WIS, WWA | Delayed by the TEAS
Hey everyone!
I'm here a little late today because I had my TEAS exam this morning, which is basically an entrance exam for nursing school, and the score is one of the factors they consider when they choose which applicants to accept (R.N. school at my college is competitive).
It's sort of like an SAT, so I felt like a teenager again this morning!
And yesterday I spent all day at Hershey Park, so I did not do any blogging ahead of time.
And speaking of Hershey Park, I found out that I JUST missed Battra92 (a reader you definitely know if you read the comments here)...he was at Hershey on Tuesday and Wednesday with his family.
Anyway, all of that is why I'm here now at noon. 😉
What I Spent
I spent:
- $50 at Mezeh (see Saturday)
- $25 at Aldi
- $18 at Trader Joe's
- $26 at McDonald's (see Thursday)
So, $119.
What We Ate
Saturday
I'd spent the day sanding furniture, and in the evening, Sonia wanted to come over to watch some period dramas with me (she is my diehard period drama fan! Mr. Selfridge, Downton Abbey, Victoria, The Crown...).
I had not prepped any dinner, so the three girls and I went out to eat at Mezeh.
Sunday
We were at my parents' house for a Father's Day gathering; my main contribution was a big bowl of fruit salad.
Monday
A fend-for-yourself night; Zoe ate some leftovers, I ate a bratwurst in a bun, and I can't remember what Lisey ate!
Tuesday
I thawed some pulled pork that I'd frozen a few weeks ago, and we ate it on buns, with fresh produce on the side.
Wednesday
Lisey was out with her cousin and Zoe and I had burgers, corn, and watermelon.
Thursday
I took Zoe and her friend to Hershey Park for the day, so we just stopped at McDonald's for dinner on the way home.
Friday
As per usual, I have no idea yet! I never know what the girls' plans will be, so I fly by the seat of my pants a bit on Fridays.
Here's hoping your test went well!
Please tell me you ate chocolate.
This week I had:
The leftover half of a gluten-free Firehouse sub with plantain chips. The sub was courtesy of my daughter, who bought subs for all of us on Father's Day.
The co-op where I shop sometimes makes their own sausages. Their "Irish bangers" surprisingly had nothing on my avoid-list of foods, so I bought a pack of two and had one with fried cabbage and more plantain chips one night and one with salad and fruit another night.
I cooked some bone-in chicken breasts and had them twice, once with mixed broccoli, cauliflower and carrots cooked in the chicken pan, and once with some leftover veggies that needed using up.
I cooked pork chops and had them twice, once with the leftover veggie mix from the chicken meal, once with green beans and applesauce.
Tonight is almost certainly a burger with some sides.
Oddly...we did not have any chocolate at Hershey Park! Ha. I think you can get chocolate on the funnel cake, but we just opted for a regular one.
Yay for a sausage you could eat!!
@JD, Mmmmm, Irish bangers. So hard to find anything other than Italian where I live. Well, I mean there's chorizo and kielbasa and stuff, just not fresh.
Looks yummy!
We had:
- Chicken pasta salad and ma--cheese, ice cre sandwiches for dessert (had company)
- Ham potatoes soup and saltines
- Bean bowls
-Leftovers
Not that it matters now, but fingers crossed for an excellent score on your test! I also don't think it matters because, given your grades in all classes, I feel sure you did very well. But I'll cross my figurative fingers for you anyway!
Saturday: We arrived home from our trip in the early afternoon, so I was very tired. I didn't want to cook, but I knew everyone would appreciate cooked food after a couple of days of car food, so I used a rotisserie chicken I had brought home with me to make a spaghetti sauce for the kids with tomato and cream sauce. My husband and I ate the chicken and sauce without the pasta. I also had a ton of snow peas in my garden, many of which were overdue for harvesting and were a little too mature. I sauteed those in butter, and they were really good. There were little green peas in them, but the pods were still tender enough to eat. My kids ate the less mature ones raw.
Sunday: Steaks, oven fries, baby carrots (leftover from our roadtrip), pots de creme. Dad's favorite foods.
Monday: Leftover steak, rice, green salad with vinaigrette
Tuesday: It RAINED! And was very cool, with a high of only 68 degrees. In celebration, I made pizza. One just cheese, one with bacon, both with fresh basil from the garden yay!
