eat.sweet

Ahhh the first shopping day of June. This week’s menu is summer-y. Also, our freezer is starting to get full so I’m only cooking twice.

$49 @ Stop and Shop

– wheat bread
– half gallon of milk
– Smart Balance butter/shortening sticks (1 lb)
– soymilk
– deli chicken breast
– deli asiago cheese
– granola bars
– Golden Grahams cereal
– can of diced tomatoes
– chocolate chips
– chicken tenders (3/4 lb)
– tortilla chips
– 1 jalapeno pepper
– 1 onion
– 1 English cucumber
– asparagus, 1 lb
– cantaloupe
– shallots
– salsa 

$2.50 @ Chinese market
– sesame oil
– Thai peanut sauce 

The Menu (June 8-14)

Sunday – chicken satay, sticky rice, cucumber salad

Monday & Tuesday – shiitake & bacon pasta

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday – things from the pantry; probably something like pesto, veggie burgers, mac & cheese

Saturday – out?

We spent $56 this week. I don’t have a lot of cooking to do this week, but somehow I caught up in buying too many snack foods. (Remember, green items are organic, blue are marked as “natural”)

$30 @ Whole Foods
– potato chips
– spicy pork sausage
– lettuce
– mushrooms
– green pepper
– ginger
– red potatoes (3)
– Cotswold cheese
– bread
– deli cheese
– deli salami

$26 @ Stop & Shop
– whipping cream
– light mayonnaise
– 2 Lean Cuisines
– 48 oz chicken broth
– chocolate pudding snack packs
– Wheat Thins
– garbanzo beans
– box of whole wheat pasta
– box of bowtie pasta
– light coconut milk
– broccoli rabe
– 2 carrots

The Menu (Week of May 26 – 31)

Sunday & Monday – still in St. Louis

Tuesday – Dinner @ the brewery for DL

Wednesday & Thursday – Pasta with sausage & broccoli rabe

Friday – out (Brian’s birthday!)

Saturday & Sunday – curry soup

I just realized that I had drafts of posts that I never published. That’s why it looks like I just made 4 new posts in one day.

It’s shopping day already! Because we got free dinners & ate improve meals last week, and because we’re going away for the long weekend, I can afford to spend more. This week is full of good eating and I got to restock on olive oil.

$63 @ Whole Foods
– Greek yogurt (single serving)
– plain nonfat yogurt (32oz)
– olive oil
– chocolate mint oreos
– water crackers
– pine nuts, bulk
– apples (3)
– banana (1)
– kale, 2 small bunches
– arugala
– lemon (1)
– garlic
– basil
– mozzarella cheese, 8 oz
– manchego cheese
– deli turkey
– deli muenster cheese
– boneless skinless chicken breasts (2)
– yams (2)

The Menu

Sunday & Monday – Little Thimbles pasta and sauteed kale; It was a great meal! The pasta dish needs a better name and I only put in 4 oz of mozzarella (instead of 8). I’ve eaten raw kale before and it was gross. This was my first time cooking it and it was really good.

Tuesday – Split Pea Burgers and sweet potato wedges

Wednesday & Thursday – Chicken Pesto Pizza with arugula salad

Thursday through Monday – Going to St. Louis, hopefully the in-laws will give us good meals

I had another embarrassingly expensive week. I’ll just get right into it.

$58.00 @ Stop ‘n Shop

– English muffins (buy 1 get 1 free!)
– shredded cheese
– pepperoni
– smoked cheddar cheese
– water crackers
– rainbow sprinkles
– canned tuna (2)
– Crisco
– powdered sugar
– enchilada sauce
– cream of tartar
– tortillas
– Wheat Thins
– black bean tortilla chips
– butter
– green pepper
– onions (2)
– potato
– lettuce
– grapes

$3 @ Chinese market

– chopped dried seaweed
– lime
– piece of bulk tofu; it’s soooo cheap!

