Category Archives: Holidays

Recipes specifically for or about any American holiday

Administrative, Appetizers, Breads, Comfort food, Dessert, Finances, Holidays, Main Dishes, Meal Plans, Slow cooker, Snacks

Weekly Eating – December 2020

January 10, 2021 BudgetEpicurean 5 Comments

Mid-December, and I’m going through periods where it feels very Christmasy because so many people are going big on decorations this year, and periods where I’m still kind of in denial/limbo with time; what even is it, you know? Between a 6 month old baby and all *waves hands helplessly* THIS stuff… who knows what day it is.

We continue to count our blessings in a big way. I am in a stable job, with a team I love, where I can work from home. We have a home. We were able to get a folding table so I could move my work station upstairs and be warm for the winter. Now my commute is literally 1 foot from my bed, which is both good and bad in ways.

Baby is growing and learning and becoming more and more delightful by the day. He is settling into a more predictable pattern of feeding and naps, and sleeps through the night a little more than half the time. This is *peak* baby cuteness, and I am so thankful for this time to fully enjoy and savor it. He will be crawling and walking and terrorizing us and the dogs in no time!

Anyways, we are also blessed with steady income, which means a stable grocery budget. Our budget has definitely gone up, as food prices keep inching upwards and now I’m eating a bit more from breastfeeding, as well as kiddo is trying solids too.

So we shoot for $400-500 a month now, between groceries and takeout. We are trying to order once a week from local independent restaurants since this all happened.

Going into December, we had a fair stock of meats from the most recent Butcher Box, but were down to nearly no fresh produce as I am shopping only every other week now. So I shop less often, but bigger when I do. I try to rotate between canned goods, pantry staples like flour/rice/tortillas, frozen items, and pick up the fresh stuff each time.

A run to ALDI restocked the dairy, oodles of fresh produce to last 2 weeks, and some more meats that I could individually package for the boy, as Veganuary is coming up soon!

Hubs will eat some of the same things, but I do not expect him to be fully on board for a whole month. Therefore, I put chicken quarters and 1/2 pounds of meat in the freezer, so he can add to whatever we are having or whip up some burritos anytime.

ALDI – 12/10/2020		$132.34
Meats	$36.94	Dairy	$28.35	Staples	$31.09	Fruit/Veg	$28.27	Extras	$7.69
meatless sausages 4	2.89	greek yogurts mixins 4	3.56	guacamole 2	5.98	frozen broccoli 4	3.4
1lb deli ham	2.95	blueberry rasp yogurt 12	3.84	almond milk 2	3.58	spring mix	3.59	quart bags	1.89
salmon side	13.46	cottage cheese 2	3.18	baby teething rusks	1.79	brussels sprouts	1.49	oreos 2*	3.1
3lb ground beef	7.95	plain greek yogurt	3.29	baby blueberry puffs	1.15	spinach	1.19
whole chicken	4.65	unsalted butter 2	3.58	baby pouch prune	0.79	romaine	2.19
chicken quarters	5.04	eggz 3 dozen	1.74	mayo	1.79	grape tomato	1.79	tax	2.7
		shredded cheese 2	5.58	pita chips	2.29	3 bell peppers	2.69
		sliced cheese 2	3.58	pumpkin seeds	2.05	cauliflower	2.29
				mild salsa	1.9	zucchini 3 1.67lb	1.99
				pinto beans 4lb	2.99	yellow squash 3 1.65lb	1.96
				potato 10lb	3.89	broccoli crowns 1.63lb	2.36
				red potato 5lb	2.89	avocado 5	2.19
						bananas 5	1.14

*I think ALDI brand Oreos are far superior, sorry Nabisco. They are more chocolatey and crunchy, which I love. They have become my absolute favorite indulgence. Too bad the Bitches Get Riches team didn’t have an ALDI to include them in their ranked chocolate cookie taste test! ALDI would have won for sure.

I also got some baby puffs and teething biscuits to try out. I’m so excited to have him try avocado for the first time! Snacks will include hard boiled eggs, bananas and apples, and homemade hummus with peppers and pita chips.

