Meal Prep Weekend & Grocery Spending

The weekend of the 9th was the prefect storm for doing some batch cooking at home. We literally had rain storms on and off all day so it was the amazing day to stay inside. G switched to nights at the beginning of the week and then we left for a camping trip so I wanted easy meal starters to have in our fridge. Basically all the prep work is done we just have to throw together a meal we are craving!

I quickly made up this super simple Buffalo Chicken Salad in our food processor for a few lunches during the week. I love serving this on a Tomato & Basil Rice Cake with cucumbers on the side. The nice thing about this recipe is it’s one that taste way better the next day! Next time I go to make this I’m going to make a double batch - which should get me thru the entire work week. 

I also roasted a chicken like I mentioned in my last post. I was able to pick off 1lb 7oz of chicken, which we will have with lunches or dinners. We didn’t get thru all the meat before we left so I froze some of the meat for meal ideas later.

My sister sent my a Reddit link that showed someone making Roasted Butternut Squash and Cauliflower tacos. I happened to have both butternut squash and cauliflower at home so I figured this was meant to be! If you are looking for a way to go meatless for a meal I would HIGHLY recommend this recipe. I made everything except the avocado mash (Irony: my $10.00 avocados did not ripen in time) nor did I pickle my onions (personal preference). I also knew I needed to prune my basil pot, so I was brain storming some ideas and looking for some recipes when I stumbled across this roasted corn, rice and pesto salad. I figured it would be a great side or on the tacos themselves. Again: I was blown away with how good this turned out. I didn’t have any fresh corn so I actually rehydrated some dehydrated corn (I do this myself) and roasted that on a cookie sheet. This recipe makes a lot of salad but again, it was amazing to have during the week. 

We had two trips to the store last week: $20.53 & $137.46. The bigger shopping trip was G picking up items for our camping trip last weekend. We went with some friends and each of us was in charge of different meals. If you can’t tell with our list, we were in charge of pizza bush pies. We definitely over estimated the amounts we needed but we have been using the meats as snacks and froze an entire loaf of bread.

I had the worst migraine Wednesday night that lasted into Thursday, so G had picked me up some Mr Noodles because I was severely dehydrated from throwing up. He also bought the Epson Salts so I could take a bath and try to relax. He did a really good job at the store and got so many items on sale! 

• Produce
•    
• Diary
• Coffee Creamer - $3.84
• Sour Cream - $5.69
• Margarine - $3.49 - We cannot take butter camping, it gets too cold in the cooler, so camping is the only time we eat margarine
• Shredded Mozzarella - $5.99 (sale)
• Shredder Cheddar Mozzarella - $5.99 (sale)
• Cheese Curds - $5.99 (sale)
• Meat
• Salami - $10.99
• 2 Pepperoni Packages - $9.98 (sale)
• Pepperoni Sticks - $9.29
• Ham Slices - $6.49
• Breads/Baked Goods
• 2 loaves Wonder Breads - $6.00 (sale)
• Hot Dog Buns - $3.00 (sale)
• Burger Buns - $3.00 (sale)
• Pantry
• 4 Rice Cakes Packages - $11.00 (sale) - I eat these with cottage cheese for lunch most days
• 4 cans of red kidney beans - $5.96 (sale)
• 4 cans of black beans - $5.96 (sale)
• Hazelnut Spread - $4.99 (sale) - This is a treat for G when we go camping, he likes making dessert bush pies with hazelnut spread and bananas 
• Canada Dry Tonic Bottles - $6.26 (sale) - Another camping must have for G, Gin and Tonic’s is his drink of choice
• Canada Dry Ginger Beer Bottles - $6.26 (sale) - Moscow mules are my drink of choice right now so this was a camping must have for me!
• San Pellegrino Lemon Cans - $8.51 
• 2 Pizza Sauces (squeeze bottles) - $5.98
• Fibre1 Bars - $4.99
• 3 Mr Noodles - $6.27
• Misc
• Epson Salts - $8.99
• Household

On Monday we were in the city for a medical appointment and we did a big shop at Costco. We stocked up on a lot of items we were running out of. I’ll go over our spending for this week in a later post but we are trying really hard not to go grocery shopping for the rest of the month. Finger’s crossed that we can eat from our stock pile!

