May's First Grocery Trip

Breakfast: Get whatcha want

Lunch: Egg-y, cheesy casserole thing that Claire threw together (and wheat-free brownies for dessert)

Dinner: Hamburger steak, baked okra, corn - with ice cream sandwiches for dessert!

First of all, I got paid yesterday, bringing the total to $904.26. Then Mama and I headed to Walmart and Sam's around 2pm. I do not like getting away so late, but we were home before 6:30pm, so I guess it's not that bad. We spent $411.09 (YES! Under budget! A little...), leaving the grocery money with $493.17.

Here's a little tip that ... I failed on yesterday. Check to make sure your coffee beans are NOT decaf, preferably before you got through the checkout line, but definitely before you get home. :/ An emergency coffee bean run may be in our near future.

Ting-a-lings

First of all, after receiving the money that the clothing envelope owed groceries, and after repaying myself (after having to supplement the grocery money from my own funds the other day), the grocery money is not in the hole! It has exactly $36.26 until a few days from now when, thankfully, I get paid again!

Breakfast: Baked basil-egg cup things

Lunch: Left-overs

Dinner: Soup and homemade crescent rolls

I made Ting-a-lings yesterday morning. I opted for those because I was hot, and the thought of doing cookies was less than delightful to me. Also, I love Ting-a-lings/haystacks, and they're incredibly easy.

• 1 bag of butterscotch chips
• 1/2 bag of chow mein noodles
• 1 to 1 1/2 cups peanuts

Melt the butterscotch chips. I did it in the microwave, but be careful. They do burn/scorch pretty easily. If you think they've already reached that point, but just barely, then add a little coconut oil, butter, or shortening. That should get it usable again, but that only works if you've not burned them too badly. Stir in the noodles and peanuts. Drop in whatever sized stacks you want on wax paper and let cool. Enjoy!

Plan ahead

That is such a wonderful concept, and oh, so convenient... when I can remember to do it. Yesterday, I did it. Somewhat. Sort of.

Breakfast: Bacon, cream of wheat, cereal, etc.

Lunch: Tomato soup with macaroni noodles. That's my go-to meal when we're out of time, and are nearly out of everything -  including left-overs. Unfortunately, we're now pretty much out of tomato products (well, we still have a ton of paste, but that doesn't quite work...). Thankfully we're going to go grocery shopping Friday.

Dinner: I knew I was going to do something with chicken, so I'd gotten a whole chicken out and thawed in the morning. After sticking it in a sink of hot water (BEST way to thaw something quickly, by the way), I searched Pinterest for "whole chicken." THIS recipe came up, and was well reviewed in the comments. I love crockpot meals, so I thought I'd give it a try. I will admit that I was a bit skeptical. I usually cook whole chickens roasted in the oven so that the skin gets nicely browned. To my delight, this chicken turned out not too noticeably different from the oven roasted version, and, of course, the crock pot was a great deal easier to clean than the roaster! Along with that chicken, we had THESE rolls, and green beans. One tip: start the rolls before 4:45pm if you want to eat dinner before 7:00pm... Circumstances beyond my control prevented me from doing so. We ate late, but the rolls were good!

Back again

But I'm not going to even try to remember everything we've eaten since I last logged on here. Suffice it to say, we've had plenty, remained in a perpetually stuffed state, and nearly eaten our way into sugar comas. It's been a great Christmas! Over the past week or so, Daddy picked up some groceries for us, totaling $48.50, bringing the grocery money to $638.22.

Here's some food-related fun we've had in the last week or two:

Chocolate mints using THIS recipe.

Obviously, I decided to dip the mints instead of top them. One tip if you decide to do this recipe: Keep them in the freezer. I did most of the time, and they were delicious that way. But I also wanted to see how they held up out of the freezer. Well, they held up okay, but the chocolate got grainy...

The final result of our plum pudding adventures! Much to our surprise, it was actually pretty good! We just need to add more nuts and cook it somewhat less. Still, we were fairly pleased with the end result, especially since we've never done it before!

A slow and drizzly Monday

That's certainly what yesterday was like! So much so that I didn't feel like I actually got going until 3:30pm! I did a few things here and there, but it was just slow...

Breakfast: Get whatcha want.

Lunch: Ditto... (Told ya it was slow...) I had a clementine.

Dinner: Daddy made turkey pot pie with more Thanksgiving left-overs.

