Wow, I can’t believe the grocery challenge is already over! So how did everyone do? I can’t wait to submit my entry and hear about everyone else’s. In the mean time, here’s what we ate for the final weekend of the challenge:

Breakfast: I had a yogurt, Jai opted for leftovers.

Lunch: This may sound odd, but I was in the mood for a bowl of Rice Krispies, so that’s what I had! Jai had more leftover pork chops.

Dinner:

We tried the Gardein BBQ Skewers that I got for free, along with some curried rice that I made & salad. The skewers were pretty good – they’re an imitation meat that taste a bit like meatballs. I quite liked them!

Here’s our menu for Wednesday –

Breakfast: Cereal

Lunch: Leftover pork chops, French fries, and salad:

Dinner: Some friends of ours had a gift certificate to a local restaurant, and wanted to take us to dinner. So thank you to our friends for a lovely meal at The Silver Salmon!

Here’s Tuesday’s menu:

Breakfast: Cereal

Lunch: Monday’s birthday girl was our guest through Tuesday afternoon, so we all enjoyed lunch together –

Hamburgers and french fries, with a variety of toppings. We’ve also been drinking a lot of that Capri Sun from my stockpile!

Dinner: Leftover pork chops and salad:

I also had a few slices of homemade bread, but I didn’t get a picture of that! Or the candy bar I ate before dinner…

Here’s Monday’s menu:

Breakfast: Jai helped himself to the stockpile, while I ended up skipping breakfast – oops.

Lunch: Leftover spaghetti pie:

I went to the store that afternoon and bought flour, milk, half and half, butter, 2 packages of pork chops, and a head of lettuce for $17.99.

Dinner: It was my future sister-in-law’s birthday, so I held a little birthday dinner –

There were five of us altogether, and we had pork chops in Mesquite marinade, baked potatoes, 2 loaves of homemade bread (only one is pictured) and a salad made from red leaf lettuce, green onions, carrot and dried herbs.

After dinner, we had tea and cake:

Unfortunately, I ran out of pink icing halfway through the inscription and had to switch to black icing! Hey, it’s the thought that counts, right?!

This was a cake decorating kit that I won in a giveaway a while back. I substituted applesauce for the eggs and vegetable oil in the cake mix – I had vegetable oil on hand, but one of our guests has an allergy to it. I wasn’t sure how the cake would taste with so much applesauce, but it was good! If you like a really light, fluffy cake, you would probably want to stick with eggs and oil, but if you like dense cakes then you would enjoy this.

Here’s what we were eating last weekend:

Friday –

Breakfast: Cereal

Lunch:

Leftover pasta and salad – I was going to have this for dinner, but it smelled so good when I opened the fridge that I decided to have it for lunch instead!

Dinner: I made a chicken salad sandwich for myself before heading out the door to meet up with a friend. When I got home, I had a little more pasta, because it’s yummy!

Saturday –

Breakfast: Cereal

Lunch:

We had company over for lunch, and I used the rest of the leftover chicken meat to make more chicken salad – I mixed it with mayo, honey Dijon, 2 hard boiled eggs, mushrooms, cilantro, and green onions. It’s tasty, and a good way to use up leftovers! We also had the rest of the chocolate cake that I baked on Wednesday.

Dinner:

3 guesses!

Sunday –

Breakfast: Cereal

Lunch:

In addition to all the Alfredo pasta, I also had a bowl of cooked, unused noodles leftover from that night, because I made too many. I wanted to use these up, so I adapted a recipe for spaghetti pie from this page. First, I mixed the noodles with melted margarine and Parmesan cheese, and used them to form a crust in two pie pans. Then I layered slices of processed cheese on top.

Next, I cooked a package of ground pork with onion, cilantro, fresh garlic, and dried herbs, and then spooned the mixture into the pie.

Then I covered the pie with pasta sauce, more Parmesan cheese, and baked it.

We had company for lunch on Sunday also, and we enjoyed the spaghetti pie with some salad.

This was quite good – I’m not generally a fan of processed cheese slices, but when they melt into this pie, it tastes like regular cheese.

Dinner:

Finishing off the rest of the Alfredo pasta:

Yes, I know, pasta at every meal! I was just eager to use it up, since I had so much!

Here’s Thursday’s menu:

Breakfast: Power bars.

