WIS, WWA | sandwich, sandwich, sandwich
What I Spent
You know something? We don't have any BJ's receipts this week.
This is probably related to the fact that Mr. FG has been back in the office for work a little more regularly of late!
- $27 at Harris Teeter
- $140 at Aldi
So, $167 for this last July report.
July Spending
Week 1: $157
Week 2: $183
Week 3: $157
Week 4: $84
Week 5: $167
What We Ate
Saturday
Mr. FG and I bought another Local Flavor voucher for the sandwich place we tried last week.
I tried a crab cake sandwich this time, but it was a little disappointing, mainly because the crab was super shredded. No lumps at all!
The grilled cheese I tried last week was much better.
We also used a Coldstone Creamery gift card to get some ice cream afterward.
Sunday
We had cold cut sandwiches, because sandwiches two nights in a row is not a problem.
Monday
Uhhhh. I only now just realized that this made our third sandwich night in a row.
Sonia requested beef au jus sandwiches, so I made those, using homemade French bread.
Tuesday
Guys. We did not have sandwiches!
I made a bucatini pasta recipe from Cook's Country. The flavor was good, but we all agreed that bucatini is sort of hard to eat.
It's like long strands of uncut macaroni and man, it wants to slip right off your fork.
Wednesday
I made Swedish pancakes, which are like crepes for the lazy. 😉
Thursday
I made butter chicken (another Sonia request) and we ate that with naan that we'd taken home from the food pantry extras.
Friday
It's just Mr. FG and me tonight! Which means we could eat something with dairy AND shellfish.
Like shrimp and grits.
Sunday: Pasta with zucchini sauce, based on Smitten Kitchen's take. It makes a really nice meal.
Monday: Pasta with meat sauce, left over from the giant pot I made over the weekend.
Tuesday: My husband made chili, which we shared with a friend who came over.
Wednesday: I made tofu and veggie stir-fry with rice. I really like BudgetByte's sauce recipe from her tofu and broccoli stir-fry, except I cut the sugar in half and add the ginger and garlic to the veggies instead of the sauce.
Thursday: We had smoked salmon sandwiches.
Friday: We're headed to my parents, and I think they're making brisket. Yum.
Shrimp and Grits for the Win, I say.
We had an odd menu week, because I was gone this past weekend, and my husband had his oral surgery yesterday and couldn't eat any "real" food, so...
I had made a chuck roast in the pressure cooker, so one night this week was leftovers of the chuck roast and veggies (onion, carrot, celeriac) and a salad.
We had AIP-spiced pork "curry" with ground pork and cabbage, with sweet potatoes on the side.
We had Boston Butt roast made in the pressure cooker and we had that with squash and more squash - steamed kubocha squash with cinnamon, and sliced zucchini and summer squash fried in a little bacon grease. My daughters had used some of the vegetables I had planned to have with the butt when they helped with their dad over the weekend in my absence, but we managed with the squash just fine.
Planned pork leftovers - more butt roast with cauliflower and cheese and green beans.
Planned pork leftovers 2.0 - butt roast with green beans and watermelon, because it was such a good watermelon I couldn't resist.
Last night I scrounged leftovers of this and that and he had a cup of yogurt then had finely cut up leftover summer squash and zucchini, which was a big hit for him.
Today is shopping for two weeks again, so more menu planning, which I totally dislike doing, but I dislike having nothing planned for dinner or finding I am lacking critical ingredients, even more.
With all the fresh tomatoes coming from my son's garden, I've been eating lots of sandwiches, because how can you go wrong with a tomato sandwich with tons of mayo?
Saturday: We had Chick-fil-a because we were exhausted from loading and partially unloading the moving truck
Sunday: We had Firehouse Subs because we were exhausted from unloading the moving truck
Monday: Brats, fries, grapes
Tuesday: Sausage, peppers, and onions over rice
Wednesday: Nachos
Thursday: Taco salad
Friday: No plan yet, maybe homemade pizza
This was a high expense week for me...$229 @ Sam's. This was a big stock up trip though - everything that I bought was either meat or pantry staples that I stock such as rice, oats, spices, tuna. Between this and the garden harvest we are well set. I just have a couple of items that I have yet to buy so that we are set for fall & winter.
Sunday....I canned a bushel of cucumbers and a half a bushel of tomatoes this day so I hit the easy button and threw some pork chops into the crockpot for dinner. We ate those with rice and green beans.
Monday...Leftovers for everyone. Mom was tired.
Tuesday...crockpot dinner again for the win. I cooked chicken breasts in the crockpot and then shredded them up, cooked egg noodles in the gravy and mixed the two together. Yum. We ate this with fresh from the garden sauteed green beans and sauteed corn off the cob.
