Budgeting for Organic Foods-Menu Planning

The key to a successful budget is planning. My biggest problem is waste and overbuying and you can combat both of these with a great plan. The other thing I notice is that when I plan I am more inspired to make more new and interesting foods.
My first step to planning is taking stock of what I have in the fridge/pantry that needs to be used up. This week I have some leftover beef stock from making crock pot roast beef sandwiches, zucchini and ham that I want to use up.

So lets start from there with the leftover beef broth, I'd like to make Risotto. I found a great recipe online that sounds delicious! Now I'm not using tenderloin for this, I'm using leftover chuck roast. That's another one of my big ways of saving money, really stretching our meat and using cheaper cuts. We really just use meat to add flavor and see it as a side not the main component. Pinterest has been a great source of inspiration and I saw these healthy Zucchini chips that I'd love to try. The ham is just begging to be made into Spit Pea Soup, YUM!!

Saturday-
Beef Risotto-I'll be using some mushrooms we have in the fridge for this, so we have everything in house to make this except for the wine. I'm also using Aborrio rice instead of the carnaroli rice the recipe calls for (Aborrio is also a great Risotto rice). As a side I want to make Zucchini chips because I think that would brighten up the heaviness of the meal, Also I'd like to bring them to the Superbowl party we are going to Sunday but want to try out the recipe beforehand.

Sunday-
SUPERBOWL!! We were invited to a friends house so I just wanted to bring a couple things, the first being the Zucchini chips and the second is Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Dip. These look delicious! For the Cookie Dough Dip I'll bring some apples as well as Graham Crackers to dip.

Monday-
Monday I'll be babysitting so its a great day to use my crockpot for some Split Pea Soup. We have some Ezekiel bread that will hold up nicely toasted with this soup! Another meal we don't need to buy anything for.

Tuesday-
Spicy Honey Chicken, Brown Rice and Broccoli. For this we buy our Chicken from Trader Joes and get Organic Cage Free thighs for 4.99 lb. It is a bit pricy but this will be the only meal this week that is featuring meat and using more than a lb.

Wednesday-
Another Pinterest find is Coconut, Shrimp and Corn Chowder. This looks delicious and we happen to have some wild caught shrimp in the freezer and all the ingredients in the pantry.

Thursday-
Dahl with Spinach served with brown rice. One of the hubs favorite foods is Dahl, which is awesome because its cheap and nutritious! We often do vegetarian nights to save cash. Thankfully the hubs will eat everything! If your family isn't big on the vegetarian bandwagon try to cook foods from other cultures, they might be so fooled by the new flavors that they will not even realize that they are eating vegetarian!

Friday-
Pizza! Pizza crust is cheap and easy to make yourself. Pizza is also a great fridge emptier; take your veggies, leftover meats, cheese ends and use them up! One of my friends parents instituted pizza night at their house when we were younger. Everyone was invited and they just made pizza after pizza. It was so fun and delicious and everyone ended up there on Friday nights! Something I definitely want to start doing in our house!

So as far as our menu plan goes here is what I need to buy: Garbonzo Beans, Graham Crackers, Onions, Garlic, Broccoli, Spinach, Chicken Thighs and Corn. As you can see I'm relying heavily on what is in my pantry so I really only need to pick up a few things to make our dinners. Now I go through and add in some of the other things we'll need this week: fruit, yogurt, milk, eggs. For our breakfasts we either eat eggs, oatmeal or smoothies so I try to have those things in the house at all times. Lunches generally are leftovers. Now that I'm all done figuring what we are eating this week I go through my house and see what needs to be re-filled. I like to keep a well stocked pantry (flour, sugar, oatmeal, beans, coffee, butter, peanut butter, tuna, jelly, baking needs, tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, chicken broth, olive oil, etc). Once I see what I need to replenish I check the sales and see if there is anything there that I can buy in bulk. This week my groceries I need will probably only cost $40-45 so I have about $30-35 to restock my pantry or stock up on sales items. Sometimes I'll use this extra if I see good sales and sometimes I will roll it into the next weeks budget to save up in case there is a good sale on meat or I'm close to needing a high priced item (maple syrup, oils, etc). I'll also use the surplus to sometimes treat us to takeout.

What are you making this week?

Grocery List
Garbonzo Beans-3 cans (1 for the dip and 2 for pantry as I used mine up this week on hummus)
Graham Crackers
chicken thighs
Onions
Garlic
Broccoli
Spinach
Corn
Apples
Bananas
Oranges/Clementines
Yogurt
milk
eggs
tuna


Extra
Red Wine

On menu planning

Generally the best way I have found to follow our budget and eat real foods is menu planning. While I have been faithful to following weight watchers recently, I admit I have let this fall by the wayside. I haven't been inspired in the kitchen and so we have been eating out more than I care to admit or just eating boring foods. I'm going to try to break this rut by at least making one new recipe a week and menu planning. This week we did go over budget by about $20 but our menu also includes a special fathers day meal of grass fed steaks.