- M

Grocery Spending & Reduced Food Waste

As a way to be a bit more accountable and to keep better track of my grocery budget, I’m going to try to have an update every week with any grocery spending. This week we spend $38.91:

Produce

    5 pound bag of carrots - $2.50 (sale)

    1 red onion - $1.67 (sale)

    2 lemons - $1.98

    1 bunch celery - $3.99

    3 organic avocados - $10.47 (… yeah, all the store had was organic - thinking about this now I should     

        have seen how much the pre made guacamole was…)

Diary

    Vanilla bean gelato- $9.99

Meat

Pantry 

Misc

    Romaine lettuce seeds - $2.09

    One of those microwave lunches - $5.99 (I needed to eat something quickly before my dentist     

        appointment so I grab one of these that day)

Household  

I’m excited to see how the rest of the year will play out for us in this area of our budget! It’s the area I feel I can definitely improve and be more mindful - but also an area I feel personal in control. Even with rising food prices and inflation (out of my control), I can choose to be a different consumer (great example above being the avocados and not looking how much the guacamole is). I don’t like assuming anything so I want this data!

A huge focus for us is reducing our food waste. Yesterday, we were invited to a friends for dinner. I made a Skillet Mixed Berry Cobbler  for bring for dessert. The past month or so, whenever we purchase any berries, while I’m cleaning and prepping, I sort my berries. I used to throw out the berries that were subpar or starting to go bad. Now, instead of throwing them out (with some exceptions) I freeze those berries instead. Two weeks ago, G and I had forgotten about some strawberries in the fridge and we had a ton of other fruit to eat up. So I diced up the strawberries and added them to the bag I already had going. Obviously, we try to eat this all fresh but sometimes it doesn’t happen. I feel much better repurposing in a different way than throwing it out. It’s similar to my bag of veggie scraps I have frozen to make stock. Anyways, so I was able to use up all that fruit in the freezer to make the cobbler. The only thing I had to purchase was the gelato!  

A few weeks ago G made a baked spinach artichoke dip. He purchase a giant bag of spinach and didn’t need all of it. We mixed some in for our salad during the week but we still had too much to use. I dehydrated 6 trays of spinach to grind into spinach powder. I’m excited to use this to colour pasta next time we do a big batch! G has also been mixing some into his smoothies. 

Today I roasted a chicken for this weeks lunches and dinners and saved the carcass/skins to make stock later!

I’m lucky I have a lot of space in the freezer to keep all these items for later use but I love getting creative :)

Any tips you want to share about food waste let me know!

- M

Budget Update & Wheat Berries

I was able to update my budget spreadsheet with our spending for June. This gave us 6 months of data to see how we are doing so far this year.

The biggest item I wanted to really watch this year was our grocery budget. Last year we spend roughly $600.00/month and I think I wanted to try to reduce this to $500.00/month for 2022. So far we are averaging $716.42/month… Yikes. I’m hoping as the year progresses the 1/4 beef purchase of $850.00 we made in January continues to average out. I’m also going to start being a bit more accountable on my blog - writing down our weekly purchases. This might be interesting to look back on later, to see how prices are changing (or not changing) where we live. 

One grocery item we won’t have to worry about purchasing for a while is flour! G and I have been researching and being a bit more conscious about the foods we have been eating. We have been trying to reduce G’s cholesterol naturally thru diet and exercise after a surprising blood test at the beginning of the year. After losing his father to a heart attack last year - we didn’t want to mess around. Being conscious of what we’ve been eating has been great. I personally track everything on MyFitnessPal as a way to keep an eye on my macro’s and making me aware of what I’ve been doing good with, but also not so good with. For example: my fibre intake is not good, but I also learned I don’t consume any trans-fats! So I’m trying to adjust and find snacks, meals, etc that I can start to incorporate. I’ve lost over 5 pounds just by adjusting my diet! 

Anyways: back to the flour! G and I had been researching wheat berries and how to grind our own flour. Wheat berries have amazing health benefits since they are a whole grain (literally). They are a great source a fibre, help reduce bad cholesterol and really high in protein. One great thing about living where we do is I know a lot of farmers. ;) I was talking to a coworker during coffee and he said he can give G and I a 5 gallon bucket full of Hard Red Wheat Berries grown last year! He had cleaned the seed last year but didn’t plant all of it this year. Since last year was (unfortunately) a bad drought year, this specific wheat was really high in protein (over 15% when he got it tested at the elevators). The coworker didn’t want anything for the grain; but G and I are going to throw together a thank you basket & bring him and his family a loaf of bread once we’ve mastered baking with fresh flour (it is a bit of a learning curve). 

In all, he gave us a little under 40lbs of wheat berries and one nice thing if stored correctly, these will last forever. 1 cups of wheat berries makes about 1 1/2 - 2 cups of flour. If you cannot tell, I’m extremely excited about this, lol. 

