What I spent
It’s a bit confusing to calculate my grocery totals this week because my shopping was all-over-the-place, due to the wintry weather we had this week.
All told, I spent $175.27, but I only have a photo of the $97 of groceries I bought in the middle of the week this week.
I found several packages of marked-down chicken and sausage, which was perfect because I needed sausage for my jambalaya. I frozen the chicken for future use.
I was super pleased to find these bags of frozen fruit marked down at Aldi. I often buy, cut, and freeze fresh pineapple for smoothies, but this is even better because there’s mango too!
Spending Tally for January
Week one: $195.93
Week two: $189.22
Week three: $120.13
Week four: $175.27
January total: $680.55, or $170/week.
What We Ate
Breakfasts were green smoothies for Mr. FG and me, cereal/toast/smoothies for the kids. And lunches were our usual combo of leftovers or sandwiches.
I mentioned yesterday on Instagram that we drank hot chocolate from a homemade mix after sledding. It’s a little hard to share links on a phone, so, here’s the hot chocolate mix recipe. I forgot I’d posted it in a stream of consciousness post, so it’s mixed in with some old photos of my kids, and photos of me pregnant with Zoe. Maybe I should give it a post of its own!
Anyway. Dinners were as follows:
Monday
It was Zoe’s turn to cook, and she made ground beef tacos with me. We had guacamole, blender salsa and tortilla chips with those.
Tuesday
I meant to make jambalaya, but realized I had no chicken broth made. Whoops. So, I got my chicken bone stash out of the freezer and made some tasty chicken broth. It wasn’t done quite in time for dinner, though, so I got a pan of stuffed shells out of the freezer and baked those.
I made two loaves of french bread to go along with that, but, um, I left the salt out by accident. The bread is barely edible without salt, even if you SLATHER it in butter, so I cut my losses and threw out the uneaten loaf and a half. So sad.
We had a green salad with our stuffed shells too.
Wednesday
I did actually make the jambalaya. Yay! It’s one of my current favorite things to eat. I thawed some homemade applesauce to go with it.
Thursday
Lisey helped me make sloppy joes, and I made fluffy hamburger buns.
Friday
Last Friday, it ended up being just Mr. FG, Joshua, and me here, so we got a pizza from a local shop. I still haven’t bought bread flour (I forgot about it until this very minute!) so we’ll see what we end up with tonight. Maybe pizza subs?
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What did you eat at your house this week?
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P.S. Check back in tomorrow morning for my new once-a-month Saturday post, featuring a goal check-in and a list of what I’ve been reading/listening to/etc.
Josephine
Tuesday 2nd of February 2016
Between the baking post, this post, and the comments I feel inspired again! I am 4 months pregnant so I have been uninspired lately on what to cook for dinner and easy/ready meals just don't do it for us. Another dilemma has been that we moved into our house in June and the wall oven doesn't work and it was waaaaay too old to repair. So after months of waiting/shopping for a new oven and baking out of a toaster oven I am going to have an oven to cook out of tomorrow! (Queue the angels rejoicing) I am going to bake and cook like a madwoman. During Christmas we went on vacation and stayed in a place with a kitchen. It was 85 degrees out and I baked a lasagna. Everyone was so happy, including me. I can't wait to get back to that happy place again!
Kristen
Tuesday 2nd of February 2016
Yay for a working oven!
Skirnir Hamilton
Saturday 30th of January 2016
We have purposefully made a salt free bread, but decided we prefer a low-sodium bread. So anytime recipe calls for salt in the bread, I add only about a 1/4 teaspoon and for us that is plenty, but we are used to a much lower sodium diet than we used to be. Restaurant food often tastes way too salty for us, especially our short time in Tennessee. California and Wisconsin isn't quite as salty. (Okay, I think Wisconsin restaurant food was even a tad saltier than California. But take out Chinese seems salty everywhere!)
Thanks for this reminder for me to post my meals on my blog. Will get to it shortly. :)
mommabee
Saturday 30th of January 2016
Last night, I made a chicken pot pie ( cooked out chicken pieces, 1 can of cream of chicken soup diluted with water, a bag of thawed mixed veg and a half box of pie crust dough for the top). Mixed it all in a pie pan and made a top crust. Cooked it for an hour. Everyone loved it.
Tonight was scalloped potatoes and ham from a leftover ham.
Tomorrow, we are helping the church with a spaghetti dinner so we eat for free. :)
Our meyer lemon tree has many lemons ready to go....I'll make a butter lemon cookie to die for and some lemon pound cakes for the ladies at church.
Kristen- sorry about the bread. Kelly- sorry about the job loss. I feel your pain...We are very familiar with that and struggle as well.
Carrie
Friday 29th of January 2016
We have recently been revamping our budget (or...ahem...using one), so it has been interesting to see what we really 'need' verses what gets thrown into the cart when trying to shop with 4 preschoolers. This week we had: tator tot casserole, beef stroganoff (ground turkey from Aldi, less than $2/lb), hot ham n cheese sandwiches and leftovers. Today, I utilized our 'eating out' fund and spent a little of it on pizza delivered for lunch, which the girls took also in their dinner to parents night out at church. We went through a 5 lb bag of carrots that I peeled and cut and left in a bowl in the fridge for at will snacking, price matched cherry tomatoes .99 at Aldi, 2.58 at walmart and have almost finished 3 containers of those. Our girls do best with sides that are just straight up plain fruit or veggies, so we did a lot of the ones mentioned (sometimes when they want a snack close to dinner, I give them their vegetable early), plus oranges and bananas (all to counteract the heavy dose of comfort carbs served this week).
Dede
Friday 29th of January 2016
We have been eating a lot of Roasted Potatoes. Aldi had red potatoes for 99¢ a bag!