Two factors that doubled my grocery bill this week:

1) Went shopping at 9pm. The deli was closed, and I don’t like the taste & texture of prepackaged deli meats. I stupidly came up with the idea that we’d have tuna or egg salad one or two days, and then make some adult Lunchables for other days. We got smoked cheddar, Boar’s Head Pepperoni, crackers, and grapes. $18 right there. Fucking grapes cost $3/lb and only come in 2lb bags = $6 for grapes. WTF.

2) Right before I left to go shopping, I watched a brand new episode of Good Eats. I love Good Eats and there hasn’t been a new episode in forever. The subject of the show? Cupcakes! I also loooove cupcakes. I immediately amended my grocery list to include the ingredients for cupcakes. Hence the shortening, powdered sugar, cupcake papers, sprinkles, and cream of tartar. $10 (not including the butter)

Bam! Half of my grocery money was spent on bougie things I didn’t need. Speaking of bougie things I don’t need – I wanted to get a pedicure this week so that I could start wearing open-toed shoes. (I indulge in pedicures like twice a year; at the beginning and middle of sandal season) But after this trip, that’s not going to happen this week. Boo.

The Menu

Sunday – frozen mushroom pizza from last week

Monday – miso soup and Asian lettuce wraps

Tuesday – split pea burgers

Wednesday & Thursday – massaman tofu curry

Friday & Saturday – bean & cheese enchiladas

I made bad choices this week.  

$78 @ Whole Foods
– brown rice
– split peas
– yeast
– vegetable broth
– cereal
– cooking spray
– sun dried tomatoes
– wheat thins type crackers
– garbanzo beans
– diced tomatoes
– chicken leg (1/2 lb)
– cajun sausage (1/2 lb)
– celery
– rosemary
– white, shitake, and other weird mushrooms
– green pepper
– onion
– mesclun greens salad
– goat cheese
– parmesan cheese
– fontina cheese
– burger buns
– bread
– cheddar deli cheese
– deli ham

I only have $1 left on my food stamp card.  How embarrassing that it’s my first month of the blog and I’m going to go way past my budget!  I could have made better choices though.  For example, the sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil cost $7, while the plain dried stuff cost $4.  But I bought the ones in oil because they taste better and now I feel guilty.  Also, one of the recipes that I decided to make, Mushroom Pizza, turned out to be very expensive.  It didn’t occur to me when I chose the recipe.  I even used half the amount of mushrooms, less than half the amount of goat cheese they called for and omitted the prosciutto.  Here’s the rundown of the costs:

• $6 for 1/2 lb of loose shitake, button, & wood-ear mushrooms
• .75 for a packet of yeast
• $4 for fontina cheese (I used the entire amount
• $2 for goat cheese (half of the $4 log)
• $1 for fresh rosemary (part of a $3 bunch; i don’t know what to do with the rest of it) 
• plus the cost of parmesan cheese

$14, which made 3 personal-sized pizzas, one of which is in the freezer for next week.  I probably spent less than half of that to make 8 split pea burgers.  There’s a pizza place in town that does a delicious wild mushroom pizza and a large costs a few bucks more than what it cost me to make it.  Factor in the labor (it takes a long time to slice all those mushrooms and grate all of the cheese) and it’s probably cheaper just to buy it!  If you still want to try the recipe though, it’s very very good.  It was my first time using strange looking mushrooms, fresh rosemary (amazing!), and yeast to make my own dough yet everything was perfect.

I ate dinner out way more than usual this month yet I still went overbudget on groceries!  Between the $21 spent on pizza and sun-dried tomatoes, I could have had money leftover to get me through the end of the month. Thinking back on it, I think I usually do one full grocery shop per month at the non-organic grocery store, just out of convenience because it’s less crowded and open longer.  I didn’t do that this month, so maybe that’s what made my bill higher than usual?  Don’t worry, I won’t starve.  It just means a little less recreation money next week.  I’m just annoyed at not having better discipline.