Although, this will save us money in the long term, I did invest in a grain mill. I purchase the NutriMill Classic on Amazon, which cost me $532.79. BIG investment, but I did pay for this out of my personal spending money - not the house funds. I figured this was a luxury kitchen gadget and I had extra spending money.

I’m hoping the grain mill will arrive next week so I can try to bake a loaf or two this month. I’ll keep this blog updated with the successes (or failures)! Enough farm talk for today :) 

- M 

Lots of Recipes

Last week was full of good food wins - lots of items used up and getting a bit creative/ trying new recipes.

Of course it started out with a good organize of the freezers. We have one big chest freezer downstairs and then our regular freezer drawer upstairs in our kitchen. I like to keep upstairs minimal with only a few fruits, veggies, frozen herbs and any items I know I’ll use up during the week. I took a mental inventory as I was cleaning and have some meal ideas for the future. We have used up all our homemade pre-made meals, except for one veggie soup portion I have frozen still.

Last Saturday I took three large ziplock bags of frozen vegetable straps (1 bags each of: carrot peels and ends; celery ends and leaves; and onion skins) and made 28 cups of veggie stock! I let it simmer all morning and then started to process of slowly freezing it all. I have a silicon ice cube tray that has marks for 1/2 cup and 1 cup portions so I was able to freeze a few different combos to have handy. 

On Saturday I also roasted my first whole chicken which I had gotten on sale at NoFrills a few weeks ago. I looked up a few recipes but this one (linked below) was highly rating but also a very simple recipe. I’m not going to lie: I thought the recipe was too good to be true. The chicken is only stuffed with celery then seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic powder and onion powder and cooked for 1 hour 15 minutes (with a 30 minute rest time). Best chicken ever! Will definitely make the recipe again. We used it in a few different recipes during the weekend and week, G even made a buffalo chicken pizza on a flatbread that turned out really good.   

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/83557/juicy-roasted-chicken/

During my freezer organizing, I was reminded of the many many pounds of ground beef we own. So we used 8 pounds, making two different recipes. We made 4 pounds of kabobs to have for lunches during the week and 4 pounds of sundries tomato burgers, which we also had for lunches and meals throughout the week.

G had a few days off during the week so smoked a chuck roast (also from the freezer) which turned out amazing! I guess they call chuck roast the “poor mans brisket”, and it did remind me of a nicely smoked brisket. I’ll have to compare the prices next time we are in the city to see what the price different really is. 

We were also in the mood to bake this week. Monday evening I made a blueberry/cranberry skillet cake (recipe below). It was good, not too sweet, but I might add some nuts or granola next time to add a different texture. This used up frozen blueberries and a bit of the frozen cranberries I had in our freezer. It was a nice ‘healthy’ treat to have with my coffee each morning.

https://snack-girl.com/snack/blueberry-skillet-cake/

G had to feed our sour dough starter and made 9 loaves of bread with the discard and some of the starter. Most of these loaves will be frozen for later eating, which helps restock our freezer because we had no loaves left in there. 

- M 

Productive Weekend

Last weekend was super productive for us. It was beautiful weather: sunny, hot and hardly any wind! I focused on yard work while G plugged away at organizing his dad’s items in the garage. 

I got all the yard furniture and planters out of our storage shed. Gave everything a good wash. And then planted all the flowers I had purchased in the city last weekend. My regular flower bed has all my perennials - so I focus mostly on planters around my deck and patio. This is perfect because if we need to move before fall, I’m able to pick the planters up and move them to the new house. 

I also planted my small garden (again - in raised beds/planters from Costco so I’m able to move them). We decided to plant a few more peppers this year - 3 different verities to try out. I planted my usual combo of lettuce and spinach, but also am trying a bit of kale to see how that does. Another planter is full of snow peas, and I’m really hoping these do well because we love snacking on them! We are also trying to grow pickling cucumbers for the first time this year. I do have these planted in the ground so I only purchased three plants to grow up the trellis behind my flower bed. I’m hoping we can get a few harvests out of them before we would have to move. We’ve never canned pickles before and it’s something we want to get more into as G loves pickles! 

Besides those traditional garden plants - I made a small herb garden. We finally used up the last of our frozen rosemary from 2020 over the winter so I need to stock up the supply again if possible. I only have one rosemary plant so far but I hope it’ll do well. *fingers crossed*

That evening we had friends over for our first real fire of the year. I had purchased some smokies to cook over the fire and made a quick pasta salad. Our friends brought some potato salad and scones to have for dessert. It was a good thing she brought something sweet because we forgot to stock up on marshmallows! We had none in the house (not even any stale ones from last year, lol). Definitely on the grocery list now.

