What did I make this week?

So one of the things I love about many of the blogs I read is when people put out their meal plans.  It's inspiring and gives me great ideas.

The reality of my life right now is that I often don't stick to the plan, and I have a hard time planning more than 3 days ahead.

So I thought I'd share some pictures of things that I made this last week instead.  It's been a rough week, with a lot of beer and not a lot of sleep, due to work layoffs, heat, stress, etc.

Not pictured: a legion of salads and turkey sandwiches, plus crockpot Asian chicken with broccoli.  And nachos.  And cupcakes.  And hummus.  And beer.

 Spinach balls (actually "mixed greens)

Roast potatoes 

Falafel (the dough)

Falafel (in the pan)

Falafel (done)

Lentil/walnut/mushroom pate, on a bagel (this stuff is delish)

Cabbage and ramen slaw with cashews

A view on my walk one day.   Yeah, rubbing it in.

The aftermath of my 9 year old's birthday party

The budget update

So how am I doing on my $80 budget?  Well, so far so good.  There are some challenges, however:

1.  I tend to buy a lot of produce.  The CSA (not included in the budget) helps, but it's hard to figure out how much produce to buy around the CSA stuff.
2.  Running out of things.  I don't always remember to write stuff down.  So, we ran out of popcorn. At the local grocery store: $4.  At Trader Joe's?  $2.  Guess where we bought it last night, at the last minute?
3.  Organics.  These are expensive.  Free range meat?  Even moreso.  You can get good deals at the local Whole Foods and other high end stores, on sale.  But you have to track that.  And fit it into your budget.  And thus far, I haven't had the energy to track that - a good whole chicken can be had, on sale, for $2 a pound (so $10-12).  You can get a good 3 or 4 meals out of that, particularly if you make your own stock.  So I eat more stuff from the freezer and more dried beans, because they are universally cheap.
4.  Special occasions.  A certain boy is turning 9 next week.  I am shopping for cake mixes.
5.  Eating out.  When I first set the budget, we ate out a LOT.  Then a few weeks ago, I said "no eating out for 6 weeks".  Well, there are a couple of exceptions (gift cards, the birthday party, and a pre-paid event.)  And my spouse ate out yesterday for lunch because he was too tired to pack a lunch after a long business trip - he got stuck on the East Coast an extra day due to weather.

Anyway, here's the summary so far:

Note that this week (week 7), is still not over.  And I'm sending my husband out for vanilla and yogurt for another batch of muffins, so it will go up by a few bucks.

I'm still "over" for the year because of the first 3 weeks before I set a budget.  I'm hoping that a bunch of $70-75 weeks will let me catch up.  It's easier to get a $70 week when my spouse is traveling.

What's on the menu this week?

Lunches Mom: salad (spinach, lettuce, arugula, leftover ham from Christmas from freezer)

Lunches Dad: turkey sandwiches

Dinners:

Saturday: Falafel (chickpeas were on sale for $1 for a pound dried), roast potatoes, kale chips

Sunday: Some sort of lentil thing, but I haven't figured out what

Monday: crockpot chicken (I'll be at a PTA meeting for 3 hours), broccoli

Tuesday: Leftover chicken, cole slaw

Wednesday: one-pot spaghetti, cole slaw

Thursday: Seriously unable to plan that far ahead.  Depends on leftovers - spaghetti?

Friday: Someone's birthday, hm...pizza? Nachos?

Other things that I'm cooking that don't fit into a category:
Spinach balls (actually, chard, beet green, collards).  We get a lot of greens.  I have to be creative.
Orange lemon poppy seed muffins
Hummus
Corn bread
Ham salad

Orange Lemon Poppyseed Muffins

So Sunday is park brunch day.  It rained last night, so I wasn't sure we were going to have it, but I wanted to be prepared.

I wasn't up to anything too difficult. I didn't sleep well last night and woke with a bit of a headache (thanks to 1/2 glass of wine too many at our parents' night out and hormones).  Wow, a night out!  It was fun, and for some reason, the babysitter can get our toddler to bed better than we can.

Pinterest led me to a few interesting recipes, and I picked one because I had a bunch of oranges and lemons from the farm and from friends.  But it called for poppy seeds (I had none) and plain yogurt (didn't have that either).  I didn't figure that banana yogurt would taste right.

