Grocery Shopping

  The last time I took an actual grocery shopping trip was at the end of November. Christmas expenses took precedence in December and we had a fully stocked freezer and pantry. I have also noticed that a lot of the time now adult son is gone, college age daughter is at her boyfriend's house for dinner, and college age son and I have gotten into the habit of opting for cereal or scrambled eggs or something for dinner rather than a full meal from my dinner plans. Tuesday has become pizza night with college age son treating us. And one night we had cheese and crackers and called it 'tapas night'. LOL. This means that the freezer is still pretty stocked up as well as the pantry shelves. This is not to say that I haven't been inside a grocery store at all. I have at times picked up milk or smart balance or eggs. And of course GF has handled all the food purchases for his house.
Today I had a bonus day off from work. A day where due to a very large funeral and a planned brown bag day coincided with a day I'd taken off from aftercare meant that I did not have to come in to work at all. The funeral was going to be using my kitchen so I didn't even have space to do paperwork at my desk. Now that I am on salary this didn't really present me with any issues. I took advantage of the time off to catch up laundry and get the house cleaned  up . I then made a short list (mostly produce, dairy, and juice) and headed out to do some grocery shopping.
My first stop was BJ's . I spent a grand total of $41.44 and brought home a gallon of organic milk, a 48 oz box of Cheezits, a 5 lb bag of sweet onions, a bag of 8 ciabatta rolls, a large box of Special K cereal, and a three pack of Pledge for dusting.

 My second stop was Aldi. I spent $126.08 and brought home 2 dozen eggs, 3 lbs. navel oranges, 5 lb. grapefruits, 3 lbs. granny smith apples, 5 lbs. russet potatoes, 3 lbs. bananas, 1 bag of spinach, 1 large corned beef brisket,  a pint of mushrooms, a pint of grape tomatoes, a box of
'celtic trio' cheddar cheese,  a can of whipped cream, a bag of baby carrots,  4 boxes (2 chicken, 2 beef) of rice mix, 2 multi-colored peppers, 1 wheel of queso fresco, 1 box creamy wheat cereal, 2 blocks Colby cheese, 1 block NY cheddar, 1 bunch celery, 2 packs cheddar brats, 1 package of maple sausage links, 1 pound butter, 1 bottle tomato juice, 1 bag romaine hearts, 2 bottles steak sauce, 2 cans fire roasted tomatoes, 2 cans diced tomatoes, 1 bag Valentine Kisses,  1 bag shredded mozzarella, 2 boxes red velvet cake mix for a Make & Take I am doing at school as well as 2 cans of frosting for this, 1 quart plain Greek yogurt, 1 quart lowfat cottage cheese, 1 box organic shredded wheat, 1 pint whipped cream cheese, 2 bottles 100% apple juice, 2 bottle ruby red grapefruit juice, 1 bottle 100% cranberry juice, 1 bottle 100% grape juice, 1 bottle 100% cherry juice, 1 bottle pomegranate plum juice, 2 bottle coffee creamer, 1 bag dried coconut, 1 bag diced coconut, and  1 package peanut butter cheese crackers.

This should last us quite a while. I will be reimbursed for the cake and frosting items.

Pardon our construction dust....

  For the last several years I have lived in a kitchen that was desperately in need of ceiling repair, new paint, new counters, new sink, and a new floor. A leaking second floor porch put several holes in the breakfast nook area and a combination of leaks and bathroom renovation added some impressively large holes to the main kitchen ceiling area. Adult son who lives at home works in the flooring industry but previously worked for a home builder. He is completely capable of tearing out and replacing said ceiling (with a little help since it is not a one man job) but as is usually the case when there is the money there is no time and when there is the time there is no money.
Here is a picture of the main kitchen ceiling (and the plaster wall which sustained damage from the now repaired leaking) to show you what I mean:

 

But it seems as if the cosmos has come around in our favor. I came home a couple of weekends ago from GF's house to a lovely surprise. Adult son and a buddy of his had torn down the ceiling in the breakfast nook area and totally replaced it as well as repairing part of a plaster wall in that area that had been damaged:

 

A new ceiling light fixture is already purchased and ready to go once son is done with the sanding and painting. The main kitchen area will be next! The new dry wall is currently living in front of the dining room window seat and son already has a new ceiling fan to replace the really ugly fluorescent fixture that has been there for years. The bow window that you can partially see in the above picture does not open and our stove does not have a fan hood so a ceiling fan will be a real joy once it is in place. On the list of things I plan to do over the summer (or spring break depending on how the ceiling comes along) will be to totally paint this kitchen. The sponge painting and stenciled border are old and dated and need to go. We are also talking about sanding down the cupboards and painting them white (son would like to replace them entirely but sadly there is no money for that) and possibly replacing the countertops. A new double stainless steel sink (gifted to son by ex builder boss) is in a box down cellar waiting to be put in place as well. Our current sink is porcelain and badly chipped. And finally son is hot to replace the floor which can be done very inexpensively since he can purchase the materials at a floorer's discount.

