals, because woo, I had such a blood sugar crash after this!
Monday
I worked, so I started my day with some chocolate overnight oats.
Then I had chickpea salad with chicken, plus fruit, some popped chips, and some Nerds clusters for lunch.
And for dinner...Cheerios with a banana.
Tuesday
This was another work day, so you know I ate exactly the same thing for the second day in a row. Copy and paste. 😉
Except...I had plain bran flakes with blueberries when I got home.
Wednesday
I was having a very low-energy day (which happens to me after working sometimes), so I gathered up some Panera gift cards with random amounts on them, and picked up some food for Zoe and me.
I got a steak sandwich on an Asiago bagel, and it was good!
I felt slightly stalked by Chiquita. 😉
The weather was super nice after we ate, so I went out and caught a sunset.
Thursday
I made a pasta salad (using the Barilla protein pasta), some vegetables, and some chicken, a decision driven largely by my need for a packed lunch Friday.
Friday
I'm working today, and Zoe has a closing shift at work, so I'll probably just eat some yogurt with fruit before I go to bed.
The cats I had growing up would stalk us at dinner too! I had to look up crazy bread.
This week's eats:
Monday: I got takeaway pizza from a local cafe. I had always been meaning to try their pizza and it was very tasty!
Tuesday: Chilli mac and cheese
Wednesday: Leftovers
Thursday: Last night was a bit of a scratch meal because I came home late after going to the cinema. I fried potatoes and onions and put them in a wrap along with avocado, pesto and sundried tomatoes. It was a little salty but fine otherwise.
Friday: I have no idea!
For some reason I forgot to add what I ate over the weekend! I also forgot to add that I usually have strawberries with greek yoghurt and granola for dessert.
Saturday: I had pasta parcels with spinach and ricotta with some salad on the side
Sunday: Veggie stir-fry with roasted tofu
Saturday: We went to a giant wedding at a nearby ranch. There were around 300 people there, and dinner was catered from a local (-ish, 130 miles away) Mexican restaurant. So fajitas, beans, rice, etc. It was very good. And so was the German chocolate wedding cake, hooray. Nothing worse than disappointing cake.
Sunday: I had some chicken bones to make into stock, and it was cool enough this day to simmer them, so that is what I did. Then I used that stock and the meat I got off the bones to make chicken tetrazzini. I also put an apple/pear crisp in the oven with the casserole, using one quart jar of canned apple slices and one quart jar of canned pear slices. Canned fruit is always worth the work.
Monday: Sloppy joes, leftover pasta, carrot sticks, ice cream
Tuesday: My husband is taking all the kids on a camping trip Sunday and so won't be here for Father's Day dinner. So we basically had it this night instead. He grilled steaks--sirloin and rib steaks--and I made garlic mashed potatoes and a green salad with ranch dressing.
Wednesday: I had made a big skillet of ground beef, rice, and cheese for a lunch earlier in the week that provided the bulk of this meal, supplemented with leftover steak and green peas.
Thursday: We had two guests join us for dinner. I made two half-sheet-pan Pizzas--one plain cheese, one with Italian sausage, bacon, and pickled onions--and then one quarter-sheet-pan vegetable pizza with bell peppers, pickled onions, finely diced collard greens, and tomatoes. Also green salad with vinaigrette and crispy rice treats for dessert.
Today: The only pool in our county is on the giant ranch down the hill, and the only people who can use it are the ranch employees. We're good friends with one of the families that works there, and they invite us to swim at least once every summer. That's what we're doing today. I know all of us, including me, will be exhausted when we get back, so I'm just going to make some tuna salad before we leave and we can have sandwiches on the bread I baked yesterday. Still-frozen peas and ice cream and that's the most low-effort meal possible. 🙂
I got a cookbook from the library called, “Milk Street: The World in a Skillet” by Christopher Kimball. I brought this home based on the title.
The theme seems to be food inspired by international cuisines that can be cooked in a skillet. So this week I made braised chicken with apricots and pistachios. I modified this by adding rice so the chicken braised on top of the rice and served it with kale. That was Sunday. Monday was toasted gnocchi salad with chicken, olives, wilted spinach, roasted red peppers, and grape tomatoes- that wasn’t from the cookbook, I just make that a lot. Tuesday was Turkish Cauliflower Musakka. Wednesday I had to take one kid to an appointment so I took the other to Chick-fil-A and let me tell you, their honey pimento cheese chicken sandwich was delicious. Thursday we had an extra kid and I was very late in court so I don’t know what they had, but I had chicken salad with apricots and pistachios on a yellow bell pepper. Tonight the plan is something called Pork in Veracruz sauce. I will make pintos and rice with that.
