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!