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!
Oh man, this week was ups and downs all over. First off, Sunday was my tea party! I had such a blast getting all dolled up, when I have a theme I go ALL IN. The group of women was a great mix of personalities and it led to some really great conversation. Maybe after a while I can convince them to talk finances? 😉
The downside of having the party hosting bug is that I go ALL IN. This means occasionally I over-do it, and I definitely over-did-it. I spent way too much on groceries, and it turned out we didn’t even use a good chunk of the food! I even tried to keep telling myself that it’s tea, not a full meal, but… I just can’t help myself!
I’m gonna blame this one on my mom, who is the world’s most awesome party planner, ask anyone who knows her (she planned my amazing destination wedding for <$10,000!). I grew up with lavish parties on a shoestring budget, and a big weakness for making sure when there are 10 guests, I have enough food to feed at least 25.
Monday:
Breakfast – Waffles with fresh berries. I made a batch of waffles on Saturday and stuck them in a ziplock for breakfasts this week. And I’m so glad it’s spring, and berries are on sale again! It is not quite blueberry or strawberry season, so I know they’re greenhouse grown or imported, but I’ve missed fresh berries!
Lunch – Leftover 5 Bean Chili with leftover koftes mixed in. The boy didn’t love these re-heated and honestly neither did I (most things are best fresh) so I just mixed them into the chili. I figured, hey, lentils and onion go great in chili! And it tasted just fine.
Dinner – Changed our minds from stuffed baked potatoes to mac n cheese! Two reasons: 1) we got a “wintry mix” of rain/sleet/snow which made for a yucky cold night and demanded comfort food and 2) I had soooo much cheese leftover from the tea party!
Made a big pot of “lazy black beans“, and then accidentally got caught up blogging and burnt the bottom. 🙁 I still put them in the fridge, we will see if they’re salvageable.
Tuesday:
Breakfast – Leftover biscuits from the tea party warmed up with some strawberry jam.
Lunch – I made this black rice and radish salad, with a few differences. I added lemon juice and zest to the dressing, laid it all over a bed of torn kale, and added thin sliced cucumbers.
Snack – Then after lunch I had a triple chocolate brownie (from last weekend’s 3/3 party) and it was heaven. If this isn’t your definition of heaven I don’t want to know how you define it, and probably don’t want to go there.
Dinner – I made some crispy baked tofu for myself and ground turkey for the boy, and we had Taco Tuesday! My tacos were a little smoky but I figured it was from the fire…
We lit up a fire in the backyard and ate outside. It was still super chilly, but really nice. I can’t wait for it to warm up so we can do this more often.
Wednesday:
Breakfast – Waffles with strawberry/OJ sauce. I just microwaved a cup of cut up berries in about 1/4 cup juice and poured it on.
Lunch – Leftover chili and mac n cheese mixed together
Snack – Finished the beet hummus and some veggies
Dinner – Sooooooooo I made a big batch of black beans… and today I tried to eat them with stir fried veggies and rice.
I choked down part of a bowl because I’d already dished it out, but the burnt flavor was just too much. I had to throw out a whole pound of cooked black beans, and my heart broke a little 🙁
I had a follow-up bowl with the rest of the tofu and more rice.
Thursday:
Breakfast –Roasted sweet potato with white beans. I loved this combo last week, but for whatever reason I took 2 bites and just could not…
Snack 1 – good thing I had a granola bar in my lunch bag
Lunch –The last bit of leftover chili mac, and leftover Black Rice & Radish Salad. I’m glad I had double the lunch since I had such a lackluster breakfast appetite.
Snack 2 – I did also make a bunch of kale chips yesterday, so I packed up the half I didn’t immediately inhale for an afternoon snack
Dinner – I had no idea what to make, so I made refrigerator soup! It’s basically when you just pull everything out of the refrigerator and toss it together with some water to make soup. I added the sweet potato and white beans I couldn’t finish, plus some rice, some of the tofu, and other veggies.
It’s different every time, and a great way to use up bits of leftovers so you don’t have to throw them away. The boy said that with extra chilies and hot sauce it wasn’t even that bad!
Friday:
Breakfast – Great Grains cereal with Almond milk. Yet again, a cereal the boy requested, and I’m the one eating it. 😀
Lunch – In cleaning out the fridge, I found out that I’d hidden a few pieces of the spinach artichoke pizza! So I dug those out to finish it off. I also had 2 lonely beet veggie burgers hanging out, so I nommed those too.
