In Scout's Freezer

Week 5

Scout — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:54:20 +0000

February is starting cold this year, and so I piled the soups high in my lunches. I think I will be keeping those for myself, so I don’t have to worry about the kids bringing them home and telling me it was yucky. I am also trying to restock my freezer a smidge this week. So I bought extra sirloin, and will be freezing a loaf of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I have already stocked it with 14 cups of chicken stock this morning, and will be cooking a pot of beans and a loaf of bread tomorrow for freezing. This was a tricky week for menu planning, since my daughter and I are going to a camp out this weekend. I want to make sure I don’t have to worry about dinner the night before so I can pack and double check the packing. So my dear husband is on his own, cooking for himself and maybe my son.Sunday

Breakfast – cereal
Lunch $10 – homemade pizzas!
Dinner $2.67 – Rosemary Dijon Chicken and Roasted Veggies

Monday

Breakfast – eggs and toast
Lunch - Sesame fried ramen with peas and chicken, and maybe some other stuff
Dinner $14.76 – Gnocchi with Pesto Cream Sauce and salad

Tuesday

Breakfast $1.58 – Fairy Bread
Lunch – $2.40 Veggie soup for me and $7.47 Cracker Stacker Lunchable for the kids
Dinner $19.78 – Gyudon with stir fried veggies (with leftover sirloin going into the freezer)

Wednesday

Breakfast $0.68 – that yummy Baked Apple we had a while ago
Lunch $10.93 – Macaroni salad, plus whatever looks good in the fridge
Dinner $9.38 – Shrimp Nachos and Taco Potato Salad, lots of potatoes left over

Thursday

Breakfast – smoothies
Lunch $2.36 – Freezer PB&Js for the kids, Cream of Carrot soup for me
Dinner $11.81 – Apricot chicken, with mashed potatoes

Friday

Breakfast – egg sandwiches
Lunch – whatever looks good in the fridge, maybe with fish sticks from the freezer
Dinner – delivery, or DH bringing something home . . .maybe Subway

So going into the freezer are 10 PB&Js, over a pound of sirloin, the equivalent of 6 cans of pinto beans, 4 medium pizza crusts, 4 quarts of chicken stock, and a loaf of bread.

Week 4, Winners/Losers

Scout — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:58:01 +0000

Well, for this week, it is definitely a week of winners. We had several, in fact. On Sunday, we had a major win for the adults, Sweet Potato Enchiladas, although the kids thought it was too spicy (???? They’re crazy!). I had leftover filling, and it was good with crackers for lunch! For convenience and flavor, this Brat recipe is awesome. I liked not having to have my husband grill them, and then wait for his “perfect” brats, which take hours and hours, and are really best the next day. Although I think next time, I might sear them in a pan first, as these turned out slightly . . .pasty looking. I like my brats a nice caramel color. My last winner for the week is Breakfast Sausage. But it is super! I like that it is made from turkey, but tastes like regular breakfast sausage, can be done in patties or crumbles, and freezes wonderfully. It is even great as sausage on a pizza!

Week 4

Scout — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 22:59:19 +0000

Hopefully this week will bring a return to normalcy around the craftscout household. But I kinda doubt it. I am done with the Girl Scout troop’s backyard Campout last weekend, but am in the midst of planning for the big campout in two weeks. Along with the normal day to day stuff! I had to restock a bunch of stuff this week: detergent, softener, soy sauce, garbanzos, frozen fruit for smoothies, salt, batteries, and other stuff. Also Boogie is supposed to bring snack for his preschool class this week, and I actually remembered before the night before! Of course, I forgot the kids’ toothpastes, but I can go grab those tomorrow when Boogie is at school. Or ask DH to bring some home. Needless to say, since I had very little stash left, and all these extras, $130 is perfectly respectable. But thankfully, I will be able to drop some stuff from this week’s shopping trip into the freezer.

Sunday

Breakfast – cereal
Lunch – Fuddrucker’s (they have a family special! 2 kids’ meal, 2 adult meals, $20)
Dinner – Pork Fried Rice I was supposed to make last week, but didn’t because I had a campout instead. Ahhh, planning . . .

Monday

Breakfast – Banana dogs using the last of the bananas, and hot dog buns leftover from the campout
Lunch – Pizzas from the freezer, carrots and ranch (from campout), and apple
Dinner $4.66- Sweet Potato Enchiladas and Black Bean and Corn Salad

Tuesday

Breakfast - Turkey Sausage and egg tortillas
Dinner$11 – Brats and Broccoli Salad, this seems pretty high, but the brats come in packs of 5, and I chose to buy 2 packs and lunches taken care of.