The meal plan includes lots of salads and fresh veggie sides. We will have salmon, crock pot lasagna, and some sort of mexi dish for sure. I will probably also make beans and rice, some sort of soup, and lots of potato dishes. Half of the salmon I will use to make my own lox! It is super easy, and way cheaper than buying it.

Then the week before Christmas, I did another stock up run to Harris Teeter to get things we would need for Christmas. Our parents both drove in from out of town, to spend kiddo’s first Christmas together!

We planned for at least 1 big fancy dinner and several smaller meals plus some takeout. I had been watching the Great British Bakeoff, and was inspired to make a super fancy sausage wreath! It was my first time working with puff pastry, and I think I cooked it slightly too long, but overall I was quite pleased.

It was definitely a holiday that no one expected, but we still got to spend time together and that is what is most important.

I also made some more sweets, because you must. I did a big batch of chocolate peanut butter Buckeyes, which I shared with some neighbors, and also made a big batch of Cracker Cookies with mom while she was here.

Dairy	$20.44	Staples	$38.93	Fruit/Veg	$51.20	Extras	$98.86
chobani 4pk x2	3.99	HT Peanut butter x2	3.98	can whole plums	0.99	fizzy water cans	2
yogurts 10	4	wheat cheerios	1.49	can mandarin oranges	1.98	frozen choc chip cookies x2	3.98
half and half	1.69	dry chickpeas 3lb	3.87	markdown produce	4.77	pecan pie	4.99
sliced cheddar 24	4.99	canned beans x6	2.94	bananas	2.07	puff pastry	5.49
block cheddar	1.49	simmer sauces x2	4	carrots 10lb	5.99	popcorn	1.5
block colby jack	1.49	granola cereal	2.99	sweet potatoes	1.43	ice breakers	7.98
vanilla ice cream	2.79	maple syrup	4.99	canned peaches	3.75	choc chips x3	6
		gerber splashers x2	5.68	broccoli/carrot mix x2	5	lara bar x3	3
		tortillas	5.99	beets	2.99
		rice x2	3	baby carrots	0.99
				kalamata olives x2	7
				less sugar wild	3.99
				brussels sprouts x2	5	tax	7.49
				red cabbage	2.8
				jicama	1.65
				turnips	0.8

We had a wonderful holiday, with lots of presents, looking at lights, walks outside, and baby giggles. My mom taught me another type of crochet stitch, and brought me some super soft yarn. So now I have a scarf project, ETA 2025. 😀

We also celebrated another birthday season, with more presents, more sweets, and some lovely alone time for me! Once you have a kid, it’s amazing how hard it is to find any time to do literally anything that requires two hands, and/or some amount of focus.

Moving into January, we have tons of leftovers still from the holidays. We have several containers of dirt cake, shredded meats from the boy’s request for “the ultimate burrito” on his birthday, lots of cookies still, etc. So we are eating up those things, and then will attempt a more vegan-ish rest of January!

Hope you all had a restful holiday season!

Beverage, Dessert, Eggs, Holidays, Less than 5

Crema Fina Egg Nog

December 28, 2020 BudgetEpicurean Leave a comment

Egg nog is a classic holiday beverage, with many possible origins for its name and recipe. Whether you love it or hate it, spike it or drink it virgin, pasteurize or leave out the eggs completely, it is irrevocably linked to the winter holidays and Christmas.

The thought of drinking raw egg throws off most people, unless you’re already a body builder or someone who drinks them daily already. But not all eggnog includes egg. Some are basically just a thinned down pudding or a boozy milkshake.

This recipe does call for actual eggs, and is for adults only. You can definitely make alcohol free eggnog, but since the base ingredient here is wine, clearly, this is not the recipe for you!

This is super simple to scale up as needed, you can make yourself just one glass or a whole pitcher for a party. And if you don’t happen to have Crema Fina (so sorry) you can easily create a similar flavor with milk, creamer, and rum or even brandy.