Wednesday: Beef stir-fry (green peppers and beet greens from the freezer, onion, snow peas from the garden, carrots), leftover rice
Thursday: Barbecue bull, coleslaw, bread and butter. I found about forty pounds of bull meat still in the freezers, so I figured I'd better start using up the jars of pressure-canned bull I still have. I was making coleslaw in the food processor anyway (round 2 of cabbages coming out of the garden), so I used the processor to pulse the bull meat with some extra fat to break it up some more. Then I fried that with lard and added barbecue sauce.
Tonight: It's hot, so I think just tuna salad, bread, leftover coleslaw.
@kristin @ going country,
Rain!! Celebrating with you!!
I had some extra time to plan a menu, so I browsed my fav frugal cooking blogs for new recipes to use what I had on hand.
Sat-Sun out of town
Mon- travel day
Tues-cooked cube steak from freezer, mashed potatoes, sautéed frozen green beans, carrots
Wed-sautéed ground beef, cabbage and rice, leftover green beans and carrots
Thurs-Frugal Girl hibachi chicken n shrimp (excellent!)
Fri-leftovers of the above entrees
Sweet and sour meatballs, mousy pizza (see yesterday's comments), Mexican takeout, Italian takeout. It's been a rough week, but I say that every week. Even my mother says, "I can't decide whether your life is tragedy or comedy."
The problem with period dramas is that they're so rarely historically accurate, especially anything to do with Julian Fellowes, who I loathe. The red mist came over my eyes in the first episode of Downton Abbey and I metaphorically flung the DVD across the room.
@Rose, I may be kicked out of JASNA for admitting this, but I excused myself from watching any more Jane Austen adaptations after the 2009 BBC Emma. Except for the Love and Friendship 2016 film (which, despite the fact that it's actually based on Lady Susan, is really quite good), my record since then has been unblemished. And nothing about the trailer for the upcoming Persuasion on Netflix has induced me to change my mind. I busted a sofa spring years ago from jumping up and down on the couch yelling, "No! No! It's not right!"
As for Downton Abbey, I lasted about a quarter of the way through Season 2 and then jumped ship. If Matthew and Lady Mary exchanged one more longing, cow-eyed look, I was gonna heave a brick through the screen.
@A. Marie, I knew you'd understand.
The problem is, they put contemporary characters in period costume and call it period drama. NO. People 100-200 etc years ago thought and spoke differently than we do. Take that, Julian Fellowes, you hack.
I often feel like that when I'm watching period dramas...the less-faithful ones in particular always seem to have some language that's vaguely anachronistic and I find myself suspending disbelief a little.
Kristen, watch the original Brideshead Revisited with Sonia. She'll love it and there are lots of lovely period costumes too.
@Rose, I also am a stickler with period dramas. I hated, hated, hated the movie Elizabeth with Cate Blanchett. So much conjecture that wasn't based in historical fact.
The only good Pride and Prejudice is the 1995 version with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. I am afraid to watch any Little Women films, because I adored the book so much (still do) and I'm just sure that it's been butchered.
The hair in the newest Little Women is seriously wrong, especially Marmee's (the side part!). And Sonia informed me that there was a deplorable lack of hats as well.
Kristen, yes! I sometimes look at still pictures from movies on IMDB to get an idea of what the movie looks like, and the hair is so wrong in that movie. My poor husband gets to hear me lament about hair in period pieces a lot. We just finished watching Hornblower (very good), and there wasn't a lot for me to nitpick, because it's mostly guys in naval uniforms running around on ships! Ha.
Sonia is quite up on historical fashions, so she is often annoyed by inaccuracies in movies and shows as well!
@Karen, I have so many feels about Little Women. I love a lot of it, but I dislike the idea of the Motherly One, the Smart One, the Sweet and Dead One, and the Emotional Artistic One. Women can be more than one thing.
And then there's Professor Bhaer, who needs to burn in hell forever for being the most annoying character of all time.
A funny thing about Little Women: I have always found Beth to be a very boring character. And yet, she is probably the sister that is most like me. Sigh. Maybe I would find myself boring if I met me!
@Karen, I agree for the most part about the 1995 P&P. But my biggest problem with it is that (ahem) there is NO wet shirt scene in the novel. Some of my JASNA cohorts are always saying, "Oh, the films are such a good idea because they'll get more people to read the books." But every time I have to deal with someone who gets to the novel and is hugely disappointed that there's no wet shirt scene, my BP rises into danger territory.
And I've come to think of Andrew "Sex It Up" Davies (the screenwriter for this P&P, and the one who's responsible for inflicting the Sanditon abomination upon us) the same way Rose thinks of Julian Fellowes: Grrrrr!