Wednesday

Breakfast $4.38 – Broiled Bananas
Lunch – Leftovers
Dinner $3.25 – Chicken with Apples, served over brown rice

Thursday

Breakfast $1.50 – Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal
Dinner $13.61 – Shrimp and Corn Chowder, in the crockpot. another expensive one, but I got 2lbs of shrimp, so half will go in the freezer for another week.

Friday

Breakfast $2.29 – Strawberry Smoothies
Dinner – Turkey Meatloaf, with salad

Saturday

Breakfast $2.78 – Toasted Fruit Burritos, with some serious modifications as nectarines aren’t in season right now
Lunch $3.27 – Tuna Noodle Salad
Dinner $1.77 – Cranberry Chicken

Snacks for the week include: sweet potato chips $1.40, lentil munchies $1.12, and spicy orange hummus $5.68

Week 3, Winners/Losers

Scout — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 23:00:58 +0000

Well, this week, we definitely had a winner. This chicken pasta recipe is well worth saving for an OAMC session! Of course, at our house, we will love just about anything with pesto. In fact, my mother had a huge jar of pesto she had out to spread on bread, and she had to frisk my husband and I down before we left to make sure we didn’t run off with it! I think we will need to devote my new Aerogarden to basil for pesto in the next go around. Mmmmm, fresh pesto.

Week 3

Scout — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 14:29:31 +0000

So, since we had DD’s birthday this weekend, and then a school holiday yesterday, my weekly schedule got all messed up. But the party was a blast. This week we have a little more breathing room, so the $130 grocery bill didn’t pinch very bad. In the next couple of weeks, my roommates are going to be moving out, so we’ll see how I do scaling down to cooking for only 4, and shopping for only 4. Hopefully I will be able to get our regular shopping trip down under $100 each week.
This week, I tried to focus on healthier foods since I am running out of frozen stash and pantry stash. On the whole, it is more expensive to eat healthier, because processed crud is kept intentionally cheap. I will also have extra stuff to either eat as lunches throughout the week, or put in the freezer or pantry. I think next week I will impose a “no pasta” rule, though. There is entirely too much of it this week! On to the menu:

Sunday

Breakfast – smoothies from whatever was in the fridge and freezer
Lunch – Party food: wraps, macaroni salad, stuffed celery, cake, trail mix
Dinner – leftovers

Monday

Breakfast – Leftover breakfast burritos (eggs, the last of last week’s roast, a smidge of cheese, and the last tortillas)
Lunch – leftovers from party (I had some cancellations, so there was lots of extra food)
Dinner $19.55 – Mediterranean Pizzas with lemon scented couscous. Really expensive, I know, but a) Hubby requested it and b)I only used half of the stuff I bought for this. I will be having Mediterranean stuff for lunch all week!

Tuesday

Breakfast $9.78 – Breakfast open face sandwich
Lunch $5.99 – for the kids: fish sticks, salad, and banana mini muffins from the freezer. For me: leftovers.
Dinner $4.28 – Asian noodles and broccoli, no tofu

Wednesday

Breakfast $2.22 – Raisin apple roll-ups, soooooo yummy, and pretty healthy, too.
Lunch – Pizza Lunchable, homemade, of course, and stockpiled in my freezer
Dinner $15.63 – Italian noodles and broccoli

Thursday

Breakfast $5 – Smoothies
Lunch $2 – Mini turkey burgers, fried ramen, and assorted veggies
Dinner $2.89 – Burritos made with taco meat from the freezer, fresh homemade refried beans, smothered in green chili from the freezer with a side of rice

Friday

Breakfast $2.29 – cereal
Lunch $2.89 – Lunch wraps, plus assorted veggies and fruit
Dinner $10.17 – Homemade hamburger helper; I’m going to make a full batch of the mix portion for the pantry, and the lasagna version with ground turkey for dinner, probably with a green salad

Saturday

Breakfast – eggs and whatever is still in the fridge
Lunch – leftovers
Dinner $7.52 – Pork Fried Rice, with added stir fry veggies

Week 2 Winner/Loser

Scout — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 20:21:42 +0000

This week, we had a real loser – Broccoli Chicken Lasagna. I mean, I’m sure that if successful, it would have tasted fine, but my biggest pet peeve is badly written recipes. And this one was. I figured that, since it is a lasagna recipe, it would all fit in the same baking dish I always use for lasagna, a 9×13″. And with nothing in the recipe to go by, I went forward with this assumption. The only substitution I made in the recipe was using this instead of canned cream of chicken soup, a standard sub for me. I used the shorter cooking method. It overflowed, it poured out onto the bottom of my stove. There is nothing I hate more than recipes which cause me to need to clean my oven. >:(