So I headed to the store and used 10% of my weekly budget (ouch!) on poppy seeds (no cheap options at the close store) and a small yogurt.  It was worth it!  And now I have plenty of poppy seeds.

I pretty much followed the recipe here exactly, except that I didn't top with coarse sugar, because who has that?  Not me.  Still the hubby and older son loved them and they are almost gone. (No brunch today.) Pardon the crappy photo.  I mean, the photos on the original recipe are awesome.  I'm pretty sure nobody comes here for my photography. Just my witty personality.

The general weekend prep this week, in addition to the muffins, included BBQ chicken in the crockpot (for tacos), spinach balls (actually chard and beet green balls), steamed beets, plus lots of washing lettuce and radishes and hard boiling eggs for lunch time salads.

I also washed and froze dill for the freezer, and probably should do the same with the parsley, but I already have a ton of frozen parsley.  How much more do I need, really?

$1.69

So, I'm looking through the ads this week, and what do I see?

Quaker oats, 42 oz, on sale for $1.69. ($0.64 a pound)

But that's not the crazy thing.  It's says it's on sale from a regular price of $2.69.

Since when?  I JUST paid $3.99 last week at the same store!! ($1.52 a pound)

Grr.

You'd better believe that I'm buying 2 boxes, maybe 3.

Hmmmph.

The Oatmeal Death March

So today, I got a glimpse of what my life was like in 2009, when I embarked on the grocery budget challenge.  Back then, I was aiming for $160 or $320 a month (alternating months), not including the pre-paid CSA.

The problem with a tight budget is the inability (or difficulty) in stocking up.  In 2009, the $320 a month months were stock up months.  And of course, I rolled over unspent money to the next month.

This year, I started my $80 a week challenge 3 weeks in, and was already over budget by about $100 when I started.  So there is no "overflow" and won't be until probably April.  I periodically check to see when I break even.  I am lucky that I have bulk chicken breasts and pastured pork in the freezer right now, but when that runs out, it's going to be even more of a challenge than it is now.

Case in point: Oats.

I've been making granola a lot lately.  For V-day today, I decided to make oatmeal cookies.  When I checked the pantry, I realized I was short on both oats and brown sugar.  I knew a grocery shop was in the cards today, but I have only $22 left for the week.

My  memory tells me that oats are generally $0.80 on sale, and I can usually find them for $1 - $1.25 a pound not on sale.

Well, my memory sucks.  Here's what happened today:
1.  I wasn't going to check out Costco, because it's out by work (11 miles away).
2.  I remembered that oats are cheap at Whole Foods, and sometimes Lazy Acres.
3.  Since I was heading to Trader Joe's, I opted for Whole Foods because it is nearby.
4.  I needed milk at Ralphs.

Step 1:
- Ralphs: 42 oz oats on sale for $3.49.  $1.32 a pound.  A little expensive.  Also needed brown sugar.  $1.69/lb.  Opted to skip Ralphs.

- Trader Joe's: 2 lb oats for $4.  $2 a pound.  Nope.  Brown sugar: $3.49 a pound.  Nope.

- Whole Foods: Bulk oats at $1.79 a pound, and packaged was even more.  Nope.

- Albertson's (my regular store): I was sure it would be cheaper here.  $3.99 for 42 ounces, or $1.52 a pound.  And brown sugar $1.79 a pound.

At this point I couldn't stomach another stop, not even going back to Ralph's, which is on the way home.  So I spent $0.60 extra and learned a lesson (again).

When you are on a budget and out of something, it's a problem.  You end up spending more for non-sale items or smaller items.  (I also spent too much on hand soap yesterday.)  In order to get great deals, you have to keep your eye out for prices AND for the amount that you have.  If you are out of something, then you can just decide to make something else instead - this is a seriously good way to save money, and I've gotten better at it over the last few weeks.

So for today, I could have skipped the oats until I got a better price, and made chocolate chip cookies instead of oatmeal cookies.  But my husband doesn't like chocolate, so what's the point of making a Valentine's day "treat" if it's not a treat for your honey?

In the end, I split the dough, and half are oatmeal raisin, half oatmeal chocolate chip, because my big boy doesn't like raisins.

Greens Greens Greens!

It must be winter in Southern California.

My husband picked up the veggies this week at the CSA and ooh-boy, are they full of greens!  Craziness I say.  I know what we are eating this week.

