September grocery shopping

We needed some serious food. Normally I would wait until tomorrow to keep the August tally more within budget, but with my daughter and I both starting school today shopping seemed like a way to keep us both occupied.

I took my daughter to New York Bagel and Deli in the 25th Street shopping center for her "before school" breakfast. We spent $5 on bagels. She picked blueberry with blueberry cream cheese and I had jalapeno with egg and cheese. I had $7 left and a baker's dozen bagels in $8 so I couldn't out my change and came home with a stash.

Then we went to Giant. Blue needed greens. We needed fruits and veggies. I had a $4 off $45 purchase coupon.

I spent $80, which considering I had no list and couldn't be real thorough with sales/prices... is good.

We bought (in 30 minutes):

• Motts no sugar added mixed berry applesauce (has actually vitamin C, many others don't), the individual servings, which I normally don't advocate. $1.89
• Minute Maid no sugar added Apple Strawberry juice boxes (10), $2.79
• Hunt's Fire roasted diced tomatoes $1.09
• Bush's black beans, two cans at 83 cents each
• Berio Extra Virgin Olive Oil, big bottle, on sale for $5.79
• Whitehouse Applesauce, I forget the funky flavor, but similar nutritional content to Motts, $1.89
• Barilla whole wheat pasta, five boxes, at $1 each
• Peaches packed in pear juice, 15 ounces, 2 cans, 99 cents each
• Pears, packed in juice, 3 cans, 99 cents each
• Kidney beans, three 15.5 ounce cans, 59 cents each
• 16 ounces cashew butter, $5.24 (normally $7)
• petite diced tomatoes, 14.5 ounces, 2 cans, 65 cents each
• box of raisins, $1.77
• canned chunk pineapple, 99 cents
• black olives, $1.27
• small cans of no salt added tomato sauce, 4 cans, 35 cents each
• 16 ounces of pasta shells, 2 boxes, 75 cents each
• two pounds bananas, $1.32
• 2 pounds broccoli, $2.49
• 2 pounds gala apples (4 apples), $2.85
• pint of blueberries, $3
• prepackaged very veggie salad, $2
• prepackaged greens for Blue, $2
• strawberries, $2.49
• Pillsbury ready made pie crusts, 4 crusts, $4.70 - $1 coupon = $3.70
• Light and Lively Cottage Cheese, $3.49 (big one)
• Very Vanilla Soy Milk, 64 ounces, $2.85
• 32 ounces vanilla yogurt, $1.79
• 16 ounces of Wisconsin cheddar, $3.65 (damn it, I thought this was on sale for less than $3)
• dozen extra large eggs, $1.19
• soymilk, 64 ounces, $2.39
• tampons, $2.50
• Suave Kids Shampoo/Conditioner/Body Wash in watermelon, 22.5 ounces, $2.74
• 15 ounces of lemon juice, $1.49
• Canola cooking spray, 5 ounces, $1.50
  
• Kidney beans, big can,
  

Improvised Lo Mein

My mother-in-law made her Chinese-style pork with vegetables a while ago and we froze some. I am extremely low on groceries, so I thawed some for lunch. I plan on cooking some spaghetti, after breaking it in half, then sautéeing the spaghetti in sesame oil and sesame seeds and then serving the leftovers over that. That's as creative as I can get right now...

A trip to the warehouse club

Thus far in August, we have spent about $100 on groceries and $200 on eating out. That's surprised me. I expected both figures to be higher.

The Mexican dinner the other night did indeed yield breakfast. Plus, we got three servings of nachos out of those leftovers.

Last night, my husband and I went to the warehouse club on the way to the movies (and we ended up with enough free samples to qualify as dinner). We spent $142 on non-perishable items. I find that many of the warehouse club items aren't actually cheaper, but I like having items like soap in bulk.