Now I am intrigued; I have never seen Sanditon.
It's making me chuckle that you consider the 1995 version to be "sexed up", because I generally consider that movie to be extremely chaste. 😉
@reply to all
Being a hick really has some advantages. I can watch most anything without having a fit(lowered expectations) I recently bought 6 seasons of Doc Martin dvds for a total of 2 bucks. Looking forward to watching them.
So funny, Kristen. I'd say you're like Meg, but what do I know.
I'm obviously Jo, but Professor Bhaer is getting ghosted, pronto.
I've always been a very compliant, go-with-the-flow sort of person, and man, whenever I see those kinds of people in movies, I am like, "YAWNSVILLE". Ahahahaha.
@A. Marie,
I just watched the 2020 Emma directed by Autumn de Wilde. I advise against it if you thought the 1995 P&P scene was too much. It was a really strange movie with really strange gratuitous nudity.
The thing that bothers me about this is not that the movies themselves are that risqué- it’s that Jane Austen never would have written these scenes. I understand tweaking the script so that modern watchers can follow but wholeheartedly abandoning it is another thing entirely.
@Rose and everyone, I feel your pain. My husband and I are ancient history devotees—met because of it, in fact—and there have been movies we’ve flat-out thrown things at because everything was so WRONG. On the flip side are movies that are up front about being ahistorical, which we can genuinely enjoy given a good story. The two Brendan Fraser “Mummy” movies (there was no third one, I don’t care what IMDB says) were silly schlocky fun, they didn’t pretend to be otherwise, and we constantly recognized props based on actual artifacts (mostly jewelry) that showed someone in the art department had a copy of Cyril Aldred’s “Jewels of the Pharaohs.” (Seriously, nearly every piece of jewelry from both movies is in that book, and it was already twenty years out of print at the time! [I fought on eBay for my copy.]) Meanwhile, you have 1963’s “Cleopatra” taking itself waaaaay too seriously despite visually going off the rails for four hours with ludicrous costumes, makeup, and sets with minimal basis in a ridiculously well-documented reality. Aaaaaaah!
@A. Marie, Agree on the shirt scene. Wasn't necessary and I'm sure Austen herself would have been mortified.
@Tiana, I LOVE Doc Martin. It's fantastic.
@Karen, I got the Covid in March And rewatched the Collin Firth P and P while I was down and out. I just love it!
@Tarynkay, that was my main point.
@Rose, I too couldn’t stand DA. I made it through the first season and some is season two because friends kept telling me it was so good. But it was painful.
If you all really want a terrible period piece that runs far from the book… the latest masterpiece theatre of Around the World in 80 Days was dreadful! We had just finished reading the book for school and so I was excited to watch it. But I made it two episodes in and my poor husband had to hear me complain the entire time. It was the WORST book made in to an Movie I’ve ever seen. They basically took the names of the characters and that was it. They changed gender and personalities. It was so bad.
@Faith, Agree. Way too modernized for my tastes. The one from the 80s with Pierce Brosnan was good, though. I can't speak to it's accuracy because I never read the book, but it was entertaining and my boys loved it.
@Tiana, love Doc Martin!
@LDA, Same here! My husband does not like it, saying it is too snarky. If that is the case, I don't know how he has stayed married to me for 39 years. Behind my back (or so they thought), my staff at one agency used to call me Laser Tongue.
@A. Marie, I'll admit to liking Sense and Sensibility starring (and written by) Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, and Alan Rickman. Also stuck on "The Crown," that I'm learning something about the post-war history of England and the "inner workings" of the royal family.
I think the precise historical accuracy of Michael Landon's "Little House on the Prairie" has helped generations of young people understand the American Midwest.
Not. The Laura Ingalls Wilder historic sites are even polluted by images of the TV show.
I love the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, but I really, really dislike the TV show.
@Lindsey, one of my nicknames at my former company was Conan the Grammarian.
@A. Marie, that is hysterical & I would be honored by that title!
@Heidi Louise,
Thank you, thank you. I adored the book and so highly disliked the TV show that I watched one episode as a child and NEVER AGAIN. I'm glad you told me about the historic sites because I truly want to visit and now I can prepare myself.
Glad to hear that you went to Hershey Park the day before the TEAS. I always felt that if I didn't know the material by the day before an exam, no amount of cramming was going to help. Doing something fun that day was much better. (And, of course, I nearly always knew the material!)
