Dinner Tonight

made a quick dinner for russ and myself tonight. I made four cheese lasagna hamburger helper with italian sausage with Pillsbury grands biscuits and salad. So... thats:
hamburger helper: .75
1 lb Italian sausage: 2.00
biscuits: .50 (well we only ate three, so that's not quite .50 but I don't wanna do that math)
salad- ok here's the hard math
Romaine 1.00. I used 2 leaves of what 16? So thats about .12
3/4 a roma tomato which was about .20 cents so that makes it about .15
2 stalks of green onion which was .69 and how many of them were there? 8? about $0.16
1 baby carrot and dressing. yeah I'm not counting all that. I'm rounding off the whole salad to .50 cents

Total: $3.75
plus lots of leftovers. Not to bad.

Food Waste Wednesday

Not the best week, but I think I'm improving. I see improvement at least. In the picture:
1 apple
1 banana
3/4 yellow pepper
8 oz mozzarella
just a little over 1 cup bagged salad.

I can never(!) eat the last banana. I don't know why. It doesn't matter if I buy 8 or 2, the last banana never gets eaten! The cheese I'm actually proud of because I've had this for a while and it was good for a long time. I used 1/2 the block then it finally turned. I bought the yellow pepper and have been adding little bits to salad, but couldn't use it up in time I guess. But you know what's not in this picture:
The tub of cottage cheese Russ finished!

Debt Confessions

Okay, so I have debt. As much as I try to be frugal, I have debt. (Actually...my debt inspired my frugality) and I had a plan to help ease my debt but that didn't work. I was declined. Sad. My mom loaned me money for school, about $1000 (I did pay off about $400 already) and then my credit card debt just started somehow racking up. To the tune on $2300. I finally (!) came clean to my mom about my debt and she immediately took action and transferred $2400 into my bank account. So yay! my credit card is finally and officially paid off. I thought this was going to take years! But now I owe my mom just under $3000. Luckily for me she gave me a really low interest rate- because yes, I made her put interest on my loan. Now, I'm going to pack away my credit card and use it only for emergencies! My new debit card is in the mail, and I will try and use cash much more often!
Debt: $3000

Menu Plans

K, here's a super rough draft of my dinner plans this week:

Sunday: Work till 11
Monday: (If this is gross, I'm giving up on my slow cooker!) Italian chicken
Tuesday: Dinner with mom
Wednesday: Lemon Chicken
Thursday: Italian Sausage Lasagna Hamburger helper
Friday: Farmhouse chicken
Saturday: Soup in a bread bowl

Dinner Tonight

I love my slow cooker. I love coming home knowing dinner is already cooked. But tonight, well...dinner was gross. I made 20 garlic chicken which came to a rough total of $3.50 and it was not good! So I made myself chicken nuggets and russ ate a bagel.
I served the chicken with knorr's alfredo pasta sides and zucchini. The only thing we ate was the zucchini!

Dinner Tonight

Made dinner tonight. Somehow I got the dates wrong on my meal plan post- I worked last night and made dinner on Wed and well, I just didn't wanna make french toast so I made the pork chops instead. I just breaded the boneless pork chops with an italian crumb/parm seasoning blend and pan fried them in olive oil. Then I made a sauce out of 1 c chicken stock and 1/3 chive and onion cream cheese till it thickened into a sauce. I served it with biscuits and veggie sticks.
Pork chops: 4.00
chicken stock: 1/2 a .83 can- .40
Cream cheese: 1/2 a 1.99 tub- 1.00
veggies: carrots and radishes: roughly .25
biscuits: 1/2 a .50 can- .25.
The meal was about $6.50. Not terribly expensive, but I really want to try and make sure dinners cost less than $5 in the future!

Dinner Tonight

Dinner tonight was pretty good, if I do say so myself! We had Italian Pot Roast and mashed potatoes and corn and salad.
The Pot Roast was a Hormel Refrigerated Entree I got at Albertsons for 4.99 -1.ooQ 1.00DQ=2.99
The mashed potatoes were Country Crock for 3.99 -1.00Q -1.00DQ= 1.99
The corn are these great little individual cups at walmart, a pk of 4 is 1.60 so 1 is a little less than .50 cents. Russ likes corn and I do not, so I ate the leftover packaged salad.
I was skeptical about those Hormel entrees but it was really good! With a coupon, I highly recommend.
the total came to about 5.50, plus I have leftover potatoes for tomorrows lunch.
Plus, it came together iin like 10 min!