• 21.5 pounds of Meow Mix, $12.32
• 35 pounds of clumping cat litter, $10.74 (cat litter is my primary reason for having a membership. Having a membership is against my principles of how I normally shop. It's too close to Wal*Mart for business practices)
  
• 10 cans of chunk white tuna packed in water, $6.57
• Glad 13 gallon garbage bags, $11.97 (I don't remember how many are in the bag, but they last us more than six months and my husband likes them)
• Special K meal replacement bars, $11.86 (I believe there are 16 in the box. They were the cheapest of all the "bars" and has less than 200 calories each and 10 grams of protein. I start school Monday, as does my daughter, and I haven't quite figured out how to get a healthy lunch into myself. So these will be emergency rations in my purse)
• The 300-use pump of French vanilla creamer, $9.88 (lasts about a month, the little jar is $2-$3 at the store and lasts about four days)
• The four-pack box of Ritz crackers, $5.97 (as long as I have peanut butter and Ritz, we have a quick lunch-on-the-go)
• the mega bottle of Cascade dishwasher liquid, $8.94
• Dove, I believe it was 20 bars, $12.88 (this will also last us months)
• Dial, 20 pack of soap, $7.69 (for hand washing, liquid soap is too expensive and the kid uses way to much. A bar of soap makes a mess by the sink, but the cost savings is worth it)
• JIF creamy peanut butter, 2 big jars, $7.69
• A huge container of Emerald dark chocolate cocoa-roasted almonds, $9.63 (These were a risk, but the taste FANTASTIC. As in, eat-the-whole-container delicious. They are unsalted, have lots of protein, Vitamin E and other nutritional yumminess. Plus they're almonds and dark chocolate, two of my favorite things)
• 4 pack of Degree men's anti-perspirant, $7.38 (this is the only brand that works for my husband. He's stinky. And $2 in the store is a bargain. So this was also a great find)
• toilet paper, 36 premium double rolls, $14.98 (it's not my favorite. I like cottonelle but 36 rolls should hold us for a while)
  

Waffles for dinner

We had belgian waffles from the freezer, smoked bacon, and berry applesauce for dinner. We topped the waffles with real maple syrup and in some cases peanut butter. The house is running out of groceries, but it worked.

Trail mix, augmented

As I have reported in the past, I make a pretty awesome homemade granola, but with the intense heat and how busy we've been I haven't had a chance to make any.

My mother (Mimi) had brought some huge containers of Swiss Trail Mix that had so much butterscotch chips and chocolate candies that it didn't really qualify as a snack in my mind. It did have some peanuts and some dried pineapple and raisins but nutritional it was more or less dessert.

Normally I mix this 50/50 with my own granola. Today I took a container of it that was 2/3 empty and added a container of White Mountain trail mix from Aldi. This is very similar stuff, just more peanuts and more cranberries, and white chocolate instead of butterscotch and chocolate candies.

Then I added what cashews we had left.

Then I added a sample box of Honey Bunches of Oats I was given.

Now the container is full again, with "stuff" closer to the way I like it.

Making the best of naughty

We were exhausted... and my daughter got her "big girl" bike today and it had been a frustrating day for me so I thought to lighten the air, I'd take everyone out for Mexican. It would have been inexpensive if we all shared the $12 pile of HUGE nachos, but I opted for several appetizers.

I justified the expense by saving enough nachos and sausage dip for lunch tomorrow (we have chips here to refresh them) for my husband and I.

Then we ordered dessert.
Not a good fiscal move.

But our daughter selected rice pudding and couldn't finish it, so guess what she's having for breakfast...

So dinner for 3
Lunch for 2
Breakfast for 1
plus tip=
$55

I can live with that.

Modified Ugly Bean Dip

We needed a quick vegetable-rich dinner, so we made ugly bean dip. We modified the recipe based on what we had on hand:

Sauce
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup canola oil
1/4 cup sugar
(I did not use it all)
Boil and cool.

Dip ingredients, mix in bowl:
red onion to taste, finely diced (about 3/4 cup for me)
3 small tomatoes from the garden, diced
about 1 cup finely diced cucumber
about 1 cup yellow corn
one can black beans, drained

Pour sauce on ingredients and stir.

We didn't have the fancy scoop Fritos so we ended up dumping the fritos on top of our dip on the plate and spooning it into our mouths instead of dipping.

Thoughts on cheap meals

A friend of mine is heading back to college next week with a reduced meal plan. She has 10 meals a week in the dining hall and the rest she's on her own. I have other friends that are tightening the belt. So it got me thinking... My college friend has a budget of $30/week for groceries. Off the top of my head...

