Last week was a busy one for Super Coupon Girl, with our move over to WordPress! Now that the new site is up and the dust has settled, let’s recap our menu for the last few days of the All You Grocery Challenge.

Day 18:

We had a heatwave last week, so a lot of my meals ended up being very simple, because I didn’t want to turn on the oven and make it worse!

On Wednesday, I made a simple pasta with carrots, cheese, seasonings and flaxseed for lunch, and we had leftover ham chowder for dinner. The chowder is actually a lot better the next day – especially if you stir in a little cheese before microwaving!

Day 19:

Thursday was as simple as it gets: Leftover ham chowder for lunch and spaghetti with butter and garlic salt for dinner. I was feeling sick and didn’t have much of an appetite, hence the very stripped-down meals.

Day 20:

We finished off the rest of the ham chowder for lunch – seriously, I made a huge batch of it! – and then for dinner I baked some corn and pre-cooked pork chops from the freezer, since I could bear to turn on the oven again.

Looks good, right? Unfortunately, I froze the pork chops in a pretty flimsy ziploc bag quite a long time ago, so they ended up being freezer burnt. BLECH! We threw them out and made quesadillas instead. Oh well, at least the corn was good!

Day 21:

For lunch, I defrosted some of the dirt cheap deli ham that I got in April and served it with homemade bread, cheese, and lettuce for sandwiches. I also made a potato salad to go with it, using up the rest of the potatoes that I had on hand as well as 6 hardboiled eggs and celery.

We also had veggies with ranch dressing for dip.

We had company join us for dinner – I defrosted a big package of thin cut steaks and marinated them in chipotle seasoning for the main course, and served it with homemade bread, potato salad, and a green salad consisting of red leaf lettuce, iceberg lettuce, carrot slices, and flaxseed. Our guest also brought over walnut clusters for dessert – yum! There was a lot of steak – two trays worth – but unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of it! There were lots of leftovers, so we sent our guest home with a couple of steaks and half a loaf of bread.

Day 22 – The Start of Week 4:

We enjoyed leftovers from the previous day – ham sandwiches & potato salad for lunch, steak & green salad for dinner!

Here’s our menu for Day 17 of the All You Grocery Challenge:

Breakfast:

Peanut butter & banana slices on toasted homemade bread.

Lunch: Kept it super simple with a quesadilla!

Dinner: I made up my own “Ham Chowder” recipe, taking inspiration from the yummy potato soup I made on Day 4. I cut the bone out of a ham steak and put it in a stockpot with maybe 5 potatoes (I don’t remember how many exactly!). I filled the pot with just enough water to cover, added a stock cube and seasonings, and boiled until the potatoes were well cooked. I blended the soup a little at a time in my food processor, and served with homemade bread.

Jai liked this, but I thought it was a little bland. It was OK, but a bit watery – I only had one stock cube left, so it didn’t get cooked in lots of nice juicy stock like the last batch of potato soup that I made.

Our final total for Week 2 was $48.34. $30.59 of this was spent on groceries, while $17.75 went towards lunch at a restaurant. Our allotment for the Grocery Challenge is $25 per person per week, a total of $50 maximum for our two-person household.

Our menu for Monday, Day 16, was a bit thrown off by the holiday weekend. We had some cupcakes left over from the 4th of July, and were also sent home with some Rice Krispie Treats and popcorn from the party; so we ended up snacking on those throughout the day. For lunch, I threw together a quick, experimental dish of leftover spaghetti noodles scrambled with 4 eggs, bread chunks, cheese, seasoning, and flaxseed. It was good, but it would have been better without the bread. (Hey, it was worth a try!)

I was so exhausted that I ended up going to bed early without eating dinner. I guess the holiday weekend really took it out of us!

Here’s our weekend menu for the All You Grocery Challenge:

Friday, Day 13:

Breakfast: I think cereal or fruit?

Lunch:

We had leftover meat and potato pie, mushy peas, and bread.

Dinner:

I heated up two more pre-cooked steaks from the freezer, and served with a small salad and orange slices:

Saturday, Day 14:

Breakfast: I ended up skipping breakfast; I think Jai had fruit.

Lunch:

Grilled cheese sandwiches on homemade bread, with celery sticks & peanut butter:

Dinner:

I wanted to keep dinner simple, so I just threw together some spaghetti tossed with olive oil, shredded cheese, seasonings, and flaxseed. I usually aim to serve a vegetable or fruit with each dinner, but I was just too tired!

Sunday, Day 15:

Since it was the 4th of July, we had holiday plans with friends and family, so it wasn’t a “normal” day. There were some leftovers in the fridge which we snacked on through the day – along with a sample or two of the food I was preparing for that evening! – and then we headed over to watch fireworks with family, where there was a huge buffet of food. My contribution was cupcakes and 2 loaves of bread – the second loaf was still in the breadmaker when I took these photos!

I used a few different effects to decorate the cupcakes. Some of them were plain yellow cake batter with red sprinkles stirred in; for the rest, I tinted the batter, added different flavors, and layered it in the cupcake liners to create fun, multi-colored cupcakes. The first layer was tinted with red food coloring and flavored with a little apple juice and apple pie spices; the second layer was left untinted and flavored with extra vanilla extract, while the top layer was tinted blue and flavored with a little blueberry juice. The addition of juice made the batter quite runny, so I was worried that they wouldn’t cook properly, but they ended up nice and moist.

I normally make all my baked goods from scratch, but I had a Duncan Hines cake mix and pre-made frosting in my stockpile that needed to be used up, so these cupcakes were a good way to utilize those items.