WIS: $14 at the Thursday farmers' market at the Regional Market (hey, this is the season for fresh local asparagus, snow peas, and strawberries). But I did concentrate on freezer and pantry clearance, which enabled me to stay out of supermarkets this week.
WIA: I cooked boneless pork ribs from the freezer on Monday and boneless/skinless chicken thighs from the freezer on Thursday, and used these in various ways over the course of the week. Evening at the Improv rides again!
Many years we took our daughter and a friend to Hershey Park. We always did the "chocolate tour" and received a small piece of candy at the end. It was always a fun day.
I look forward to taking my kids to Chocolate World next time we're in that area. It's been a few years since we've been there.
No big cooking here this week. We got back from camping Friday night, had a full weekend, and then had to eat dinner at 4:30 each night this week in order to get to Kids Camp on time.
Saturday: We went to a 5yo's birthday party and dinner was served there. So fun!
Sunday: To celebrate Father's Day for my husband at lunch we had brisket, macaroni salad, green beans, and Italian ice. We celebrated my dad at dinner at my parents' house.
Monday: Spaghetti
Tuesday: Brats, hot dogs, strawberries, and carrots
Wednesday: I had a tomato sandwich, the kids had pierogies, and we all had strawberries
Thursday: This was day 4 of Kids Camp at church and they had pizza for all of the volunteers and their kids. Hooray for no cooking or cleanup!
Friday: The last night of Kids Camp is a big party and we'll have dinner there
Well after 2.25 years of avoiding it, Covid finally got us this last week. My youngest tested positive on Saturday and the rest of us followed (not possible to isolate a 2 year old from everyone else so I knew there was no avoiding it) Somehow we only got takeout once though, although the rest of our meals were very very basic.
Saturday - normally our takeout night, the kids wanted pasta though and pasta takeout is just not worth it to me. It’s so expensive and all the kids really want is pasta and marinara, nothing fancy. So I just cooked pasta with jarred sauce and microwaved some meatballs from the freezer.
Sunday - salmon and shrimp with butter and herbs from our garden, pierogis, steamed broccoli and carrots, biscuits
Monday - this is when I tested positive so our meals deteriorated from here haha This was my worst day of symptoms too, I couldn’t get out of bed. My husband ordered Chinese takeout for dinner.
Tuesday - I had some pulled pork and baked beans in the freezer so defrosted those and just reheated them for pulled pork sandwiches with beans.
Wednesday - canned clam chowder and biscuits from a tube
Thursday - chicken patty sandwiches and rice-a-roni
Friday - finally feeling almost better today so I could try to cook something more ambitious, although my husband, who was the last to test positive, seems to be feeling his worst so I won’t have help with the kids. I’ll see how the day goes and either attempt a stir fry or just more jarred sauce with pasta.
Not sure if anyone is in Pa., But if so,try Knoebels for a budget friendly amusement park. No pay for admission,can purchase ride tickets or wristband, and concessions are so reasonable!
@MissyY, we are in NY and took our (now grown) kids there for many years. Love that place!
30 years ago, with a terrible cold and awful period cramps, I hauled my butt out of bed to write the LSAT. Didn’t know it then, but it turned out to be the the first step of a wild and wonderful ride-never looked back. I wish the same for you.
As a total junkie of historic fiction, I never met a period drama I didn’t like at least a little. It’s all good fun and we could all debate the accuracy of television as a medium generally….Anyways, WWA:
Saturday - backyard potluck with work colleagues. I took veggies/dip and soft drinks. Also had appies, salads, meat skewers and cookies. Time flew until the mosquitos determined it was their dinner time.
Sunday - bbq ribs, baked potatoes, corn on the cob, chocolate covered ice cream bars.
Monday- beef and veggie stir-fry and rice.
Tuesday- everyone was on their own while I had a hair appointment (ha).
Wednesday- roasted veggie pasta primavera.
Thursday - Mary Brown’s chicken takeout (healthier version of KFC).
Friday - planning to make fish tacos…
Wishing everyone a wonderful weekend.
Glad to hear you are done with the exam (I know you did well!) and that you had a fun day yesterday too! I was thinking "Kristen must be out on her brother's boat or something today since it's so nice out!"
WIS: 0.00 this week as I'm not even close to running out of produce yet! I think I might have overbought last week, but so far, no waste. Even that yogurt is going to be salvageable, I think. I tasted it again and now it just tastes really sour kind of like sour cream, so I'm thinking marinade. How would you guys use ancient yogurt?