I have been pretty disgusted with what I am learning about much of our food supply, so in general we buy organic; and our beef must be grass fed. I want to incorporate at least one fish meal as well a week and that must be ocean caught. Its so important to me right now that I would rather eat vegetarian rather than conventional beef or farm raised fish, it really just doesn't seem safe to eat any more. I have been called a food snob before because of this but honestly I feel it's a question of safety. We eat like this at home knowing that while we are out we can't employ the same practices but at least we know the vast majority of our diet is safe.

This has been a challenge as far as the grocery budget so I will be working on following our budget strictly and incorporating vegetarian meals to offset. The fish cost has been offset by buying wild alaskan salmon in a can.

This weeks Menu:

Sunday-Father's Day! Grass Fed Steak, asparagus, roasted potatoes, salad and for dessert Cherry Pie (from the 50 lbs of cherries my friends and I picked and processed). All favorites for Schmoops first father's day.

Monday-honey lime enchiladas made with homemade tortillas (I will be subbing coconut oil for the shortening).

Tuesday-Pizza- store bought crust, store bought sauce. Easy peasy

Wednesday-.Crock Pot Black Bean Soup-served with Greek Yougurt instead of sour cream and flavored with fresh cilantro from our garden

Thursday-Quiche with sausage, onions and peppers

Friday-Alaskan Salmon Chick Pea and Mint Patties served with cous cous

I'm hoping that Wednesday can be a beach day and we can bring leftover pizza for lunch and then come home to some wonderful crockpot soup. Also, did you notice the two low cost vegetarian meals that I snuck in there?

Are you menu-planning? What helps you?

O...M...G... Soo good

So yesterday I got inspired and I made Mozzarella Cheese. It was alot easier than I thought, once I found the ingredients. I used a gallon of organic milk from an Amish Farm, about a teaspoon of sea salt, citric acid and some Junket Rennet. Lacy from Razor Family Farms has some fantastic directions, the only thing I found was that when I was finished and put it in the salt water mixture the edges were a little mushy. Also maybe I mixed it a little too much because the inside was harder than regular mozzarella. That being said the taste was fantastic and when shredded the texture and consistency were spot on.

Today I used the homemade mozzarella in a homemade pizza. My default pizza dough recipe is soo stinking easy.
I use:
1 cup of warm water
2.25 tsps of yeast
Mix together than add:
2 Tbsp of oil
1 Tbsp of honey
1 cup of whole wheat flour
1.5 cups of white flour
a shake of dried onions
dashes of oregano, garlic pepper, parsley, and sea salt.
Let rise for 10 minutes and bake at 450 degrees for 10-14 min.

Then I take one can of Crushed Tomatoes and open it and add about a teaspoon of sugar, then doctor it up with my spices. I use the can to mix up the spices so I'm not dirtying any other dishes.

(go ahead I know you want to click to enlarge the goodness)
I also carmelized some onions and picked basil from my garden and also some roasted red pepper.

One Word:

DELISH!!

Some Good Dinner

Last night I was soo close to ordering out, I was just tired when I got home and didn't feel like cooking. I stopped at my sister in laws house and took in some of the cuteness that is my niece. The pit stop fueled me on and gave me the boost I needed to make some dinner. So I made some roasted potatoes, chicken and asparagus.

We had a lovely dinner with a stimulating dinner guest, Kitten Cat Snuggle Fluffy Pants III (we're trying to rename him because his name now isn't safe to say in front of children, he got the name from his love of jumping on the dining room table).

The hubs was REALLY happy I made asparagus.
I also made a Cranberry Lemon Cake from A Hippie with a Minivan's blog and it was goooooooood

Rustic Butternut Squash with Linguini

Oh mama thats the stuff.

I was trying to think of what to make with a yummie looking butternut squash that I have had.  Today I was inspired by one of my favorite reads, Apartment Therapy The Kitchen when they had an article about how butternut squash tastes amazing roasted with butter and thyme.  

I thinly sliced my squash and roasted it in layers with sliced portabellos, mozzerella, provolone, lots of fresh garlic, pepper, salt, onion powder, thyme, sage and pats of butter.  When it was all layered up I poured about a half cup of cream on top. I put this mixture in the oven at 450 degrees until it bubbled and the squash was tender.

I mixed this into some linguini and let me just say FANTASTIC!!!

A really nice rustic tasting fall dish :)

Happy Birthday Daddy

So my dad is coming over tonight for a birthday dinner, so as is customary I made him a birthday cake last night. As you know my birthday cakes aren't usually the normal run of the mill type jobs, I like to have fun with them, and if you know my father you know that this one is especially appropriate.

