Sunday, 11/20: Tree Trimming Party

Doris was sick a lot last week and I fell behind with my postings so I'm starting over with a new week. We trimmed our tree early this year so that we would have time to enjoy it since we are spending so much time in FL. Everyone thinks we're crazy, but really we're not. We invited Michael and Nancy and the girls over and I made a big pot of chili. We're saving the leftovers to eat when we return from our trip next Monday. I used two boxes of Fantastic Food Vegetarian Chili mix and added my secret ingredients (kidney beans, black beans, and salsa). Extra beans makes this dish extra farty.

I served it with hot sauce, monterey jack cheese, corn bread, crackers, and clementines. Doris wouldn't touch the chili but loved the corn bread. Jiffy mix for just 69 cents.

Karen made oreo stuffed chocolate chip cookies using tollhouse dough. They are good but she uses too much cookie dough and it create massive cookies.

Chili mix: $4
Kidney beans: $2.58
Black beans: $2.58
Salsa: $6
Corn bread mix: $1.38
eggs: 50 cents
cheese: $2

Total: $19.04 ($3.81 per person)*

*Maggie and Thea don't count as people because they aren't allow to eat yet.

$11.43 for the just three of us and there are a ton of leftovers so not as bad as it seems.

Tuesday, 11/15: Sesame Broccoli

I found a sale on Gardein products at Safeway so I bought a new one - Mandarin Orange Chik'n. Easy and yummy. Definitely a winner. To go with it, I made Sesame Broccoli, and wow, that was amazing! I'm still thinking about it. And it was so easy. I really love sesame oil, and toasted sesame seeds are so yummy. Definitely a keeper recipe. We used the frozen broccoli from Whole Foods and it tasted like fresh. Really good. I used one bag of broccoli and double the other ingredients.

Doris has been complaining about her tummy hurting for a few days so I let her eat yogurt and bananas for dinner. She really liked that and ate 2 of each.

Chik'n: $4
Broccoli: $2.29
Sesame seeds: 20 cents
Sesame oil: 30 cents
Soy sauce: 10 cents
rice: 50 cents
yogurt: $1.50
banana: $1.34

Total: $10.23 (3.41 per person)

Monday, 11/14: Mac & Cheese & broccoli

We had bought some Halloween themed Mac & cheese on clearance. Ghosts, bats, pumpkins. The boxes looked like normal boxes, but we learned something. There are a lot less noodles in themed mac & cheese than the regular boxes. I served it with frozen broccoli and mini corn dogs. Good meal but left us a it hungry since there wasn't enough mac & cheese to go around. Karen also ate a spicy chik'n patty to supplement.

Mac & cheese: 50 cents
broccoli: $1
corn dogs: $2.67
Chik'n patty: $1

Total: $5.17

I chose this to be a cheap and easy meal and it succeeded in that goal.

Sunday, 11/13: Indian Spiced Acorn Squash

I had lots of leftover curry and two small acorn squash in my fridge. Usually I make the acorn squash risotto recipe from my Fresh & Simple Vegetable Dinner cookbook. I like this cookbook because the recipes are fairly easy with few ingredients and they are usually pretty tasty. I've had bad luck with Doris eating risotto recently, so this time I turned the page to Indian Spiced Acorn Squash, and served it with the leftover curries (cabbage & pumpkin) and made some paneer with the leftover curry sauces that I've collected.

Doris only ate the paneer and Karen only liked the squash a little and really just liked the paneer. Neither of them touched the leftovers. Sometimes I'm just working hard and spending lots of money to make food for myself. I thought it was tasty at least. I subbed sesame seeds for pumpkin seeds to save money and I really liked the taste of the toasted sesame seeds. I'm a big sesame fan.

I hate how hard it is to peel acorn squash. That was definitely the worst part of this dish. I will only make squash when it comes in my CSA because it's required. It's just too much work.

CSA veggies: $2
spices: 50 cents
vegetable broth $2
dried cranberries: $1
banana: 67 cents
chutneys: 50 cents
paneer: $4
rice: 50 cents

Total: $10.87 ($3.62 per person)

Still high. It's a problem when you run out of CSA veggies. It wouldn't be bad if we could eat it for leftovers, but ....

Week 8 in Review

Sunday: Diwali celebration $16.14*
Monday: Leftovers $0
Tuesday: Cabbage $6.54**
Wednesday: Sesame Tofu $10.60
Thursday: Panang Tofu Curry $14.08
Friday: Breakfast $20.17
Saturday: Etete $40
*I'm just including the cost for the three of us so that there is a reasonable number here.
**Cheapest meal of the week

Total: $107.53 ($15.36 per day)

Ouch! So many things came together to make this a really expensive week - breakfast for dinner, 2 meals that no one liked so we couldn't eat them for leftovers, dinner out. We have to do better next week.