I spent $206 at Aldi this week.
Your week sounds delicious!! Recipes always look so tasty in the book, but my picky eater(s) frequently make it a waste of time and money. As a result, I alter the recipes so I can eat them (no gallbladder, & rosacea), and make choices to keep in the fridge so folks can feed themselves most of the time which is a serious advantage of having an adult family now.
When NDN1's nephew, in looking around the house during his brief visit in late May, said, "Start donating the books," I donated several to myself. 😉 One of these was Christopher Kimball's 1998 The Yellow Farmhouse Cookbook, and two others were two "Best Recipe Classics" books from Cook's Illustrated. During the Central NY winter doldrums, I will look through all of these and determine whether I want to keep them or pass them on.
I love to read cookbooks, although rarely find a recipe that will suit my ridiculously picky family. But a girl can dream! This week I am happily reading the official Call the Midwife cookbook, with loads of recipes from 1950s England.
What fun! I love Call the Midwife!
So fun! There have been many times during the show that they reference a food that I have to Google.
Saturday - This was our final camping meal and we had foil dinners with venison, carrots, potatoes, peas, and onions
Sunday - Chipotle on the drive home
Monday - I was short on time and found some taquitos in the freezer, so we had those and chips with salsa and queso
Tuesday - Tortellini and salad
Wednesday - Cool ranch crunchwraps
Thursday - Pizza and a movie night with my two daughters and a friend
Friday - My in-laws offered to take the kids for the evening, so my husband and I will be going out somewhere. No clue where yet!
Happy Friday, everyone! We stocked up and spent $200 ($23 at Aldi, $39 at Trader Joe's, $57 at Target, $81 at Eastside Co-op).
-- Margherita pizza
-- Spinach salad with everything but the kitchen sink (twice)
-- Rice, tofu and veggie bowls with sesame lime sauce
-- Vegetable egg rolls with sweet chili sauce
-- Stuffed pasta shells with marinara sauce, French bread, salad and chocolate chip cookies (wonderful gift from neighbors!) - already looking forward to having this again tonight
I am trying to make healthier meals. Was some improvement. WWA:
Saturday- grilled chicken thighs, homemade tzatziki, grilled naan, corn on the cob
Sunday-slow cooker pulled pork with kale/red cabbage/walnut slaw on buns
Monday-leftovers
Tuesday-homemade summer minestrone soup (NYT recipe, is a keeper), homemade buns
Wednesday- low energy day meant frozen pizza (at least it was bought on sale)
Thursday-Italian sausages cooked in the air fryer, ratatouille, boiled baby potatoes
Friday-will start slow cooker chili (less meat, more beans version) shortly
Wishing a wonderful weekend to all
Lots of copy and paste dinners here, because I have zero bandwidth for thinking of new things to cook. I cook special meals for DS#3, as he has a limited diet, so I'm essentially cooking two dinners a day. Plus his breakfast and lunch. Eventually DH's schedule will be such as he can do more cooking, bless his heart.
Typically M, W, F we just do pasta. Everybody likes it. I cook one batch of regular pasta, one batch of Banza, and cook some beef or fish to go on top for those who want it. I always make a smoothie bowl for DS#4, as he has braces and I need to sneak veggies in him as well as more yogurt and protein.
Tuesday this week I made burgers. Usually I would just use the premade frozen patties, but for some annoying reason Instacart (which I use right now for time crunch reasons--again, this will change when DH's schedule is lighter) will NOT allow me to order the nice big bags of frozen beef pucks on which we used to rely! So I have to get the big chubs of beef and make burgers, which is actually less cost effective. The burger pucks also work if you need loose beef, just thaw and crumble up. But anyway. The smashburgers I made were well received, as were the homemade oven fries. Lately I've been cooking in the morning and letting everyone heat up their own dinners, because by the afternoon I'm tired. 😉
Thursday is usually a chickpea/mackerel stew, as I've been using up a crate of tinned mackerel we got ages ago. It's quite tasty and easy to make.
