Week in Review

Over all, I was pretty happy about how week one went. I was excited to cook, I was excited to eat, and excited for the challenge when shopping, AND I stayed on target for my weekly budget.

Wednesday didn't go so well. It took me forever to get the day going the right direction. I finally got the baby loaded up and was headed to the store. I got to Walmart, and didn't have my wallet. I picked up my bag to get out of the car, and it felt lighter than normal. Yep, no wallet! Grr. Can I tell you this is the third time this has happened to me since September? I remember the first time distinctly because I was very pregnant, and again, it was a great effort for me to go to the store in the first place (let alone have to go twice). This never happened to me until I had a baby/was pregnant. I really am losing my mind. I always thought moms who claimed "mommy brain" were milking it. Long story short, I could have saved more money by going to Walmart, but I went to Target instead (since it's only a couple miles from my house). After my Target trip I had all the food we needed for the rest of the week. On Saturday I had my husband swing by Costco to pick up some milk. We have been buying our milk there for a few years. I love their Kirkland Signature brand organic milk. The price is $8.99 for three half gallons. I'm not sure why, but the expiration dates are at least a month out. It's an easy thing to keep stocked in the fridge. Depending on what we're eating, I can stretch the three half gallons two weeks if I'm lucky. He also decided that he wanted more frozen berries for our morning smoothies. Ya, not organic. It's a process...

Total spent for Week 1 $89.92! 


Wednesday night we made the pasta dish. It was good. It wasn't amazing, though. I added garlic to give it some more flavor. It was a fairly easy meal to have around. After making the meal, I realized I bought wayyyy too many tomatoes. The tomatoes were fairly expensive. I will need to be more careful about how many I buy. I ended up making pico de gallo (tomato, shallot/onion, cilantro) as a snack with the left over cilantro from Tuesday dinner and the extra Shallot from Thursday dinner. At least they didn't go to waste. I think I would plan to make this meal again, but maybe find a more exciting version. My food doesn't look as colorful because I had a red pepper instead of a yellow pepper like the recipe picture.

Thursday night we had the shrimp salad. I was really excited to make this recipe because it had tarragon in it. Since I've never cooked with tarragon, I felt all fancy using it. I'm not sure if this is an accurate way to describe tarragon, but the flavor reminded me of black licorice. In my opinion, it overpowered the whole meal. I think the other parts of the recipe were really great, but I will likely find a similar recipe with a different dressing. We still ate it, but we were not in love with it. The grapefruit was good, surprisingly.

Friday night was the roast chicken. My roast chicken skills are iffy. My favorite way to cook it is in the crock pot. Some say the meat ends up being too "wet" but I like wet over dry and chewy any day. I tried cooking the chicken according to recommendations, and it turned out okay, but with some evasive maneuvers to save it. I originally put the potatoes and and butternut squash in a large casserole dish around the chicken. It was really full and covered the chicken too much. Now that I've made the recipe, I think it would have been better if I had put the potatoes and squash in a separate baking dish and cooked the chicken by itself. At the end of the cooking time, because the potatoes covered the thighs, the chicken wasn't done. I had to remove the veggies and cook the chicken another twenty minutes by itself. I LOVED the butternut squash and red potato combination. I will definitely make this one again! I think it needed a third side dish. Either a salad or green vegetable. No picture. But just imagine it looked as good as it does here.

(Picture above borrowed from here).

Saturday night we went out to eat at Lark Burger. Their truffle fries are ammmaazzzingg for all you Denver locals. Sunday, I changed plans around a bit and was planning to use the roast chicken to make chicken soup since I already had carrots and celery around from the week prior (organic, by the way). We got invited to go have dinner with a friend, so I will push this meal to Monday.

http://www.larkburger.com/videos/photos/food-2

For lunch this week we had left overs from some of the meals (most of these recipes are for four people), had sandwiches with bread from the bread machine (that's why I bought turkey from Target), and macaroni and cheese. Ya, I know. But I like it okay? Leave the macaroni alone. Breakfast was smoothies, cereal, and eggs.

Monday we had chicken soup, today we had a throw together Thai Curry. I used some frozen chicken, and other pantry items to make it. It was topped off with some left over cilantro from last week. Verrryy yummy. Here is the recipe plus I threw in a scoop of peanut butter.

I will post the new menu tomorrow (hopefully). The weather has been amazing the last few days and I have not been interested in grocery shopping. I'm reverting back to digging through my pantry to put together random stuff for dinner. I digress...