It’s the What We Spent, What We Ate feature!

I missed two weeks of food reports due to the holidays, but I’m baaaack!

(Hi.)

Just in case you all were sitting on the edges of your seats waiting to hear my year-end grocery totals…I ran a report in Quicken, and my grocery spending for 2015 averaged out to $199.987453 (no lie!) per week.

We can just round that up to $200, wouldn’t you say?

I had a lot of weeks in November and December where I spent less than $200, but I did buy a quarter of a cow earlier in the year, so that bumped up my average.

I think I probably will not need to buy another quarter until 2017, so I may end up at less than $200/week this year.   Stay tuned to see!

To start off the new year, I did an unusual thing and went grocery shopping on a Saturday! with Mr. FG!

In other news, I was too lazy to take my groceries out of the bag for a photo.

That’s 6 exclamation points so far.   Sorry.   I’ll try to refrain for the rest of the post.

I spent $195.93 this week, which includes my $33 produce box, $10 of chicken from the organic store, a $7 mid-week milk run, and my initial Saturday shopping trip.

(not shown: the sugar snap peas that Lisey and I immediately ate, dipped in ranch.)

So, that was my spending, and here’s what we ate.

Monday

I made hibachi chicken and shrimp, with yum yum sauce.   And rice.

Since that dish has veggies, protein, and carbs in one dish, well, that’s all I made for dinner.

Can we talk about how much better hibachi is with yum yum sauce??   It’s like a whole new meal.

Funny thing…a while back I saw a bottle of yum yum sauce in the store and was about to buy it, and Mr. FG said, “Hmm.   I bet you could make that at home.   It can’t be that complicated.”   And he was right.

This is the recipe I use for yum yum sauce.

It is easy and it is marvelous.

I will never look back.

Tuesday

So, I’m starting this new thing where I’m cooking with one kid each Tuesday.   It was Joshua’s turn and we’d planned to make gyros, but he didn’t get going early enough in the morning to marinate the chicken.

(teenagers and growing, you know.)

We scrapped that plan and made buttermilk waffles instead.

Wednesday

This was our barely-home day that I mentioned yesterday, and we had clam chowder, English muffin bread, and a green salad similar to this one.

Thursday

I seasoned and roasted a turkey breast from Aldi, made gravy, sauteed the green beans from my produce box, and threw together two pans of no-knead rolls.

Interesting note about those…I was short on time, so I totally skipped the first rise and instead spooned the dough right into the muffin tins to rise and then bake.   They were a little more dense this way, but I actually kind of liked ’em like that.

Anyway, this is good to know because I may possibly be in a hurry again at some point in my lifetime. 😉

(Without the first rise time, these rolls are on the table in about an hour.   Speedy!)

Friday

It’s Friday! Pizza night!

(I like exclamation points and I cannot lie.)

(sorrynotsorry.)

My crew has consistently been requesting regular ol’ pizza, so we shall see if that’s the case again this week.

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How were the eats at your house this week?   Are you back to normal life after the holidays now?

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Just a reminder before I close: Today is the last day of the Mrs. Meyer’s ePantry offer.

(It’s gone at 6pm, actually.)

To recap, ePantry newbies get a free cleaning set with the purchase of some other products from ePantry.   Total out of pocket is $26.24, which averages out to $2.38 per item.   And shipping is free!

ePantry is a subscription service, but you are never obligated to purchase anything else, you can cancel after your introductory offer, and if you do stay an ePantry member, it is totally ok to skip deliveries for as long as you’d like.   You can easily order only when you need more items.

Order here, or read my post with all the details here.