Psst, I make money on some of the links in this post at no cost to you. It keeps the lights on around here. Amazon links are affiliate links. 

What a week! I think we definitely did well on the food front. We mainly stayed within our comfort zone, but also tried to incorporate more healthy eating recipes into our diet. Our resolution to eat healthier is slowly but surely improving with each week.

See what we ate and what we spent on food as we try to tackle our Grocery costs.

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

Monday

Breakfast: Green smoothies. This week I used a new recipe for green smoothies and they turned out uhhh-mazing! Here’s the recipe I used for green smoothies. Thanks to the addition of hemp seeds and pumpkin seeds with banana, this smoothie tasted like a peanut butter banana sandwich. It was crazy.

Mr. Picky Pincher hated it at first, but it’s since grown on him. I’m very happy to have a decent green smoothie recipe!

Lunch: Leftover barbecue.

On Sunday evening we made a fantastic Italian sausage ragu with polenta. Here’s the recipe.

We were going to eat this as lunch on Monday, until we remembered we had barbecue leftovers from the weekend. 

And uh, I can’t resist the lure of barbecue, y’all.

We opted to freeze the ragu leftovers for later. Huzzah for bulking up our freezer meals!

Dinner: Asian zoodle soup.

We found butternut squash noodles for 50% off at the grocery store last weekend. We decided they would be most tasty in an Asian-inspired soup. I didn’t use a recipe here, but it came out pretty good!

I made the broth from Mr. Picky Pincher’s homemade turkey stock (leftover from Thanksgiving turkey bones). I added soy sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, and chili garlic paste. I let that shiz stew down for an hour to become even more flavorful.

In a separate skillet I seared and cooked chicken. I wish I’d butterflied it first so it would have cooked faster, but oh well.

Once the chicken was done, I deglazed the pan with a little bit of soy sauce and dumped in my carrots, cabbage, and onions. How tasty!

I’ve been struggling to cook veggie noodles well. I seem to always turn them to mush! Well, ladies and gents, I’ve found a way to cook them that works for me!

Steaming. 

The noodles are cooked to perfection and don’t disintegrate upon serving. Huzzah!

Tuesday

Breakfast: Orange pistachio parfait. We acquired a bag of oranges over Thanksgiving and I’ve been trying to use them all up. 

I originally made this as a healthy dessert option. Mr. Picky Pincher’s come to love it as both breakfast and dessert. It’s just sliced oranges with homemade yogurt, honey, and pistachios.

Yum!

Lunch: Leftover zoodle soup.

Dinner: Bacon apple farro salad. This is a great recipe that I uncovered in a library book a few weeks ago. It’s perfectly tart, tangy, salty, bacon-y, and mostly healthy. I’m trying to find more salad recipes like this because I really like it!

It has farro that’s been cooked down in apple cider vinegar, red wine vinegar marinated green apples and onions, bacon crumbles, feta cheese, and lettuce.

Wednesday

Breakfast: Chorizo potatoes.

I bought way too many potatoes and we needed to eat them. On Tuesday night I cubed potatoes and roasted them. On Wednesday morning I cooked a link of ground beef chorizo and charred bell pepper. The result was a spicy, filling dish for breakfast that didn’t take too much time. 

Lunch: Leftover salad.

Dinner: Beef tacos with caramelized onions, cilantro, and peppers.

Hom nom nom, tacos! I swear, these things are good for any meal. I browned ground beef with taco seasoning and drained the fat. While the beef was cooking I seared onions, jalapenos, and bell peppers in the cast iron skillet. We topped the whole shebang with cilantro and hot sauce.

It was magical.

Thursday

Breakfast: Sweet potato waffles with scrambled eggs and bacon.

A few weeks ago I made a bulk batch of sweet potato waffles (recipe here). We’ve been munching on them as a lower-carb option to my homemade biscuits.

I topped the waffles with fluffy scrambled eggs, pre-cooked bacon reheated in the microwave, and hot sauce.

Y’all.

I normally make this dish with sausage patties, but the bacon was EVEN BETTER. Imagine that – bacon making something taste good.

Lunch: A McDouble.

I had to drive several hours today for work. Because I had a meeting at 12:30 at a place that was 2 hours away, I snagged a McDouble at 10:30 in the morning. I wasn’t all that thrilled about the McDouble, but I did what I had to do.

In other news, I should be getting a mileage reimbursement check.

Dinner: Christmas Party #2.

Mr. Picky Pincher is an officer for his professional society. They had their Christmas party today at a barbecue restaurant. We chatted with a few people, grabbed drinks at the cash bar (c’mon guys), and munched on subpar barbecue. Actually, we decided it was the worst barbecue we’d ever had. The “smoke ring” on the brisket was actually a half inch of burnt brisket.

They did a door prize drawing and I won a nice bottle of liquor. It’s a local spirit distilled from tuna (aka prickly pear). I thought it would taste sweet like a tuna, but it was surprisingly complex. I’ll store it in the freezer and it’ll be a nice after-Dinner drink.

Friday

Breakfast: Oatmeal was on the menu, but I was feeling lazy. I rummaged through the freezer and found a loaf of chai spice pound cake (recipe here). I love pouring a little bit of my coffee on top of the cakes. Mmm!

Lunch: Not sure! I was hoping we would have leftovers from last night’s meal, but no such luck. They served everything family-style and we weren’t able to take any home. I’ll probably put together a plate of hummus with bell peppers, cheese, and sausage.

Dinner: I don’t know! We have plans this weekend so I’m not sure where we’ll be eating. Also, I just wanted to let y’all know that the What a Frugal Weekend post will most definitely be late. I anticipate it’ll be up on Monday evening instead of Sunday evening. Sorry, but it’ll be worth the wait!

Grocery Costs

Let’s see what we spent this week!

On sale: $5.76

Coupons: $8.14

Total: $163.54

Goals for next week

Ouch! Our grocery costs were pretty high this week. Fortunately, there are reasons for this. 

First of all, I bought ingredients to bake for the Picky Pincher Holiday Baking Giveaway (thanks to everyone who entered!). High quality ground beef was also on sale for 25% off, so we snagged four packs. We also stocked up on various snacks after having dinnertime struggles.

It was way more than I cared to spend, but it’s not like we’re dining on filet mignon and lobster every night. Next week our spending should be more normal.

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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