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Archive for August, 2009
Thursday, August 6th, 2009
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…
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Wednesday, August 5th, 2009
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.
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Tuesday, August 4th, 2009
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!
Posted in All You Challenge, Coupon Menu Corner | 2 Comments »
Monday, August 3rd, 2009
Total spent: $22.88 Total before coupons: $47.96 View receipt – unfortunately the ink on part of my receipt got smeared on the way home, so I’m going to go back into Safeway and get a reprint for the grocery challenge.
I had a lot of produce and leftovers to be used up, so I made a meal plan based on that and picked up some missing ingredients. I also had a bunch of good coupons that were expiring at the end of the month, so I redeemed those as well.
Got:
1 jar of mayonnaise – need this to make coleslaw with the rest of my cabbage! I had a coupon that would have made another brand much cheaper, but the store was out of stock, so this was the next cheapest brand. Price: $2.49 1 box of Rice Krispies – regularly $3.99, used a free coupon that I received from Vocalpoint. Final price: Zero! And as an added bonus, the box of cereal also contained $5 worth of coupons! If you haven’t signed up for Vocalpoint yet, I highly recommend it. This is one of several free coupons that they have mailed to me. 8 Mars candy bars – on sale for “Buy 2, get 2 free”, use four free product coupons that I received from the “Free Chocolate Friday” promotion, making all 8 candy bars free! 1 gallon of milk – price: $2.49 1 quart of half and half – price: $2.29 1 tub of yogurt – on sale for .70 cents, used one free coupon that I received via My Blog Spark. Looking at the receipt, it appears that the coupon took of the maximum value of .89 cents, so I received .19 cents of overage. Does anybody know why some free coupons are coded to take the maximum value off, no matter what the sale price is? 1 box of Skinny Cow Ice Cream – regularly priced at $5.49, used one free coupon that I won in a Twitter contest from Joyce of Saving Our Cents. Thanks again Joyce, these are so yummy! 10-pack of beef hamburger patties – price: $5.99 1 package of Oscar Mayer hot dogs – regularly priced at $3.79, used this free hot dog coupon that I signed up for in May. Final cost: Zero! .71 lbs of pork chops – price: $2.12 2.09 .lbs of pork chops – price: $4.24. These pork chops will be our main course for dinner tonight! 1 package of ground pork – price: $2.99. I love pork because it is inexpensive and delicious. I bought this ground pork to use in a spaghetti casserole, since I had a lot of unused pasta left over from dinner on Wednesday. 1 carrot – also for the coleslaw that I’ll be making. Price: .16 cents 10 lb bag of potatoes – I love potatoes because they are cheap, versatile, and you get a lot of food out of one bag. Price: $1.79 3 fruit squiggle snacks – .79 cents each, used three free coupons, making the final cost zero! I found these coupons in the gym, of all places. They had a big stack of the coupons for members to take next to gym schedules and leaflets. I think I was the only one who had even noticed them. It pays to keep your eyes peeled for coupons, because you find them in the oddest places! 1 package of Gardein BBQ Skewers – on sale for $3.50, used the free coupon that I mentioned last month. Once again, this coupon automatically took off the maximum value of $4.99 instead of the sale price, so I received $1.49 in overage.
This trip brought my final total for the week to $48.10.
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Monday, August 3rd, 2009
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!
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Monday, August 3rd, 2009
Here’s our menu for Wednesday:
Breakfast: I prepared some food in the morning for that night’s dinner, because I wanted to use the stove earlier in the day before the temperatures got too hot. I ended up “sampling” what I was making instead of sitting down to eat breakfast! Jai had a banana.
Lunch: We were having company over that night and I was making quite a bit of food, so I didn’t want to eat a huge lunch. We both had power bars – the one I ate was a “FullBar” that I won in a giveaway from Saving Money 101. Thanks, Paula! It was quite tasty, and it was indeed filling. We also had some chips and dip:
The chips are left over from the nachos I made last week, while the queso dip is the same jar that I used in some of my recipes during the first week. We’ve enjoyed this as a snack twice – that bag of chips really went a long way!
I went to the store on Tuesday and Wednesday, to pick up 2 heads of lettuce, a bunch of green onions, a gallon of milk, a large package of chicken breasts, .81 lbs of coffee, a tub of Parmesan cheese, and a quart of half and half for $20.34. This brings my total for the week to $25.22.
Dinner: Four of my dear friends were visiting from out of town, so I invited them over to dinner. I made shrimp & chicken Alfredo served over angel hair pasta, two loaves of homemade bread, and a salad made from romaine lettuce, green onions, mushrooms, and dried herbs. For dessert, I baked a homemade chocolate cake, and one of my friends made a cheesecake – which I forgot to get a picture of, darn it!
Since I was cooking for six, I made a lot of food – and I overestimated how much we would need, as I tend to do! My motto is that it’s better to have too much food than have guests go hungry; and we love leftovers, so it’s all good. For the main course, I used three boxes of pasta, a 2lb bag of shrimp, and a bunch of chicken breasts (I don’t remember the exact weight). I made a variation on this Alfredo recipe – I highly recommend the recipe, it’s been a big hit every time I’ve made it. We all ate plenty, and I still have a stockpot full of pasta as of this writing!
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Saturday, August 1st, 2009
If you didn’t get in on the last Scwan’s food deal, then you might want to check out this one. Today only, the first 500,000 people who click here to visit their website can receive $10 worth of food free of charge – looks like the delivery free is waived also, although that could be regional. This promo is limited to those who have not ordered from Schwan’s in the last 14 weeks.
According to the ticker on the website, the promotion starts in about 2 hours, so heads-up! Shopping Frugal has more details here.
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