Month 2, Week Three Budget Review

To stay on track for the month, my budget for this weekend's shopping was $56.40 minus the $9.94 I spent at Natural Grocer mid-week, for a total of $46.46. I came close.

I got out of Sprouts for $53.58, which means I am over by about $6. Not bad.

Sprouts was out of the frozen pizza dough, so I had to improvise. I got some small pizza crusts from the bakery. They were more expensive than the other, but I was stuck.

• Pizza Crust, $2.99
• Pearl barley from the bulk bin, $0.33
• Quick cooking oats from the bulk bin, $0.92
• Cage free eggs, $1.99 (rain check)
• Organic Valley milk, $5.99
• Soy Milk, $3.79
• Chicken breast deli meat, $3.19
• Salami, $3.99
• Grated parmesan, $2.70
• Monterey Jack, $2.34
• Shredded mozzarella, $2.31
• Raw Milk White Cheddar, $2.85
• Vanilla biscuits, $1.99
• Natural Cinnamon Square cereal, $2.50
• Organic peanut butter cereal, $2.99
• Puffed Cereal, $1.59
• Pork steak, $2.13
• Chicken breast tenders, $4.04
• Grape tomatoes, $0.99
• Navel oranges, $1.74
• Organic Jonagold apples, $2.22

Total: $53.58

My thoughts for meals this week:

• Tonight we had the personal pizzas (tomato sauce, parmesan and mozzarella cheese) and fresh juice (apple, pear, orange). I love our juicer!
• Eggplant parmesan with pasta.
• Crockpot stew made with the pearled barley, buffalo stew meat from last week, and whatever vegetables I have left fresh or pull out of the freezer.
• Baked pork steak, steamed vegetables and another side of some kind.

I need to find a recipe for something I can use the chicken in. We could also have breakfast for dinner one night. We've got tons of eggs. I'm pretty happy with how I did at the grocery store.

Have a great week!

Saturday Night

Joy from Joy the Baker blogged about making Delicious Hot Chocolate. Of course I read her blog entry late at night when I was hungry but trying to convince myself I wasn't. Not a good combination, because it led to this:


Followed by this:

And it ended with this:

I love Saturday nights.

$2 Lunch Challenge: Day Four

This is not the call you want from your brother: "I've been diagnosed with pertussis (whooping cough), and since we spent Thanksgiving together, your family has been exposed and needs to get put on antibiotics."

Whoo-eee. Fun times. So, off to CVS I went to collect four rounds of antibiotics. Right next to CVS is a new Natural Market. And then, it was amazing, I found myself INSIDE the store. How did that happen?

But it was okay, because you know what? I found the makings of the Day Four lunch for the kiddos.

• Organic Valley cheese, $0.56
• Organic Golden Delicious Apple, $0.66
• Grape Tomatoes, $0.11
• 2 Slices of Whole Wheat Bread, $0.40
• Peanut Butter, $0.06
• Organic Fruit Spread, $0.22

Total, $2.01 for my daughter's and $1.90 for my son's (no grape tomatoes).

This is what called out my name from the shelves (okay, okay, so I had some mommy guilt from the junk jelly from yesterday):



The bread is made locally, and guess what? Look at the ingredients:
The cashier told me it was amazing bread. I ate a slice in the car on the way home. He was right. It rocks.


Now, for what's on tap at the school, for $4.25:

Baked Chicken Nuggets, 200 calories
Macoroni & Cheese, 161 calories
Steamed Broccoli, 32 calories
Pineapple, 66 calories
Dessert, 124 calories
Totals, 582 calories

Mid-Week Budget Update

I stopped in the Natural Market that just opened and I walked out with bread, fruit spread and Organic Valley cheddar cheese. It cost $9.94 which will be deducted from this weekend's shopping budget.

Organic Butternut Squash, Sweet Potatoes and Baked Buffalo

Tonight's dinner tasted a whole lot better than it looked. Promise.

I peeled the butternut squash and sweet potatoes from my Urban Acres share and boiled them in water. Once they were soft, I went to town with a hand mixer, some butter, milk, cinnamon, vanilla and a little dash of Florida Crystals cane sugar. Let me just say, it was sweet, creamy goodness.

Stephen baked the buffalo london broil steak that I had marinated overnight in some lemon zest, lemon juice, soy sauce and garlic. The flavor was great, but it got cooked too long. It should have been broiled, not baked, but you live and you learn.

I also got our juicer and made apple, pear, tangerine juice. It was fantastic and the kids drank it all up. We used two apples, 3 pears and one large tangerine from our share. I was tempted to make another batch. It's a great way to get fresh fruit in your kids!

Tonight's dinner was super easy to make. I did the butternut squash sweet potato mash last night, so all we had to do was heat it up. Tonight took about 20 minutes and that was mostly baking time.

$2 Lunch Challenge: Day Three

Today I went with the standard peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The bread and peanut butter are from Whole Foods. The jelly: not so much. It's leftover from before the big organic makeover. So, admittedly, it's not great. It's total junk, actually, but I only used a small amount. I'm going to rationalize this so I feel better. Avert your eyes.

Here's the breakdown of my daughter's lunch that cost $2.07:

• Bread, $0.25
• Peanut Butter, $0.06
• Jelly, $0.02
• Fruit Salad (organic apples, tangerines and kiwi), $0.80
• I drizzled local raw honey on the fruit, $0.04
• Raw organic veggies (celery, carrots, radish, grape tomatoes), $0.33
• Ranch for dipping, $0.05
• Wheat thins, $0.30
• 2 strawberry yogurt chocolate pretzels, $0.22

My son's lunch was the same, except I didn't include the raw veggies and ranch. I included more wheat thins and pretzels. His lunch totaled $2.03.

Had my kiddos eaten at school, I could have parted with $4.25 each and they could have eaten:

Crunchy Tacos, 387 calories
Savory Spanish Rice, 67 calories
Refried Beans, 126 calories
Fresh Melon Slices, 86 calories
Dessert, 124 calories
Total, 791 calories

Is it just me, or does anyone else think it's odd that dessert is exactly 124 calories every single day? Is it the same dessert each time?

$2 Lunch Challenge: Day Two

The lunches I packed for my kids for Day Two of the $2 Lunch Challenge were pretty similiar. I only made a few adjustments for my son. Here is my daughter's lunch which cost a total of $1.98:

Here is how it broke down:

• I made the pork chop "nuggets" at home. It took all of ten minutes. I used thick pork loin chops from Whole Foods, cut them up into small pieces, dipped them in a beaten cage free egg, covered them in a breading made up of panko bread crumbs, grated romano cheese from Sprouts, sea salt and pepper, then cooked them in a little bit of olive oil until they were done. All of the ingredients cost about $4.20 and they made 15 good sized nuggets. It looks like there are four nuggets in my daughter's salad, but it was three (one was long so I cut it in half). Total for the nuggets: $0.84.


• The ingredients for the salad (lettuce, grape tomatoes and radishes) and ranch cost $0.28.


• One cup of organic popcorn was $0.12.


• The fruit salad was all organic produce (banana, kiwi and tangerine) and cost $0.74.

My son is not a salad eater (I'm still trying), so I substituted the salad for two chocolate strawberry yogurt covered pretzels from the bulk bin at Whole Foods. I know the salad is much healthier than the pretzels, but we're working on it. His total came to $1.92.

Had they eaten at school, it would have set me back $4.25 for this:

• Breakfast Burrito w/ Ham, 360 calories
• Homestyle Potatoes, 207 calories
• Fresh Orange Slices, 31 calories
• Dessert, 124 calories
  TOTAL: 734 calories