Saturday, 11/12: Etete

We met Sarah and her husband for dinner at Etete, a little restaurant in Little Ethiopian. Good Ethiopian food.

Total: $40 ($13.33 per person)

Friday, 11/11: Breakfast for dinner

Karen promised Doris breakfast for dinner on Friday. So we all dressed in our pajamas and had breakfast. I made trader joe's hashbrowns (you fry them up and I swear they taste just like McDonald's), scrambled eggs with cheese, danish pancakes from trader joes topped with honey and powdered sugar, one frozen waffle, an apple, frozen veggie sausage, veggie bacon, and some blackberries and raspberries. Doris had her favorite breakfast item - frozen pancakes still frozen. I'm guessing when I add this up, it will be an expensive meal.

Hashbrowns: $1.25
Eggs: 75 cents
cheese: 75 cents
danish pancakes: $2.67
waffle: 33 cents
apple: 75 cents
sausages: $2.67
facon: $4
berries: $7

Total: $20.17 ($6.72 per person)

!!! OMG. That is way too expensive. No more breakfast for dinner, or at least we scale it back.

Thursday, 11/10: Panang tofu curry

This is Doris' favorite dish. We get it frozen from Trader Joe's and it's all she ever talks about. And sometimes she's lucky and she gets it from a restaurant. So I attempted (and failed) at making it myself using this recipe. The sauce was too runny, the tofu too soft. I think the sauce was flavorful, but needed to be much, much thicker. And the tofu should have been fried before soaking in the sauce because this is just tofu mush. Add to it that Karen doesn't like cooked carrots and Doris says "Ew!" every time she sees a pepper (which she used to like mind you...) and this just did not work for my family. But I think I'll try again with a different recipe. Now that I know what's wrong with this one, I'll know what to watch out for.

Modifications - I used canned carrots because I didn't have fresh. I used a combination of lime and lemon juice because I didn't have lime leaves and the fresh limes at the grocery store were just a joke. Sometimes it's just horrible to have Safeway as our main grocery store. And I left out the ginger. Instead of hot chili paste, I used hot chili sauce - the kind with the rooster on it. I served it over basmati rice.

Rice: 50 cents
Shallots: 75 cents
Garlic: 30 cents
Peanut butter: 50 cents
Spices: 30 cents
Hot chili sauce: 20 cents
Coconut milk: $1.29
Lemon and Lime juice: 75 cents
Brown sugar: 20 cents
Tofu: $6
Carrots: $1.29
CSA veggies: $2

Total: $14.08 ($4.69 per person)

A lot of money to spend on a meal no one liked.

Wed 11/9: Sesame Tofu

I had high hopes for this dish. My attempt at reducing our dependence on fake meat and eating more tofu. It was a bit of a let down. The tofu was amazing. Best tofu I've ever made. It came out crisp and didn't stick to the pan and had a nice flavor. But the noodles were only 'eh' and the sauce was too much and there weren't enough vegetables. Or enough tofu, actually. Doris ate most of the tofu, leaving very little for us. I think we are a two blocks of tofu family now. This dish might actually be good if you double the veggies and tofu.

Instead of a red pepper, I used a small green pepper and four 'yummy orange peppers'. We've had the soba noodles in the pantry for a while so I was happy to finally use them up. I used white vinegar instead of rice vinegar to save money and reduce the number of items in the pantry. And of course, I left out the ginger. And once again no cilantro at Safeway, so I left this one out, though it certainly would have made it taste better.

Tofu: $4
Sesame oil: 30 cents
Soy sauce: 15 cents
Sesame seeds: 5 cents
Peanut butter: $1
Vinegar: 5 cents
Red pepper: 5 cents
Noodles: $1
CSA veggies: $2
Bok choy: $3

Total: $10.60 ($3.53 per person)

Borderline high. As we run out of CSA food, this cost will just inch right up, I'm sure of it.

Tuesday, 11/8: North Indian Spiced Cabbage

**Winner - cheapest meal of the week**

I had another half head of lettuce from our CSA and a bunch of random curry leftovers, so I attempted this dish again. This time I used a fresh new bag of garam masala and added two tomatoes. And just like last time, I left out the fennel and replaced the fennel seeds with more cumin seeds and left out the cayenne pepper since all that does is add heat but not flavor. It made for a really tasty dish. I like that this dish includes protein so I don't have to worry about adding something.

Doris chose to eat white rice and naan for dinner. She's much pickier when she's tired and she was tired last night, so I hope that's all this was about. But I do worry that she's turning into a picky eater. On Saturday she was so constipated she cried "It hurts!" while pooping, so it'd be nice if she'd eat some vegetables with dinner.