Ingredients (per serving):

1 cup crema fina hazelnut wine (or, 1/4 c hazelnut creamer, 1/2 c milk, and 1/4 cup dark rum)
1 raw egg, room temperature
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp powdered sugar

Simply combine all the ingredients in a blender, and whip it up for at least a minute or two. The longer you blend, the frothier it becomes. You can also use a hand mixer or a whisk.

Cheers!

Administrative, Breads, Breakfast, Healthy, Holidays, Informative, Less than 5, Main Dishes, Snacks

Weekly Eating – 3/11/19 thru 3/22/19

March 24, 2019 BudgetEpicurean 2 Comments

Hey y’all! Welcome to the series Weekly Eating.

Here is where I’ll talk about the week’s meal plan versus reality, what we ate for the week, and how we did budget-wise. I hope it gives readers a behind-the-scenes look into our life through the lens of food, and it’s also a way to keep us on track with meal planning and grocery budgeting.

Feel free to share your wins and lessons in the comments below!

Whoops, missed a week there! Sorry guys. We’ve got a lot and not a lot going on at the same time.

The coop is making steady progress. We got 4 pallets for free, plus some dumpster-diving got me a half sheet of plywood. For about $40 I bought a roll of hardware wire and chicken wire, and all we need is nails, staples, and time.

The frame is built and the floor is braced and wired, we just need a run for some hinges and a way to keep the door shut. Then the final pieces are putting on the door and roof, and the babies have somewhere to move to when they are no longer babies (which is like, in 2 weeks!)

They have grown so much bigger, and have upgraded to a larger feeder. They are also on a mix of chick and regular flock food, and I use a bigger mason jar for their waterer. They’ve begun to start jumping and bouncing, and trying out their wings. And we had our first escapee when I opened the screen to feed them the other day!

And we (i.e. just the boy) have started adding back in food groups to see if any spark reactions. We had cut out everything but meat, fruit, vegetables, and nuts & seeds. He added back in grains first, and had oatmeal, my homemade bread, and pasta all in one day. No problem.

Then dairy, so I stocked up on kefir, milk, butter, and plain Greek yogurt. Made a huge pan of the tastiest mac n cheese you ever saw. Again, no problems. He did say that he missed dairy way less than he thought he would, so that’s nice. Corn is back, without issue. I think soy is the only thing left, and we don’t use much added sugar products anyhow so I don’t mind permanently dropping those. He will go back to adding honey to tea, for instance.

Gardening

The seedlings I started have not come up yet. I am concerned that this week of 30-s overnight will kill them… it gets quite hot inside during the day, but not if there is no sunshine. Come on, actual spring! I need warmth so my fig can finally go in the ground.

On the bright side, I found some surprises in the garden. I had planted some brassicas and root veggies last fall, but they are super slow growing due to next to no sunlight… and they overwintered quite nicely, such that I may actually get to harvest some kale, cabbage, carrots, and/or radishes soon!

And, this is the first year I have annual flowers coming up. I bought three packs of bulbs on clearance last fall, and planted them even thought it was a bit late in the season. I figured, why not. And now, all these lovely irises and hyacinths and tulips are coming up! It makes me very very happy.

Food Swap

March’s Food Swap was awesome, it was at Hi Wire Brewery in Durham. I had never been, so I was pleasantly surprised with how huge it was, all the indoor lawn games, crazy wall art, and delicious beers on tap. It was Spring Break for UNC and Duke, so it was blessedly empty of students. AND on Mondays they sell a LITER of their own beer for $7!

I made pickled quail eggs the week prior in expectation, one batch turmeric and one batch beet pickled. It was like Easter come early with the fun egg colors. I also took a few jars of my candied orange peels.

I ended up going home with a half dozen chicken and a half dozen goose eggs, some jam, garlic pickles, homemade yogurt, Irish Car Bomb cupcakes, enzymatic orange cleaner, beef jerky, and preserved lemons! Quite a bounty.

Breakfasts:

Egg sandwiches – since I got oodles of eggs and also my quail keep giving me at least 2 a day, we eat more eggs now than ever before. And what better way than on homemade bread?