• Any meat you buy needs to be served in small portions so you can save more for later meals. If you find a good deal on thin pork chops, make pork with apples. But eat one pork chop and freeze the only portions.
• She's a cereal eater, I'm not. I need more protein in my breakfast. Some of my favorite breakfasts are: peanut butter and graham crackers, one scrambled egg or a fried egg with a homemade biscuit (now this friend does not have access to an oven, but she could come over to my house, make a big batch of biscuits and freeze them. Perfect for sandwiches or even with jam for tea), cottage cheese and apple butter, yogurt (from the large container, not the individual portions), with granola and nuts-- again homemade granola, but if she can borrow an oven it's cheap to make.
  
• comparison shop. Shop certain stores for certain items.
• Stick to basic fruit: apples, bananas. No fancy tropical fruit unless it comes from a can.
• Save salads for the days after you go grocery shopping. Keep them simple. Carrots, broccoli, the cheapest lettuce.
• Tuna
• Wegmans store brand mac and cheese with peas and/or broccoli
• Fresh broccoli and fresh carrots can get a lot of mileage
• Frozen spinach equally as versatile
• pasta and plain red sauce, spaghetti cheese
• soup and meatless chili
• buy juice in the frozen aisle and mix it yourself
• frozen vegetables with the carrots, cauliflower and broccoli can be one-stop vegetable shopping
• homemade hummus
• burritos ($1 for beans, $1 for tortilla shells, $1.29 for cheese if you go to aldi, add your favorite salsa as a splurge
• grilled cheese
• a splurge is only worth it if it has more than one use
• Tortillas are cheaper than bread
• If a food has no nutritional value (chips, ice cream, cookies) it should be saved for a blue moon
• processed foods are equally detrimental

Who else has ideas?

Peach and Almond Pasta

Leftovers are often the key to stretching the grocery budget. After Friday's dinner, we had eaten all the pork with apples but we hadn't finished all the gravy. In this particular case, pork with apples became pork with peaches and apples (not to be confused with pork with peaches and snow peas) because we ran out of apples.

I didn't want to waste that yummy gravy so we heated it up and added slivered almonds. We served as the sauce for multigrain pasta. It was fabulous. Though raisins would have made it better. We didn't have raisins,

Also, went bike riding five miles this afternoon. My water bottle is plastic and it always tastes plastic to me. I hate warm plastic-flavored water. And I knew by the time I needed the water it would be very warm. To combat this, I brewed a glass of Celestial Seasonings Wild Berry Zinger tea and threw it, bag and all, into my water bottle with all the ice I could stuff in there and some more water.

Garden Pizzas

Well, the visitors have gone home and I didn't cook much while they were here. Today I had $15 left to my name and I stopped at Giant for some odds and ends.

We had leftover mozzerella sticks from a dinner out. For lunch I made English muffin pizzas with cheddar, tomato AND basil straight from my garden.

At Giant, I spent my $15 on the following:

• Dole Spring Mix, 2/$5
• Thomas' English Muffins (Buy One, Get One)
• Multigrain Rotini
• Giant Pizza Sauce, on sale for 49 cents each
• Light and Lively Cottage Cheese, the big container
• 8 oz. New York Extra Sharp Cheddar
• 16 fl ounces of Coffeemate in the funky Parisian flavor

$15.38, and I got a coupon for $4 off my next $45 purchase.

Breakfast post-bicycling

My daughter and I went bicycling this morning and before we left we each had a bowl of cereal with soymilk. When we got home I made fried eggs and I ate mine on homemade bread. We had fresh strawberries and organic lemonade. I also had leftover Dole salad to which we added cucumbers and a tomato from the garden. Then, we finished it off with a donut from a trip to Dunkin Donuts last night.

Quesadilla and salad

For dinner last night we had a light meal of quesadillas with cheddar cheese, sour cream, mango and regular salsa. We had a side of salad. This morning we had fried eggs and brioche. And for lunch/dinner we had Indian. We have houseguests so I expect not to have a whole lot of meals because we'll be out and about.

Mixed Up Pasta

We had leftover spaghetti in the fridge that my husband made to use up the jar of Wegman's chunky pizza sauce that he opened by accident. It made the spaghetti really yummy.

