Last week's meal plan went really well. Everyone liked all the recipes, and no one hurled food across the room with a shriek of "Ucky!" this time. (That's Baby B, I hasten to add, not my husband!)
This week I actually had lots and lots of food left over, but no meat or milk, which meant I couldn't eke out another day's worth of meals on what I had. Well, I could have, but some toddler in my not-too-distant vicinity has a milk-drinking habit to think about, so I really did have to go shopping. Supplies left over were: half a block of cheddar (that plan of not buying pre-grated cheese is really working--we've definitely stopped throwing cheese on every meal, which is surely healthier as well as cheaper), half a block of cotija, about half a cup of yogurt, half a cup of cottage cheese, a tiny bit of sour cream, nine eggs, enough rice (both brown and white) for several more rice meals, plain flour, whole wheat flour, tortillas, some frozen mixed berries, frozen peas, frozen green beans, a can of tomatoes, about a pound of carrots, half a head of celery, and a broccoli crown. So this week's groceries didn't cost a whole lot.
This week, my stomach heaved at the thought of trying to think up more things to do with chicken. So I decided we were having pork for a few meals, and chickpeas for a few more (since I have this newfound love of chickpeas). I could only get the pork in a big pack of two hunks, so I'll freeze one and use it some other time. Super economical, anyway. We've made the pulled pork recipe before, and we all liked it, and it made absolutely loads of food that could be spread out over several meals, so I don't mind spending nearly ten dollars on something that will go so far.
Meals this week:
Breakfasts: steel cut oats with frozen berries and yogurt OR eggs on toast
Lunches: sandwiches with peanut butter OR Nigella Lawson's peanut butter hummus, apples or oranges, carrots and celery, raw almonds
Snacks: fruit, nuts
Dinners:
1) Slow Cooker Filipino Adobo Pulled Pork from Skinnytaste.com, over rice, with a spinach salad
2) using leftover pork, we'll make wraps with tortillas, cottage cheese, spinach
3) using leftover pork, we'll make sandwiches on homemade whole wheat hamburger buns; side of peas
4) Chickpea, tomato and spinach curry, side of rice
5) Chickpea burgers on leftover homemade whole wheat hamburger buns, side of green beans
6) Nigella Lawson's macaroni and cheese, side of broccoli
7) Zucchini soup from Skinnytaste.com with toast and Nigella Lawson's peanut butter hummus (using regular yogurt, not Greek, because none of us likes Greek yogurt and we don't want to have to use up the rest of a container of it)
Dessert: grapes
This week's groceries:
Fruits and vegetables:
2.85lbs navel oranges 2.51
3.15lbs Fuji apples 4.03
1.75 lbs red grades 5.04
16 oz spinach 1.48
1.73lbs zucchini 1.52
Bulk:
0.84lbs macaroni elbows 0.71
1.23lbs dried chickpeas 1.29
1.27lbs steel cut oats 0.80
0.7lbs raw almonds 3.89
Dairy:
1 gallon Organic Valley 2% milk 6.92
Nancy's low fat yogurt 2.37
Misc.
Apple cider vinegar 0.96
Can evaporated milk 0.78
Sara Lee 100% whole wheat bread 2.28
Meat:
3.75lbs pork sirloin 9.84
Total: $34.58. But really, I had so much food already that it would have been at least twice that if I'd had to buy everything I needed.
It's weird, but writing down what I buy each week always gives me this guilty feeling. Guilty, because I'm supposed to be proving how little I can live on, but I buy things that technically are luxuries, like grapes, which aren't really the healthiest fruit, but which we all like. And guilty, because I haven't become a vegan or given up mainstream meat products (though I don't buy factory-farmed beef, or any seafood at all now). And guilty, because I always have food left over at the end of any given week, which makes me feel like I"m doing this project wrong.
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