Allow me to list:
kale - 2 bunches
chard - 1 bunch
"spicy greens" - 1 bunch
lettuce - 2 heads
spinach - 1 bag
turnips (with greens) - 1 bunch
beets (with greens) - 1 bunch
(We also got cauliflower, marinara, oranges)

So.  My goodness.

Today I fired up a pot of water with the steamer insert and started washing.

I first washed and steamed the turnip greens and beet greens, and put them in a bowl when done.

Then I washed and steamed the chard, and chopped the stems and tossed those into the crock pot with the black bean soup that's in there (recipe from Budget Bytes).

After that I washed the spicy mix and tossed it in there.  Generally the spicy mix is used in salad.  I could have done that and mixed it with the lettuce and spinach.  But I find it to be really spicy.  And as I suspect that we will be getting the spicy mix for several weeks, I decided to pace myself.

While the spicy mix was cooking, I smelled a strange burning smell. I  turned it off and moved it into the bowl.  Here's the bowl:

After it cooled, I pureed it in the food processor.  My favorite ways to eat greens are in soup, in frittata or quiche, as an Indian curry, mixed with an Asian sauce, or creamed.

These are destined to be creamed with cream cheese and parmesan.

As I started to wash the mountain of dishes, I noticed that the burning smell was the bottom of my big pot.  Ugh.  It's soaking right now, while the beets and turnips roast.

Does anyone have a good turnip recipe?  I admit, I don't care for them.  I've tried them many ways, but mostly end up choking them down with potatoes.

Superbowl Sunday

Well, I survived another week.  Thanks to Smowmaggeddon, my husband's trip to the frigid northeast was canceled last minute (well, postponed really, to an undecided date).  Yay!  The week ended up a social whirlwind.

I am a fairly social person for an engineer.  I have a lot of groups of friends and like to cultivate and embrace them.  But that's a lot of work.  On the Myers-Briggs surveys I tend to come in at ESTJ or INTJ.  I am weak in the E/I and S/N.  I find that when I was a supervisor of a group of six, I leaned more ESTJ.  But now that I'm more of an individual contributor, I lean more INTJ.  Interesting.

Anyway, this week sported:
Morning brunch potluck at the park (Sun) - standing weekly date
Elementary kid birthday party (tons of fun, lots of parents to talk to), it was at a ropes climbing course. (Sun)
PTA move-a-thon planning meeting (Mon)
Fundraiser for school at local pizza place (Tues) - are you tired yet?
Out for a glass of wine (and she brought cheese/ crackers, I took nuts) with a good friend (Weds)
Lunch out with a former boss and couple of others (Fri)
Lunch out with a good friend (Sat)

Well, it definitely hit all at once (that is 6 months worth of social engagements for me).  Also I had PMS so maybe my food choices weren't always the best (sometimes they were!)  I also had about 6 months worth of beer and wine (a total of 4 beers and 2 glasses of wine all week).

So for Superbowl Sunday?  There's our standing date for the potluck, then to the pool with the boys, then...nothing.  No plans, other than to occasionally check the score to see if I've won money in the pool (my numbers are 8 and 5, so...I'm not particularly hopeful).  And of course I wrote this yesterday, we all know I won no money.

Here's a snapshot of the CSA, the menu and cooking for the week:
Beets: roasted for salads, steamed the greens to go into a frittata for today's potluck
Lettuce and radishes: lunch salads
Butternut squash:  Roast
Cauliflower (from a coworker): Roast for tonight's dinner
Kale: chips (last night)
Parsley: I washed and spun 2 very large bunches and stuffed it into a small ziploc bag for the freezer.  No way I could have used it all up.

I also made refried beans in the crock pot (from 100 days of Real Food), but I must have put too much water in there.  They were like soup, so I had to cook them down for an hour after.  We used canned beans for last night's burritos.

Left to do today:
Make the frittata
Make granola
Figure out what to make for dinner.  There was an interesting chicken and lentil soup I saw on the kitchn this week.  So maybe that?  Or  maybe something else?  It's a bad sign that I haven't figured it out yet.
Wash the lettuce and radishes and some carrots for the week's lunches (mine and the 3rd grader's)

A few photos of the work - so much of the prep work is for lunches.

Here's an outside picture of my lunch (salad)

Here's my 3rd grader's lunch (that's homemade hummus!)

Here's some roasted carrots - my coworker gave me a bunch of HUGE free carrots, so I made them into "fries" and baked them.  And we'll probably not eat them until tomorrow.