Last Saturday was the perfect day - I hadn’t realized how much I missed sitting around the fire until the late hours of the evening. It made me excited for summer!

- M 

Playing Catch Up

What a month and a half! 

Last time I had a chance to write it was all about my personal triumphs and finally, at the age of 31, learning how to drive stick shift. I won’t lie: although I love my SUV’s comfy ride, it has been nice being able to take the Mazda if it works out better. For instance, G had to replace the rear camera on the KIA (part ordered online and he did the work himself), and he was able to do that on one of his day’s off during the week instead of waiting for me to get home and rushing thru it in the evening. He also replaced the breaks, changed the winter tires, etc. My car has definitely had some nice maintenance lately! The only thing left for the next little bit will be some new winter tires come November. We have the money saved for that in our flex account so once we see a good deal in the Fall we can purchase them.

In other big news: our house is officially on the market! I’m glad we waited to start all the relocation madness until after our company left because it felt like our house was turned upside down. Kids are busy, lol. The exact day G drove them to the city to catch their flight, I came home and was in cleaning mode. That weekend we met with our real estate agent, signed the listing agreement, had our official relocation meeting later in the week and then scheduled a home appraisal. Good news is that the market in our small town looks WAY different than when we purchased and our home appraisal came back $45,000.00 more than when we purchased in 2016. We had quite a few showings so far but no offers. Seeding is in full swing in Saskatchewan so I’m hoping we will get even more action once the farmers wrap up.

We also learned from our relocation meeting that RCMP moves work a bit differently now. Most of our expenses will be covered, however, we need to pay up front and then get reimbursed. Last time we moved they dealt with payments and invoices directly. I’m glad I’ve been hoarding money once we knew this transfer was happening, that buffer will help with some of these costs.

My life is a little chaotic right now, we just got back from a two week visit back home. We flew into Ontario and then drove a Uhaul back to Saskatchewan. Luckily, we cut down our driving time by going thru the US. We took the scenting route thru Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (the UP) and indulged in pasties! My family would vacation in this area every summer and G has joined us on a few trips when we first started dating so it was nice to enjoy an area that bring back so many good memories.

The reason we brought a Uhaul was because we were clearing out G’s dad’s garage. He passed away very suddenly last summer, and G’s step mom sold their house and is downsizing. G took a lot of his dad’s tools, work benches, smoker, BBQ, etc. So that is currently all dumped into our garage waiting to be sorted.

That will be our goals this weekend: starting to organize and sort, I want to plant my flowers and garden, clean the windows, and organize our finances from after our trip. 

It looks like it’ll be a beautiful weekend for outdoor tasks, as long as the wind dies down here!

- M 

New Skills

At the end of 2019 G bought his dream car. A beautiful, Mazda 3 Hatchback - super sporty looking. Only one issue (for me): it’s a manual. G specifically wanted a manual vehicle and it was hard to find one he liked. He was frustrated that companies are going away from these sort of cars, opting to only have automatic for a lot of their lines. I, on the other hand, completely understand. When he first got the car I had a few short lessons around our little town. Stalled a lot, got frustrated at the car (it’s the car’s fault after all) and got the car home, parking outside and not in the garage.

Flash forward to last week when we are organizing ourselves for friends who are coming to visit with their two little ones. G needs to take the automatic SUV to the city to pick them up from the airport but I need to go to work (which is a 30 min drive in the opposite direction). The leaves me two options: 1. Get a ride to work or 2. Learn to drive the Mazda.

This weekend I had two lessons. There was lots of stalling, lots of “your too fast off the clutch” or “your too slow off the clutch” and I learned terms like “blip” when I go to downshift. Yeah, my anxiety was thru the roof all weekend because I already said I would drive myself to work on Monday.

This morning I woke up way before my alarm and couldn’t sleep anymore. I got ready, made sure G had his phone off silent (he’s coming off night shifts) in case I needed rescue, reviewed my notes (yes I made myself notes) and left for work. 

And guess what: I didn’t stall once! My first downshift was a bit jerky but my second one went better. I was nervous around a Stop sign at a railroad crossing, so there is a bit of a hill, and although I almost stalled there I caught it before it happened. (If you can’t tell my big issue is with the lower gears, 3-6th gears I’m good). 

I’m hoping my way home tonight will go just as well, and although I’m still a little nervous, I can feel my confidence building. 

Wish me luck & pray I don’t ruin G’s dream car, lol

- M