WWA: Lots of zucchini fajitas this week! Good thing we like them! Seeing it written down, I'm realizing this was a very frugal week for meals with almost all proteins coming from eggs or beans. This wasn't really on purpose. It was mostly driven by the avalanche of squash in the fridge, and I even skipped a farm share! Holy cow, our farm shares have been really large this year, and I'm so grateful! I think more meat from the freezer might end up on the menu this week, though. Especially since I'm full on home now to help with prepping. We did have some ham sandwiches and there was pepperoni on the focaccia, so it wasn't an entirely vegetarian week, though I would be fine with that-it's the mountain of veggies and fruits that I can't forego. 😉
Fri: salad, zucchini fajitas with homemade flour tortillas and crumbled queso.
Sat: green grapes, raspberries, corn on the cob, and focaccia on the front porch with our friend.
Sun: sweet and spicy kale, leftover zucchini fajitas, Spanish rice, swiss cheese quesadillas.
Mon: rice bowls made with leftover rice, leftover zucchini, leftover kale, crumbled queso, and topped with fried eggs and kohlrabi chips.
Tue: kohlrabi chips, leftover kale, scrambled eggs, sourdough toast with butter, jam and crumbled Wensleydale cheese.
Wed: baked yellow squash rounds, kohlrabi chips, leftover kale (this was four big bunches of kale, so we ate it for four dinners in a row), rice and beans, homemade flour tortillas and cheddar cheese.
Thu: baked yellow squash rounds, zucchini fajitas, leftover rice and beans, homemade flour and corn tortillas and cheddar cheese.
Tonight: baked zucchini rounds (there will be NO more squash in that fridge before I pick up the farm share again tomorrow, damn it!) and focaccia. Maybe some pineapple too if I get it cut up.
Have a great weekend everyone!
@Becca,
Not sure if you will see this as it is days later...but did you buy or make the kohlrabi chips. I have 2 kohlrabi in the fridge that I need to do something with so I am curious about the ones you mention.
@Jaime,
Hi there! I just peeled and chopped up the raw kohlrabis to make the chips. I suppose you could air fry them as well, but we usually just eat them raw. I like them and it gives the kids something to complain about. 😉
Pulled all of the fresh veggies out of the hydrator drawers (younger people know them as crisper drawers) and did something with ALL of it - e.g., ants on a log, celery-apple salad, orange pepper strips for stir-fry, sliced red cabbage and radishes for both jackfruit tacos and sandwiches, steamed broccoli for rice bowls, shredded carrots for salads, made creamy cucumbers, made zoodles out of zucchini, and made eggplant/tomato/onion concoction to go over zoodles. It was fun, productive and nothing went to waste. I stored what I could in mason jars, and I admit to opening the refrigerator just to peek at all the colorful goodness!
I totally do that when I organize, clean, or paint an area. Gotta admire your handiwork!
@MB in MN, Oooh, you just gave me the idea to shred my carrots and keep them for salads, because one of my kids just informed me he wants to eat salad every day from now on "for my health" and I have to encourage that!
@MB in MN,
I never put veggies in those drawers. If I do they just turn into slime. Instead I keep cheese in one drawer and use the other one for defrosting meat. I would say the problem is that in those drawers the veggies are out of sight, out of mind, but funnily enough, we never seem to forget about our cheese no matter how out of sight it is! 😉
This week I had the fun of following a low-tyramine diet for myself (trying to see if I can figure out triggers for my migraine attacks).
Sunday was pizza night--leftover homemade pizza crusts and toppings from Saturday. Everybody's favorite meal. Homemade vanilla pudding for dessert, my husband's favorite.
Monday was chicken and rice casserole. Usually I make this with a store brand low sodium broth, but most all of them have yeast extract, which is high in tyramine. So I bought some bone broth. Eventually I will make my own bone broth, when it's not, you know, 90 degrees in the shade. I left out the onion powder as well, nobody noticed that. Doubled the chicken because my husband is eating low-carb, so he picks out the chicken.
Everybody likes this meal, actually.
Tuesday: Taco Tuesday, just cooked ground beef with all the fixings. I like to put Fritos in my taco salad. Fritos were happily on sale last week when my husband kindly did the shopping as I recovered from a migraine attack.
Wednesday: Make your own sub sandwich night, chips and watermelon. I managed to pick THE most delicious watermelon ever. Go me!
Thursday: Lentil soup and leftover sandwich fixings. Sadly, lentils are high in tyramine, apparently, so I heated up some rice and black beans from Tuesday for my dinner and made another taco salad. With Fritos.
