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What a week! It seems like time is flying by in preparation for the holidays. This week I squared away most of my Christmas shopping. Thanks to putting most of our expenses on a cashback rewards credit card year-round, Christmas won’t have an impact whatsoever on our budget. Woop woop!

Last week’s food was a little rough, mostly because we took the plunge and tried too many new healthy eating recipes in one week. This week we decided to stagger new, healthy recipes with meals we already liked. This approach will help us embrace new recipes more easily at a slow ‘n’ steady pace.

That said, this week was a little wonky on the food front, but I’m still proud of how everything turned out. Check out what we ate and what we spent this week on our journey to crush debt!

P.S. Be sure to check out The Picky Pinchers Cookbook! Score early bird pricing for just $4.95 before the price increases on December 15. 

Monday

Breakfast: Cereal. I meant to do something fancy today, but I had the Monday morning blues. It was a good time to pull out a bag of cereal for breakfast. We always buy the bags of off-brand cereal, since they’re often half the price of boxed cereals!

Lunch: Leftover chicken fries with cauliflower mac ‘n’ cheese. Y’aaaaaall.

On Sunday we made the most delectable new Dinner. I wanted to get my comfort food fix with less calories. I poked around online and decided to make oven-baked crispy chicken fries with pasta-free cauliflower mac ‘n’ cheese.

This was such a tasty meal! I coated the thinly-sliced chicken with cornstarch, egg, and panko before baking it in the oven. The cauliflower mac is just a take on my meaty mac ‘n’ cheese recipe (from the Picky Pinchers Cookbook), but leaving out both meat and noodles. It was a slightly healthier version of comfort food. Mmm.

Dinner: Slow cooker chicken enchilada quinoa. Pizza. After last week’s dinner fails, we decided to take it easy on planning healthy meals each night. We’re now trying two new healthy recipes each week. Today we attempted to make this slow cooker chicken enchilada quinoa recipe. It seemed like a good idea when I found the recipe, but it tasted bland and … just awful.

Mr. Picky Pincher took one bite of the quinoa, spit it in the trash, and said, “Why would anyone think this is a good idea??”

In preparation for food fails like this, I bought two frozen pizzas at the grocery store last weekend. I was able to get hot dinner on the table by 5:30. Naturally I wasn’t thrilled about eating greasy pizza for dinner from a health standpoint. Financially, though, it did save us from picking up takeout.

Pro tip: I like to dip my pizza in a mixture of Ranch and Sriracha. Mmmm.

Tuesday

Breakfast: Breakfast bagels two ways. I made bagel breakfast sandwiches for me and the hubs today. However, I wanted something both sweet and savory. I decided to make bagels two ways.

I shmeared one side of the bagel with cream cheese and plum jam.

The other side of the bagel was topped with an egg patty, homemade sausage patty, and salsa. After eating this side of the bagel, I realized it really didn’t need the bagel. Next time I’ll just do the egg patty on the top and bottom as a lower carb option.

Lunch: Leftover pizza. Not my fave, but it’s food.

Dinner: Creamy sausage pasta with salad. We opted for another unhealthy-yet-tried-and-true recipe today. I made the creamy sausage pasta that my friend Katy cooked for me many years ago. I recently rediscovered the recipe and it’s been a favorite of ours!

We paired the pasta with a chopped salad.

Wednesday

Breakfast: Sweet potato waffles with scrambled eggs, sausage patties, and salsa. This was pretty good! I made these sweet potato waffles over the weekend and froze them. I crisped them up in the waffle maker for breakfast, although I do admit that the waffles don’t get ultra-crunchy. I tossed them in the broiler for a little crunch.

Next I made my famous fluffy scrambled eggs. The secret to good scrambled eggs is adding half and half to them and stirring constantly on low heat. I used to eat my weight in overcooked eggs, but I’ve gotten a better handle on how to cook them now.