Grocery Shopping day

Since my schedule is so irregular, I have to shop when I get the day off. Today was my day off and I think I did pretty good.

ALBERTSONS:
2 lean cuisines 1.88 ea
1 Rhodes Garlic rolls 2.69 -1.00Q -1.00 Double Q
1 Can Soup at Hand 1.00 -.50Q -.50DQ
2 pkg Hormel Fridge entree 4.99 -1.00Q 1.00DQ -(another) 2.00Q
1 1lb bag baby carrots 1.00
2 Luna bars 1.29- 1.29 B1G1Q (not pictured)
TOTAL: 13.79
TOTAL SAVINGS; 22.39
(I Love saving more than I spent!!)

HARMONS:
(Sorry no picture, I took one and put everything away, then went to upload the pic and couldn't find it!)

4 Diet coke 12 pks 16.00 -2.00Q
3 Progresso soups 2.00 ea -1.10Q
1 Blue Cheese dressing 1.00
1 womans world mag 1.79 (it had Tara from the biggest loser on the cover. HAD TO HAVE IT!!)
Green Giant frozen immunity boost blend 1.50
3 Hamburger helpers 1.50 ea -.75Q
Betty Crocker Garlic mashed potato mix 1.50
2 Pilsbury Grands Biscuits 1.50 ea -1.00 Q
Fig Newton snack pack 1.00
Yoplait delights 2.00 -1.00Q
1 orange .93
-5.00 betty crocker coupon
-.10 bag credit
-10.00 Gift Certificate (I won this buy helping a customer and my name got put in a drawing that, yup I won)
TOTAL: 19.13
TOTAL SAVINGS: 24.38.
Yeah! I saved more than I spent again!

Food Waste Wednesday

Yeah! Look how little my food waste is. It's not perfect, but I sure have come a long way. This makes me happy! In this picture:
1 Lime
1 Fruit Snax bar- I can't even remember when I bought this; found it in the back of my pantry and since it's organic, (w/ no preservatives) I figured I better throw it out.
Leftover pizza fondue
The pasta sauce I didn't use to make pizza fondue.
I know I should have used up that sauce, and eaten the leftover fondue, but I am still pretty impressed with my progress!

Dinner Tonight

Tonight I made Asian beef patties with Peanut Ramen noodle salad...well, that was the intention. I made the sauce for the ramen and it was gross. Instead, I just used the regular old seasoning packets.
The cost breakdown:
Ground beef: 2.00
Ramen noodles: .16 ea x2
green onion: .20
Salad .75 plus fixings. rounding to 1.00
The sauce I threw out:
peanut butter ~.25
Teriyaki Sauce ~.20
Garlic ~.05
Cider Vinegar ~.25
= .75
Okay. I feel better. If my numbers are correct I only wasted about $1.
Total cost of dinner (including waste): 4.27.
Plus I have lunch for tomorrow.
This dinner was cheap, but only so-so. The salad was the best part. Anyway, I'm glad I used some of the meat in the freezer and the ramen I bought back in January!

Menu Plans

I always plan on all these fancy dinners to make and when it comes right down to it, I never wanna cook! I'm gonna keep trying though. Here's this week's plan.

Sunday: Asian Beef patties with Ramen noodle salad.
Monday: I work 3-11 (so I'm off the hook for cooking dinner)
Tuesday: Dinner at my moms
Wednesday: Work 3-11
Thursday: Pork chops with a parm chive sauce. Mashed potatoes and salald.
Friday: French Toast
Saturday:20 Garlic slow cooker chicken. Rice and zucchini.

I'll post about how well the meals turn out and how much they approx cost in my efforts to save. And don't be surprised to see that my plans have changed and I've made something else!