Seems as if this old house (85 years young this year) always has a need. It feels good to see work finally getting done on this.

 

Something New

In an effort to save money and be a better manager of my resources I have been eye-balling a lot of meatless recipes lately. I came across one for Winter Vegetable stew on the Betty Crocker website that I bookmarked to try. Tuesday night I organised my ingredients ready for prep and into the crock pot on Wednesday morning. The recipe called for fire roasted tomatoes which I didn't have on hand so I substituted regular diced canned tomatoes. I added peeled and diced onion, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, and celery. Chicken broth, thyme and rosemary went into the pot.

I set the timer and went off to work. A wicked sinus headache brought me home early and both my son and I remarked on how delicious the house smelled when we walked in. When the timer on the crock pot went off I decided the stew needed a little something more to it. I settled on my mom's drop dumplings. I combined a cup of flour, one egg, and enough water to make a thick batter. I boiled some water and dropped spoonfuls of the dumpling batter in.



Once they were cooked I drained them and added them to the stew. 

Sons and I both really enjoyed the meal although I think the fire roasted tomatoes would add yet another depth of flavor. Next time I make this it will be with those. 

Bonus Day

Going back to school this week was an adjustment, however it wasn't as difficult as I had anticipated. The weather was a bit of an issue. Cold enough to keep us indoors at aftercare and snowy enough to make the morning commute a pain. With college age son still staying at GF's house, adult son working long hours, and college age daughter eating at her bf's house I found myself unmotivated to cook for myself. Even with planning dinners for one. Monday I pulled out the two remaining cheddar brats from a formerly full package and cooked those, pairing them up with egg noodles and peas. Tuesday adult son was home and got us pizza. Wednesday I had a hair appointment and GF invited me to dinner at a local pub/restaurant. Upon leaving dinner I discovered that school was cancelled the next day due to the expected subzero temperatures.
My first inclination was to spend the day relaxing but my better nature prevailed and I decided to spend the day getting some stuff done around the house. A good choice since it kept me busy and warm. My first job was cleaning the bathroom. I washed down the walls, the baseboards, and the floors using some Lysol spray cleaner I have been wanting to use up. My bathtub is extremely old. I think it may be from the 1960s. The house was built in 1930 but the tub is obviously newer than that. It has several permanent stains and one spot where the porcelain was damaged by drain cleaner. When adult son renovated the bathroom in 2009 we decided not to replace the tub since it is longer than the standard tubs you have today. And refacing it was too expensive. In any case even with its issues the tub REALLY needed a good clean up. Two rounds of Kaboom bathroom cleaner and it finally came clean. We have a set of chrome and wire shelves similar to this

 that holds a makeup basket, the hairdryer, toiletries, and dog grooming items. It was looking bad. I emptied it and gave it a good scrub down. While cleaning I made a mental list of needs for this space. A new shower curtain liner, some more hand towels, a new mini blinds are on the list. 

I then dusted, swiffered, and vacuumed the living room while doing a couple of loads of laundry. Dinner was totally off the menu. I had a small boneless leg of lamb in the freezer. I pulled this out and seasoned it with some Penzey's Greek seasoning. I tossed peeled and diced potatoes, carrots, and turnips with some olive oil, salt and pepper and more Greek seasoning and put them around the lamb and roasted the whole thing in the oven. Adult son and I enjoyed a delicious meal. And I have enough leftover diced lamb now in the freezer to make a meal with next month. 

I also had enough time to do some relaxing starting a new book and catching up with a couple dvr'd shows . 

Sunday Supper:Spaghetti night

  Sticking with my planned menus for the month of January is going to be very important to meeting my budget goals. With that in mind while doing errands with GF I suggested he pick up some meatloaf/meatball mix at the wholesale club. Half for use on Sunday and the other half for later in the month for meatloaf.

I used an open jar of Ragu sauce that was in his refrigerator and combined this with a couple of cans of tomato sauce, added garlic, Italian herbs and grated parmesan cheese  in the crockpot to stretch this sauce.

