Cheap & Cheerful Suppers: More 20-Something Cooking

Friday

homemade pepperoni and mushroom pizza, steamed broccoli, carrot sticks

To make this dinner easier, they used a pizza crust mix and canned spaghetti sauce for the pizza (with cheese, pepperoni, and canned mushrooms).

Saturday

bean burritos made with commercial flour tortillas, canned beans, cheese, salsa, plus canned tomato chunks and a radish green and watercress salad

I was hungry and forgot to take a photo. All I have to do is show up, right? And I can't even remember to take a picture! Sue me. I was hungry. Ha ha. 

Sunday

"Pasta Tina" from Jimmy Kimmel, a sauce made from canned cannellini beans, roasted garlic, olive oil, chicken soup base over cooked macaroni (Parmesan garnish), plus steamed carrots and roasted canned tomatoes

This was much better tasting that it looks. I thought Pasta Tina was delicious. I was hungry and didn't think to take a photo until I was half finished. My daughter says she will make this again for us.

Monday

Homemade tomato soup (canned tomato paste, basil, garlic, chicken soup base), ham and cheese sandwiches, radish greens and cabbage slaw

I've never done sandwiches much for dinners. But I think I will going forward. I love soup and sandwich meals.

Tuesday

Canned chili boosted with fresh peppers, onions, canned tomatoes, and more cooked pinto beans, scratch Virginia spoon bread

Wednesday

do it yourself nachos -- tortilla chips, canned refried beans topped with melted cheese, salsa, mixed vegetables, canned pineapple chunks

Thursday

chicken and rice casserole (a church favorite recipe), steamed broccoli, orange juice

Over the weekend I baked 3 kinds of muffin, blueberry, raisin bran, and chocolate chip-pecan. I baked the batches one right after the other, using all the same utensils, mixing bowl, and tins. I made 40 muffins in total and froze most of them to take out of the freezer a few at a time throughout the week. We also had homemade yogurt, oatmeal, toast, eggs, bananas, juice, and milk for breakfasts.

Lunches included more homemade soups, pureed carrot and chive-potato-cheese, plus peanut butter sandwiches, cheese sandwiches, apples, crackers, and leftovers.

I love having my daughters do the cooking. Everything is delicious and all I do is eat and help clean up. The two of them use more convenience products than I do. However, I don't think they're choosing terribly costly convenience items. Just items like canned beans, spaghetti sauce, pizza crust mix, sandwich fixings, canned soup for a casserole, etc. I'll be giving them the day off for Easter and doing the cooking myself.

That's what we ate this week. What was on your menu?

Grocery Shopping This Week

I shopped in-person earlier this week and noticed a few things. 

First off, the produce section seemed much less full than I'm used to. The apples I'd planned on buying weren't there, and there wasn't even a section with their tag indicating they'd sold out. The loose apple bins were only partially filled. I'm used to seeing apples mounded up, stacked in layers 2, 3 or 4 deep. There were plenty of bananas, however. Green cabbage is one of those items that have been hard to find at Fred Meyer this past year. Some weeks, there were no heads of green cabbage at all. In previous years, the green cabbage took up a large section, with a minimum of 30 heads from which to choose. This week, there were 8 heads of cabbage for me to choose from. This is the week before Easter. In other years, this week has seen a large shelf/bin just for asparagus. I didn't even notice any asparagus and reflected on that after I got out to the car. Most of the produce shelves appeared to be about half full, in contrast to other years when produce has been overflowing. 

In the center aisles, there were numerous pockets of bare shelving. In some cases, products that I knew from before 2020 weren't even there. This has been an ongoing issue with grocery stores since spring 2020.

The milk, butter, and cheese refrigerators were full. The egg refrigerator has shrunk and was about 2/3 full. The eggs on sale (18-ct) for the week were nearly sold out. The price was excellent (sale plus digital coupon brought the price to $1.47/18 ct. carton), so that is understandable. I was able to buy the amount of eggs that I had intended (about a 2-month supply), and still leave some cartons behind. Cheese appears to be becoming a luxury item. The name brand cheese (Tillamook) was $10 for 2 pounds. My family would not be eating cheese at that price. The store brand (Kroger) was on sale and had a digital coupon, bringing the price down to just under $5 for a 2-lb block or bag. That's a reasonable price to me and slightly lower than a few months ago. I bought the limit of 5 packages, again about a 2-month supply. There was plenty of milk, but it has gone up about 80 cents per gallon. I didn't buy yogurt, but I noticed large bare sections of shelving where the store brand usually is displayed. 

I still look for bargains every time I shop. This time it was butter. Kroger had been packaging some of its butter in 2-packs, two 1-lb boxes over-wrapped together, with a slight discount for buying more than one pound. Evidently, this wasn't as popular of a marketing gimmick as they'd hoped, and many of these 2-packs were about to expire (30 or more double packs). The sell-by date was April 13 and I was shopping on April 11. They'd marked the butter 2-packs down to $2.99 ($1.50 per pound) to sell them quickly. I scooped up ten 2-packs, or 20 pounds. I also had a coupon good for Kroger brand products, valued at $6. Applying this $6 to the butter brought my price per pound down to levels I remember from when my kids were small children ($1.20/lb). I left plenty of marked down butter for anyone else bargain shopping that morning.

I didn't buy everything on my list. A couple items weren't even there any more, so I had to rethink my plans. Some categories were just too expensive (meat). I stocked up on ground beef summer and early fall 2021, paying $2.88/lb. This week at Fred Meyer, the same grade beef was $4.79/lb. I still have some in my freezer, so we can go on with the ground beef that we have. I was just looking for something other than ground beef (way, way out of my price range). 

I passed by the Easter candy section and noticed huge price hikes that I think shouldn't have been there. I wanted some jelly beans and the best I could find in the holiday section were $3 for a 12-oz bag. I headed over to the regular candy aisle and found a 10-oz bag of Kroger brand jelly beans for $1.25. I also noticed exorbitant prices on what I consider ordinary chocolate Easter candy (Mars brand) in the special Easter aisle, $4.50 for 9-oz bags -- that's $8 per pound! I can make molded candies (using my rabbit molds) or mounded chocolate and coconut "nest" candies for a third of that per ounce price, by using chocolate baking chips.

Prices are up, that's for sure. There are still some bargains to be had. But you have to look for them. My other thought is that I'm very glad to have a garden planned for this spring and summer. I hope that many people across the globe will be planting gardens this summer to offset some of the shortages to come.