Monday, March 29, 2010

Meal Plan: Lunches

So, as you know, I've been working today on planning Russ's lunches. Inspired by my last post, I decided to quickly write up some ideas for the following week for Russ's lunch.

Wednesday: Tuna sandwiches, orange slices, cheese stick. approx total: $1.50
Thursday: Ham sandwiches, strawberries, carrots, fruit roll up $2.86
Friday: Turkey sandwiches, snap peas, yogurt $2.41

Yay, that's like a savings of $18! Hopefully, Russ eats everything and we're able to keep up with this new plan.

Russ's first lunch

K, I haven't packed a lunch since I packed my own for elementary school and I've never packed a lunch for someone else. I really struggled (am struggling) as to what to pack. My main focus is that it's healthy, secondly filling and thirdly, cheaper than going out. Russ's main focus is that it's not gross.
I packed him two turkey sandwiches (because 1 apparently is not enough!), a peach cup and some cottage cheese, and snap peas. I didn't calculate the calories/ fat or anything, I just wanted to get all the food groups in there.
The cost:
bread .05 x4= .20
The turkey .40
the cheese .30
The lettuce .06
the tomato .18
The peas .85
The cottage cheese .40
the peach cup .50
total: 2.89

Wow! The average Russ spends when he buys lunch is $7.00, so that was my goal, to get it under that number. So that this is under 1/2 that, makes me quite happy.

Grocery Shopping Day

I've been at my sister in law's house all weekend but now I'm back and it feels so good to be home! Russ and I decided that he should start taking his lunch to work instead of him buying lunch every day. So I went to the grocery store to buy lunch supplies along with the rest of the things we need for dinners. Luckily we have a ton of stuff in the freezer, so I mainly just needed 'sides.'
I also want to buy more organic produce. The funny thing about being frugal is sometimes I want to get something for as little as possible, even if that sacrifices some of the quality. Yeah chili dog dinners cost like $2.00 but they're not as nutritious as say grilled chicken and veggies. So I went to a local store called Natural Grocers where they have all organic stuff but it's at a very affordable price. If you live in the St. George UT area, check out this store; I love it.

Natural Grocers:
Romaine .89 (At Walmart, the regular romaine was 1.68!)
4 Golden Delicious 2.34
3 Fuji apples 2.03
2 Pears 1.18
Panda licorice (not pictured 'cause I ate it!) .65
Fage Greek yogurt 1.75
Total: 9.11

Albertsons
Claim Jumper meal (I'm going to split this and serve for a quick dinner one day.) 1.88
10 Fruit roll ups .69 ea (expensive but they're so yummy!)
2 navel oranges .87
2 tomatoes 1.43
Total: 11.43

Walmart:
2 boxes of cereal 2.50 ea -1.00Q
1 jar salsa  1.92
2 Dannon 4 pk 1.87 ea -1.00Q
Cottage cheese 1.62
Sliced American cheese 2.63
5 String cheese .25 ea
Turkey Lunch meat 3.00 -.55Q
6 yoplait yogurts .50 ea -.40Q
Philly cream cheese minis 1.46 -1.00Q
Chocolate milk 1.08
Ham lunch meat 2.28 -.60Q
1 box of stuffing 1.00
Peaches fruit cup 1.98
Snap peas 2.58
Pkg salad 2.50
Carrots 1.48
1 can chili 1.50
bread .75
Total: 35.70

Final Total: $56.22

Monday, March 22, 2010

Menu Planning Monday

This week is going to be somewhat crazy for me. My sister comes to town on Thursday and then I leave for my sister-in-law's on Friday. And of course there's a lot to do before I leave!

Monday (tonight)- Easy dump and go chicken with salad and garlic bread. (*the chicken was only so so. It made a lot so I put some in the freezer. This might be one of those meals we eat because there's nothing else and we're too poor to go out!)
Tuesday- Chicken oreganato, zucchini and seasoned rice
Wednesday- honey garlic pork chops with corn, tomato slices and...probably white rice. Not sure.
Anyway, the rest of the week I'll be gone. Not sure what I'm going to do about meals then! I may have to pack snacks haha.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Food Waste is back

I haven't done food waste in quite some time. Frankly I'd put it off for so many weeks I got too nervous to start back up again and see what was still in the fridge! And I was right to be scared! We wasted a lot of food!
In this picture is:
1 yellow pepper (which I was planning to use for dinner tonight, rrrgh!)
1 orange
4 plums
4 gogurts
1/2 lb polish sausage
1/2 lb bacon
1/4 yellow onion
1/2 full jar of zesty bean and cheese dip (which is really delicious. Don't know how this got wasted!)
In the Tupperware on the right is the leftover salad that's way gross now.
And in the top round Tupperware on the left is leftover mushroom and pepper mix from when we made quesadillas a while a go
and the Tupperware under that is leftover shredded chicken for a way long time ago.
Just gross and a big waste of money. Not good. Not good at all!

Monday, March 15, 2010

Fage coupons!