I took half the meatloaf mix and added an egg, some Italian bread that I'd soak in a bit of milk, more grated parmesan, garlic, onion, and Italian seasonings and made meatballs that I browned off on a cookie sheet for 20 minutes in a 350 degree oven:

 

I added the meatballs to the sauce and left that to simmer in the crockpot on low for about 2 hours;

While the pasta was cooking I made a Caesar salad of romaine lettuce (from Aldi), some shaved parmesan (buying this in a bulk piece allows so much versatility), some cheese and garlic croutons( from Aldi) and Caesar dressing that GF got for 50% off at the local grocery store . Dinner was served:

 

 

 

Scoring a victory at the pump

  Gas prices have been falling steadily here the last month. Good news for those of us on strict budgets. I am hoping this will have a cascading effect and we will shortly see some reductions in the grocery stores as well.
In the meantime the SUV needed to be fed so that I can get back and forth to work this week. While out running errands GF and I were actually on our way to another gas station where we'd seen the advertised price as $1.87 a gallon when what to our wondering eyes should appear but this:

No need to drive any further. $25 later and I was all gassed up and ready to go. SUV is tucked up inside GF's garage and we will be taking his car to pick up college age son later on. Son is still on vacation from school this week so he will be residing with GF and going to work each day with him as he has done over break. He has already banked enough to cover his books and any other sundry expenses as well as some fun money. This means a savings for me as well as I will be able to take a shorter route home after work and anticipate making dinner for just myself or myself and adult son this week.

Preparing to go back to work

 Today is my final day of vacation. Limiting stress is one of my goals for the year (for health reasons: my BP is up, I'm having frequent episodes of insomnia, and at the beginning of the year I had some scary anxiety attacks that I do NOT want to have come back) and to that end I want to be all prepared for tomorrow. On Friday I sat down with the lunch payments I received at the end of the day on the 19th as well as all of the lunch and drink tickets for January. I entered the payments into the excel spreadsheet that I use to track these. Then I sorted tickets into the individual  classes and entered these numbers into the daily lunch and daily drink spreadsheets that I use to help me figure out how much food/milk to order and how many lunches I may be looking at making on any given day. Of course these numbers fluctuate depending on who decides that morning to order lunch or to buy milk at the lunch window that day. Three hours of work and I had all my numbers before me. I then went online and put in a food order at my food service providers website (food for tomorrow had been ordered based on numbers from the previous time I'd served this), went to my milk provider and placed my weekly order there as well. I then got on the phone and made arrangements for a special milk delivery to arrive on Monday to get us through until our regular delivery day. I figured this was enough work for a vacation day.
This morning I got out all those lunch and drink tickets and trimmed them to a size to fit the plastic protective sleeves they go into (the paper cutter in the school office can only get them so small), separated the tickets out into ordered lunches and non-ordered lunches for tomorrow and placed the tickets I am using tomorrow into the class pouches. We are very low tech at my little school. Still using paper tickets. No fancy scanners and ID badges here. This means tomorrow morning I will be copying each and every ticket in the school office before any of them go to the classrooms. Inevitably someone will lose their ticket before they reach the cafeteria. LOL. I also know that I will be dealing with parents who 'forgot' our first day back was a new lunch month and that means more payments and tickets to process. Processing the ones who were returned promptly Friday and today means my stress level is WAY lower. After all in addition to all this paperwork at the beginning of the day I have to cook lunch for what looks like close to 100 people. By myself. :-)
In any case although I've given up some precious hours of vacation time I am feeling good. I checked my work email this morning and returned an email that needed my prompt attention. As I've mentioned before this year I am one of the three people planning and running the parish fish fry events and this was connected to that. Early planning and prompt attention to my portion of the responsibilities means that I can keep a  handle on that stress thing yet again. And to that end I am going to make sure my February and March lunch menus are in place by the middle of this month. I just do not want to be dealing with those while dealing with the extra fry stuff.
Lastly GF and I will be going out to run a couple of errands. We will hit Target so that I can buy sponges for my cafeteria, then to GFS so that I can pick up fresh produce for salads for the days before my delivery arrives. And lastly gassing  up my SUV for the week.
I am feeling very productive and getting into that work state of mind!

First Meal of 2015

 2015 has gotten off to a great start on the cooking front. After peering into GF's refrigerator I came up with a terrific brunch that was based on what was on hand. It even included some of the planned over ham from "That Ham". Inside of the refrigerator was 2 dozen eggs (awesome), a baggie of ham slices (awesome), a block of cheddar cheese (terrific), milk and smart butter. On the counter were two lonely Idaho potatoes (great), and a loaf of rye bread (yippee). In the cupboard I found dried chopped onion, an item I keep on hand here because GF is not a big fan of onion and the fresh ones tend to go bad before I can use them all here. I also knew we were going to be going to BJ's in the late afternoon where we were picking up more potatoes so using up what was on hand was not a problem.
I quickly prepped the potatoes by dicing them small, the cheese by grating it, and the ham by cutting it up into smaller pieces:

I heated up a skillet on the stove with some oil in it, added the potatoes and the dried onion along with a sprinkle of parsley,  a pinch of salt and some black pepper and set that to cooking:

Once the potatoes were golden on all sides I added a tablespoon of water and covered the pan to finish cooking. I took six eggs and some milk and beat them in a bowl:

I tossed in the cheese and the ham. In my larger electric skillet I melted some smart butter then added the egg mixture to make a scramble.