Cinnamon sugar toast – speaking of homemade bread, if you’ve never had cinnamon sugar toast on hot out the oven bread, you need to get you some right away! It’s magical.

Breakfast burritos – you can see why grains were the first thing the boy wanted to add back. It brings things like toast, pasta, and wraps

Snacks:

Apple with almond butter & raisins –this has definitely become my top favorite snack. It is great for the morning, when it’s ten and I will die if I have to wait one more hour for food, or afternoon when it’s 2 or 3 pm and I need a lil something to tide me over until dinner. Peanut butter works too, but I prefer almond.

Nut bars – I’m glad a friend with a Costco membership let us go with them once and buy a ginormous box of these bars. I have one in every bag, car, coat, and purse, and it has saved me more than once.

Gummy bears – another Costco purchase. I know these are in no way healthy for me. And we also didn’t realize until we got home and opened it that they are not a huge bag of gummies, but a billion individually wrapped packages of like 5. I was crushed. Wasteful and full of HFCS… no use crying over spilt milk, they’re already bought and opened so now we gotta eat them all.

Lunches:

Greek salad – Been trying to get more salads into my daily diet, and to make it more interesting I opened a jar of kalamata olives, and combined with grape tomatoes and cucumber from my Produce Boxes, made a couple delicious Greek salads.

Stuffed potatoes – I had some cheese sauce left from the mac n cheese, so we did a baked potato and sweet potato bar. Mmmmm.

Lentil soup – lentil soup is super quick, easy, and good for you. It’s a perfect “kitchen sink” meal, because you can toss in whatever veggies or herbs need to be used up soon. This one had celery, carrots, leftover mashed potato, onion, and kale.

Dinners:

Pesto pasta – pesto is one of my all time favorite ways to get anyone to eat greens, and use up any leafies or herbs that are wilty. Things I’ve successfully mixed into pesto: basil, parsley, cilantro, kale, spinach, collard greens.

Colcannon – we went all-in on the Irish for St. Patty’s Day. We are not Irish by heritage but you know I love me a good food holiday. I made a corned beef brisket and some colcannon, which is basically mashed potatoes with cabbage in it. I’ve heard you can also use kale. It’s a great way to sneak in veggies.

Taco bowl – since it’s starting to warm up and finally feel like spring some days, we’ve been eating outside on the weekends. Once rice was allowed back, and tortillas, you better believe burritos are back in full force too. And I keep adding in salads.

Lentil sloppy joes/janes – one of my alltime favorite vegan meals, these are so easy to prepare and crazy healthy for you. I told my grandma I ate mine with pickles and sauerkraut and evidently that is insane? What do you put on a sloppy joe?

AYCE Sushi – got a bunch of friends who love sushi as much as I go together and went out to RocknRolls sushi! It’s a conveyor belt style all you can eat place, for $12. I love it so much. We put down 73 plates worth of sushi and sashimi.

Food Total: $206.68

Weekly Produce Box = the Harvest Box 2 weeks in a row. Winter strawberries grown in high tunnels, green beans, blueberries, lettuce, cucumber, zucchini, grape tomatoes, corn, onion, sweet potatoes, and purple cauliflower!

I’ve started baking bread again, and we’ve gone through about three loaves in a week 1/2! So when flour was on sale for under a buck, I was not about to let that pass me by. I stocked up on some sugar free sausages and a few roasts, plus some organic cheeses and dairy for adding those back. Most of the produce we got from the boxes.

4.92 lb brisket	colby & cheddar brick cheese	3lb flour x3	3lb mandarins
pork sausage patties	Greek yogurt	dipper chips	Bananas 2 bunch
85/15 ground turkey	Fairlife milk & choc milk	flax wraps	Simply orange juice
2lb peeled shrimp	Plain kefir	canned tomatoes	Canned diced pineapple 2
lunch meat	Kerrygold org slice cheese	grapeseed oil for mayo
Angus sirloin 3lb		Org raisins
		2lb brown rice
		Dry chickpeas x4 lb
		Flour 5lb x2
		Sugar 4lb

Lessons Learned

Cooking from scratch is always the best. The boy could have bread back because I made it, and without added sugar. I tried to find bread at the store that didn’t have honey, or sugar, or high fructose corn syrup, and it was impossible. But also, convenience foods have a place in life. Sometimes when you’re super busy or just not in the mood to cook, it’s really nice to have something you can just pull out and microwave or otherwise not think too hard.