Week 2

Scout — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 15:59:25 +0000

Whew, spent way more at the store than I had intended on this week, but I what I bought was good vegetables, and lots of them. I also got lots of healthy snacking stuff. I am trying to eat better this year, and encourage my kids to eat better, too. They both really like dipping veggies sticks, so I got celery and carrots, and stuff to make hummus – 3 different kinds! I thought it would make a cute lunch this week, and I will need to freeze some, or I will gobble it down. I also got lots of tortillas and bread this week. I need to have a baking week, and put a half dozen loaves of bread in the freezer soon. I also need to make applesauce. I am OUT! Let’s get to the menu:

Sunday

Breakfast – Cereal for the kids, I’m tired and haven’t had coffee yet
Lunch – over to my parents’ for my daughter’s birthday with them
Dinner $8.45 – The ONLY eggplant dish I like! Plus a lovely Italian green salad.

Monday – DD’s Birthday!

Breakfast $4.09 – Sunshine Toast again. DD really liked having heart shaped eggs, and requested them for her birthday. Boogie wants cow shaped eggs . . .
Lunch $1.35 – DD also will get to buy her lunch today, a special treat for her birthday
Dinner – And off to CiCi’s for her birthday dinner!

Tuesday – back to normal

Breakfast $2.38 – Bananas on english muffins, seems high since all I bought was bananas for this, and bananas are the cheapest produce you can get per pound. But that was for ALL the bananas I bought, and my kids LOVE bananas!
Dinner $18.77 – Pot Roast and salad. This is the dinner that killed my budget this week. It is a lot of money, but not all of the package of things I bought will be going to these recipes, and there will be lots of yummy leftover roast for breakfast and lunches. I plan on eating a lot of salads this week for lunches, and both kids actually like them, too, so the big box of salad greens will not go to waste. I also plan on turning the empty box into a container garden for growing microgreens indoors. I thought it was appropriate.

Wednesday

Breakfast $2.58 – Migas using leftover roast. I want to use this lighter recipe, but I will be using regular eggs, not subs.
Dinner $8.26 – Broccoli and Chicken lasagna with some more of that Italian salad. This sounds like a nice change from the usual meat lasagna, or even the usual kids of veg lasagna. I will of course be using my usual cream of something soup sub.

Thursday

Breakfast $2.58 – Oatmeal, the good stuff! The cost for this is because I wanted to go ahead and use dates, they are sooooo yummy. And they add fruit to the dish.
Dinner $5.39 – Sloppy Joe Potatoes, again another interesting sounding twist with added veggies! All I bought for this was the potatoes, really big ones that weight a pound each! But since I am not planning on adding butter and sour cream and cheese to this dish, I feel okay with the healthiness of this.

Friday

Breakfast $4.27- Mmmm, cobbler! Since it doesn’t use the whole can of either the peaches or pears, I am prolly going to go ahead and freeze the leftovers for the next week.
Dinner $6.11 – Baked Tilapia and brown rice

Saturday

Breakfast – whatever I am in the mood for cooking. Prolly not much but we are now out of cereal.
Dinner $5 – Steak sandwiches with roasted cauliflower, using some strip steaks I have been saving for a while in the freezer. This cauliflower recipe is supposed to really taste wonderful, even to people who don’t really like it.

So, this is my $100 week. The freezers are getting awfully empty, and so is the pantry. I am hoping that next week I will be able to do better, moneywise, and really get the rest of my freezers emptied out. Next week, I might actually have to buy all the meat for the week!

Week 1 Winner/Loser

Scout — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 14:29:57 +0000

At the end of each week, I would like to post any recipes that were real winners or losers at our house and why. For the first week, I have two winners:

Sunshine Toast – DD loved this recipe. She loved the idea of cool shapes in her breakfast. Boogie liked them when he found out they could be in any shape I have cookie cutters! But the timing is tricky, because I like my eggs a little runny in the yolk. The first time I made these, they tasted more like hard boiled!

Lemon Vinaigrette – I was given a bunch of fresh lemons plucked right before a freeze happened, and this was one of the recipes I decided to try to use them up. I LOVED IT! This is one of the best salad dressings I have had. But it is the kind of recipe that makes me hum a song from The Sound of Music: “These are a Few of My Favorite Things”!

Week one, 2010

Scout — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 23:51:45 +0000

For the first full week of 2010, we are still recovering from financial emergencies at the end of 2009, so our menu is concentrating on frugality and using what we have. The grocery bill for the week was $80, but only $68 when you remove the cat food and kitty litter. Last week had an excess of pork products, and this week is more chicken based.

