WIS, WWA | Someone's peeking
I was leaving for the gym the other morning, and I felt some eyes staring at me. 😉
Lisey used to have a T-shirt with a black cat peeking around a corner, and it was perfect because our black cat is forever peeking around corners.
Chiquita is much less stealthy. 😉
What I Spent
I spent:
- $80 at Aldi
- $34 at Safeway
What We Ate
Saturday
Lisey and I were out with my parents, who kindly treated us to dinner.
I had a grilled Caesar salad with scallops and lump crab, and it was very delicious. Unfortunately, I did not take a picture of the food. Whoops.
Sunday
Zoe and I had some waffles, OJ, and bacon for dinner. 🙂
Monday
Hibachi chicken with rice:
Tuesday
I made some taco bowls with Doritos.
Wednesday
A work day for me; I packed some chickpea salad and shrimp, and I had some cream of wheat when I got home.
Thursday
Work day #2, so of course my lunch was an exact repeat of Wednesday's.
And I had some yogurt and fruit after work.
Friday
I'm off today, and as of this moment, I am feeling spectacularly unmotivated, mainly because I am really tired.
If I do not find any motivation by dinnertime, it's gonna be something very easy. I may feel a grilled cheese sandwich calling my name. 😉
I want that cat shirt! I'll take a cat as well 😛
This week's eats:
Saturday: Takeout
Sunday: Baked sweet potato with sauteed veg
Monday: Aubergine in a tomato sauce with garlic over spaghetti with feta cheese
Tuesday: Potato frittata with spinach, garlic and feta cheese
Wednesday: I went out for dinner with a friend and we had Lebanese food
Thursday: Ratatouille with roasted vegetables and red pepper pesto with feta cheese
Friday: I'm going to the cinema this evening so will probably have a quick pasta dish of some kind 🙂
Ooh, what are you going to see tonight?
Practical Magic 2! I really love the first film - not sure how good the sequel will be but I'm sure it'll be fun 🙂
Sophie, I’ve recently come across a book recommended in the NYT called, We'll Prescribe You a Cat. It will be a Christmas gift for one of my DILs and also sounds purrfect for you!
Btw, your menus always sound delicious to me.
I've actually noticed that book in the library but haven't got round to reading it! I should. And thanks re the meals! 🙂
I’ve read that book. It’s an offbeat, enjoyable read, especially for cat lovers. 😉
So weird. My comment wouldn’t post after three tries so I added the author and it's here twice. Ah, well.
I am coasting on a big grocery spend from the week previously, so I haven't shopped. But I will definitely feel a pinch next week. Every two weeks shopping works!
M - sammie at home
T - Skillet tilapia, salad with spring mix, avocado, chick peas
W - TJ's primavera pasta with a seasoned chicken thigh from the freezer
Th - Cabbage and Carnitas Skillet
F - I think I am going to do a taco salad with freezer turkey taco meat and some low salt Fritos
Weekend meals will be from my freezer stash of leftovers (:
Chiquita is so totally adorable! Thanks for posting so many pix, they make me grin.
Happy Friday, everyone! We spent $89 ($31 at Tare Market and $58 at Aldi).
-- Pasta with broccoli (twice)
-- Salad (thrice)
-- Baked potato, roasted carrots and roasted cauliflower
-- Butternut squash soup
Saturday: Taco meat made with ground beef and canned beans, turned into quesadillas. Random corn on the cob I got from commodities, and then the bread and butter used to butter the corn. A starchy meal, but no one complained.
Sunday: Grilled steaks with herb butter (parsley, basil, and green onion from the garden) and caramelized onions (from the freezer). Fried potato cubes. Cucumbers. Brownies with vanilla ice cream.