That’s why I try to make my own “fast food”. I batch cook a huge portion of black beans, or pinto beans, or rice, and have it in the fridge or freezer ready to go. Then you just pull out a tortilla or bowl and pile things in and you have ready to go food! And especially with the boy, he will eat whatever is the absolute fastest and easiest. So the easier I make healthy eating (cutting up fruits and veggies ahead of time, portioning out healthy meals into individual containers) the more likely we will eat healthy.

How about you guys? Did you have a learning week or an awesome week of wins?

Administrative, Finances, Healthy, Holidays, Informative

Resolutions or Goals?

January 1, 2019 BudgetEpicurean 12 Comments

Happy New Year everybody! Welcome to 2019.

It always comes so fast, I don’t know why I keep being surprised by it. Happens every year.

Know what else happens every year?

Resolutions

People resolve to:

Get more fit
Lose weight
Sleep more
Drink less
Eat better
Save more
and so on

And many people are kind of “over” resolutions, because we are so bad at keeping them.

I have for years resisted the resolution bandwagon, for this reason. But I have discovered that there is a big difference between a resolution and a goal.

“If there is a specific achievement it’s a goal, but permanent changes to your life are resolutions since you keep doing them every day and not just until a specific achievement is reached.” (source)

Under this definition, I do actually make resolutions, several times per year.

I have in the past made changes to exercise more often, to eat less meat, to create less waste, to clean more often, to create better sleep habits, and so on, with the intention of doing these things every day. Of course I fell off the wagon on a few of these things, and have tried more than once to instill these habits.

But life is a journey, a work in progress, and I do still believe in incorporating these things into my life.

For the New Year though, I decided a goal is a better practice. One that follows the SMART principles:

Specific – no “eat better” allowed here
Measurable – what gets measured gets improved (just ask Erik)
Attainable – a big dream with small steps to get there
Realistic – a thing which can actually be accomplished
Timely – set a time limit! You need to feel the urgency

Goals, when written down and as specific as all the above, have a much higher likelihood of being completed or achieved than vague promises or following the social media crowd.

I want my goals to improve the things I value the most: relationships, finances, health, and happiness.

Thus, my goals for 2019 include:

Call one family member per week

I usually am pretty good about using the commute time home to chat with my mom. But I need to also make it a priority to talk to the more remote family members like aunts, uncles, and grandmas. They won’t be around forever, and they have plenty of wisdom and stories to share. I want my family to never doubt that they mean the world to me, no matter how far apart we all are. That will equal out to at least 52 phone calls over the course of a year!

Date night at least once per month

My relationship with my boy is the most important one in my life. Not just because we live together and see each other every day, but also because so many things depend on this relationship, like our weight and health habits, happiness, and finances too. Luckily, I think he’s pretty cool, and he thinks I’m pretty cool too. We need regular, focused, one on one time away from typical distractions like video games and cell phones and bills to keep that spark strong.

Savings rate of 50% or better every month

I have slacked on calculating this for far too long. No more. My goal is to, at the end of January, and each month, calculate our actual savings rate. This will be complicated since we both have a work mandated 401k, as well as an HSA and Roths to factor in, before any contributions to our mortgage, taxable investment accounts, and money market. But I want to do it, at a minimum quarterly, to better see where we are. The market is crazy and net worth is not a thing I can control. But savings rate, we can control, and improve.

Max out both Roth IRAs by end of February

I know there are all kinds of arguments for dollar cost averaging and putting a set amount into the market each month no matter what. But there are some potentially big changes coming in 2019 (if they pan out, I’ll tell you all about it!) and we want to put that money to work as soon as we have it and not worry about it for the rest of the year. So the goal is both fully funded Roths by the end of February to the tune of 11k*. Limits increased for 2019 to 6k each, therefore it will be 12k total! Thanks Josh for catching that!

