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It was another week of frugal eats around the Picky Palace, y’all. I’m proud to say that we didn’t eat out once, which is awesome! We’re still woefully over budget on groceries for the month, but I’m doing my best to keep our totals manageable. Boo.

See what we ate and spent on food this week!

Did you try a new recipe this week? Let us know in the comments!

P.S. Be sure to check out The Picky Pinchers Cookbook! 

Monday

Breakfast: Breakfast cookie.

Nice ‘n’ simple. I pulled a few more breakfast cookies out of my freezer for a quick, Monday-friendly Meal. I cooked these who-knows-how-long-ago and froze them. It’s certainly been worth it! These li’l guys have kept me fed for weeks. I have one more serving and then I’ll finally we done with them.

Here’s the Recipe I use for the breakfast cookies.

Snack: Rolos. Don’t judge! We got junk food as a treat over the weekend and I finished off my bag of caramely, chocolatey Rolos. Mm.

Lunch: Leftover stroganoff.

This was a surprisingly simple and flavorful Sunday dinner! I used this recipe to make the stroganoff, although I didn’t cook it in a pressure cooker. It’s just ground beef–I don’t need to cook it under pressure!

This reminded me of a healthier, homemade version of Hamburger Helper. Luckily for us, egg noodles were BOGO at the store last week, so this meal was made with free noodles.

Next time I might even make extra meat sauce and freeze it. I think this would be a fantastic freezer meal, as long as you cook the noodles fresh. I think noodles get weird when they defrost.

Dinner: DIY night! Steak and squash / Sweet potato corn salad

Ahh, the much-cherished Picky Pincher DIY night. This is the one meal each week that we get to pick for ourselves. Hubs cooks his own meal, and I cook mine. He opted for steak and grilled pattypan squash, which we grew in our garden.

I was going to do an elaborate cheese plate, but in light of the budget, I used ingredients we had on hand to make sweet potato corn salad. Recipe here. Cheese would have been more fun than a salad, but this was still mighty tasty.

Tuesday

Breakfast: Yogurt bowl

I’m so happy it’s strawberry season! Organic strawberries were a mere $2.50/pound, so I made sure to snag a carton of them. They paired beautifully in my homemade yogurt (recipe here) with hemp seeds, granola, a touch of maple syrup, and blueberries.

Snack: Babybel cheese. Has anyone ever frozen Babybel before? We got a huge bag of them at Costco and I worry about keeping them in the fridge for too long.

Lunch: Leftovers

Dinner: Cheesy sausage pasta

This one’s an old favorite. My friend Katy gave me this recipe many years ago, and it’s become one of hub’s favorite dinners. I used up our second bag of egg noodles for this because I forgot to buy penne pasta. Oops! It came out all right with the egg noodles, but it wasn’t quite the same.

Wednesday

Breakfast: Tacos

Snack: Handful of almonds and cranberries.

Lunch: Leftover sausage pasta.

Dinner: Chicken chipotle tacos.

This is another easy-button meal. I cubed chicken and stewed it in homemade chicken stock, Rotel, two chipotle peppers with adobo sauce, and lime juice. We served the chicken on toasty tacos. This was mighty tasty! It did need avocado or cilantro to round out the flavor, but I was still pleased with it.

Thursday

Breakfast: Bagel with almond butter, strawberries, and banana.

I picked up a pack of whole grain bagel thins last week. I loooove having bagel thins on hand; they’re great for fast breakfasts and lunches. I smeared a toasted bagel thin with almond butter and topped it with sliced strawberries and bananas.

Snack: Popcorn

Lunch: Leftover tacos.

Dinner: Barbecue chicken wraps.

New recipe alert! We used this recipe to put together these easy-peasy dinner wraps. It was as easy as cooking and cubing chicken, chopping up some veggies, making a sauce, and searing the wraps in the cast iron.

The recipe didn’t call for searing the wraps, but I can’t eat a wrap that doesn’t have a little crunch to it. These were really tasty, but I do think they were too sweet. Next time I’m going to add our homemade hot sauce to balance out the sweetness.

But y’all, the buttermilk barbecue sauce in this recipe is gold! I’m gonna have to use that on sandwiches ‘n’ stuff because it’s legit.

Friday

Breakfast: Cranberry orange loaf.

I was feeling out of sorts this morning and wanted something easy. I pulled this cranberry orange mini loaf from the freezer’s depths. I made this last month using leftover oranges and cranberries in the pantry. Easy enough, right?

Snack: Granola

Lunch: Leftover wraps / work lunch

Dinner: Salsa verde chicken and dumplings.

We’re making hubby’s favorite meal tonight! I discovered this recipe for salsa verde chicken and dumplings in a library cookbook ages ago. It’s an easy, flavorful meal that’s super budget friendly. All I had to buy was salsa verde!

The last few times we made this meal, I made way too many dumplings and not enough chicken; we’ll change the ratio this time.

Grocery Costs

Let’s see what we spent this week!

On sale: $2.46

Coupons: $3.25

Total: $66.68

Total budget remaining: -$81.13

Goals for next week

Hrmph. I mean, our spendiness at the beginning of the month really screwed us here. I’m pleased to keep our total under $70 for the week, but we’re still doomed to be over budget. Womp womp.

This week’s budget destroyers were a pack of coffee (which I bought with a coupon) and a jug of real maple syrup. I finished my jug of Aunt Jemima and wanted something real. Y’all, maple syrup is expensive, but the real stuff beats the fake stuff all day. Soooo tasty.

I’m pleased that we met last week’s goal of not eating out. Yay for little wins, right? Obviously we’re over budget, so I’m not going to kid myself here. I’d love to keep takeout off the menu for next week and try to keep our total as low as possible.

P.S. Can you guys believe it’s already almost June??

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 stay frugal this week?

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