But for lunch, our daughter wanted boxed macaroni and cheese (also Wegman's brand, their spiral macaroni and cheese dinner tasted incredible, in my opinion).

We added some peas, sliced the spaghetti small, and mixed everything together and it was fabulous!

Cucumber salad

Shannon made cucumber salad for her family reunion. She doesn't measure so I figure I'd make an approximation of what she did, because it looks very yummy.

Shan's Cucumber Salad

• 1/2 one large red onion, diced
• 1 large can black olives, either sliced or mooshed by hand
• About 4 large cucumbers, in large chunks
  
• Ranch dressing (somewhere 2/3 cup?)
• Apple cider vinegar (around one cup?)
• Flax seed (about three teaspoons)
• garlic powder (about four tablespoons, to taste)
• dill or It's a Dilly (about four tablespoons, to taste)

Combine and chill. Serve once flavors blend.

Vegetable soup

I made canned vegetarian vegetable soup, added some extra water, some extra frozen vegetables, and some spices, and some Morningstar vegetarian breakfast patties. I served with my homemade rye rolls.

Then we went to Target, I love their Archer Brand stuff. We needed a birthday present, so I used a $5 off a $25 purchase coupon. So I got three big cans of hunts sauce, eggs, soy milk, chocolate soy milk, and shredded cheddar cheese. The prices were okay. But I like some of their funky organic stuff.

Shopping/budgets

I just finished paying some bills, and I'm disappointed in myself. I hosted two dinner parties recently... but when the end of the month rolled around I had spent $363 on groceries. I always shoot for $250, and allow myself some wiggle room, so I label $300 reasonable. And even the $363 would be fine... but we also ate out several times and spent $121 on that. So that raises the grand total to close to $500. Not acceptable. But in my head, I understand that each dinner party raises my grocery budget by $50.

Now, today is August 13. We have spent $50 on groceries thus far this month. (I had one dinner party July 31 and the other August 7, so that actually lowered my grocery bills for right now because I still have supplies from those dinners in the house. And we had a lot of leftovers.)

I won't be cooking much this week... I have to work crazy hours. Last night my husband made garlic-vegetable pizzas on my crazy white bread I made the other day.

I thought I would spend about $50 a week in August, going to the store each week for just what we need to survive that week. Except for that initial trip to get supplies for the dinner party, I have not been to the store. (We have no milk, no eggs, no cheese, no fresh vegs.)

And now I discover that will have houseguests for a week beginning this weekend. There goes the August budget.

Pesto (and bread)

It's been 100ish degrees and humid. So, I decided to take advantage of the humidity and make bread. The bread has a final rise of at least twenty minutes, so I put it out and went to the pharmacy.

When I returned, my bread had risen to proportions never before seen by man.

And then I made pesto.

Today's pesto, which may be used as pasta sauce or as a dip for my homemade bread...

Mix in food processor:

• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 2 cups fresh basil
• 3 tablespoons fresh parsley
• 2 teaspoons fresh oregano
• 1/2 cup pine nuts
• 1/4 cup parmesan cheese, grated (omit if you prefer to have a vegan or lower fat pesto)
• 3 tablespoons garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon fresh ground four color peppercorns
• 1 small tomato from the garden

This would be delicious with broccoli... in the pasta, not in the sauce. But I don't think I have any.

Pork leftovers

We had waffles with peanut butter for lunch yesterday and my family had waffles for breakfast. Me, I'm holding out for waffles with ice cream.

For lunch, I took the leftover pork with apples, that I assumed was just apples and sauce, and poured it into a skillet. I planned to used Morningstar vegetarian sausage patties (2) as the protein source, but imagine my surprise when I found a pork chop in with the apples. So I chopped it nicely and added the porkchop and the sausage. Once that got bubbly, I poured the leftover coucous in. I served with leftover cornbake and watermelon.

Gayle's Nana's Waffles

From Gayle:
"Now this took my mom a little work to perfect. The old recipe was a bowl of this and a handful of that. Of course it all depended on what you called a bowl.

• 2 c unbleached flour
• 4 tsp baking soda
• 2 eggs
• 4 T vegetable oil (the original recipe was lard, then Crisco, now veggie oil....progress)
• 1 3/4 cup sour milk (Plain milk will work, taste is different. Soy should work also.)

