I asked her what she'd like for her birthday dinner. She doesn't talk much yet, but she considered the question for a few moments before replying "Apple, chee [cheese], brocky [broccoli], pah-tah [pasta], sossie [sausage]. Sossie sossie sossie!" Well, that was pretty predictable. So I decided to make a baked pasta recipe with sausage and cheese, with a side of broccoli and sliced apples for dessert. I also had to get supplies to make a birthday cake. She adores chocolate cake, so I decided to try my hand at one, although I'm not a great baker. I know I could buy a cake, but the nice ones are expensive, and I'm sure that if I follow a good recipe exactly, I stand a chance of not messing this up.
This week's meal plan:
Breakfasts: steel cut oats with plain unsweetened yogurt OR eggs on toast
Lunches: wraps or sandwiches with Smitten Kitchen's chicken salad, carrot and celery sticks, string cheese, apples, oranges
Dinners:
Roast chicken with sides of brown basmati rice and steamed broccoli
Tomato-sausage penne bake, side of steamed broccoli
America's Test Kitchen tamale pie (not available online, sorry!), side of steamed broccoli
Madhur Jaffrey's mushroom curry, sides of brown basmati rice and peas
Leftovers (of which I anticipate there will be lots)
Desserts/snacks: America's Test Kitchen Emergency Chocolate Cake with chocolate buttercream frosting for Baby B's birthday, apples, oranges
This week's groceries:
Vegetables and fruits
1 lb cremini mushroos 2.98
bunch of cilantro 0.48
1 lb broccoli crowns 0.97
1 head celery 0.88
5.13 lbs Fuji apples 5.03
5.83 lbs navel oranges 2.80
Bulk
0.43 lbs dried cranberries 1.50
0.89 lb Dutch process baking cocoa 3.57
0.7 lbs penne 0.59
Dairy
Sargento Italian shredded cheese 1.98
Sargento reduced fat Mexican shredded cheese 1.98
Cheese Heads reduced fat string cheese 2.98
Nancy's low fat plain unsweetened yogurt 2.37
Organic Valley 2% milk, half a gallon 3.60
Organic Valley whole milk, half a gallon 3.60
Challenge unsalted butter 2.87
Meat
Small whole chicken 5.94
1 lb local ground pork 2.78
1 lb Italian sausage 2.68
Cans
Store brand crushed tomatoes, 28 oz 1.13
S&W black beans 0.68
Other
100 Red Rose black tea bags 2.96
5 lbs plain flour, supermarket brand 1.64
2 lbs powdered sugar, supermarket brand 1.28
Clabber Girl baking powder 1.58
Sara Lee 12-grain bread 1.98
birthday candles 0.64
Mayonnaise, supermarket brand 1.50
Total: $62.97.
So, altogether a bit more than I usually spend, but still far less than my goal at the start of this blogging project to spend less than $100 a week for our family of three. I guess it was more because of all the baking things I bought: a big bag of flour, powdered sugar, cocoa (though I was pleased to be able to get good-quality cocoa in the bulk section, because packaged cocoa is always expensive), birthday candles and so on.
I'm still uneasy over where our meat comes from. I suspect I'm too easily hoodwinked by the term "locally produced," and my wishful thinking endows this with all sorts of qualities it might not necessarily have, like naturalness and wholesomeness. Now that I consider this, I feel ashamed of myself, because there's no way a pig farmer can bring me a pound of ground pork for $2.78 without keeping those pigs in crates.
I suck.
Oh well, I will try to improve in the future. We are really going to have to go on the straight and narrow next week, because we're so darn broke. I was looking at the prices of bulk beans and grains, and thinking that all this brown basmati rice we buy because it's supposed to be low-glycemic is more than twice as expensive as plain short-grain brown rice, and three times as expensive as plain long-grain white rice. Now, if I'm not misinformed, I believe it's possible to bring down the glycemic load of a meal by having lots of low-glycemic things with the high-glycemic ones, so we could, in theory, eat a moderate portion of cheaper rice with a nourishing Non-Disgusting Bean Stew, a bit of chicken and some broccoli florets, and be OK.