The Menu

Monday – Mushroom and Three Cheese Pizza

Tuesday – Penne with Mixed Greens & Goat Cheese

Wednesday – leftovers

Thursday – crockpot jambalaya

Friday – leftovers

Saturday – homemade split-pea burgers

ideas for cheap eating the week after:  the last mushroom pizza, more split pea burgers, veggie stir fry, bean enchiladas.  I’m going to try to keep it under $30.  That way, I’ll be under $200 for the month, and an average of $50/wk for two people still sounds pretty good.
 

I spent about $65 this trip. I feel like I bought a lot of groceries this week, but I didn’t spend as much as I thought. I couldn’t get all of my ingredients at one store, so I ended up having to go to 3 different stores; But I went all in one trip, and they were all within a mile of each other anyway.

Items in green are organic, items in blue aren’t classified as organic but are advertised as hormone-free, antibiotic-free, preservative-free or some combination of those. Whole Foods is the specialty natural foods grocery, while Stop ‘n Shop is just a regular average giant grocery store.

$45.31 @ Whole Foods
– Silk soymilk
– chocolate chip cookies
– quart of milk
– cream cheese
– raisin bran cereal
– annato seeds
– frozen peas
– eggs
– bacon
– baby greens salad mix
– scallions
– leeks
– onion
– shallot
– smoked salmon
– sourdough bread
– pepper jack deli cheese
– smoked chicken deli cheese

$8.75 @ Stop ‘n Shop
– tomato sauce
– portobello mushrooms (2)
– red bell pepper
– 4 potatoes
– chicken broth
– Goya Sazon seasoning

$2.50 @ Chinese market
– nori seaweed sheets

The Menu

Sunday – Portobello Mushroom & Roasted Red Pepper maki rolls, smoked salmon & cream cheese maki rolls, some spring rolls I have in the freezer.

Monday – Potato Leek Soup, salad

Tuesday – leftovers; I will probably keep eating the soup for lunch throughout the week.

Wednesday – Jerk Pork Chops with yellow rice and peas.  I had pork in the freezer.

Thursday – leftovers; I will only cook half of the pork chops on Wednesday and the other half on Thursday. This way we don’t have to eat dried out leftover meat.

Today was my first grocery shopping trip of the month. I think I last went shopping on the 30th. My food stamp month actually begins on the 4th, which is when I get the next month’s money. I’m not sure how to format my grocery shopping lists, but let’s see how it goes. Organic items will be marked in green.

42.06 @ Whole Foods:
– mixed nuts (1 lb for $5!)
– frozen waffles
– chocolate mint oreo-type cookies
– box of tomato-basil risotto
– Graham Bumpers cereal (like Golden Grahams)
– maple syrup, 12 oz
– head of red leaf lettuce
– cilantro
– red onion
– plum tomatoes (2)
– asparagus, 1 lb
– green bell pepper
– fresh sea scallops (12 oz, on sale)

I still need to buy broccoli, which Whole Foods didn’t have. Shopping was light this week because I won’t be home for dinner on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday plus I’m using a few things we have in the freezer. And we still have bread and sandwich fixins from last week, so I didn’t have to buy those.

The Menu

Sunday – Scallops and asparagus with risotto; I’m not sure if I will use the boxed risotto or make my own.

Monday – leftovers for him; I’m driving 2 hours to a wine & cheese reception at one of the graduate schools I got accepted to. I might stop at Wendy’s if I’m still hungry.

Tuesday – boxed mac ‘ n cheese, side of broccoli; I once bought a 12-pack of Annie’s Mac ‘n Cheese at Costco for like $8! It will probably last us a year.

Wednesday – Chicken burritos, maybe a side of black beans; using chicken, tortillas, and cheese that I already had in the freezer and canned beans that I stocked up on when they were on sale.

Thursday – leftovers

Friday – On Fridays, I work with a program that brings urban middle & high school kids to visit college campuses. I get to eat in the college dining halls for free. Brian will either scrounge in the cabinets or go out.

Saturday – out. (We ended up going to Taco Bell)

Money remaining: $138.65 (I must have had some money leftover last month)