Veganuary (ish) – one month of 99% vegan eating

This will be a way to detox from the insanely overboard consumption over the holidays. (#TMIwarning) I’m a fraction of a pound away from 160 and had a bowel crisis over Christmas, if you must know. (#sorrynotsorry) It will also ease me back into my intended way of 80/20 plant-based life-long eating. Exceptions include animal products that meet my extremely stringent criteria, and I will not make a nuisance of myself if invited to someone else’s house or event, I will eat the food offered.

The Daily Dozen – I will do my best all year to stick to this

The Daily Dozen is based on the book “How Not To Die”, which I loved, own, and highly recommend reading. I also aim to re-read it through by the end of March. It is taped to my refrigerator to make it easy to remember. Basically loads of high antioxidant foods, whole grains, and veggies. Plus water and exercise. By eating all these things every day, you have a lot less room for junk.

Do more of what is good or good for me

OK, this is the closest one to a resolution rather than a goal. This loops into the health goal, in that I want to do more of what is good for me, like eating plants, doing yoga and HIIT, and sleeping. But I also want to do more of anything that makes me happy, within reason. Obviously popcorn and wine makes me happy, but shouldn’t be every day. But reading? That I can, and should, do every day. A nice warm bubble bath? Sure. Gardening and loving my quail? Yup.

Make someone smile every day

That person can be my husband, a stranger I smiled at, someone at work whom I give a genuine compliment, or even myself. There is too much doom and gloom and selfishness in the world, we need to pay more attention to the good all around and within us. Like thanking the stranger on the bus, or Penny from ShePicksUpPennies who celebrates money wins, large and small.

Cheers to making 2019 all we can dream!

How about you guys? Any resolutions, or goals, for the new year of 2019?

Breakfast, Crock pot, Holidays, Main Dishes, Meal Plans, Salads, Slow cooker, Soups

Weekly Eating – 10/29/18

November 4, 2018 BudgetEpicurean 2 Comments

Hey y’all! Welcome to the series Weekly Eating.

Feel free to share your wins and lessons in the comments below!

Last weekend’s Halloween party was a blast! I bet you can’t guess correctly what both of our costumes were.

It was nice enough that we could all hang out outside and play cornhole and beer pong and enjoy the bonfire. And the trick or treat shots were a hit! We did three rounds, and used almost all of them. Yes, I came up with 50 different liquids. They included everything from juiced celery to tequila to bean cooking water. And people were really good at guessing correctly!

I also had time on Sunday to whip up a batch of homemade mayo, and some hemp milk since we ran out of almond. Uhhh sidenote, how did she get all the milks to stay clear?? Am I the only one, every time I make any plant milk (almond, coconut, hemp, cashew, rice, oat…) it separates in like 0.4 seconds. I swear I do filter it… maybe I need cheesecloth. But then the yield is lower. 🙁

Monday:

Breakfast – sad bowl of cocoa puffs… I’ve been less inspired about breakfasts lately. Normally I turn to warm oatmeal when fall rolls around but that isn’t sounding so great. I may need to try intermittent fasting as a double win…

Lunch – big warm bowl of leftover white bean & barley soup

Dinner – Some ravioli I defrosted with corn on the cob, microwaved broccoli and cauliflower, and a big salad with toasted pumpkin seeds, cranberries, and homemade apple cider dressing

Tuesday:

Breakfast – it is not possible to take a good picture of oatmeal. It had peaches in it though.

Lunch – Rest of the barley soup & a salad

Dinner – Tuna salad puffs! Throwback Tuesday, to 2014.

Wednesday (Halloween!):

Breakfast – a breakfast boo-rito

Lunch – potluck at work!

Dinner – more Booritos! (we didn’t want to stand in line at Chipotle)

Thursday:

Breakfast – coffee and tangerines

Lunch – leftover bowl: potatoes and cauliflower and stuffed mushrooms from the party

Dinner – the rest of the empty the refrigerator Dal

Friday:

Breakfast – golden grahams with hemp milk

Lunch – Pumpkin chili when we get to the cabin!