Also, I know I'm always going on about my non-negotiable policy of feeding my daughter only organic dairy products, but the fact is that we can't get organic yogurt or cheese in this town except at the natural foods co-op, which is very, very expensive. The brand of yogurt I buy, Nancy's, claims that it comes from farms that don't use rBGH, so that seems acceptable to me. But I actually can't find any brand of cheese at the budget supermarket that says anything about not using rBGH, and I'm going to take this as an indication that they do, since if they didn't, they'd certainly want to advertise it. So why am I not cutting cheese out of my diet? More importantly, why am I squeamish about using supermarket-brand cheese when I happily use supermarket-brand everything else, from flour to mayonnaise?
So maybe next week, when all this birthday partying is over, I'm going to take a good hard look at my unnecessary expenditure. After all, if I can cut a few things down in price, then maybe I can get some actual free range meat. Or perhaps I shouldn't eat meat at all. These are the things that keep me awake at night.
UPDATE: I want to let anyone reading this post know that the mushroom curry was awful. Awful, awful, awful. Terrible taste and flavors. I had to throw it out. I was surprised, since Madhur Jaffrey is a reputable author. I swear I followed the recipe to the letter. We had eggs on toast that night.
Mayonnaise, supermarket brand 1.50
Total: $62.97.
So, altogether a bit more than I usually spend, but still far less than my goal at the start of this blogging project to spend less than $100 a week for our family of three. I guess it was more because of all the baking things I bought: a big bag of flour, powdered sugar, cocoa (though I was pleased to be able to get good-quality cocoa in the bulk section, because packaged cocoa is always expensive), birthday candles and so on.
I'm still uneasy over where our meat comes from. I suspect I'm too easily hoodwinked by the term "locally produced," and my wishful thinking endows this with all sorts of qualities it might not necessarily have, like naturalness and wholesomeness. Now that I consider this, I feel ashamed of myself, because there's no way a pig farmer can bring me a pound of ground pork for $2.78 without keeping those pigs in crates.
I suck.
Oh well, I will try to improve in the future. We are really going to have to go on the straight and narrow next week, because we're so darn broke. I was looking at the prices of bulk beans and grains, and thinking that all this brown basmati rice we buy because it's supposed to be low-glycemic is more than twice as expensive as plain short-grain brown rice, and three times as expensive as plain long-grain white rice. Now, if I'm not misinformed, I believe it's possible to bring down the glycemic load of a meal by having lots of low-glycemic things with the high-glycemic ones, so we could, in theory, eat a moderate portion of cheaper rice with a nourishing Non-Disgusting Bean Stew, a bit of chicken and some broccoli florets, and be OK.
Also, I know I'm always going on about my non-negotiable policy of feeding my daughter only organic dairy products, but the fact is that we can't get organic yogurt or cheese in this town except at the natural foods co-op, which is very, very expensive. The brand of yogurt I buy, Nancy's, claims that it comes from farms that don't use rBGH, so that seems acceptable to me. But I actually can't find any brand of cheese at the budget supermarket that says anything about not using rBGH, and I'm going to take this as an indication that they do, since if they didn't, they'd certainly want to advertise it. So why am I not cutting cheese out of my diet? More importantly, why am I squeamish about using supermarket-brand cheese when I happily use supermarket-brand everything else, from flour to mayonnaise?
So maybe next week, when all this birthday partying is over, I'm going to take a good hard look at my unnecessary expenditure. After all, if I can cut a few things down in price, then maybe I can get some actual free range meat. Or perhaps I shouldn't eat meat at all. These are the things that keep me awake at night.
UPDATE: I want to let anyone reading this post know that the mushroom curry was awful. Awful, awful, awful. Terrible taste and flavors. I had to throw it out. I was surprised, since Madhur Jaffrey is a reputable author. I swear I followed the recipe to the letter. We had eggs on toast that night.
Hi Miranda
ReplyDeleteYour papa kindly sent us the link to your blog which I will occasionally follow. Good luck with the lard - scary stuff, but I think it makes good pastry! Challenge with the soup will be to make it into something where you can't tell it's there. What about eventually making what I call "fridge cleaning soup" where you use up all the bits and pieces of good stuff but each too small for a meal
Judith