I popped the rye bread into the toaster:

 and within minutes the first meal of 2015 was plated and ready to go:

 

One of my goals for this year is to eat out less and use up smaller amounts of food or planned overs before they go bad on me. Especially at GF's house where I will leave him things and they will just molder in his refrigerator because he can't be bothered to heat them up and eat them.

Our New Year's Day dinner was a smallish pork roast that I browned and put into the crockpot along with sauerkraut, a bit of apple cider, and some brown sugar. It cooked while GF and I ran errands (picked up college age son from his girlfriend's house, shopped at BJ's). Once back at his place I made mashed potatoes, heated up some corn, and made a small batch of homemade applesauce to serve with the pork roast. We enjoyed the dinner so much I totally forgot to take pictures.

It felt good to know that all our meals yesterday were made at home. I also had a zero dollar day since the BJ's trip was one that GF needed to take. I'd say 2015 is off to a good start.

 

 

 

 

A look ahead and a look behind

Before plunging into what is going to be a busy day I thought I would take a look at finances; both those of the last year and what is ahead. I am pleased at how last year turned out overall. I managed not only to take care of the day to day obligations of living but also to celebrate a new birth and a high school graduation. We made it through the summer months on savings and after my meeting with the business office we are finally set on a steady income for the entire year. I trimmed some fat from the budget by renegotiating my internet costs, not renewing the XM radio, and making some changes to reduce utility and grocery expenditures. 

I have a couple of goals for 2015. I need to rebuild my savings so this is priority number one. I am not sure how much of a tax return I will receive this year. With youngest turning 18 we are no longer eligible for some tax credits we have used in the past. Any return will go towards property taxes. If there is not enough to pay the full year I will be getting 3 paychecks in January and one of these will help out with that bill. I will be earning some extra pay for running the parish fish fries. I am earmarking this for savings but if I need to use this for those taxes then that needs to be done. I will continue doing the baking classes once a month and that money will go in savings. I feel as if I am still grappling with the new income amounts and often feel as if I am standing on the edge of a cliff and disaster is only inches away. Hopefully with sensible money management this feeling will fade away. 

I have set myself a challenge as well. Beginning today I am going to go an entire year without purchasing any clothing for myself. The only exception is for socks and undies if needed. I love new clothes so this is going to be quite a battle for me.  I am also determined to have more free ( no money spent) days than days where money goes out this year. 

Wish me luck. 

Boxing up the holiday & our whirl of gaiety

Not wanting to face both going back to work and putting away holiday decorations all at the same time I decided to do something I have never done before: do it before the new year. Tuesday and Wednesday mornings I set aside for this chore. By noon on Tuesday I had all the interior decorations packed up and the plastic bins stowed away on the cellar shelves. A quick vacuuming of the living room and dining room, a stiffer of the woods floors, and a mopping of the kitchen floor and my goal was met. 

Tuesdays are $5 movies at a local theatre so college age daughter, her boyfriend, his mom, and I all went off to see the final movie in the Hobbit trilogy. Tuesday night GF and I joined friends at the newly opened Hofbrauhouse for a festive holiday dinner. A fine time was had by all. A co-worker told me this is a pretty good approximation of a genuine German beer hall. A three piece polka band, long tables with family style seating, on site brewed German style beers and terrific German food. There was even dancing in the aisles and sometimes on the tables. My Bavarian DNA loved it.
Yesterday my goal was to get the tree undecorated and ready to be transported over to middle daughter's home. SIL wants to cut it up for summer bonfires. I got all of that done. I also got a nice surprise. Adult son had a couple of days off of work and he decided to get a major project underway. Due to a bathroom remodel three years ago plus a leaky second floor porch (now fixed) our kitchen ceiling had some large holes. The porch leak also caused a portion of one of the old plaster walls to crumble and break off the lathe. Adult son has cleared out the kitchen, hung up tarps to block off the room from the rest of the main floor and begun the removal of the remainder of the ceiling! He isn't sure when or how long it will be before he is able to start hanging a new ceiling, it isn't a one man job but both GF and a buddy of his have offered to help. Frankly just getting rid of the old ceiling is an improvement. He will also replace the broken plaster wall with drywall. And he plans to get some insulation into the area under that porch. This is the eating area of the kitchen and has always been noticeably colder than the rest of the room. This will be a plus to both comfort and the heat bill.
Tomorrow the exterior lights and decorations will come down and I will be able to go back to work without these chores hanging over my head.
And GF and I closed out the year with what has become a tradition a trip downtown with his brother and SIL to the casino for dinner, slots, and revelry at midnight.  I took $110 with me to gamble and brought $110 home so it was a good night for me. I was prepared to come home with nothing so I am  hopeful that this is an indication of good things in the new year.