Onion: 75 cents
CSA veggies: $2
Chick peas: $1.29
Tomatoes: $2
Spices: 50 cents

Total: $6.54 ($2.18 per person)

Our CSA ends in two weeks. I'm worried about our meal costs sky rocketing.

Monday 11/7: Leftovers

All leftovers. Free and easy meal.

Sunday, 11/6: Diwali celebration

Our final Diwali celebration. We had 9 adults and 4 toddlers for a Diwali puja and feast. It was a great time. I'm not sure I can guess how much we spent but I'm sure it blows our weekly budget. Our menu is below:

Appetizers
Poppudums
Samosas
4 kinds of chutneys - mint/cilantro, tamarind, mango, and homemade (Karen's mom) lemon pepper

Dinner
Naan
Rice
Potatoes Suki-bhaji
Chole
Pumpkin
Paneer Jalfreezi
Eggplant Bharta

Dessert
Jalebi cupcakes
Jalebi
Kaju rolls
Gulab Jamun
Apple crisp
Kefir (rice pudding)
Mangoes

We bought most food but some was brought by others. The Kaju rolls were a gift from Karen's boss, the Gulab Jamun was brought by Andrea and Corita, Apple Crisp was brought by Raiyan's family, and the mangoes were brought by Eli. I guess we bought everything else.

The dinners were mostly recipes from the Indian cooking classes I took a few years ago. I doubled all recipes. At first I was going to make 4 dishes, but Karen got nervous about having enough food, so I added the potato recipe because I had all of the ingredients. These recipes are hard copies from the class that I've scanned in. I'll try to add all recipes here but for now I'm only able to add the eggplant recipe. The pumpkin recipe has been posted on here previously.

The paneer jalfreezi is just paneer (2 blocks) with 4 bell peppers and some jar sauce. I also added one hot pepper for flavor because I had it from the CSA I bought the Jalfreezi sauce this time and it was really yummy. Definitely one of the best that I've made.

For the chole, I needed 2 onions but only had one left. So I used one red onion and 4 leeks. I also added one extra tomato for more sauce. I thought I had the amchoor powder that was called for, but I didn't. I found that tamarind and lime juice are good substitutes, so I added some tamarind chutney and lime juice to the dish.

I added two hot peppers to the potato suki-bhaji because I had them from the CSA and thought it might be nice. I served the potatoes cold like a potato salad but served all of the other dishes hot.

I topped everything with a little bit of cilantro. I couldn't find cilantro at safeway so I had to use the little half bag that was from our CSA. I definitely would have preferred more cilantro.

I was able to use a lot of CSA veggies to keep the ingredients fresh and the costs down. I had onions, peppers (bell and hot), leeks, potatoes, cilantro, and some tomatoes.

I used vast amounts of tomatoes. These dishes are very heavy on the tomatoes. I used 12 tomatoes and half a pint of cherry tomatoes. I also used 6 bell peppers and 5-6 onions. I guess it's just a lot of food that I made.

We have lots of leftovers so tonight's dinner is free and easy.

Poppudums: $4
Samosas: $2
Chutneys: $2.25
Naan: $8
Rice: $1
CSA veggies: $2
Spices: $3
Chick peas: $2.58
Tomatoes: $8
Pumpkin: $4
Garlic: 50 cents
Paneer: $10
Jalfreezi Sauce: $3
Eggplant: $6
Jalebi: $8
Cupcakes: $3
Kefir: $3

Total: $70.33 ($5.38 per person)

That's like one week's entire budget. But it was a party and served 13 people, so not bad. Really, pretty good. $16.14 for just our family.

Week 7 Review

Sunday: Old Town Pizza $25
Monday: Halloween $2
Tuesday: Pizza $2
Wednesday: Sweet Potatoes $5.75*
Thursday: Fried Rice $7.38
Friday: Nando's $10
Saturday: Boston Market $21
*cheapest meal of the week

Total: $73.13 ($10.45 per day)

A high one. 3 meals out in one week is a lot.

Saturday, 11/5: Boston Market

We needed fast food because we were on our way to the auction. But Doris was so constipated. That morning she cried "It hurts!" while pooping. My poor, poor baby. So we wanted a veggie filled meal. We ended up at Boston Market. Doris got the kids meal - mac & cheese, corn bread, a fountain drink, and one side. She chose apples. Then Karen and I each got the three sides meal and shared our food with Doris. Karen got mac & cheese, creamed spinach, and green beans. I got mac & cheese, sweet potatoes, and corn. Doris shared the corn and green beans. Doris was the only one to get a drink so we all enjoyed her yummy orange soda, which she loves because it tickles her tongue.

Total: $21 ($7 per person)

Friday, 11/4: Date Night

Doris went to Olivia's for the night and Karen and I had the night to ourselves. We had a Groupon for Nando's so we went there. Karen had a veggie burger and fries, and I had hummus & pita, fries, and a roasted butternut squash salad. Of course every thing was spiced with Peri-peri seasoning. It was yummy and the whole thing only cost $10. I love Groupon. It was crazy how long the line is. People really like that restaurant.