Tonight: Husband is cooking salmon burgers and we'll have coleslaw and chips.
On the one hand, I hope the diet helps. On the other hand, I hope it doesn't because it sounds like that might suck to have to stick with this diet!
@Kristen,
Well, the idea is first you eliminate all the high tyramine and high histamine foods. I had no idea raspberries are high in both, but they are. One of my favorite berries, too! After you're off them for a while, and have also stopped caffeine (already done), you can slowly reintroduce things. The real kickers are onions and lemon (all citrus, actually). I use lemon in a lot of things. And reading labels for additives that have a lot of glutamate is no fun. But! I can have sunflower butter, lots of fruits and veggies, and I have a nice excuse for not eating up leftovers, as the more cooked food sits, the more tyramine builds up in it.
The protocol is from the Heal Your Headache book, if anyone else is interested.
@Karen, thank you for the book recommendation. I hopped over to my library site and put it on hold. I'm always interested in more ways to manage my headaches. The other day I told my husband "one upside of my eventual death is that I won't have headaches anymore."
@MB in MN, There is a website called The Dizzy Cook which has a lot of the info about the migraine diet: https://thedizzycook.com/category/hyh/
She uses it to manage vestibular migraine, but I think it applies to all migraineurs.
When I read title I thought an amazing cup of tea or tea party had delayed you.
This week we went cheap and easy. (cheap was more important than easy because I spent a lot of money on food last month in the hope that June would be a lower spending month to average things out.)
We had "baked" (microwaved) potatoes with the works:
cheese, sour cream, hatch chilis and baked beans/chili made from cans.
(My husband LOVES this concoction. At first I was offended that he liked this better than my homemade-from-dried-beans-baked beans but I've decided to get over myself and prepare the easier food that he loves.)
Sadly, no! A TEAS exam is a lot less fun and it costs $95. Ha.
@Kristen,
I hope the exam went well. When do you find out the results?
Instantly! A lovely feature of this computerized age.
I got an 89.3%, which is in the 98th percentile nationwide. So that makes me think that not very many people get a score in 90s! You have to get a 58% or better to get into this nursing program, and the national average is 65.7%, so I feel pretty happy with my score. I definitely don't think I need to pay to retake it for a higher score...I'd hate to spend another $95!
@Kristen, huzzahs and congratulations on the high score! (But I think I'll be speaking for most of us when I say I'm not surprised.)
And, no, you're not a "Beth" type from Little Women, and no, you're not boring. Would all of us be here if you were??
WIS: $12.99 at one farmstand; $10.50 at the second farmstand; approx $10 at the grocery store; $40 at the restaurant
I am working on the concept of a Pantry Challenge (especially freezer)
WWA
Sat: Made a salad with what I found in the 'frig--lettuce, tomato, carrots, red onion, pepper, boiled eggs, remainder of croutons and some goat cheese.
Sun: Father's Day we went to my daughter's home for a "cold" cookout. It was cold here in the NE. I took herb garlic spread I made with cream cheese and the subbed the remainder of the goat cheese for the butter. I bought a Boston Cream Pie from a lady who makes wonderful cakes. We usually get them at the grocery store and they cost much less; but this was special and the baker did not disappoint. The cake ended up serving 12 at the cookout and my other daughter's family when they arrived home from their trip.
Mon: Pot roast with potatoes, onion, and remainder of the carrots.
Tues Leftover. It was a pleasure not to have to cook when I came in from work.
Wed: We had a couple in for dinner. I marinated some steak tips from the freezer; added rice, asparagus and salad. I made a dill dip with yogurt, a Greek dressing, shortcakes, and whipped cream. I bought lettuce, tomatoes, cuke, strawberries and cream. I enjoy dinners with friends at home. At a restaurant the waitress wants and needs to turn over the tables.
Thurs: Leftover. There was a piece of steak, some salad, and rice left.
Fri: Today we went out for lunch to a restaurant on a lake. We have not gone out to a restaurant together in a very long time.
Back to the pantry/freezer tomorrow
We had loaded mashed potatoes, one of my favorite ways to use up odds and ends. I also found three lbs of ground turkey for $5 so we had pasta with meat sauce and tacos too.
I made the red chicken curry with some changes...cubed rotisserie chicken, Maesri red curry paste( 1\2 the price of Thai Kitchen and I think it tastes better, get it at most Asian grocery)raw cashew butter+water instead of coconut milk, also some roasted carrots, bell peppers and onions from the night before instead of sweet potatoes. Red Boat fish sauce. It is good. If I had to buy all the ingredients it's probably as cheap for me to buy take out. This recipe 4 servings, take out 3 servings & take out makes fresh in house red curry paste.
