Well, I had the best of intentions when I created my menu plan last week. What is it "they" say about the best of intentions? Yup, it all blew up in my face, but for the most part I was able to recover.
So what did we eat last week?
Sunday:
Well, I did the post on Monday, so I knew what we ate Sunday. Yeah, I cheated a little. But at least that plan worked.
Monday:
The plan was to have Lettuce Wraps for dinner. The chicken wasn't defrosted, so I had to come up with something else. I though about making the lasagna, until I realized that I didn't have the ingredients. Oops! So I made a
Marinara Sauce and we had it over spaghetti with garlic bread. It was a Giada recipe, and was really easy and came out great. I cut in half as I only needed enough for dinner. Next time, I will have to double it and freeze some for future use.
Tuesday:
Thought about making the lettuce wraps, but it was cold for Florida and I couldn't really wrap my head around the whole idea. And I think we needed lettuce. What we had left wasn't going to work. I made mini veggie pot pies. I wish I had a recipe to share with you, but I kind of made it off the top of my head. I used purple potatoes, carrots, peas and chard. I also used the Puff Pastry cups, as I had them in my freezer. It was a great change for this classic dish.
Wednesday:
I was already to make a chicken stir fry (I gave up on the lettuce wraps). That was until I opened the chicken and it smelled funny. Ugh! I had exhausted all of my last minute ideas, and was stuck. We ended up going out for dinner. :-( I was really bummed and felt like I was failing my family 4 days into the new year.
Thursday:
I worked hard to recover from the night before. We had lasagna. Jolly Green Daddy's request, so he went to the store and bough what we needed. He was very happy that he saved $3.40. I am too, but he spent more on some items than I would have. But I knew what I was getting into when I sent him to the store. So, that trip to the grocery store took another $14.54 out of our grocery budget.
Friday:
I pulled some meat out of the freezer. I thought it was a roast. There was something on the label to give me that idea. So, I planned on making
Momma Neely's Pot Roast. When I started cooking the meat, I found out that it was not a solid roast, but some kind of flat piece of meat that was tied up like a roast. I cooked it as I had planned. By the time it was done, it was falling apart. I've heard that's a good thing with meat, right??? Jolly Green Daddy and Sprout enjoyed it.
I made Delicata Squash and Kale Minestrone in the crockpot. I used this
recipe from The Sweets Life as my base. She used butternut squash, but I had the delicata in the fridge, so that was what I used. My only other comment. Is that I did add the elbows at the end of the cooking process. When I went back for seconds it was clear that they were continuing to absorb the soup and by the time I got to the leftovers for lunch there was no liquid and it was pretty much mush. Such a bummer for such a great soup. Next time, I think I will make the elbows separately and add them to the bowls, so that they don't get mushy. Sprout liked it, Small Fry ate some (though he was quite fussy and didn't really want anything) and Jolly Green Daddy said it was good except for the squash, but he doesn't like squash so I wasn't surprised.
The final part of our meal was Challah (I'll have to type up my recipe at some point). The only problem was that the oven was being used to make the Pot Roast. I wasn't sure what I was going to do. I decided to hedge my bets and try making it in the toaster over. Yes, I baked my challah in the toaster.
Saturday:
On the positive side, we had very little food left in our fridge this morning. Sprout was asking for fruit, and I had nothing to give her. So I thought we would go check out our local farmers' market. (One of the plusses to living in Florida is that we can get fresh local food in the winter. The summer is questionable, but the winter no problem.) So $50 later we had brussels sprouts, the biggest portobello mushrooms I have ever seen, strawberries, grapes, leeks, a red pepper, local honey, smoked white fish dip, smoke salmon dip, fresh local mozzarella and kettle corn (that was for Jolly Green Daddy). That should keep us going for a while.
Tonight we had portobello mushrooms stuffed with spinach and artichokes. Wish I took a picture. I used this
recipe from The Savory Sweet Life, added frozen artichoke hearts and used whatever fresh spinach we had left. Jolly Green Daddy and I really liked it. Small Fry ate every bite I gave him, and Sprout was being persnickety, though she did eat (and ask for more) all of her brussels sprouts.
Budget:
Starting Amount: $300
Amount as of 1/4: $291
Amount as of 1/5: $276.46
Amount as of 1/6: $227. 48 (found a really good deal on Brother's All Natural, both kids eat these so they're good to have on hand and tough to find a good price on)
Amount as of 1/7: $182.08 (kettle corn not included)
I will make this work!