The hubs and I were happy to have two really good friends over last night helping us with this tremendous undertaking. My friend Lisa kept singing "I think your tractors sexy" song and lets just say that after about 2 hours of cream cheese icing intake we were having a good time. There may have been another cake decorated with a plastic Captain Kirk and something about a sexy starship written on it but I'll just leave that to your imagination.

Life Got In The Way

So this summer it feels like I lost it and went into survival mode for a couple of months. I lost a good bit of frugalness and by just surviving we saved a good deal less than we could have. I didn't cook nearly as much as I should have, we skated by not going grocery shopping more weeks than I can count, we ordered pizza or went out to eat more than normal. Honestly I don't feel too bad about it, we were busy enjoying life and having so much fun we didn't have time for the normal stuff. Now that the summer is over and things are slowing down and the house is getting back in order I feel like I can tackle this and get back on track with our savings and also prepare more healthy meals for me and the hubs.
This past week we did eat healthy meals that I prepared myself and I'm going shopping today to make sure that we do the same next week. I'm keeping a tighter reign on us as far as spending goes and making sure we're not going too crazy. Any ideas for quick, easy, healthy meals for this week? I love a challenge so leave me a recipe :)

btw as far as weight loss goes I lost another 2 lbs this past week! Yeah!!

Wordless Wednesday-Weekend of Cakes

Above cake was made for my friend Mary's wedding this weekend by my best friend T who is AMAZING!


This cake was made by Dirkey for a friends retirement party. Its a yellow cake with buttercream and a raspberry filling; it was decorated with buttercream, fresh raspberries and fresh flowers.

Garden Bounty or as Beyonce would say Bountyliscious!

Mmmmmm we're still harvesting the goodness, below is some freaking awesome tomatoes we have going on at Casa de Dirkey.
I think I've said before I'm totally digging on this whole gardening thing! I love having the freshest best tasting veggies at my hand for dinner. I don't know if I've divulged this yet, but I'm kind of a veggie snob (shocker I know). I will not buy canned veggies and it causes great pain to buy frozen veggies but I will do it (rarely).
One of my favorite things that I've been making this summer has been Zucchini Parm. Mmm just typing it makes me drool...

Here's the recipe:
need
3-4 good size Zucchini's
Olive Oil
Diced Tomatoes (preferably fresh)
Mozzarella
Parmesan
2 white onions
7-8 cloves of garlic
Lots of spices (parsley, basil, oregano, etc)

I slice the Zuch's up into disks then lay out a layer of them in a Lasagna Pan. I then will spread 2-3 crushed garlic cloves over them and sprinkle with olive oil. Then I'll put a thin layer of diced tomatoes, diced onions, spices and cheese on. I repeat this all 3-4 times and bake at 350 for about an hour or until Zucchini is tender when you pierce with a fork. You might want to cover with aluminum foil until the last ten minutes of cooking time so your cheese on top doesn't get too brown.

Seriously-SO GOOD!

I scream You scream we all scream for ICE CREAM!!

So I've recently been playing with my ice cream maker, then one of my friends got one as well, now it seems that ice cream recipes are all the rage in my daily reads.
Here is an awesome link from Apartment Therapy-The Kitchn (yes I know its spelled wrong) with every type of ice cream you could ever imagine!!!

You're welcome!!!

Besides being cheaper right now, I love the fact that my homemade ice cream is way less creepy than the store bought. With the exception of a few flavors, most store bought ice cream has some scary looking ingredients. My homemade only has what I put in it! Nice!!

Creation Recap and Detox

So you all know that last week I went away for work and it was an amazing week. There were alot of highlights for me. The most noteable probably was Melody Green talking about her and her husband Keith's ministry. I had read No Compromise about 10 years ago, which is a book Keith Green had written that made a tremendous impact on me and on my faith. Other highlights were seeing friends that I only get to see once or twice a year (boo geography for keeping our states so far away!), seeing new to me artists (I now love Skillet and Flyleaf), and also just seeing a years worth of work come to fruition and see God use what we put our hands to for His glory. For all the fun involved it was also was a tremendous amount of work with most of us pulling at least 17 hrs a day (my boss was easily doing 20+). We all drove home on Sunday and thankfully the hubs had met me up there on Thursday night and was able to drive our car home. I literally slept 80% of the car ride home then promptly fell asleep on the couch and slept until 10 am Monday morning. The no sleeping came with a side of crappy eating (lots and lots of coffee and free access to fair type foods). I did try to grab veggies when I could but it was maybe a handful a day. Needless to say my body is not too happy with me, it feels as if I have a sinus infection, and I think I could sleep for another 3 days easily. So I've decided that I'm doing the whole Vegan thing again for at least the next two weeks until west. Hopefully it will clear out of my system a good amount of the junk that has accumulated there and kind of get me back on track with my eating. I feel like I've been treading water with my weight for the past year despite working at it and following weight watchers most of the time. I'm going to use this time to really focus on this and changing habits. I know its going to take awhile but I also know it can be done. I just pray that I would have the strength and endurance needed to finish this race.
I went on my lunch break to Whole Foods and picked up about $80 worth of veggies for my veggie/juicing blitz. I'll be breaking out my Christina Pirello books and my imagination to cook up some yummie treats for us. As a change from last years Vegan August I will not be incorporating any soy into our diets as soy and I are not friends. I will be relying heavily on my friends, the Legumes. I'm going to try to cut out any processed Vegan foods (except whatever I bring for west if I decide to do it while I'm there). I'm also going to add in the juicing as I've discovered that I love me some beet juice in the morning. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I'll start harvesting my garden as well.

