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What’s for Dinner? September 1

Hey, Picky peeps! It’s time for this week’s What’s for Dinner? post. It was a wonky week for food, mostly because we weren’t able to grab groceries until, like, Tuesday night thanks to Hurricane Harvey (we usually shop on Saturdays). Because of shopping restrictions, we were able to cook off our pantry stock and save big bucks on food this week. Woohoo!

P.S. I use MyFreezEasy to get a lot of freezer meal ideas.

Now here’s what we ate and spent this week!

Monday

Breakfast: Blueberry turnovers. I baked these bad boys a few weeks ago using some Leftover blueberries and puff pastry. I cooked down the blueberries with a bit of sugar and lemon extract before adding a corn starch slurry to thicken it. I scooped the filling into puff pastry squares and semi-successfully folded the pastry over the filling before baking. It was simple to put together and soooo good.

I keep these turnovers in the freezer and zap them in the microwave for 20 seconds to defrost them. Be careful with the filling–it gets molten hot! I might have burnt my mouth by shoving a turnover into my craw too quickly…

Lunch: Mexican taco bake. This is one of our favorite meals! We were out of quite a few ingredients, but fortunately we had enough to make a Mexican taco bake casserole. We even had a few extra servings left over to freeze, so that was a win.

Dinner: Lentil curry with pita bread. I bought the groceries to make this last week but forgot to cook it! I’m very glad that happened since we had to wait to do grocery shopping thanks to Harvey.

I used this recipe for this simple lentil curry and it’s pretty good! But damn if it isn’t spicy! The recipe called for two tablespoons of curry paste and I only added one–we were still sweating and tearing up after this meal. Mr. Picky Pincher discovered that you can temper the spice with a dollop of yogurt, though.





Tuesday

Breakfast: Yogurt bowls / cereal. I wasn’t feeling like doing anything today, so it was an every-Pincher-for-themselves kind of Breakfast. I ended up eating two bowls of knockoff Fruity Pebbles (you know, the cereal that comes in the giant bag instead of a box–it’s much cheaper!).

Lunch: Leftover lentil curry. I felt the burn, y’all.

Dinner: Jimmy John’s. I was feeling ‘meh’ today and cooking did NOT seem appealing. We decided to grab Jimmy John’s sandwiches with Mr. Picky Pincher’s mom and sister. I’m usually a total fatty at JJ’s and will eat an entire sandwich, no questions asked. Well, today I finally learned some self-control, and I was able to save half my sandwich for lunch.

Look how responsible I am.

Wednesday

Breakfast: Southwest breakfast bowls. These would have been really tasty, but I messed them up. Oops!

I like to pre-cook all the components for my breakfasts, which meant I cooked these sweet potatoes on Tuesday night. I guess I wasn’t paying attention, because I didn’t cook the sweet potatoes all the way through. The result? Crunchy, un-cooked potatoes in our breakfast bowls. Gag!

The flavors were good, though. I mixed sweet potato with Mr. Picky Pincher’s homemade pinto beans and some leftover breakfast sausage I froze last week. They’re even better with my fluffy scrambled eggs (the secret is adding a dash of half and half), but I was feeling too lazy for that.

Lunch: Leftover Jimmy John’s. Hom nom nom.

Dinner: Chicken biryani with broccoli. I found the recipe for this Americanized version of an Indian classic dish in a library cookbook months ago. It’s delicious but it’s pretty spicy! The seasoning is garam masala paired with coconut milk, ginger, and my homemade yogurt.

We paired the biryani with steamed broccoli. This dish is pretty cheap to whip up and we were able to get extra servings to freeze. Win!



Thursday

Breakfast: Egg muffins. I tooootally forgot to pre-mix my egg muffin mix on Wednesday night, so I was in a panic to cook these on Thursday morning. I’m proud to say I successfully whipped these guys up in 45 minutes in my morning stupor.

To yield six muffins, I mixed four eggs with half a yellow bell pepper, half an onion, more leftover pre-cooked breakfast sausage, and a handful of Mexican cheese. I wanted to add spinach, but we didn’t have any. Oh well! I baked them at 350 for 30 minutes until they were slightly puffed and no longer runny.

These. These were good, y’all. I’m never a fan of super-eggy breakfasts, but the combination of meat and peppers was perfectly delightful. As an added bonus, they were perfect for Mr. Picky Pincher to eat on the road.

Lunch: Leftover chicken biryani. Get in my mouthhhhhh.

Dinner: Roasted veggies and sausage. I’ve really grown to love this simple Dinner. I think I got the idea from a Buzzfeed article about sheet pan dinners. It’s different each time I make it because it’s a way to use up our leftover veggies.

This time I baked broccoli, cauliflower, garlic, onions (leftover from breakfast), zucchini, mushrooms, and yellow bell pepper (also left over from breakfast).

This was so good, y’all! I just roast the veggies at 350 for about 30 minutes until they’re tender. Then I add the sliced sausage to heat it up before serving. Bam! Magically healthy dinner!

I tried to slip some zucchini in here to trick myself into eating it. Surprise: I still hate zucchini, even when it’s hidden with other veggies. I guess I’ll stick to my triple chocolate zucchini muffins to sneakily get my veggie servings.



Friday

Breakfast: BOBs at Whataburger! Mr. Picky Pincher took Friday off work to have an ultra-long weekend. Since he didn’t have to be at work at 7, we were able to eat breakfast together. I grabbed a coupon and we went to Whataburger for breakfast. We got two sausage Breakfasts On A Bun (BOBs) with grilled jalapenos. I meant to take a pic of them, but I inhaled mine in 2 seconds.

The best part? It cost just $4 for breakfast for two people, thanks to our coupon. It was a fun and cheap treat!

Lunch: Leftover sausage and veggies.

Dinner: Pizza partay! Picky Toddler’s birthday got canceled last week thanks to Hurricane Harvey, so tonight we’re having a make-up party for the little guy. We’ll drink beer and eat some pizza while the little ones run around and smack a pinata.

Grocery Costs

Let’s see what we spent this week!

I should note that we had to go grocery shopping at Walmart since people raided HEB during Hurricane Harvey. We really don’t like Wally World’s produce or stuff in general, so we kept the bill pretty streamlined.

On sale: $0

Coupons: $0

Total: $27.48

Goals for next week

Yeah, we probably bought, like, 15 items at Walmart so our total was nice ‘n’ low! Isn’t it funny how much better we do at eating from our pantry when there’s a natural disaster that forces us to do it??

I’m veeeery happy with our low grocery cost for this week. I know we won’t be able to match this for next week, but a low number was great for our budget! I’d like to continue eating more at home next week since we ate out more than once this week.

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

The post What’s for Dinner? September 1 appeared first on Picky Pinchers.



This post first appeared on Picky Pinchers | A FRUGALITY AND LIFESTYLE, please read the originial post: here

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