In an 8-cup bowl mix everything. Just dump it all it. Make a mess if you want to. You can't kill this recipe. Heat waffle iron. If not teflon coated, spray with cooking spray (or use old fashion butter...yum). Use the 2/3 cup measure and scoop out the batter. Makes a perfect round waffle. Remove when brown and easily lifted from iron. (Mine has a idiot light. Perfect every time.) Serve."

Now Gayle will probably shoot me for dickering with her family recipe, but the whole point of making waffles this morning is to use up my sour dairy products purchased at Klein Farm early last week.

Angel's Banana Waffles
Ingredients

• about two cups farm milk, sour
• about one cup drinkable vanilla maple yogurt, also from the farm and sour
• 3 eggs (also from the farm and the only eggs I had left)
• 1 banana, ripe
• 2 heaping tablespoons baking soda
• 1/2 cup canola oil
• 1 1/3 cups whole wheat flour
• 2 2/3 cups unbleached white flour

Mine cooked in 2 1/2 minutes. The darkest one in the photo was in for five.

From the dinner party...

The recipe for pork with apples can be found via the links below... Pear soup is from last week...

Cornbake

I have tried unsuccessfully over the years to make my mother-in-law's cornbake. I don't know where she got the recipe from but it's a family favorite and chock full of comfort food-ness. I'm sure over the years I've failed at it because of my tendency not to follow a recipe so today I tried extra hard AND I called my mother-in-law to verify the size of the pan.

Esther's Corn Bake

• 8.5 ounces Jiffy cornbread/muffin mix (yeah, something out of a box!)
• 1 can whole corn, undrained
• 1 can creamed corn
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 stick butter, melted
• 2 eggs beaten

Mix and pour into large casserole or 9 x 13 cake pan. Bake at 350 for 1 hour. Should not be as dry as cornbread, but should set more than a pudding.

Caviar and PB&J

We're having our dinner party tonight so for lunch I'm serving peanut butter and Gayle's homemade blueberry jam on Giant's multigrain sandwich bread. Serving with leftover corn on the cob, carrots and green pepper from my garden.

Last night I had caviar for the first time! Frank made crackers with liverwurst and cheap caviar. He said the cheap caviar is better than the mid-grade. It basically gave the liverwurst an extreme salty flavor.

Help!

A friend is bringing someone for dinner tomorrow. It's a French someone, whom she's dating, and the whole dinner has me a wreck.

Originally I had planned meatloaf. But it's hot, and I don't like meatloaf.

Then I thought dinner-in-one-dish or hamburger-stuffed bread.

But now today I'm wondering if I should do pork with apples.

An opener of chilled pear soup, main course of pork with apples, cornbake, couscous, and maybe my last loaf of homemade rye bread. I have orangina/chartreuse cocktails planned. They are bringing dessert. And I have lots of vanilla ice cream...

But what to serve... Help!

Spinach Rigatoni with Garden Vegetable Sauce & Gruyère

I made spinach rigatoni from Aldi tonight. I like the spinach rigatoni from Aldi. It's $3.99 for the bag, and the bag feeds the family with some leftovers, especially when I doctor it.

The bag supposedly feeds three. Because of all the cheese, they are high in saturated fat, but they are also high in protein and nutrients. I don't use the seasoning packet so that may reduce the sodium significantly. I don't know.

But one serving of just the pasta has 19 g protein, 5% RDA Vitamin A, 35% RDA calcium, and 15% RDA Iron.

And tonight I made this funky sauce:

• 1/4 cup leftover crôque monsieur sauce
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 1/4 cup shredded gruyère
  
• 2 teaspoons butter
• one teaspoon cornstarch
• 1/4 cup diced tomato from the garden
• 4 basil leaves from the garden
• One handful parsley from the garden
• 1 tablespoon chopped chives (from the garden)

I melted the butter, added the cornstarch and whisked until combined. I added the crôque monsieur sauce, the cheese and the heavy cream. Once combined, I added the herbs and the tomato. I cooked until bubbly.

When the noodles were done, I poured the sauce over the noodles in a big pot. Then I added:

• 3/4 cup finely chopped fresh broccoli, cooked
• 1 cup peas, cooked
• 1 shredded morningstar vegetarian chicken finger

And that was dinner.

