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December 5th, 2003 - Friday All about the food For awhile, a few months ago, I was really doing well with planning out a week's worth of meals. If I didn't have the full week, I at least had five nights of dinners (most of which allow for leftovers, thus solving the lunch dilemma) and on the other nights we would have a fall back meal of spaghetti (we almost always have what we need for that) or something equally simple. Then, for some reason, George started stopping at the grocery store on his way home. Anyone who has alternated between meal planning and just randomly running through the store knows the big difference. Not having any set plan meant that we had a meal for that night plus a bunch of pieces of meals that may or may not be able to be cooked, depending on what's missing from the pantry or fridge. The biggest problem isn't the frustration though, of finding that you're missing garlic for your garlic pasta. The biggest problem is that you end up spending more money than you should because you're always having to go back out to get more stuff. This time I got a budget for our groceries, and then I looked through recipes. We had been eating a lot of the same things lately, all of which are tasty but it's easy to get into a rut. I dug up some recipes that we haven't had in awhile, as well as a few that are brand new to us. Then I made a list based on what we needed to make all of those meals. We ended up with a grocery bill of $56 and we only need to get two more things to have seven days of supper (we missed the salsa for one recipe, and we accidentally got cream corn when we really need kernel corn). That's pretty decent. There were some good sales. Anyway, I'm sure it's boring to read about someone else's groceries, but I really do love grocery shopping and I get al giddy when I get to come home and put everything away. If you're the least bit curious, here's our menu for the week (in no particular order):
When we got home tonight, I got everything put away the way it's supposed to be (as opposed to George's tendency to put things haphazardly into the pantry, which drives me mental) and I made the Creamy Vegetables and Pasta. I have no idea why it's been so long since I last made it. It's really very easy and it's delicious. The fact that it's vegetarian is a little bonus. I've never made anything with eggplant so I'm looking forward to making the Faux Moussaka (it's really just fun to say "moussaka"!). I'm making that and the stew with ground pork instead of ground beef. I hope they still turn out okay. Beef was $2.59 a pound. Ground pork was 99 cents a pound. No contest.    And if that's not enough kitchen talk for you, after I put Hayley to bed, I came out and made some Butterscotch Squares. I was out of vanilla so I was worried that they wouldn't turn out but in the end, this was my best batch yet. See?  Okay, I know. You guys don't come here to see pictures of food. All anyone really cares about is the plethora of cute toddler pictures. 
It's hard to tell but she was really dancing with some heavy booty-shaking. No more music videos for her.
Okay. I'm off to bed. Hopefully Hayley will sleep well tonight. She didn't nap well and she was very busy doing toddler stuff today, so I'm hoping it tired her out. She had a very exciting evening because I did a full cleaning of the rats' cage. I washed the plastic base in the sink and she watched while Nicodemus and Mozart ran wildly around the bathtub. I thought she was going to have an aneurism from her squeals of joy and her laughter. They even came right up to her outstretched fingers and sniffed her, which is a big step for them since she kind of scares the crap out of them. Good night! << - Journal index - >>
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Reading: The DaVinci Code, Dan Brown.
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