Wednesday...We had family night at church for the end of Vacation Bible School so we made it a date night and got pizza from a local family owned spot. Pizza was followed by snow cones and bouncy houses - a kid's dream come true.
Thursday...Leftovers plus chips with homemade peach or tomato salsa. Bomb pops or popsicles for dessert.
Friday....my crew is begging me for turkey burgers so I will whip up a batch with feta, spinach, red peppers and onions. We will eat these on buns with lettuce and tomato, possibly some veggie stir fried rice to go with it so I can use up all the veggie odds & ends and some leftover rice lingering in my fridge.
Happy weekend friends!
@Angie, Those burgers sound delish!!
I spent $80 at Aldi, which is a tad low, but made up for it with a mid-week $50 spent at H-E-B.
Monday: Mississippi pot roast, carrots and potatoes. Also green beans. Grandkids had Neopolitan ice cream sandwiches for dessert.
Tuesday: Cobb salads
Wednesday: Chinese take out
Thursday: Enchiladas made with low-carb tortillas, guacamole
Friday: dinner out somewhere
I just want to say that I find it hilarious that your husband likes to hang out at BJs. I mean, it's a neat enough place but I don't get why it's so special. They used to have a great little cafeteria (like Costco still has) and I enjoyed getting lunch there.
As for lunches this week:
Saturday: Wife had friends over and they had pizza. I ate some when I got home.
Sunday: Hot dogs, tossed salads and potato wedges (made in the air fryer which were ... okay I guess but not as good as in the deep fryer.)
Monday: We also had sandwiches. It was too hot to cook so we made sandwiches and ate them with the leftover potato wedges.
Tuesday: Barbecue chicken plus rice pilaf and salads.
Wednesday: Leftover pizza from the weekend
Thursday: Pork chops, mashed potatoes and spinach. My whole family decided after trying it several ways we really only like spinach raw in salads.
I'm jealous of all of you who have ripe tomatoes from your garden! We've only had some cherry tomatoes so far....
WWS: $79 at Market Basket; $6 at Shaw's; WWA:
Sat: Grilled eggplant with grilled kale & red pepper; couscous and chickpea with lemon & herbs; feta & pomegranate molasses and spiced yogurt (a riff on a recipe from Olive magazine)
Sun: veal piccata meatballs over mashed cauliflower; sautéed kale
Mon: Banh tom chien (Vietnamese shrimp and sweet potato fritters) with nuoc cham over big salads
Tues: leftovers for me, Italian sausage for him
Wed: "Buffalo" baked tofu with big salad (RabbitandWolves.com, although she uses vegan butter, etc, and we use regular)
Thus: zucchini and goat cheese tart (Ina Garten); ham steak
Fri: homemade pizza; salad
Yum, I love butter chicken.
We are in the middle of our kitchen reno (that means no sink, no stove, teeny weeny fridge) so we are just eating cold breakfasts (cereal or breakfast bars, fruit) and lunches (sandwiches with veggie sticks) and one hot meal for dinner. Last week and this week both I just make a BIG batch of something because cooking in the guest bedroom and having to wash up in the bathroom is a pain. So this week's big batch meal was Sloppy Joes Plus, a recipe from Budget Bytes that I make regularly though I always use my own homemade sauce instead of canned. Our cucumbers are going crazy in the garden and I have no stove or fridge for canned or fresh pickles, they became a side salad with a dressing I made up. Next week it's supposed to be rather cool so I'm going to make a chicken chili.
Oh My Goodness - you found bucatini! We love that pasta and it's been super hard to find (something to do with people using the hard noodles as straws and how that changes its FDA approval is the rumor I heard). Fingers crossed it shows back up here in the midwest - we love it in peanut noodles.
I did! Harris Teeter here carried it.
I wonder; could you order it online?
There was a great article on the great Bucatini Shortage on Grubstreet! https://www.grubstreet.com/2020/12/2020-bucatini-shortage-investigation.html
Goodness, I had no idea how lucky I was to get some!
Saturday: In the summer, I tend to cook meat in the mornings when it's cool, and then make it into an actual dish at dinnertime. So, this day I cooked stew meat and used it for tacos. We also had raw green beans (from the garden! yay!) and chocolate peanut butter milkshakes. None of my children knew what milkshakes tasted like (ice cream is hard to get here), so I felt like I should remedy that.
Sunday: Tuna patties, bread and butter, frozen green peas, apricot and cream popsicles
Monday: Roasted chicken (one of our meat chickens, which ended up being very large), potatoes, garlic, carrots, green beans, and a REAL WATERMELON HOORAY! Watermelons with seeds have become impossible to find here outside of actual farmstands, and my husband went by one in Colorado on his way home from the airport when he picked up our son. So we had the first real watermelon of the summer, and possibly the last.