And that's dinners for this week!
WIS: $100 at Food Lion, and $9 and change at Dollar Tree.
WWA: For DH, salami/ham sandwiches with pepper jack cheese, with fresh cherries or grapes, sweet peppers and cherry tomatoes on the side. I also cooked him chili with cheddar-herb corn muffins and a spicy pork and veggie stir-fry.
Aside from yesterday when I had French toast and an apple for supper, I had strawberry protein smoothies with a side of peanut butter toast every other night.
Sunday: steaks, baked potatoes, corn, watermelon
Monday: smothered chicken, mashed potatoes & gravy, carrots, angel food trifle with strawberries and blueberries
Tuesday: mini pizzas
Wednesday: grilled chicken salads, garlic bread
Thursday: meatloaf, mashed potatoes & gravy, corn
Friday: TBD....we are helping friends get ready for a party so i don't know what time we will eat dinner.
Wow, that's a simple week of dinners! I think I would do that if I could.
I spent $31 at Walmart and $10 at Kroger. So $41.
Sat – we had a doctored up store bought deli pizza ( I added thin sliced squash, sliced jalapenos and feta cheese), and a salad with a lettuce and tomatoes out of our garden
S – grilled strip steaks, homemade pasta salad, backed eggplant topped a tomato slice and cheese, cornbread muffins.
M – left over steak, cornbread muffins and eggplant for husband. I wasn't hungry so I didn't eat.
T– skillet meatloaf, leftover pasta salad, stuffed jalapenos, frozen peas and carrots.
W – I got tired of cooking so we ate chicken dinners from Popeye's when our nephew was here on evening doing some work for us.
Th – shrimp stir fry with eggplant, broccoli, onions, carrots, water chestnuts and pea pods over ramen.
F – we will probably have baked pork chops, cole slaw and onion potatoes.
WIS: $18.50 at the Regional Market (including local asparagus, strawberries, and snow peas--yum!), $12 at the no-name grocery outlet, and $5.50 at Price Chopper. Part of the Price Chopper tab was for Breyer's no-sugar-added vanilla ice cream to have with the strawberries; with these berries, I don't need added sugar!
WIA: Strawberries and ice cream, of course (I had these for a couple of meals, no kidding!), plus the "eat your weeds" pork stir-fry I described on Tuesday. (And thanks to whoever it was on Tuesday who shared that memory of Lindsey in Alaska chasing after her pig named Martha Stewart. I think Lindsey would be pleased to know that she's still making us laugh from the Great Beyond.)
Better half bought a container of local vanilla ice cream in anticipation of a good home strawberry harvest. Said harvest was not to be had (drought - watering isn't the same, smaller berries, wildlife despite me feeding the the rain deluge and heat). But we did enjoy a root beer float last weekend. And enough root beer and ice cream for another. Instead of making lemonade out of lemons lol..
You are very welcome! She was a true treasure🥰
Our cat has her treat after dinner and sometines jumps in a vacant chair if dinner is taking too much time!
Sausage and beetroot
Shakshuka
Tortellini with red sauce
Couscous with grilled veg and tzaziki
Pasta/broccoli/chicken salad.
Something/something for 2 days - not worth remembering apparently.
We have a hot week ahead of us and I am trying to think of a menu I can quickly prep in the morning, and that will not require hot stoves or ovens in the early evening. I am thinking Salade Niçoise, and gazpacho, and then I will also peruse my slowcooker recipes. Ideally something that yields leftovers.
Friday: Aldi’s version of Chik-Fil-A nuggets, the bottom of a bag of tots, the bottom of a bag of curly fries, Caesar salad.
Saturday: We attended a grad party in the late afternoon where they served wood fired pizzas.
Sunday: Smoked chicken thighs, bacon cheddar pasta salad, zucchini fritters.
Monday: Pork roast from the freezer, roasted baby potatoes, kale salad.
Tuesday: I picked up Wendy’s for my son on the way home from his game, I stole a few of his fries but otherwise I wasn’t hungry for dinner, I have no idea what my husband ate.
Wednesday: It was my son’s best friend’s 16th birthday and his mom discovered my son was playing against the boys’ former team where three of their friends still play. She set up a last minute surprise dinner for the boys at a local restaurant. I had a burger, my son had fish and chips, my husband stayed home and raided the fridge.