Grocery Shopping day

I went to the grocery store today and was pretty proud of myself (...at first.) I had a grocery list and everything! And my new coupon binder.
ALBERTSONS:
Kikoman's Teriyaki sauce 2.29 -.55Q
Sanitas tortilla chips: 1.88
Rice cakes 1.89
V8 blend juice 2.00 ea. 4.00- 1.00Q
Country crock mashed potatoes 3.99-1.00Q
Turkey lunch meat 4.99-1.00Q
green onion .69
radish bunch .69
plus Albertsons has those great Double my coupon coupons so that's about -3.00Q!
Total: 14.39
Total savings: 12.65

WALMART:
Ok, here's where I got a little off track. Still pretty happy though; I got lunch for like a month!
Dozen eggs (not pictured) .98
Zucchini .55
Red onion .54
Tomato .36
Dole salad 1.98
Spinach 2.38
Hairspray 3.22
Shaving gel 2.24-1.50Q
Shampoo 3.08
Luna bar .75
Wanchai Ferry Garlic Chicken 6.00-4.00Q
Marie Calendars Pot Pies 2.00x 3
Marie Calendars Frozen dinners. 1.67x3
Lean Cuisines 2.00x3-1.00Q
Total: 37.03
Total Savings: (approx) 13.54

Dinner Tonight

I made dinner again tonight! yeah! I'm on a roll. I made Brown Sugar Chicken. The chicken was just okay; Stephanie at A Year of Slow Cooking raved about it, so I was expecting something different, I guess. Russ said he'd eat it again.

The chicken was from a bag of thighs I bought at Costco a LONG time ago, and russ has been after me for a while to make them. (He said he was proud of me for cooking them tonight!!) They cost like $8 and there's like oh 15 in there so that's like um.....54 cents each. I used 4 of them so that's 2.16.
The brown sugar, vinegar and soy sauce are (I consider) pantry staples plus I have no clue how much I bought them for, nor how much 2 tbsp would be so...
The lemon-lime soda was 1.39. The recipe only calls for about 1/4 c but I never would have bought it otherwise (yet...I did drink the rest).
I served it with Chicken and Garlic Rice-a-roni that was 1.00. I severely overcooked it, so look for it in future food waste blogs.
And bagged salad that was 1.67 and this was the third and forth servings of the bag, so that's about .83 plus fixings. I'm rounding to 1.00
SO
my total was $5.38.
I would have made it under $5 if I didn't wreck the rice! (It made about 6 servings but I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna eat the rest, so I'm counting the whole dollar. ) Sad.

Dinner Tonight

I made dinner tonight...sorta. Tonight Russ and I went to my store party. I've mentioned before the perks and (many) downfalls of working at a grocery store. Well, one of the perks is that we had a party today. Russ and I went and there was a prize drawing and Yours Truly won the Vizio 22" Flatscreen TV!! I was super excited.
Then when we got home, it was late and I was not about to cook a whole dinner, and my mom had just given us a can of chili, so we made chili dogs!

Chili- FREE
hot dogs- .11 ea. x2
hot dog buns- .25 ea x2
cheese- the whole 1lb bag was only 1.99! We used about 2T of that, so that's like...what?
Total: Just over .75 cents!!
I think that makes up for the chicken fiasco yesterday!

Food Waste Wednesday

(Sorry, my phone's in my car which is in Vegas, so no pictures.) Wednesday seems like a good day to do food waste. Last night, Russ and I had a talk about food waste. I tried to get him on board but it didn't quite go the way I'd hoped. He's pretty good about eating what needs to be eaten anyway. This week was another disappointing week however. I wasted
1 chicken breast (that Russ thought was bad, but I maintain was perfectly fine...)
2 chicken breasts that I had defrosted in the fridge overnight but could just not get myself to cook it the next few days and then my small window closed and into the bin they go.
2 c pasta. I made this from a kit that was on sale, but it was so gross Russ and I couldn't even finish what was on our plates. I put it in the fridge knowing I wouldn't eat it. Not to upset about this one.
1 green pepper. I don't even know why I buy these.
Jello cups Raspberry Goji flavor. I did not like these. I ate one of six and let the rest sit in the fridge for who knows long. I finally decided to toss them.
Almost a whole block of cream cheese. I can't even remember buying this!
1 bag (about 1 cup) broccoli. These were for the 2 chicken breasts above. I didn't make that so I didn't make this. Then it turned brown.
Mozzarella
Parmesan- these were both from the back of the fridge. Both were shredded which of course has a smaller shelf life that block. both were moldy.
So that's my list. Pretty bad, I know.

Trying to Save money

I have decided to make a conscious decision to save my money and eliminate waste. I have blogged about it-somewhat randomly- in the past, but now I will have a whole blog devoted to my efforts. Right now I do have some credit card debt (The worst!) and school loans I'm trying to pay off and I don't make all that much! So stretching my money is very important for me. Hopefully this blog with help motivate me to stay on task and save my pennies!