Tuesday: Beef pot roast, rice, frozen peas, watermelon
Wednesday: The kids had pasta with leftover beef, marinara, and asadero cheese. My husband and I had just the beef with the sauce and cheese. We all had green beans.
Thursday: Breakfast sausage patties, curried split peas, leftover rice, carrot sticks with curry dip
Friday: Well. I have piece of red meat labeled "neck roast" that's braising right now. The question is, was it a bull neck, or a ram neck? I didn't label it specifically, which makes me think it's from the bull, which was butchered before I knew we would have different home-butchered red meat in the freezer. If it's from the bull, I'll probably have to take it out and put it in my pressure cooker to get tender. I'll know in a couple of hours, because if it isn't at all tender by then, it's not the ram. In any case, the kids will have leftover pasta with it and we'll probably have more green beans if I get enough off the plants today.
I cannot recall Saturday, but otherwise we had:
Pulled pork and farmer salad with a homemade, dressing. Plus dessert (because Sunday)
Oventoasted beetroot with potatoes and sausage
Homemade paella
Millet with coconut, veg and baked bananas
Macaroni and broccoli salad
We are doing good by way of vegetables, I can see the bottom of the vegetable drawer which is good, since I'll go shopping tomorrow.
I am so excited to try the Swedish pancakes. Thinking I may fill them like a blintz! I spent $9 for a basket of fresh vegetables at a local farm market and spent $28 at the grocery store this week. I've rotated the pantry and freezer goods so that we can plow through the COVID stash amassed. Here's what we ate:
Saturday - Pan fried in butter a butterflied venison tenderloin. Served with sautéed mushrooms, watermelon and corn on the cob.
Sunday - Moroccan spiced beef shish kebobs, fried green tomatoes, green beans, tater tots and watermelon for dessert. The vegetarian substituted the meat for a veggie kebob.
Monday - Stuffed shells and garlic cheese bread.
Tuesday - Refrigerator dump of leftovers to choose from.
Wednesday - Sesame bagel breakfast sandwich variations with choice of egg, sausage, cheese, avocado, salsa, etc. with hash browns on the side.
Thursday - Weekly local restaurant support night after the girls in the family went to the hair salon. We did takeout at the local Chinese restaurant and served the different dishes family style when we got home.
Friday - We will be dining on leftover Chinese.
Had a bad summer cold this week so we relied on more takeout than usual.
Saturday - takeout burgers
Sunday - Mexican chicken and rice salad
Monday - takeout pizza
Tuesday - instant pot pork carnitas tacos, elote corn
Wednesday - cheesy chicken vegetable and rice casserole
Thursday - takeout Chinese
Friday - roast chicken thighs, corn on the cob, green beans, biscuits
We are eating a lot more sandwiches in this hot weather, and also because the tomatoes are ripening. Menu for the week includes soft crab sandwiches, BLT's, tuna salad, cheesesteaks, and Chicken Shawarma (https://www.the-girl-who-ate-everything.com/chicken-shawarma/#wprm-recipe-container-29557).
All made at home. Glad my husband doesn't mind sandwiches.
Sunday: We grilled burgers and had them with fresh cucumbers from the garden
Monday: I made crock pot pulled BBQ pork with a pork roast from the freezer and some jalapeño coleslaw, then we made sliders with mini Hawaiian rolls.
Tuesday: Linguine with fresh mozzarella, chicken sausage and a fresh tomato/basil sauce.
Wednesday: We met up with some friends who were visiting and went out to Indian food. We came home with lots of delicious leftovers for lunches.
Thursday: Grilled chicken sandwiches with strawberries and pineapple on the side
Friday: Some local take out, I will see what the kids want to get
Saturday: Homemade pizza
I don't recall all that I had this past week, but I want to share a recipe that I fell in love with:
Grains-free banana coconut pancakes
(for 1)
* 1 riped banana
* 1 egg
* vanilla to taste
* baking powder (0.5 teaspoon? Did not mesure)
* 2 tablespoons coconut flour
Mix all and fry batter for pancakes
Topping suggestion:
* frozen strawberries, cooked on stovetop until mushy. Add sweetner of choice. Add cornstarch for a thicker consistency.
Enjoy!
ps : IComefrom a website, which I dont' remember. This is NOT my recipe.
We spent $96 at the grocery store. Of that, $14 was cat litter and cat treats, so our people food expenditure was $82.
We ate sandwiches with fresh produce on the side for supper every night. One night it was so hot that I had three slices of honeydew melon and called it good. My lunches were leftovers from lunch out on Saturday supplemented with some baked beans and fruit.