Monday: I had quite a bit of leftover steak, which I cut into small pieces and simmered in a sauce made from the leftover caramelized onions, a giant leek from the garden, a bit of tomato sauce from an open can, and some chicken stock that had been in the refrigerator awhile and needed to be used. I added heavy cream and cornstarch at the end. This was served over rice, to which I added the leftover herb butter to handily use up all the leftovers from the previous night. We even had a small leftover brownies for everyone. O happy day. The very uninspired vegetable was raw cucumbers and pickles.
Tuesday: Chicken thighs--I used the Smitten Kitchen low and slow recipe for this--mashed potatoes, maple carrots or raw broccoli, stabby cake. This was the Feast of the Archangels, traditionally just Michaelmas, which is the feast of St. Michael. We love St. Michael in our house. Goose is the traditional food for Michaelmas, but that's not so readily available to me. Chicken is my nod to the poultry. I always make a devil's food cake and let my children stab it with toothpicks after we say the St. Michael prayer. (I know I've explained this before, but it's because St. Michael is traditionally depicted with a sword when he defeated the devil and threw him out of heaven.) We had ice cream this year to go with the cake.
Wednesday: I used the leftover taco meat to make an enchilada casserole, and then we had cucumbers with ranch dip and the cupcakes I had made with the extra stabby cake batter. I did frost the cupcakes. With peanut butter frosting, yum.
Thursday: I was at a wedding (for two people I had never met because they were from out of state and had no guests, so needed two witnesses--random, but very fun actually) at a somewhat far mission church and didn't get home until 4 p.m., at which point I changed, bolted down some homemade Greek yogurt with maple syrup, and went straight to the school for volleyball games at which my daughter was cheering. The three at home had leftover enchilada casserole, plus canned peaches with cottage cheese. The football player came to the games after practice and got a burrito at the concession stand. He was still starving when we got home at 7:15, so he had a salami sandwich and the cheerleader had leftover mashed potatoes and cheese.
Tonight: Our priest is coming over for dinner, and it's Friday, which means I need something meatless in quantity (he eats a lot, as does my own family). If I have enough of the cod fillets I got from commodities, we'll have those baked in the oven, oven fried potatoes, collard salad (priest is the only other person who eats with us regularly who actually likes collard salads as much as I do, yay), carrot slaw (for everyone else, who does not like collard salads), and a crepe cake made with the leftover crepes from the after-church breakfast that I forgot about and need to use. Those just get layered with whipped cream and jam. I think I'll use some rhubarb jam this time. And if there aren't enough cod fillets, it might be fish sticks with tartar sauce. Luckily, our priest/guest is not at all picky. 🙂
I'm always glad to see you and your family observing Michaelmas, Kristin--as both a Jane Austen devotee and a fond widow. You and others may recall that a small group of close friends and I interred DH's ashes on Michaelmas two years ago; DH always identified with both St. Michael and St. George, so I felt the choice of date was appropriate. (At various workshops DH attended over the years, he gave his occupation on his attendee badge as "Knight Errant.")
And, yes, I do know that St. George wasn't one of the archangels. I'm just referring to DH's fondness for knights skewering dragons.
I just read you can't eat blackberries after Michaelmas because on that date the devil fell into them and cursed them.
I wondered why holy water was always burning me 😉
That reminds me to rewatch Good omens this fall!
WIS: Close to $150, mostly at Food Lion. Part of this was this week's food and part was restocking the pantry, which is now in good shape.
WWA: DH had various sandwiches with fresh fruit, fresh veggies, pickles and protein crackers.
For myself, I made a slightly revised version of Jamie Oliver's Freezer Raid Fish Pie again followed by a dish of chicken spaghetti with garden vegetables. For both of those dishes, once I'd had it for three days, the remainder was packed in freezer containers as future individual meals. Go me, as I have been good about labeling and dating the containers so as to no longer play freezer meal roulette.
It's been hot again, so our desserts were graham crackers, Jell-O, and granola bars.