Things came up at work, so by the time I got back to my desk it was after 3pm. I was ravenous, and never more happy I had double the lunch than this moment.
And now I can almost see the back wall of the refrigerator! Time to cook something…
Dinner – Stir Friday! I made my oven baked tofu and topped a stir fry of frozen veggies and extra odds and ends for a tasty, frugal meal.
The Weekend
My sister and her friends were in Florida this week for their spring break. Since I’m halfway-ish on the drive back to Ohio, they asked to stay at our place to save on a hotel. Of course I said sure! So we will have 5 20-somethings in our house on St. Patty’s Day! Hahaha we will see how us old folk fare, if we can still hang. 😉
We got all the fixings for Shamrock Shakes! Not as healthy as the one I made a few years ago, but definitely tastier!
Plans beyond Saturday morning? Sleep. Sit. Read. That’s pretty much it. 🙂 Well, maybe start some sweet potato slips.
Food Total: $122.81
Ugggggggghhhh… this was a death by a thousand cuts. No one thing was super expensive or put me over budget, I just went a little party planning crazy.
When I was looking up tea party recipes, I kept finding more and more sandwiches and sweets that I wanted to make! I ended up with five different kinds of finger sandwiches! FIVE!
But… you know… they were all delicious, and everyone seemed to really like trying one of each kind to see which was their favorite. So I can’t be too mad. At least I had plenty of tea so I didn’t have to buy any of that.
Harris Teeter
| Dairy | $15.43 | Staples | $20.92 | Fruit/Veg | $18.56 |
| Sliced cheese 5 | 5.98 | Almond milk 2 | 3.94 | Lemons 1lb x2 | 4 |
| cream cheese | 0 | Pancake mix | 1.99 | Pears 2 | 1.46 |
| Goat cheese | 3.99 | Cereal 2 | 5 | Pineapples 2 | 1.94 |
| Quart half and half | 1.47 | Blue agave | 9.99 | Baby carrots 2 | 1.68 |
| Fage Greek yogurt | 0 | Strawberries 2 quarts | 4.98 | ||
| plain Greek yogurt | 3.99 | Mini cukes 6 | 1.99 | ||
| Kale | 0.99 | ||||
| Bananas 6 | 1.52 |
Harris Teeter has email coupons just for eVIC card holders. I always check because there is usually at least one free or very marked down item that we use. This week the Fage Greek yogurt and cream cheese were totally free. Which is great, because the finger sandwiches needed cream cheese. 🙂
I admit, the blue agave syrup was a total splurge. We have started using agave as our main sweetener for tea, oatmeal, etc, rather than sugar. This was a HUGE bottle, marked down $3. So I went for it.
Kroger
| Staples | $23.48 | Fruit/Veg | $15.97 |
| Tofu 2 | 3 | blueberries pint | 1.78 |
| clif bar (should be free) | 1.5 | avocado 6 | 4.14 |
| tortillas chips wtf also should be free | 1.29 | markdowns red bell peppers 2 | 0.99 |
| buffalo sauce | 0.89 | markdowns yellow squash 3 | 0.99 |
| hot pepper sauce | 1.09 | organic dill | 1.99 |
| green and red curry sauce | 4.98 | radishes | 1.29 |
| Hot pepper sauces 6 | 6.58 | markdowns Serrano peppers | 0.99 |
| burger buns | 0.89 | markdowns apples 4 | 0.99 |
| bread loaf x2, rolls | 2.27 | Mushrooms quart | 1.99 |
| French bread loaf | 0.99 | Roma tomato 4 | 0.82 |
At Kroger, they do Freebie Friday deals, and I usually wait a few weeks to get several at once. The tortilla chips and Clif bar were included, and I would not have bought them if not free, but they didn’t ring up.
I noticed once I got home and was filling in my spreadsheets… but is not quite $3 worth going back to the store to fight over? Probably not. Just very annoying.
Lessons Learned
More ugggggh… I hate food waste! Hate it. And having to toss a huge batch of my favorite frugal food (black beans) kills me. Plus it throws off my plan of eating black bean breakfast tacos, and beans and rice for lunch. So this week was a bit of a scramble. I plan to do better next week.
I’m considering doing intermittent fasting for a bit, due to my weird dislike of breakfast lately. I used to be a devoted fan of breakfast for many years. Now it seems like nothing sounds good, and even when it does, I take a few bites and then am over it. I don’t want to waste food, that’s for sure. So maybe my body’s just changing in my 30s, and trying out not eating until a little later in the day will help.