Sunday

Breakfast – cereal from pantry
Lunch – still going through leftovers, gumbo is finally gone, as is the BBQ pork, but the coleslaw is still there and the last of roast beef went into the freezer for another day.
Dinner $2.60 – Chicken salad pita, using up chicken, lettuce, and some sour cream dip from last week, some pita bread from the freezer, and whatever else I think it needs. Plus some veggie mash I had planned for last week but didn’t get around to.

Monday

Breakfast – Baked Oatmeal, and I already had everything, although I might break into the orange juice I bought for later in the week. This is the last day of break, so I want to do something special. The rest of the breakfasts focus on speed, without resorting to cereal everyday.
Lunch – prolly leftovers again. Gah, I am getting so sick of eating leftovers, but I cook for all 6 people who live here, although all 6 don’t always eat what I cook . . .
Dinner $9 – Broccoli and Cheese stuffed shells It took me a while to realize that cheese, especially GOOD cheese is just as expensive as meat, so going vegetarian (and therefore eating more cheese and eggs for protein variety) for frugality’s sake is silly, as is pouring on the cheese as my children would like me to do. But I like to go veg at least one dinner a week for health reasons and lifestyle reasons, so instead of filling the shells I found in my pantry with cheese I am adding a whole bunch of broccoli to the dish, too, and my homemade pasta sauce.

Tuesday

Breakfast – Cookies! I love serving the kids cookies for breakfast. :) And I already have everything on hand, with the dry mix made up in the pantry, and homemade applesauce.
Dinner $7.75- Roast Chicken, with roasted veggies, and Yorkshire pudding Mmmm, comfort food . . .

Wednesday

Breakfast $5.29 – Instant baked apples This is a new one for us, but it sounded yummy (I love greek yoghurt, and got more than was needed, hence the high price) and was full of seasonal yumminess!
Dinner $2.87 – One of our faves: cabbage and noodles. Since I had a pound of polish sausage in the freezer, that will be added which makes this even yummier.

Thursday

Breakfast $4.45- Eggs and Toast, done special. This is so expensive because I am including a whole loaf of bread and a dozen eggs. Since I am not going to be baking my own bread, I chose to spend a little extra on non-HFCS bread. I really need to bake up a bunch of loaves to stick in the freezer . . .
Dinner $11.27- Crock pot Oriental chicken, plain rice from the rice cooker, and cabbage with snow peas. I needed a crockpot dinner, because this is Girl Scout meeting day, and this will give me a couple of pounds of frozen chicken breasts as leftovers.

Friday

Breakfast – Applesauce sandwiches, using leftovers from the week
Dinner $5 – Brown rice and lentil casserole Another vegetarian night, with probably a salad and homemade dressing added.

Saturday

Dinner – Meatball soup made from meatballs from the freezer and an assortment of canned and frozen veggies, and homemade stock, of course!

I haven’t posted many lunches, because those are mostly creative recreations of leftovers, with added fruit and veggies. I have planned to make cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, hummus, and peanut butter and jelly “sushi” for the kids this week.

It was the Mexican food :)

Scout — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 22:48:32 +0000

Yup, for Thursday, I ended up making some really yummy quesadillas for my parents and my family, with some excellent rice and chips and guacamole. Oh, and Happy New Year’s margaritas! I think this rice recipe, made in the rice cooker (I LOVE my rice cooker!), is my new favorite Mexican rice recipe. There are not onions that I love, but both kids pick out; there is lots of garlic flavor, but garlic for the kids to pick out, and it has about a half serving of veggies in each serving, which is a half serving more than usual! And it tastes great.

Friday

Cereal for breakfast
Leftovers for lunch
Dinner $1.43 – Black Eyed Peas, the absolute best cabbage recipe I have ever had, and corny hushpuppies from the freezer. Cheap eating, but good, and it will bring a world of luck, theoretically . . .

Today

Cereal for breakfast – seriously, my kids would eat it every morning if they could
McD’s for lunch, we decided at the last minute to see a movie at 12:30 and had no time to grab anything from home
Dinner $3.56 – Green Chile Stew with cheese and tortillas. This smelled sooooooo delicious when it was simmering. The flavor was a slight letdown compared to the smell, but it was still delicious. I made a full batch, so I now have a 2c. portion to go to my dad who will love it, a 4c. portion in the fridge in case someone wants it for lunch or dinner, and three 2c. portions in the freezer to thaw and smother burritos with at a later date.

Which brings up an interesting point. I have now 6 and a half quarts of turkey stock, 1 and a half quarts of chicken stock, and this quart and a half of green chile stew in my freezer. By the end of this week, I will probably have another 5 quarts of chicken stock in the freezer. This kind of thing usually makes me feel like I have a well stocked freezer, but in reality, my freezer stock is rapidly dwindling. Maybe, though, I will have a nice period of rebuilding and I can try a different method of keeping myself organized.