Thursday: Swedish Meatball Orzo – new recipe and my husband raved about it!
Geneva: Could we have that recipe? It sounds delicious!
WIS: $12 for lemons, milk & cucumbers
Sun - family dinner - smoked lamb, chicken and elk for gyro bar. Lemon glazed white Texas sheet cake with fresh berries and whipped cream
Mon - left over lamb on green salad, tzatiki sauce.
Tue - green salad with marinated bean salad and spicy chicken tenders
Wednesday - walking tacos, Churro cheesecake bars
Thursday - green salad with grilled elk steaks
Friyay - fish and chips, coleslaw
Saturday - fish tacos
$189 at Aldi & $14 at Lidl--big spend week. I love to buy jam at Lidl because they have larger jars of no high fructose jams & preserves than Aldi does for lower prices by weight. Sometimes I make preserves with frozen fruit, but having a ready-made jar is nice.
dinners:
Sat: home alone for dinner so leftover mashed potatoes & peas, a can of tuna, & plain greek yogurt with tart cherry jam on it for dessert (but grilled marinated chicken w/Texas caviar on the side at 8:45 pm for the music festival crowd just returning home). Also, I made cookies & blackberry cake during the day for the week so that was dessert.
Sun: salads with leftover chicken, & cake or cookies choice
Mon: chicken wraps (you're seeing a theme, right?), cake or cookies
Tues: smoked salmon & cream cheese on rye toast, fruit & veg, cake or cookies
Wed: salads w/salmon on top w/lemon vinaigrette dressing, & the last of the cake
Thurs: turkey tacos w/Texas caviar (crunchy shells for me, soft for my husband)
Fri: either breakfast dinner of eggs, sausage, toast, & fruit on yogurt, or more tacos (one choice will be lunch, the other dinner)
And at least there's a lot of food in the freezer now
WIS: $27.87.
WIA: It was déjà vu all over again! Because it’s been too hot and too busy to do “real” cooking. Thanks to Former Me lots of things were already cooked and in the freezer or in vacuum sealed glass jars in the refrigerator. Marinated London Broil with broccoli-cauliflower-cheddar cheese casserole; Asian Greens soup (with bok choy and green cabbage); chicken and beef fajitas with refried beans and corn salad. The only things that were baked or roasted were some sweet potatoes that were creeping toward decrepitude. (I can relate.)
Chiquita, sunset, food pix, all good.
Eating down the refrigerator & pantry is kinda weird, sure that goes with that, why not... Marked down salad mix is usually good too.
I never go to Panera, but that sandwich looks great! I may give it a try sometime soon.
I've spent very little the past 6 weeks or so at the grocery, and I think it is because the weather has warmed up. I tend to stock up and eat cozier meals in the winter.
However, I do plan to go pick local blueberries and blackberries this week and that will be a chunk of grocery budget, but I put them in the freezer for the year and also make jelly for the year. I also will buy pickling cucumbers this month to can pickles for the year, so I know the expenses are coming.
This week I spent $68.
We ate:
We went out for mexican food
Pork roast/roasted potatoes/salad
hotdogs/baked beans/raw veggies
Meatball subs/salad
turkey tenderloins (make these in the air fryer and they are soooo good that I think I'm going to do that at Thanksgiving rather than a whole turkey)/mashed potatoes/peas
and last night we had leftovers
Today we are having chicken cutlets and potato salad
Tomorrow we are meeting my parents to take them to lunch for Father's day and it's also my mom's birthday.
My newest high-protein discovery. Prime Bites. Muffins/brownies/rice crispy treats individually packaged so easy to carry for snacks. 19 grams of protein per serving. My Target carries them but only two of the many flavors. Amazon sells them, too. They are not particularly frugal at about $3 per serving but maybe you could spend some of your fun money on them? I have no vested interest in this company; I am just a satisfied customer. https://primebites.com
So, that Barilla Protein+ pasta is the kind that you have tried and really liked, is that right Kristen?? I might need to give that a try.
Yes! This one is WAY better than the chickpea kind.
WIS: $13 Aldi, $2 Dollar Tree
WIA:
I didn't record what I ate on specific days. I know I had pepperoni pizza twice. On another day I had an olive - cream cheese sandwich. I had chicken fajitas twice, and migas once.
Today I had blueberry yogurt, grapes and a croissant.