I don't know if you've ever had Fage Greek yogurt, but it's delicious! I love it but it's kind of a splurge for me to buy it. It can be expensive but today I stumbled upon a coupon! I've dreamed about such a coupon. Haha, I may be dramatic here but I'm very excited. I do love this yogurt. I did have to download a coupon printer thingy. (Seems like I have to have a new printer thingy for every site!) If you haven't tried this, print out your coupon and do!

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Menu Planning

Monday: tortellini with alfredo sauce and a garden salad (meatless!)
Tuesday: Chicken oreganato with snap peas and tomato slices
Wednesday I work late
Thursday: pineapple chicken kabobs with rice.
Friday: Easy dump and go chicken with noodles and whatever veggies need to be eaten.
Saturday I work late.

And I think I've devised a plan as to how to motivate me to follow my meal plan. Defrost meat in advance. If the meats defrosted then if I don't cook it, it'll go to waste and meat is expensive so I really wont want to waste it. You know? So I can take out my chicken drumsticks on Monday so they'll be defrosted on Tuesday and I'll also take out my chicken breasts of the kabobs as they need to defrost so I can cube them and then they need to marinate. So on Wednesday they'll be ready and I won't be able to put it off and give myself an excuse not to cook. A big part of my problem (besides my awful kitchen) is that it will take So Long. When I think that I'll have to defrost chicken, prepare something and then cook it for like an hour...I get exhausted just thinking about it. So if at least one step is done, maybe I'll be more inclined.
It went pretty well last week. I made 4 of my planned dishes- bbq chicken sandwiches, teriyaki burgers, steak salad and chicken and stuffing. I think that's a record for me!

I won!

I won Budget Confessions Almost Meatless giveaway! I'm super excited! Check out her blog for her own meatless recipes!

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Dinner tonight

Once again I am reminded of how much I just love my slow cooker! Today before I went to work, I put some chicken in the slow cooker covered in bbq sauce and tonight, dinner was practically done! It's SO nice to some home to done (or almost) dinner! So when I got home, I just had to shred the chicken and the bbq chicken sandwiches were ready. Then I just heated up some baked beans and cut up some carrots and dinner was done and done! I'm not really into doing the math right now, but I'm pretty sure this dinner came to less than 2.00.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Dinner and frugality.

(So none of my pictures will upload. Don't know why. I'll probably try again later)
So I think I've stumbled on a plan. On Tuesday I took out my ground beef to defrost for dinner that night and I had the idea to take the steak out too, for Wednesday's dinner. So I made teriyaki burgers on Tuesday which cost me about oh... $2.50. And then with the juice I made a marinade for the steak and let that marinade overnight, so tonight they were ready to be grilled. And because I had already defrosted the meat and had already let it marinade, I just had to make dinner. I couldn't tell myself any excuses. I had to execute this plan. So I grilled my steaks kinda early, so they could rest and cool, then be sliced up and put in my salad.

And then Russ called. He wanted us to go hang out with a friend for a while tonight. K, perfect, we'll eat right after and the steaks will already by grilled so we'll have to eat them! So while I waited for the steaks to cook, I already chopped my veggies so when we do get home later tonight everything will be ready, well almost ready.
So in here, I've got sugar snap peas, mushrooms, radishes, carrots, and cucumbers.
I didn't chop up the tomatoes, because I didn't want them to get gross sitting in the fridge for a couple hours. And I chopped the onion, but didn't want to add them to the rest of the veggies because I didn't want all the other veggies to smell and taste like onion.
And I didn't slice the steak because I didn't want it to lose all it's yummy juices. But those are quick fixes and then dinner will be quick and easy tonight. And it should cost about... maybe $6. The steak was more expensive than I'd like but I bought it a while ago, when I'm still (and I'm constantly) learning.

Oh, and another frugal thought. I used 2 pineapple rings on the burgers last night, used the juices in the marinde and ate the remaining 6ish rings today for lunch. I've never eaten rings alone like that, but why not? It's still pineapple and it didn't get wasted. yay.

PS. So we're back and we ate. Here's the finished product.


It's kinda pretty. I cooked the steaks too long tho. Too bad. I'm still kinda proud.


I went shopping today.

Last night I couldn't fall asleep so I daydreamed (you know what I mean) about all these delicious vegetables I should add to my salad for tonights dinner. So this afternoon, I couldn't help go to the store to pick up said veggies. I bought a smidge more than I planned.
 Before I left, I looked in my freezer (which is slowly and slowly depleting in inventory!) and saw that I didn't have any frozen meals for lunches at work. I try not to eat them, but when I'm late for work they're pretty handy to grab and go for lunch. So I bought some. And then I might as well get what I needed for dinners next week. I'm already planning ravioli in Alfredo sauce and so I picked up that. Actually, I bought tortellini because it was cheaper. Then I wanted garlic bread to go with it. Then I wanted a pkg of frozen rice because so often I want to make rice but chicken out because of the time and the skill (I'm really bad at cooking rice. Don't know how I screw up so much!) so I thought I'd give this a try since it was only $1. Then I got my veggies: a carrot, snap peas and some button mushrooms.
The half the carrot will go into tonights salad and half I'll chop up for veggie sticks in another dinner. and 1/2 the mushooms will go to veggie kabobs later in the week too (which should also use up the red onion and yellow pepper in the fridge) and the snap peas, Russ will eat later.
Oh, also I really wanted some pop tarts. I know they are so not good for me, but when you have a craving... you know.
My total came to $19.60

by the way, I bough the Healthy Choice Lobster Ravioli meal and it was gross. gross gross gross! Don't even bother.