Its good to know how to make it at home too.
I keep waiting and waiting for more VICTORIA!!
Sadly, I don't think there's going to be any more seasons!
@Kristen, I just looooved it. I know. No more!
This week, everyone took turns cooking-as undervalued benefit of having teens.
Monday-burgers
Tuesday-premade lasagna for the family while I went to Bible study
Wednesday-pulled pork chili (w/leftover pulled pork)
Thursday-grilled chicken legs
Friday-easy enchiladas
Very cool that your girl is asking to watch a show with you 🙂
Yes! I do not take this for granted.
I agree; I watched that with Sonia a while back and I was all, "Ummm, whoa, I did not expect to see a naked butt."
Sounds like a fun summer week and good luck on your TEAS, tho I am sure you don't really need luck... This week I ate:
Monday - Barbacoa Baked Potato with cheese, sour cream, and pico de gallo
Tuesday - Meatballs and Rice with yellow bell pepper
Wednesday - Steak Bites, twice baked potato, yellow squash
Thursday - Planned on Salmon with salad (the LAST filet - no more salmon, thank you!), but ended up having some freezer pre-cooked fajita meat over the chopped salad, along with fresh corn off the cob.
Friday - Happy Hour with The Girl at her place (she made steak, spinach, and sweet potatoes in the crock pot and it was delightful)
Saturday - TBD
Sunday - TBD
Happy last weekend of June!
https://cannaryfamily.blogspot.com/
98% percentile is amazing — Congratulations!
$7 local produce market (Monday $ deals!); $22 Market Basket; $70 Mystery shopping (will be reimbursed); $11 mushroom shop
Saturday: took friends on a food tour of my town during the day. Just ate some snacks for dinner
Sunday: ???
Monday: grilled cilantro-lime chicken thighs; grilled hen-of-the-woods mushrooms; grilled zucchini & red pepper; quinoa
Tuesday: chilled cucumber-yogurt-buttermilk-cilantro soup; popcorn (!)
Wednesday: at at work - grilled salmon with hollandaise; grilled eggplant, zucchini & red onion; sautéed spinach
Thursday: grilled chicken thighs, roasted potatoes, zucchini
Friday: mystery shop burger
Another period drama to watch is "The Paradise" which is about the 1st (fictional) department store in London. There are 2 seasons of it & it's in that "upstairs, downstairs" or "Downton Abbey" vein. I'm watching on DVDs from the library, but here's some other info:
Streaming on Roku. The Paradise on Masterpiece, a drama series starring Sarah Lancashire, Emun Elliott, and Joanna Vanderham is available to stream now. Watch it on Prime Video, VUDU, BritBox, Vudu Movie & TV Store, Apple TV or The Roku Channel on your Roku device
I had roasted a chicken and that gave us three dinners. I will use the stock to make soup tomorrow. Last night I cooked some lamb chops. The leftovers will become curry on Monday.
Grilled burgers, german potato salad, fruit, baked beans, roasted cauliflower, and a layered dessert with lemon pound cake, marscapone cream, and strawberries and mint for dessert. We had my father in law over for a cookout.
Leftovers night
Buddha bowls with fried sweet potatoes, roasted cauliflower, guacamole, and a fried egg.
Jalapeño grilled cheese and soup from a food truck at a local beer garden at the beach.
Chicken and zucchini patties with spicy mayo, sautéed veggies, and fried potato cubes.
Grilled wraps filled with veggies and the leftover chicken patties from yesterday. Applesauce on the side.
Hi all,
I have been a long-time reader of the blog and the comment section. My mom was here for 3 months and just returned to India last night. I am wondering what next week will look like. But here is how this week went.
Monday - Rice and cauliflower sabzi, and salad
Tuesday - Idli, cilantro chutney and sambhar
Wednesday - Dosa, chutney, egg curry, potato bhaji
Thursday - Fried rice, gai lan, a stir fried chicken and cashew dish
Friday - Mutli (rice dumplings w ginger, hot peppers, and cilantro), clam sukkha and salad
I am missing my mother already and I am sad to not be able to cook with her and chat in our mother tongue. I walked into my kitchen today and felt a flurry of emotions - she had mostly taken over cooking and I didn't recognize things in my pantry, I felt joy to come back to cooking, and missed her all over again. so much can be true at once.
Aww, it is always such an adjustment after a long visit!
