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.

Here’s our menu for Day 12 of the All You Grocery Challenge:

Breakfast: We both had fruit.

Lunch:

We had toast, orange slices, salad, and eggs scrambled with seasonings and flaxseed. I know, I’ve been putting that flaxseed into everything since I got it! I like it because it’s nutritious and has a good flavor, so it’s a nice “extra” to toss into dishes.

Dinner:

For dinner, I wanted to do an approximation of a traditional English meal – meat & potato pie, mushy peas, and bread. First, I made a pie crust, then filled it with two cooked, chopped potatoes, cooked beef cubes, and 1 cup of gravy. (Normally I would add a lot more gravy, but the packet I bought didn’t make much!) Then I topped with a few dollops of butter, covered with a top crust, and poked the center with a fork.

I usually do my famous oil crust, but recently I’ve been making shortening crusts. Here is the recipe I used:

Shortening Pie Crust

Recipe from Betty Crocker’s Cook Book – makes an 8 or 9 inch one-crust pie

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon shortening (I got a huge tub of palm shortening to review on Contest Corner, so that was what I used!)
2 to 3 tablespoons cold water

Measure flour and salt into bowl. Cut in shortening thoroughly. Sprinkle in water, 1 tablespoon at a time, mixing until all flour is moistened and dough almost cleans side of bowl. (1 to 2 teaspoons water can be added if needed.) Gather dough into a ball and roll out.

I cooked the pie at 350 degrees for about half an hour or so – just until the pastry looked done.

In the meantime, I started making mushy peas. Now, you’ve heard me talking about these before – it’s a traditional side dish in Northern England, and I swear they are delicious, despite the somewhat unappetizing name and my sorry attempt at re-creating them last year! Thankfully, fellow ex-pat Clair of Mummy Deals sent me her tip for making mushy peas stateside. She takes regular dried split peas, boils them with a little extra salt, and covers them in malt vinegar. I followed her lead, and it turned out beautifully! Thanks Clair!!

I made a loaf of homemade bread to go with the meal, and then packed everything up in the insulated bag you see in the background and took it over to a friend’s house for dinner. This made a lot of food, so it fed 3 of us plus seconds and leftovers.

Here’s our menu for Day 11 of the All You Grocery Challenge:

Breakfast: Confession time: We ate ice cream for breakfast. And it was glorious.

Lunch:

We had grilled cheese sandwiches made with homemade bread, along with grapes and carrot sticks.

Dinner:

I defrosted two of the steaks I froze last week and heated them up for a quick dinner, served with salad. I used the same seasonings on the salad as I did the day before, and it was great. Super easy and delicious dinner!

Here’s our menu for Day 10 of the All You Grocery Challenge:

Breakfast: I had Raisin Bran, Jai had a banana.

Lunch:

I found this great recipe for homemade tortilla salad bowls, so I decided to try that for lunch. You run the tortilla through tap water, shape it around a ball of foil, and bake. I also sprinkled Chipotle seasoning salt on top of the tortilla before I stuck it in the oven. I then layered the tortilla bowl with salad, flaxseed, a sprinkling of cheese, taco sauce, a drizzle of ranch dressing, and topped with more Chipotle seasoning salt. I served this with grapes on the side, and it was VERY good! The seasonings add so much flavor to the salad. And how’s this for frugal: The taco seasoning came from leftover Taco Bell packets!

Dinner:

For dinner I adapted this Split Pea and Ham soup recipe. I used one small onion, pulled fresh out of my garden:

I sautéed that in olive oil, then added one ham steak, half a bag of dried split peas, a little salt and pepper, and enough water to cover. The recipe doesn’t list any cooking temperature, which I thought was odd, so I just brought it to a boil and reduced the heat as it seemed appropriate.

Jai’s plate is empty because he was at a class during dinnertime – don’t worry, there was plenty left for him when he got back!

This was a very frugal meal. I served it with homemade bread, which I made with flour, salt, yeast, water & margarine – yes, margarine! I substitute it for butter and there’s no difference in taste. The soup was made with a ham steak that I got for .63 cents, half a bag of dried split peas – roughly .72 cents worth – and of course the onion that I grew myself. The most expensive part of this might have been the butter that we spread on the bread slices. Margarine is undetectable when it is baked into foods, but we find it very unappetizing as a spread – so we always use butter for that.

I never thought of myself as a big soup fan, but now that I’ve started making more of them from scratch, I realize that I really enjoy it – probably because homemade is more flavorful than anything you would get out of a can.

A friend also gifted us the ice cream and homemade crackers pictured above. YUM!