I'm excited about a little project that was partially completed in the kitchen yesterday! Towel bars were installed! They're going to help us organize the lids to our pots! The pots and lids were all together in the cabinet, and it was terrible trying to find the right lid and extract it without pulling others along with it. Hopefully these will add a cheap, simple, but significant measure of sanity to our kitchen life. 

We'll be adding one or two longer towel bars on the wall on the right; the plan right now is for those to hold our larger lids. I'm really excited to see such progress to our home organization!

WHAT'S ON THE MENU!

For Thursday:

Breakfast: Get whatcha want.

Lunch: Apple salad.

Dinner: Tomato soup, sauteed mushrooms, and bacon! Although there weren't many mushrooms left... *guilty*

BTW, y'all, I learned a rather neat trick yesterday. I was making white chocolate haystacks (of sorts... we didn't/don't have salted peanuts or cashews.), and having issues melting the white chocolate chips. I decided to stop before I burned them and do a little research. Turns out, I probably had already taken them just a little too far, but if I added a little bit of coconut oil it would stir in and continue the melting process. This would probably work with vegetable oil too, but I read to use coconut oil if you wanted the chocolate to harden at room temperature. And, of course, I did. Well, it worked like a charm! I was SO happy to find this out; I don't know how many times I've dumped a batch of white chocolate because I thought I'd heated it past redemption.

Cookies, Bread, and Purees - Oh My!

Lame attempt at a clever title, I know. Moving on! Yesterday was a very busy kitchen day for me, and if I had to guess, today probably will be too. The morning began with a batch of chocolate chip cookies (I use the recipe on the back of the Hershey's semi-sweet chocolate chip bags; I've found that to be our family's favorite so far.). Before I'd even washed the dirty dishes from those, I did a batch of bread. While the loaves rose, I caught up on the dishes, and even had a couple minutes to sit down! Once those when in the oven, I started dinner: Crock Pot Chicken Enchilada Soup. Then we had a brief-ish lunch interlude, and finally the real project of the day began: deal with the many butternut/honeynut squash we've acquired recently. But first, here's the menu:

Breakfast: Get whatcha want - I had yogurt.

Lunch: Fresh bread

Dinner: Chicken Enchilada Soup

Now the project description ('cause I know y'all are just dyin' to hear about the last 6 hours of my day yesterday). I combined my own meager knowledge with several online descriptions of ways to do this type of thing. I came up with the following, probably inefficient, way of doing it:

Dinner in the crock pot, squash in the food processor and microwave!

- Rinse squash, slice in half lengthwise, scoop seeds and string-y stuff out. (BTW, the disposal doesn't like squash seeds very much, so you might want to put them directly in to the trash or compost.)

- Place meat-side down (or skin-side up, if you prefer) in a glass dish

- Cover and microwave for 10 to 15 minutes, until it's soft.

- Scoop squash out of skin, and place in food processor

- Once the food processor is about half-full (or a little less), process until thoroughly ... unstring-y. I took each batch about 5 minutes in the food processor, and it came out about the consistency of peanut butter (for the honeynut - a bit soupier for the buttenut)

- Bag up and freeze! I did a gallon or so this way.

They're gone again...

The band members and Mama are off once more. This time they're in east Tennessee for the Museum of Appalachia's Homecoming event. Neat event, if y'all are ever over that way this time of year. That's not the point though; the point is, when half or more of the family is gone, I don't feel like cooking. Or rather, I don't find the mess I make when I cook for "less than or equal to" 3 people worth cleaning up. So, here's yesterday's rather pitiful menu:

Breakfast: Eggs and bacon (They were still here at that point - besides, Mama did breakfast!). I had yogurt.

Lunch: Luke and I were home alone. We needed to go to town for some things, so we picked up a cheap-ish frozen pizza and had that once we got back. I splurged a little "for him" (I was feeling a little sorry for myself...) and got a small bag of those cheese puff things - not Cheetos, those would've been WAY better - and a box of cereal.

Dinner: Luke and I were still home alone. Neither of us are too keen on the clean up a normal meal requires, so we had popcorn. I had another yogurt as well.

Yesterday I spent $7.66 bringing the total to $690.53, minus however much Daddy spent on the grocery run earlier this week. I need to get that receipt...

Shopping Tip: Never go grocery shopping when you're feeling sorry for yourself! I barely made it out of the store without ice cream, candy, and cookies!