@Samosa,
Your menu sounds so, so delicious! I hope you start commenting more often. What a blessing it must have been to have had all that time to cook together with your mother and to be able to learn from her right in your own kitchen so I bet it will be easier to duplicate her methods. Indian food is one of my two favorite styles of foods (the other is Ethiopian) and I'm always looking for new ways to try and make it at home, so I hope you post tons and include lots of details!
@Becca, omg, so glad to read this. I was hesitant to post my menu because it's not familiar food to most people. However, I have always loved how kind and respectful the comment section is and thought I can add exactly what we ate. I am south indian and cook quite a bit at home - happy to share all kinds of recipes and details.
@Samosa,
I admit I am not familiar with all of the dishes (like what is clam sukkha? I bet my husband would love that one since he loves seafood.), but the ones I've had are so good that I know I would love all of it! We've made carrot top sabzi a few times whenever our farm share has carrots with the tops. It's so good and now when there's carrots in the share I take any tops that other people twist off to throw away, and I don't even care that people think I'm crazy! We used to get take out occasionally from a south Indian restaurant that was sort of near my school, but discovered with great sadness that it closed during the pandemic. We haven't been able to find a close replacement restaurant yet, so we have to satisfy my cravings at home instead. So you can't possibly share too many details as far as I'm concerned! <3
@Samosa, I rarely get a chance to eat foods from cultures other than my own but like to read the names and descriptions, often looking them up. Food is such a basic part of each person's world.
@Heidi Louise,
Yes, and it's interesting to me that foods from around the world tend to start with similar staples-rice, flour, beans, eggs, etc, but can taste so incredibly different depending on cooking techniques and spices. To that end, Kristen, a fun idea for an ask the reader post might be something like "what are your top ten frugal spices and your favorite splurge spice(s)?" I would particularly absolutely love to know which are the best spices to use if I wanted to make Indian food at home or really any type of food that isn't the standard American fare. I've found that the cuisine in other countries is generally very frugal but tastes so much better because of all the spices! I feel like spices are the secret frugal weapon. 😉
@Becca, hi! clam sukkha recipe is here https://thespiceadventuress.com/2016/01/24/kube-sukkhe-mangalorean-style-spicy-clams-sukka/. I am from coastal southern India and seafood is mostly what we eat. I buy coriander seed, cumin seed, dry red chillies, turmeric and this is enough for most dishes. I toast the spices and grind them in a coffee grinder. To take it further, you can sizzle mustard seed or cumin seed in oil and pour over sabzi or rice or chutney. Food from my hometown relies heavily on tamarind and fresh shredded coconut. I buy both from indian stores - tamarind concentrate works or amchur (raw mango powder) for the sour element. Frozen shredded coconut is cheap (less than $2 in NYC) and i can blend it for spice pastes or I can toss it into warm salads or sabzis.
@Samosa,
Thank you so much for those spice recommendations! Yum, yum, yum! My husband is allergic to tamarind (no Worcestershire sauce for us!) So I'm especially pleased to read about amchur as a substitute! I'll have to look for a good Indian grocery near me. The mother of a former boyfriend once took me to one in Ohio (where she lived) and bought me one of those metal spice canisters and some spices as a Christmas gift. She was white, but lived in India as a young adult and learned how to cook there. She was the one who taught me how frugal cooking food from other cultures can be-she was an at-home mom to three boys and fed them on her husband's pastor salary by making everything from scratch. She gave me the spices almost fifteen years ago now, but I still have some of them and when I open the canister it smells like heaven and all the memories of cooking with her come flooding back, so I know what you mean about memories and kitchens, and especially smells! Thank you again for sharing your menu and your recipes, ingredients, etc!
@Samosa, I'm so glad you posted. Your meals all sound absolutely delicious.
This is probably a dumb question but what do you do with all your watermelon rinds? We love watermelon, but don’t have any “no man’s land” to throw the rinds. LOL
@becky,
Apparently you can pickle it by just slicing/peeling off the hard green outer part and then cutting up the white parts to your preferred size and pickling in your favorite vinegar. I've never tried it, but if you like pickles, it might be worth a try.
I usually compost my rinds, and my composting worms and black soldier fly larvae make very short work of them. I added the worms to my outdoor bin, but the soldier flies came on their own. At first, I freaked out because they looked so gross, but then I identified them and realized they compost even faster than worms and apparently keep away other flies by outcompeting them, so I'm pretty happy with them. Supposedly chickens really like them too, but I don't keep chickens.