WIS, WWA | I barely cooked!

Saturday: A curry to use leftover rooster meat and the stock made from the carcasses, which also included canned chickpeas. Rice made with some of the stock. We ate early, before going to a farther away church for a Saturday Mass, and then my children had cheese sandwiches when we got home as their second dinner.

Sunday: Another pork butt cooked, and then some of it broiler with soy sauce, vinegar, and maple syrup. More rice, collard greens, pickled radishes, and baked apples and pears with cream for Sunday dessert

Monday: My husband's birthday. He loves Lebanese food, so I made something kind of like that. Sourdough pita bread; hummus; ground beef flavored with tomatoes, oregano, thyme, and cumin; yogurt sauce with lemon juice and garlic; pickled onions, tomatoes, and cucumbers. This is all piled in the pita and eaten like a taco. Quite a lot of work when all the parts are made from scratch, but delicious. For dessert, he requested something he had read about called malva pudding. This is apparently a very popular South African dessert. It's more in the style of a British pudding, soft and dense with flour in it, and it has apricot jam in it and a cream and brown sugar sauce poured in the hot pudding that soaks in. It reminded me of bread pudding. It can be served with either custard sauce or vanilla ice cream. He wanted to try the custard sauce, so I made that. It was very good. Everyone in our family loved it. Well, one kid thought it was only okay, but there's always one. :-)

Tuesday: Leftovers are always appreciated after getting home at 5:45 p.m. from First Communion class with my daughter. This time it was the chicken and chickpea curry and rice.

Wednesday: My youngest son's birthday was the next day, but we were going to my middle son's basketball game that night, so we had the requested birthday dinner this night. He wanted steaks with caramelized onions and herb butter (I used the parsley that's still hanging on in the garden), pureed potatoes, carrot sticks with curry dip, and pots de creme. So that is what I made.

Thursday: The basketball game was in the town with a Subway, and the birthday boy's favorite food in life is sandwiches. So after the game, we went to Subway and the three children with me got sandwiches. The birthday boy got an absolutely loaded foot-long sub and was very happy. When we got home, we had his requested birthday taste testing of ice cream flavors. I had spent some time trying to find interesting flavors to try, and discovered that most brands don't have too much variety, and they tend to be the same few flavors across brands. So I ended up getting eight pints of Great Value ice cream in different flavors. I found a few months ago that the first ingredient in their gallon ice cream is milkfat, but in the smaller containers, even of the same flavors, the first ingredients are milk, skim milk, and cream. I usually buy the gallons anyway, because my family can't really tell the difference and quantity is their primary concern, but this time I got the pints. Their ice cream really is surprisingly good. Everyone had a great time sampling all the flavors. Thankfully, everyone had a different favorite, so they were all able to have a bowl of their own favorite after the sampling without any arguments.

Tonight: It will just be me and the younger three children home for dinner. We need to keep eating the leftover curry, which will probably not be all that well-received the third time around. Good thing there's ice cream left over for purposes of bribery. :-)

Saturday: I got takeout and watched While You Were Sleeping :)

Sunday: Baked sweet potato with various sauteed vegetables

Monday: Burritos with rice, beans and mixed vegetables

Tuesday: Mushroom cheese omelette with some vegetables and chips on the side. This was somewhat of a scratch meal because I was travelling the next day.

Wednesday: Vegetable stew

Thursday: Leftovers with green beans and mashed potato

Friday: I don't know what's on my parents' menu tonight yet!

I can hardly remember, it has been so busy! We did eat at home though. And the one day I went to customer site, I had a good and affordable salad and soup lunch there. For the other two meals (breakfast and dinner) for that day I ate sourdough buns on the train, and had fruits. Oh, just one suggestion from a friend we applied this week: instead of making peanut satay sauce to go with our rice/egg/pickles, I just added a spoonful of (100%) peanutbutter to the dish. I had made the pickles myself and they were still a bit warm. The peanutbutter blended in beautifully and I saved myself some work and a dirty saucepan.

I feel like I barely cooked, too. Like a vacay just before Christmas! I spent $47.49 on groceries, and $5 something on lunch out. Monday - kitchen closed - I ate a burger patty with a slice of cheese at home because I felt like I was starving after work and I was out of milk for a bowl of cereal. Tuesday - I ate a Taco Salad before the symphony Wednesday - (freezer) Roast Pork, baked potato, onions and peppers Thursday - Chicken Chili (chicken thigh, canned beans, salsa in my mini crockpot) Tonight - (freezer) Thanksgiving Shepherd's Pie for one Saturday and Sunday - kitchen closed - cereal if I am hungry when I get home from work Happy Weekend

$144 at the store, $37 for pizza, and $158 for dinner out:

Saturday—pizza delivery from my favorite place, yum!

Sunday—we went with my daughter, SIL, and granddaughter to see a light display, then to dinner afterwards, my treat. It was so nice to share a meal and chat with them.

Monday—fried egg grilled cheese with red grapes on the side

Tuesday—chicken quinoa soup from the freezer

Wednesday—I made budget bytes’ chicken taco bowl in the crockpot and had it over brown rice

Thursday—leftovers from Wednesday

Friday—leftovers again