Total: $10 ($5 per person)

Thursday, 11/2: Fried Rice

Fried Rice is a staple in our home. A wonderful kitchen cleaner. At least it was a staple until Karen declared that she was over Chinese food. But we haven't been to the grocery store this week and I needed something to cook, so I quietly made it hoping that Karen would eat it. She said "Nice meal, Mommy." I reminded her that she was over Chinese food and she said that she was over being over Chinese food. She's like that. Hard to keep up with what to feed her.

I had some leftover Basmati rice. I cooked up a green bell pepper and about 4 small "yummy" orange peppers and some garlic. I found half a bag of frozen "Asian stir fry veggies" and half a bag of frozen edamame and added those. And I scrambled three eggs with a bit of soy sauce. Mixed it all together with a bit of teriyaki sauce, soy sauce, white vinegar, lemon juice, sesame oil. Very yummy indeed. And lots of leftovers, which is always great.

CSA Veggies: $2

Frozen veggies: $1.50

Edamame: $2

Eggs: 88 cents

seasonings: $1

Total: $7.38 ($2.46 per person)

Wed 11/1: Sweet Potatoes

**Winner - Cheapest Meal of the Week**

BBQ Quorn cutlets, sweet potatoes, salad (fall mix, pear, walnuts, and 2 cherry tomatoes added by Doris, raspberry walnut dressing).

Cutlets: $3
CSA veggies: $2
Pear: 75 cents

Total: $5.75 ($1.92 per person)

Tuesday, 11/1: Pizza

We flew home early in the morning and went straight to work. We were so exhausted and couldn't even think of what to eat. So it was a nice surprise to get a text from Michael that he was going to leave a Whole Foods pizza outside our door. They are buy one get one on Tuesdays and Michael buys it every week. We came home to a Caresse pizza. I made some broccoli with butter to go with it so that we got at least one green thing. I thought Doris would go crazy for the broccoli but she just wanted the butter, which I didn't let her have.

Total: $2 (for the CSA veggies)

Monday 10/31: Happy Halloween!

Leila made dinner. Doris said she wanted curry so Leila went all out. Doris didn't actually eat anything. Kids. I think she was on a candy high. Leila made pumpkin, green bean & potato, dal, roti, rice, and mango. Doris kept asking for mangoes, so we served it as a side dish. However, Leila salted the mango and Doris took one bite and said "I don't like mangoes." She said she was all done but I told her that she couldn't have anymore candy unless she ate something else. I pulled some leftover Chinese broccoli out of the fridge and she ate that to satisfy me. See, Mommy, I ate something.

The nice thing about Halloween in another home is that I think Doris doesn't know that we have candy. She hasn't asked for it since we got home.

Total: $2 (I paid for the pumpkin)

Sunday 10/30: Old Town

We went to Old Town for the afternoon as a consolation for a failed attempt at Disney. It was also a bust. The rides were mostly for kids taller than Doris. The place was just weird. But we stuck around because they were doing trick or treating. We went to a pizza place for dinner because Doris said "Pizza!" Now she is pizza crazy. But actually, she ordered the kids pasta meal. We ordered a pizza meal to share - Neapolitan pizza with portabella mushrooms and kalamata olives and the best breadsticks I've ever had.

Total: $25 ($6.25 per person)

Week 6 in Review

Sunday: Sweet Potatoes $5.10 *
Monday: Spaghetti $5.30 *
Tuesday: Salad $6.98
Wednesday: Diwali $12.79
Thursday: Frozen Pizza $4.50 **
Friday: Birthday Party $0
Saturday: Temple $0

Total: $34.67 ($4.95 per day)

Pretty cheap week but this travel is killing us financially. $3000 and growing.

*based on estimates that include Karen
**cheapest meal of the week

Saturday 10/29: Happy Diwali!

We celebrated Diwali by visiting the Hindu Temple. Unfortunately, by the time we made it to the food area, they were almost out of food. We were the last ones served before they shut down. They gave us dal and idli and bottles of water and then shut the door. Total for all five of us was $19 but Robert paid for it, so really it was free. The food was pretty good but I would have liked to have tried the other options.

Friday 10/28: Dane's Birthday Party

We arrived at Grandma's to a house full of people. Dolly & the boys were visiting to celebrate Dane's birthday. Dolly made the food. Veggie chili, pasta salad, salad, texas toast. Not the best meal ever, but it filled our tummies. Dessert was cheesecake, and that was yummy. It was the kind with 16 different slices with 16 different flavors. We ate cheesecake all weekend. Leila was trying to push her homemade cheesecake but seriously?

Total: $0 (but we had another trip to FL to pay for)