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| January 8th: Chicken and stir-fry veggies on brown rice; unsweetened applesauce and blueberries. WW Points: 7 Money Saver: When running low on certain items, instead of doing a last minute trip to the store for that one item...see if you can find something slightly different in the pantry or freezer. Delayed gratification in the arena of groceries is hard. Living 15-20 minutes from our grocery store helps motivate me to use up what we have instead of paying a higher price at the closer store. We've been eating berries that we picked this summer as a fruit accompaniment to our dinners as fresh produce gets lower. |
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| January 9th: Once a week I teach an evening ESL class to parents in the district. It's really fun (and helps bring in money for the adoption!) but I also miss dinner with the family that night. So, I've gotten in the habit of having Thursday nights be breakfast night and leaving dinner in the fridge to be re-heated. My husband is very appreciative. This is a potato crust quiche, gluten free pancakes, whole wheat waffles, and a fruit salad (blueberries, satsumas, apples). This particular day I made a lot of gluten free pancakes and froze most of them so that the next week I'd just have to defrost. The waffles were defrosted from the previous week. You'll notice that we have been eating a lot of blueberries!! This is thanks to my parents' very fruitful blueberry bushes on their property! They like to share. We also try to pick a lot of blackberries over the summer on our after dinner walks to freeze. Money Saver: Plan ahead. While it would seem easier for my husband to pick up food on his way home with the kids and I wouldn't have to spend time making dinner ahead of time, this is costly. With just a little planning, I can leave a simple and inexpensive meal in the fridge for my family. |
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| Have you noticed that I just love Family Dinner Time? We eat dinner together almost every single night and I enjoy this season before the boys have schedules of their own. We eat dinner soon after my husband arrives home from work. He's always hungry then and so are we. There's something special about the dinner table as a meeting place, a family prayer location, a fellowship space..... I look forward to evolving conversations as the boys get older. I love to burn a candle (once 2 year old is strapped in his booster seat), and it's a nice break after the bustle of the day...especially since both kids can feed themselves now lol. Dinner with a baby is harder! |
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| January 10th: Homemade carrot ginger soup, mini grilled cheese sandwiches, oven roasted potatoes, and fruit (satsumas and blackberries). WW Points: 10 Money Saver: You might notice that my grilled cheese sandwich is made on a roll instead of regular bread. We're down to the last loaf of regular bread in the freezer. Before I go back to the bread outlet store (fun place) I'm trying to use up the "other" bread items we had bought. Using stuff up saves money! |
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| January 11th: Japanese curry and a strawberry Julius a la Aaron. My husband enjoys making Japanese food so sometimes on the weekend he will treat us to a homemade dinner and I get a break from cooking. It is great! I really appreciate it and it's very delicious. His Japanese curry has chicken, carrots, potatoes, water chesnuts, and some sauce he made with curry powder. Served on white rice. Strawberry Juliuses with strawberries we picked last summer (we're almost out :( WW Points: 11 |
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| January 12th: Sunday Leftovers!! Japanese curry and rice with blueberries in unsweetened applesauce. Massive amounts of curry was made on Saturday so there was plenty for Sunday and also Monday's lunch haha! I couldn't quite eat all of this. It's very filling! |
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| One fun thing about having my kids home is that they really get to be a part of the runnings of the house and, as Mateo has gotten older, he's much more interested in helping in the kitchen. One of our favorite things to do is make pizza! This day he was a "Pizza Robot" (4 1/2 year old loves robots) and laid out dough, spread the sauce, sprinkled the cheese, and added toppings. He's getting old enough to where he's actually very helpful and I really like working with him. Alex is fun in the kitchen, but with a 2 year old it is, of course, more work to have them "help" you. But he loves to be included. |
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| January 13th: Homemade pizza with cheese, veggies, and turkey pepperoni, green beans (frozen) with slivered almonds, applesauce and blueberries. WW Points: 10 (plus the extra piece I ate that isn't pictured! :) Aaron got his own personal size gluten free pizza. His was BBQ chicken pizza as we ran out of pepperoni. I have little zip locs full of 1/2 cup cooked chicken in the freezer to pull out for Aaron's lunches and sometimes I use them for pizza as well. |
January 14th: Burritos with homemade tortillas, pinto beans (from the freezer), cheese, onion; Spanish-style rice; corn; apple slices. You can maybe tell we're running low on fruit options but I always try to have some sort of fruit and veggie with dinner if possible. WW Points:11
Tomorrow is grocery day! Time to pull out the walking shoes and muscles. My kids, surprisingly, like being at the grocery store. Give them a twistie and they're happy. They've always come with me so they're used to it. Though it is a looong errands trip as we stop by Trader Joe's afterward as well to buy Alex's goat milk. But hey- TJs has stickers and tiny shopping carts! I'm already plotting how I'll do grocery shopping with 3. One in the front pack, one in the front of the cart, one in the back of the cart? We'll hit that bridge when we get there. I'm excited. Here are the totals on grocery expenses so far: $171.07 We're on par to stay within budget. I'm somewhat exhausted, but I view this and any other money-saving venture as a way I contribute to our income. Here's the break down:
WinCo: 101.72
Fred Meyer: $8.78
Trader Joe's $6.98
CostCo: $40.15
Safeway: $13.44
CostCo was actually paid on a gift card we got for Christmas but for the purpose of this blog I'm still going to count it as an expense. I'm not a huge fan of Costco. Actually, I love it. But all the convenience foods are tempting. The samples are delicious and they lure you into buying the pre-made this and that to make your life easier. We just can't do that right now in this season. And who can leave Costco without buying a frozen yogurt? Am I right? We used our gift card to buy cheese, butter, and soy milk (for Aaron), and a bag of satsumas.
Happy Meal Planning and Money Saving! Until next week...
Great tips! And this is making me hungry. :)
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