Salad wraps

To use up some produce and get some veggies into our systems, we had salad wraps for lunch. Depending on your dressing and whether or not you add cheese, they can be vegan or vegetarian.

I had my daughter peel a carrot. My mom had brought a cucumber and tomatoes from her garden. I contributed a pepper from my garden.

I got out some cheese leftovers: gruyère, smoked gouda, ricotta salata and cheddar.

I used the ranch yogurt dressing from Wegmans. And because she got to assemble it herself, my daughter is eating hers to the last drop.

We had red leaf lettuce and some Italian salad blend, all of which was starting to look a little less than perfect. Yeah, we could have had salads in a bowl, but putting them in a wrap and eating them with your hands is fun-- and silly.

Silly Cake

Yesterday we ate leftovers... leftovers from the weekend, the dinner party, even pasta I don't remember. Today for lunch, we'll probably have salad wraps and cake.

My daughter and I took the cake recipe we used for the birthday cake last week and decided to make our own silly cake. We mixed yellow food coloring (my daughter's choice) into the batter, then I gave her a fork and let her swirl other colors into the final product. While it baked, I whipped up some experimental lemon icing. I used some ingredients that means it will require refrigeration.

To make Creamy Vanilla Frosting Betty Crocker advises mixing the following:

• 3 cups powdered sugar
• 1/3 cup butter, softened
• 1.5 teaspoons vanilla
• About 2 tablespoons milk

I only had two cups powdered sugar so I did the following:
Angel's lemon yogurt frosting

• farm fresh lemon yogurt, two tablespoons
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1.5 teaspoons lemon extract
• 1 tablespoon heavy cream

Gaufres

I needed a waffle recipe, as I wanted to try something different from my normal vegan waffles. So I started looking. All the recipes I found involved separating eggs and I thought to myself, "I'm not doing that." But then I came upon this bit of info that Belgian Waffles are a variant of the French gaufres... and suddenly separating eggs seemed like a good time.

Keep in mind, my whole point of making waffles is to use up the pumpkin leftovers from the other night, and my daughter suggested waffles. So, I selected this recipezaar entry as the winner:

"A recipe so authentic that I had to convert from grams and translate from French! These waffles are rich and delicious (don't bother with syrup!), and the basic recipe is from a Belgian friend of mine.
Ingredients
4 eggs, separated
1 cup granulated sugar, plus 2 tablespoons
4 cups all-purpose flour, plus 2 tablespoons
1 cup butter, melted, plus 2 tablespoons

Directions

Separate the 4 eggs, adding the yolks to the sugar and setting the whites aside for later use.

Add the flour and butter to the yolk and sugar mixture, first by stirring and then by working the mixture into a uniform dough with your hands.

Beat the egg whites until they are fluffy: when you lift the beater from the whites, soft peaks should form and then fall back, not holding much shape.

Crumble the dough and drop the pieces into the egg whites.

Stir by mashing the pieces of dough into the whites with a spoon, then stirring until a uniform consistency is achieved.

Heat up a waffle iron. When it is hot (but not too hot), drop the batter onto the iron in the desired serving size.
I usually get about 12 waffles roughly 4-5 inches in diameter from this recipe."

Of course, I don't follow the recipe.
I used four eggs.
Four cups unbleached white flour.
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup pumpkin filling from the crêpes
1/3 cup pumpkin syrup from the crêpes
2/3 cup butter

I think mine needed some more liquid and we didn't stir enough, because they came out extremely dense, yet they also rose.

I served with strawberries and lemon yogurt. As dinner.

Pineapple crumble and vanilla ice cream

The recipe for pineapple crumble suggests serving it warm with vanilla ice cream, so we're trying it tonight... for dinner... Our daughter went to her mimi's this weekend.

The dinner party went great. The company was wonderful. I don't have much too say, so I'm posting photos...

Oh, I could add that I kept the zucchini cakes and croque monsieur warm in the oven for a LONG time and the zucchini wasn't as moist and yummy as usual but had a different texture. It worked adequately.

And I have a friend who gave us a plethora of Frito-Lay return stock... so if you see some recipes with Cheetos and Funions that's why.