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!
Hope y’all had a nice long weekend, and made it through the short week! I know I had a great time, a friend’s wedding on Sunday was so much fun! It is nice to be part of such a joyful day in someone’s life. Plus, the food was phenomenal! Brisket, pulled pork, duck, the world’s most to-die-for creamy mac n cheese… mmm! Wedding calories don’t count, right?
Monday:
Brunch – since we had the day off, we slept in a little. Then I made a sausage and pepper breakfast strata with black beans.
Dinner – We decided to go exploring nearby, and ended up in the town of Pittsboro. It is a tiny little quaint main street southwest of Chapel Hill, in the middle of some beautiful country. We stopped and walked around the downtown, and had some sandwiches; I had a Reuben. It was huge and I only finished half, so hooray leftovers!
I also cooked a whole chicken in the crock pot overnight, and in the morning shredded it all into a container in the fridge for dinners / lunches this week.
Tuesday:
Breakfast – breakfast strata
Lunch – leftover sausage & peppers, black beans, mixed with some water and rice to make soup
Dinner – Ham & Potato soup (freezer to crock pot meal!)
Snack – sliced apple
Wednesday:
Breakfast – breakfast strata
Lunch – Leftover 1/2 Reuben sandwich, pickle, edamame
Dinner – Buffalo Chicken Potato Bake, one of my all-time favorites. I used Ranch instead of sour cream, and added frozen (thawed) cauliflower and broccoli. Winning!
Snack – 1/2 a cucumber sliced
Thursday
Breakfast – granola bar
Lunch – Chicken salad w grapes, avocado, edamame; this was a very ‘green’ lunch 🙂
Dinner – Crock Pot Chocolate Chili. I tried a crazy new idea, and added a few tbsp of Hershey’s syrup to the chili, along with some coffee and hot sauce. It came out complex and delicious! We also stir in a bit of plain Greek yogurt, I’m a big fan of the flavor.
Snack – mint chocolate chip yogurt
Friday
Breakfast – chocolate coco loco yogurt
Lunch – Turkey sandwich, sunchips, mozzarella stick. I packed my sandwich in the bread bag because I’d used the last 2 slices, and waste not want not right??
Dinner – Tyler’s Taproom pulled pork mac n cheese & garlic fries (I stole a few from my dining companions 😉 ) I should write a review on this place, they had great atmosphere, great service, and the food was OUTSTANDING! Highly recommend.
The Weekend
My dad was in town (a trip to the Georgia coast got cancelled due to Hurricane Irma) so we hung out. Walked around downtown Durham and found some cool new hangout spots, watched The Office on Netflix, and had a miracle berry tasting party!
If you’ve never heard of Miracle Berry, check it out. It coats your taste buds, so that anything sour or acidic tastes sweet! It’s pretty weird, a great mind game. We tried pickles, sauerkarut, cranberries, lemons and lime juice, wines, and straight shots of vinegar! It was quite fun.
Total: $0!
My goal is to keep this number under $100 all the time, and eventually get down to $75/week for food.
We did not spend any money at the grocery store this week which is awesome! However we did spend some money out. Since my dad came for a spontaneous visit, we had to treat him to a few meals. We also did a fun ghost walking tour of downtown Durham, which stopped at a few pubs along the way, so we had a few drinks as well. It was so fun, we heard some great stories about Durham’s past, and found several great places that we want to come back to in the future.
Lessons Learned
It’s good to keep your grocery budget and your ‘eating out’ budget seperate! If you do well not spending on one, you can always boost the other. But to me, they are very different things, as eating out is a social occasion. Groceries are to have in stock in the home. And we also try not to eat out very often, about 90% of our food is all cooked at home. This also helps me to not feel at all guilty when we do indulge!