Monday, March 8, 2010

Meal Planning Monday

I'm so not in the mood to do this so here's just a quick idea. 


Monday we had potstickers and finished off the bag from the freezer.
Tuesday: burgers and chips
Wednesday: asian steak salad
Thursday: bbq chicken sandwiches and baked beans
Friday: chicken and stuffing
Saturday: stuffed chicken breasts and garden salad

Friday, March 5, 2010

Meal Plan Update

Ok, so as you know, this week I didn't do the standard meal plan. Instead I listed out a bunch of meal 'ideas' that we could choose from. Well, I'm not sure how it worked. I still had that 'what in the world do I want to eat tonight?!' feeling. I really do hate food, you know. I do. I wish I never had to eat again!!
When I do make a meal plan, I'm not super strict about following it out, that's why I thought this new plan would work. Not so much. We did eat at home every night this week....except tonight. I just did not want to! So we went to del taco. I know I know. Plus it turned out to be super expensive! $16! For del taco! I wasn't too happy.
I'm gonna have to keep trying the meal plan thing and figure out what works for me!

Constantly learning!

I'd like to think I know more than the average person about being frugal. I mean, being a checker I see about 500 people a day (not an exaggeration) and I see how they spend their money. And let me tell you, I sometimes see someone impress me with their frugality and "finagling"  but WAY MORE often I see people buy things and think to myself, really? You sure you want to pay that for that?!  Anyway, I know a lot, but I am still learning. I read some of Amy Dacyczyn's Tightwad Gazette, (I browse through this, not quite up to her level!) and she explained that yeah a box of cereal might be cheaper than this other brand of cereal, but is it cheaper than eggs for breakfast? That never donned on me! Why go with the cheaper of the more expensive? Does that make sense?
Anyway, so Capri Suns were on sale at work. I like capri suns, they bring me back to childhood and they're good. Plus they're portion controlled which with something sugary like that is a big bonus. So a box was on sale for $1.25, which is a pretty good deal considering they're normally $2.40. But are they cheaper per oz than a big bottle of juice than I can pour out 6 oz for myself? So I did a little recon and yes, actually per oz they are cheaper than any other kind of juice. And ok, they're not cheaper than water outta the tap, but that gets old! I've recently given up my 3 can a day diet coke habit (not cheap and not healthy!) so I've been relying on water for my HUGE thirst. So, I bought 4 boxes of Capri suns.
They're cheaper than any other juice, they're cheaper than bottled water, they're cheaper than soda and energy drinks.

Monday, March 1, 2010

Dinner tonight

I made dinner tonight and while I didn't love it, Russ sure liked it which is nice. I just made a Jennie-O turkey loaf because I got a mail in rebate so it was free! -sales tax and the stamp it took to mail in the rebate haha.
I served it with corn and a salad.
The corn was .60
The salad was um.... 0.50 maybe. the lettuce was .16 the tomato was .10. The cucumber was .50 but i used like maybe a 6th, that's .08. That's 0.34 and then the cost of dressing I don't even know how much that costs.
So total that $1.10.
None too shabby.
Plus there's leftovers. While there might be leftovers. Russ is thinking about finishing it off. If he doesn't I'll have it for lunch tomorrow with the rest of the tomato and cucumber that needs to be used up.

I made smoothies!

I've been wanting to make and freeze smoothies for a while now. 1 reason is because I have a HUGE bag of frozen berries I got at costco a long time ago and am still trying to find uses for all of it so I thought this would be a good use for a big chunk of them. The second reason is breakfast is a big struggle for me. I grew up not eating breakfast. I just didn't do it! And now that I'm realizing how important breakfast is, I am trying to eat better, but it's still so hard for me. I have a lot of 'digestive issues' so there's a lot of things I can't eat in the morning, plus
I'm a picky eater, plus I'm not in the tiniest littlest bit a  morning person, so I'd way rather sleep in an extra 15 minutes than get  out and eat. hands down.So breakfasts are hard for me.
So I've been wanting to make these for a while, and the other day I accidentally bought a pk of vanilla yogurt which I can't stand on it's own, so I thought to myself, Perfect for smoothies! I made smoothies today. I didn't really have a recipe, I just kind of threw things in the blender. I used:
4 cups of berries (i haven't the faintest clue how much it cost because I bought this so long ago, I can't remember what I paid for it!)
4 cups of yogurt 1.00
honey FREE (this was a christmas gift from Russ's mother. Yup for christmas she gave us food storage!)
Bananas .70
pinapple 1.00 I just used a little less than 1/2. I'll eat the rest tomorrow for lunch, so I'll say .50
Total: $2.20 + price of berries...
This made 4 smoothies plus 4 Popsicles.
That is definitely not too shabby!