Lunch: When I cooked the chicken for Wednesday’s Alfredo pasta, I had quite a bit of meat left over that didn’t go into the dish. I set this aside and made a nice chicken salad for sandwiches:

I mixed the chicken with honey Dijon, sour cream, mushrooms, cilantro, and green onions. I served it with lettuce on homemade bread with the last of the cantaloupe.

Dinner: As I mentioned earlier, I made a TON of pasta on Wednesday. Look how much I still have left!

So for dinner, we had leftover pasta and salad:

Not everyone cares for the repetition of leftovers, but while I know we’ll be having pasta for a few more meals yet, I think there are far worse fates than eating shrimp Alfredo every night! The other thing I love about leftovers is that it saves me so much time, and I also don’t have to cook in the heat. This is another reason why I like to make extra when I’m cooking!

Here’s Tuesday’s menu:

Breakfast: I think I had a SoyJoy bar? Jai had a banana.

Lunch: Leftover pork chops, curried rice, and a banana:

Dinner: I had planned to make a nice casserole and a cabbage side dish, but after it hit 80 degrees, turning on the stove was no longer an option – the heat snuck up on me, or I would have planned something that didn’t require cooking! I know many of you live in much hotter areas, but we’re not used to these temperature on the Oregon coast, and no one here has air conditioning. That kind of heat is rough with no AC, and by dinner time I was too hot to even think. So instead, we drove to Home Depot to buy a fan, and paid a visit to the McDonald’s drive-thru on the way to get the largest, coldest drinks they had:

I also got a cold ice cream cone, and we each had a hamburger. Total for the meal? $4.88. Not turning on the stove? Priceless!

Here’s the menu for Monday –

Breakfast: I had yogurt, while Jai had a banana.

Lunch:

Leftover buffet! Steak, fish, and stir-fry.

Dinner:

Pork spareribs and sautéed yellow squash, zucchini, and onion.

This was our menu over the weekend:

Friday –

Breakfast: I could have been healthy and had a nice bowl of oatmeal, cereal, or yogurt – but instead I opted for a delicious Macadamia Nut cookie! I have a sneaking suspicion that Jai may have done the same.

Lunch:

Leftover nachos – MMM!

Dinner:

I came down with a cold on Friday night, so my dinner plans went out the window. Being sick makes me lose my appetite, so Jai picked up some saltines for me, along with some 7-Up, for $4.83. This brought our running weekly total to $29.54. I ate the saltines and cantaloupe as “Dinner” while Jai ate some leftovers/raided the pantry.

Saturday –

Breakfast & Lunch:

I still felt crummy from the cold, so I didn’t eat much of anything. Jai had the stockpile special.

Dinner:

I perked up and made a nice dinner of fish ‘n chips:

I made this fish batter recipe and pan-fried the fish – a first for me. The batter came out really thick (kind of like pancakes!), so I need to work on that, but it was still tasted good. I had meant to get some peas and make mushy peas to go with this, but I forgot to buy them. So instead I served some cantaloupe as a side dish – not exactly tradition, but hey, I like fruit.

This was a very affordable meal – I got two fish fillets in one package for $2.99 earlier in the week, making the cost per person $1.50. The cantaloupe was .99 cents, and we have eaten it at multiple meals and still have some in the fridge. The chips, ingredients for the batter, and malt vinegar all came from the stockpile.

Sunday –

Breakfast & Lunch:

I had planned on making a pancake brunch, but my plans changed somewhat and I ended up making a stir-fry around 1:30:

Two dear friends are in town visiting, so I made lunch for all of us, which was really fun. I made the same stir-fry from Wednesday, except this time I added peanuts from the stockpile. Yum!


Dinner:

Jai and I were thirsty, so I bought chocolate smoothies from a local coffeeshop:

Yum! The total cost was $9.00 – the drinks themselves were $8.00, but I also stuck a dollar in the tip jar, which obviously I didn’t get a receipt for. Frugal? No way. But there’s nothing wrong with having a treat; just be conscious of how much you’re spending!

Then we ate steak & corn on the cob:

This was the same steak that I bought on Wednesday – it was a large piece of meat, so I was able to cut it in half and have more than enough for both Jai and myself.
I have every kind of steak marinade imaginable in my stockpile, because I got them all free after coupons last year; so that’s what I flavored the meat with.

After dinner, I went to the store to get more half and half and pick up some pork ribs for dinner this evening, because I wanted something quick and easy for the ever-hectic Monday night. The total for that purchase came to $6.62. This, combined with the smoothie cost, brought my final total for the week to $45.16.