Friday
leftover chicken curry (Thursday's dinner) in homemade pita bread (see this post for pita how-to's)
watermelon (free)
Saturday
bean, lentil, barley, and vegetable soup
leftover pita bread, toasted
fresh blackberries (free)
Sunday cookout
hot dogs in easy, homemade buns
garden kale and onions, sauteed
garden tomato wedges
Monday
garden kale and onion frittata topped with quick marinara sauce
brown rice topped with marinara sauce
fresh blackberries with honey
Tuesday
bean, potato, carrot, and garden kale soup
bread and butter
fresh blackberries with honey
Wednesday
homemade cheese pizza using this recipe, taking half of dough for pizza and half for a loaf of French bread)
tossed garden salad with lettuce, beet greens, cucumbers, and marinated cooked beets in a creamy vinaigrette (all veggies form garden)
garden summer squash, sauteed
blackberry cobbler
Thursday
egg, rice, yogurt, and garden greens casserole
blackberries with honey
bread and butter
We had a good week of frugal meals, despite being busier than usual. I went blackberry picking on 3 days this past week, so preparing dinners each day tok a bit of advanced planning.
Grocery-wise, we've had a couple of bonuses this week. So, you remember that a the woman my daughter cat-sits for gave us a whole watermelon, right? That lasted us about a week. Then this week, the same daughter came home from her regular summer job with 2 bags of garden produce from a co-worker -- kale, collard greens, and summer squash. In addition, I was checking out a new dollar store in our town, just to see what they carried. While there, I found 64-oz jars of peanut butter for $2. A bit skeptical, I bought 3 jars. We tried it right away and discovered that it was pretty good. So, I stopped in another day and picked up 2 more jars. That's 20 pounds of peanut butter! Now these jars have a sell-by date of Jan. 2020, so I didn't want to go overboard. I'm pretty confident that we'll use up what I did buy by the end of December. If not, I know someone who will be baking a lot of peanut butter cookies for the freezer. Do you suppose peanut butter freezes very well? I may be finding out. Right after stopping at that dollar store, I went across the street to Walmart, where I found 2-lb boxes of angel hair pasta for 75 cents. That's 37 cents/lb for pasta! I had been considering a sale of 62 cents/lb for pasta at another store. Glad I didn't buy that pasta! What amazing deals and blessings this week!
With all of this peanut butter, I decided to try making a peanut butter salad dressing for my lunch salad yesterday. This dressing was amazingly good. I used peanut butter (softened in the microwave), vinegar, oil, soy sauce, ginger powder, red pepper flakes, sugar, and garlic to make this dressing. I'll be making this again for my family this week. For tomorrow's dinner, I'm planning on angel hair pasta in peanut sauce. Yummy, easy, and cheap.
Another busy weekend coming up for me. What's on your weekend must-do list?
Next chat session opportunity
And speaking of weekends -- how about a chat session on Saturday morning, 9 AM to 11 AM (PDT), August 24, topic: Christmas/holiday foods and gifts? Gifts can be homemade, semi-homemade, or just bargains and where you found them or how you managed the deal. An example -- maybe you bought something in-store, using a coupon off of that store's website, or shopped at a particular discount online specialty retailer, or have found a great flash-sale store. For the homemade and semi-homemade gifts, please include brief instructions and/or a link to your inspiration. If you have photos that you'd like to share, you can email them to me (lili.mounce *at* gmail.com) and I'll upload them into the post.
I am still in the collecting-ideas phase, as I know many of you are, too. September is just around the corner. Be thinking about ideas that you've used in the past or have found for this coming holiday season. Also, be thinking about questions you have for the rest of the group, such as needing gift ideas for a particular age/gender or recipe for a holiday dish. Since Thanksgiving in Canada is not too far off, and then it comes so quickly in the US, too, let's include Thanksgiving food ideas, as well. Sound good?
Have a great weekend, everybody!