Dinner – I think we are grilling brats tonight

The Weekend

This weekend we are going up to a friend’s family cabin in the mountains!! I can’t tell you how excited we are. We got to go last year, and it is such a blast. There will be almost a dozen people, which may be cramped, but it will be such a great opportunity for community. It is miles away from civilization, so it is perfectly silent and pitch black at night.

Watching the sun rise over the lake, with steam coming off the water, kayaking into the middle and laying back to look up at the stars… I can’t wait to totally relax and refresh. We all take turns cooking, plus people bring crafting projects like knitting, and there are games galore from ping pong and frisbee to board and cards.

I’ll be bringing the crock pot full of pumpkin chili, along with the fixings for tacos and lentil sloppy joes. A build your own taco bar is always filling and fun. And for the lentil sloppy joes, I stuffed all the ingredients into a near empty pasta sauce jar. Just dump into a pan and simmer for 40 minutes!

Food Total: $52.50 + 49.58

Weekly Produce Box = Grape Tomatoes, Broccoli Bunch, Potatoes- Yukon Butter Gold , Red Onion (1), Lettuce – Field Grown Romaine (1), Navel Orange (1), Green Beans

Then I also added on quite a few things: kale, pears, persimmons (because there’s a persimmon tree I’ve spotted near me; I want to know if I like them before risking my neck climbing it to pick some), and I also went for it and ordered a pound of ground chicken and some tenders from Joyce Farms in Winston-Salem, NC.

I’m hankering for some white chicken chili, and when we eat meat now, I want it to be sourced very carefully. The chickens on this farm were not crammed into cages with their beaks cut off, fed a diet of antibiotics and ‘vegetarian’ corn (chickens are not vegetarians, by the way). I know these chickens lived as chickens were meant to live, out in the grass, happily foraging for seeds and bugs.

And I stopped by HT for some sale items, organic potatoes, tons of yogurt since we were out, and more cabin things.

Lessons Learned

Leftovers are the best, worst thing. They are awesome to have, for when you just don’t feel like cooking, or don’t have the time. And I’ve been not feeling like it often lately. Which is great, because we also really needed to finish up all the things from the party and clear out the fridge since we will be gone all weekend.

But sometimes leftovers keep getting left, because you don’t really want to eat them again. Then there’s the “should I throw it out” struggle, because we both hate food waste. So sometimes, leftovers can be quite unfortunate. We both just powered through a few times just so we didn’t toss it. It’s always a lesson, sometimes that lesson is ‘don’t make that again’.

How about you guys? Did you have a learning week or an awesome week of wins?

Breakfast, Comfort food, Dessert, Finances, Healthy, Holidays, Informative, Less than 5, Main Dishes, Meal Plans

Weekly Eating – 3/19/18

March 25, 2018 BudgetEpicurean 2 Comments

Hey y’all! Welcome to the series Weekly Eating.

Feel free to share your wins and lessons in the comments below!

So, remember how we had five 20-year-olds at our house for St. Patrick’s Day? Turns out they are just as much old people as we are! They got in around 8pm, we played some games, and then everyone headed for bed around ten. They are welcome back anytime! 🙂

I made a big green breakfast spread for them, and they hit the road early so as to get home, presumably to sleep for 16 or so hours. What is it about sitting in a car for hours that just exhausts you?

Then on Sunday, I realized Monday was the next Bull City Food Swap! I had some pierogi in the freezer so I took those out, but I wanted another item too (you can never have too much to trade), and I had found a recipe for sweet potato biscuits I really wanted to try out. So I whipped up a batch and OH MAH LAWD Y’ALL…

Biscuits. Are. So. Good.

Fresh and hot out the oven, drizzled with butter and honey… swoon

So I packed up a few packages of biscuits to trade too, but kept a good batch for us to nom all week. I also prepped some overnight oats, since the steel cut kind is not my favorite to microwave.