We then topped the whole shebang with a homemade sausage patty and some leftover salsa I found in the back of the fridge.

This was pretty tasty! I wish the potatoes were crunchier, but the flavors were still on point.

Lunch: Leftover sausage pasta.

Dinner: Eggplant parmesan. Tacos / Raising Cane’s.

Today was a tough one for food, y’all. We were going to use this recipe to make crockpot eggplant parmesan. The more we thought about it, the nastier that sounded.

I just couldn’t see how eggplant parm would appropriately crisp up in the humid contents of a crock pot. We decided to table this recipe to the weekend so we could properly bake it for crunch. Eggplant is always tricky for me, so I like having the extra time to work with it.

I decided we would just eat freezer meals tonight. I had a Zumba class at 6:30, so I made myself a bean taco (we were out of cheese!). Mr. Picky Pincher heated up his red beans and rice freezer meal.

And then he spat it out. Apparently it was NOT good. As I left for dance class, Mr. Picky Pincher left to pick up a box of Cane’s fried chicken.

Oh well, we tried.

Thursday

Breakfast: Tacos. More tacos! I heated up some of our homemade black beans for these suckahs. I used tortillas gifted to us by Mr. Picky Pincher’s parents and they were mighty tasty. We were still out of cheese, so I just doused mine in my favorite hot sauce.

Lunch: Leftover Cane’s / Company lunch. I gleefully ate the remnants of Mr. Picky Pincher’s box of chicken since he had a company lunch today. #NoShame #VultureWife

Dinner: Homemade spaghetti and meatballs. I kept it simple today with an old classic. We made our own marinara sauce (recipe here) that’s heavy in veggies and flavor. I cooked these meatballs a few weeks ago in a bulk batch and froze them.

For today’s dinner, I simply defrosted the marinara and meatballs, boiled some pasta, and BAM. Dinner was done.

Tonight we got the shock of a lifetime, y’all. We looked outside and it suddenly began SNOWING.

I had been laughing at the weather report all day, because I mean, c’mon. It never snows in south Texas. That’s half the reason I moved here. But nope! It was most definitely the closest thing to snow we’ve had here since 1986.

One of our poor planter beds fell over from the extra weight. I’m a little worried about how our plants in the raised beds fared. Eep! Mr. Picky Pincher covered our fruit trees as soon as it started snowing, so they’re all okay. 

We woke up Friday morning to iciness. However, as soon as the sun came up, it was game over. You now can’t even tell we got an ice storm at all! How freaky, huh?

Friday

Breakfast: Grits with bacon crumbles. Grits are crazy-cheap and delicious. I’m still trying to perfect my technique for cooking the best, creamy grits. I’ve found that they’re creamier and more flavorful when cooked with milk instead of water. I season them with salt and pepper for ultimate deliciousness.

We sprinkled the grits with bacon crumbles. I pre-cook large batches of bacon over the weekends and freeze it for later. I defrosted a few strips in the microwave and roughly chopped them to top our grits.

Lunch: Leftover spaghetti and meatballs.

Dinner: Company Christmas party.

Partay time! Mr. Picky Pincher’s company Christmas party is this evening, and that means free food and an open bar! They usually serve green beans, rolls, prime rib, chicken, mashed potatoes, and more. After the week I’ve had, I’m going to try to load up more so on the veggies and salad, although I can’t promise I’ll turn down free liquor.

Grocery Costs

Let’s see what we spent this week!

On sale: $8.70

Coupons: $5.70

Total: $92.14

Goals for next week

Not too shabby! Our grocery bill was a touch higher than our $80 goal, but I’m not too mad about it! I know we didn’t do great on the healthy eating front next week, so that’s already something we’re excited to tackle with next week’s menu. It’s all about finding a new repertoire of meals that work for our Picky palates, which can be a struggle.

Also, If you’re interested in our grocery shopping system, I go over it in depth in this eBook.

We want to know: How did you save or spend money this week?

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