I decided to reorganize the freezer now that there is a little more space and as I suspected my husband added items to the freezer I didn’t know about so I now have a few more options on the list of meals to make only using freezer items (and existing pantry/fridge items). This week's freezer items: smoked brisket, bacon, jalapenos, pork sausage, chicken stock, chicken breast, naan
Friday: Pizza at a local restaurant to use our monthly free pizza card.
Saturday: My husband made Chow Mein Hot Dish which was something his mom made when he was little.
Sunday: My husband made chili!
Monday: Leftovers
Tuesday: Zuppa Toscana, garlic bread
Wednesday: Halal Cart Chicken, yellow rice, naan, roasted cauliflower
Thursday: Leftover soup
When we are gone during a weekend & I have to jump back into the work week, things tend to get dicey for our meal plan. That was the case this week!
-Ate out at a work dinner, had pizza & a salad
-Met friends for a birthday dinner last night, and ate 1/2 a French dip & brought the rest home for DS20, who promptly ate them as soon as he got home from his work shift.
-Defrosted grilled chicken & we had that with salad, x2
-Had leftovers from work dinner another night
I'm off today, so I'm actually planning on cooking. Probably a one pan chicken & rice dish that we like, mostly because using up rotisserie chicken & broth is on my freezer clean out list.
WIS: $31 at Price Chopper.
WIA: This week's frugal fail: I experimented with a different cornbread recipe from my usual one (the new one was a Lodge cast iron recipe and involved mayonnaise), and it disintegrated as I was coaxing it out of the pan. I ate as many of the major crumbles as I could for two breakfasts, but I ended up composting the rest. (Couldn't even face trying to make a casserole with it.) This is the last time I try innovating with cornbread; I'm sticking to the tried and true recipe (with NO @#$%!! SUGAR!, of course) from now on.
But this week's win: I defrosted a piece of top round London broil from my 1/4 steer and marinated it in a version of the lamb/game marinade recipe from my 1970s edition of The Joy of Cooking. For the red wine and lemon juice, I substituted a basil wine vinegar I'd experimented with making from a bottle of red wine that had gone off (donated by a friend). This vinegar didn't quite work out as an ingredient in salad dressings and the like, but it was absolutely ace in the marinade. I'm going to save the rest of the bottle for this purpose.
Regarding the cornbread: if it ain't broke, don't fix it! 😉
Tonight I will try to make vegetarian butter chicken with tofu. I hope it will turn out well, and have a naan and raita side standby just in case.
WIS: $21 Aldi
On Saturday I had a grilled tomato parmesan chicken sandwich, and an apple.
Sunday: Same, except I had applesauce instead of an apple.
Monday: Grilled cheese sandwich, popcorn.
Tuesday: Swiss cheese omelet with peppers, onions and spinach, prunes on the side.
Wednesday: Salmon patty on bun, green beans.
Thursday: Salmon patty on biscuit, apple
Today I'm having a sausage patty on a bun, applesauce and carrot sticks.
Most of these meals are courtesy of the freezer challenge!
Saturday - takeout night, we got sushi and udon for the non-sushi eater
Sunday - Mushroom stroganoff, I was very proud that I made this as I’d been at a street fair in the afternoon with my daughter and it would have been easy to buy some fair food. We bought some kettle corn for a snack but nothing else.
Monday - cooked udon noodles in the leftover broth from Saturdays takeout udon and steamed some shrimp and veggie dumplings
Tuesday - My mom fed the kids dinner, I had cauliflower, kale and veggie sausage soup and toasted bread with raspberry jalapeño jam
Wednesday - bean burritos and rice for the kids, I had homemade black bean dip spread on crisped corn tortillas topped with avocado and mango salsa
Thursday - on a trip with friends, we rented a house so have a full kitchen. We had a snack dinner for our first night: charcuterie, salad, homemade cookies we brought
Friday - we are making minestrone soup which we’ll have with bread tonight.
I don’t think Chiquita has a stealth mode!!!
NEVERRR.