C gets paid every other Thursday. I (am such a dork)…no I have a spread sheet of possible dinner ideas that we have made and liked. I do this not to be anal but because when I don’t we tend to eat the same thing every 2 weeks. It helps me remember more creative dinners we have made so i don’t have to spend hours going through cook books to try and “spice it up” a bit. Although you all know I do that anyway, darn being a foodie. I think I probably think about food 80% of my day. Not in an unhealthy way mind you, but in a “food is my hobby there is so much that you can do with it” kind of way.
We have so far planted squash, zucchini, three or four different types of tomato, jalapenos, poblanos, two types of habeneros, hot banana peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, and beans, and possibly some other things i can’t remember. I am keeping a journal of how much we spend on the garden so at the end of the year I can figure out if we actually did save money having the garden vs buying food at the grocery. BUT in the meantime we go grocery shopping every 2 weeks. I make my list of dinners we would like to eat in the next 2 weeks, make a list of what we need in order to make those dinners, and modify based on our $100 budget. This week we are going over a bit because we are buying some things in bulk so that NEXT payday we can spend less. We are mainly buying the expensive things in bulk until we can make/grow them ourselves. Meat, oil, butter, things like that. C bought me a 50lb bag of unbleached unenriched bakers flour two weeks ago and i havent even made a dent in it (after making 8 loaves of bread, 20 tortillas, pancakes, pasta, and various other goodies). We also have 25 meat birds that will be ready for slaughter in 4 months which will be a HUGE help.
So what does our grocery list look like? it’s almost 100% vegetables with some lemon juice (we go through 1 large jar a week of the organic kind), cheese, and some various bulk food items. NOTHING IS FROM A BOX (except the Annies mac and cheese). What will we do with it?
Dinners:
french bread pizza with broccoli salad, thai chicken salad with peanut sauce, kale and quinoa patties with spicy mayo and mac and cheese (2 nights), roast chicken and veggies, pork stir fry, taco skillet with beans, ranch taco salad, spinach and mushroom quiche, stuffed cabbage rolls, black bean burgers with cole slaw, 3 cheese and spinach tortellini with grilled squash (2 nights), stuffed chili peppers
Snacks:
Bagels, Zucchini bread, Banana bread, oatmeal raisin cookies, snickerdoodles,
Breakfasts:
upside-down Apple pancakes, egg sandwiches, french toast, frittata, Omelete, strawberry pancake, breakfast burrito, and pork biscuit sandwiches
Lunches:
leftovers, green goddess sandwiches, feta and spinach fritters, ranch chicken club roll-ups, chicken salad sandwiches, bacon sandwiches, eggplant sandwiches, fish tacos, burritos.
As you can see we eat pretty darn well, and other than the extra we are spending on butter, and meat we are within our $100 budget. Once the garden starts producing and our chickens are ready we will be spending even less. i’m pretty excited about the whole thing!!!