Baconhenge-I want to make this

Speaking of breakfast foods, this looks good.
Baconhenge-bacon-wrapped french toast "stone" sticks that surround a frittata of mushrooms, potato and onions.
I found it here

Yummie Summer Quiche

So last night I got a bug in my bum to cook some quiche.
My favorite crust for this type of recipe uses:
1.5 cups of whole wheat flour
1/4 cup corn oil
1/4 cup water
dash of salt.
Mix up flour, salt and corn oil with fork till consistancy of sand. Add water and mix till it starts to come together. Place in the bottom of your pie plate and smoosh it up to look like a pie crust. It will be thicker than a normal pie crust thats what makes it so good :)

Filling:
2 onions
2 cloves garlic
Whatever veggies are in your fridge-we love: spinach, mushrooms, peppers, zucchini, spaghetti squash, broccoli; but basically anything will work.
You can also put in some meat if you would like-sausage, ham, bacon, etc.

I sautee these all in a pan till they are al dente I put in a good amount of pepper here.

Then I mix them with 3 eggs, 1 cup milk (or half and half if you so choose).
I'll also throw in whatever bits and pieces of cheese I have in my fridge adding in some thyme and rosemary.

It then goes in the oven at 375 degrees for 30-35 minutes or until set.
Its soo good :)

Vegan Week-Day 1

So today we went shopping for the vegetarian/vegan week. I didn't actually think of beginning this today but only preparing for doing it tomorrow but I realized that I had a menu planned for tonight. Needless to say today we didn't do vegetarian except for dinner. I made the Samosa's, Schmoop is making lentil soup, and we went without the Cauliflower Veggie thing. I think what I'll do is have the Lentil Soup and the Cauliflower thing for dinner tomorrow as its mostly prepped already.
As far as shopping we ended up getting everything we needed but at times it was a bit comical. One of the recipe's for this week calls for Burdock, needless to say I have no idea what Burdock is. I called my resident hippie kid best friend to ask her and she said she had no idea but it sounded like it tastes like butt. To which I replied, well I guess I'm not inviting you over for dinner that night! I ended up calling my other bff Mama K who googled it and told me it was somewhat of a root, weed type thing. So I wandered around whole foods trying to find a root/weed that I couldn't identify; turns out what I found was the fabled burdock. (I'll let you know how that goes!). There were a bunch of spices we needed since alot of the recipes came from the indian cookbook and I don't have any indian spices save some Curry. We ended up spending about $170 (ouch!!!) but we did get a ton of spices and splurged in areas I don't normally (getting a couple of bottles of juice to help kick the soda habit). I'm happy with what we got, all of it organic and it seems we have a good little pantry going of healthy good for you foods. Alot of the things we will not need to buy weekly so I'm thinking our actual grocery bills might stay the same or decrease since meat is such a pricey commodity. Mostly it will be purchasing the organic produce and replenishing whatever we need in the pantry.

The Samosa's are a potatoey filled pastry that you fry in veggie oil.

I made 20 of them and Schmoop and I downed 2.5 each for dinner as well as a Cilantro Chutney, or Dhania Chutney, that I also made (Cilantro, onion, chili pepper, cumin seeds, lemon juice). The Samosa's have in them potatoes, cumin seeds, ginger, peas, salt, coriander powder, green chili pepper, Mango Powder and Garam Masala (indian spice).


You mix it all together and fry each side about 4 minutes each in veggie oil. I know, I wasn't too big into the frying but they actually are not so bad in the nutritional facts with all the veggies in them (each one has 125 calories, 6 grams of fat, 1 gram of dietary fiber and no cholestorol as per my cookbook). Hee hee the chutney has 1 calorie!

Yum!!!!!

Trying New Things

I was reading in Shelly's Blog about the health benifits and other benifits of going vegitarian/vegan. I brought up to Schmoop a few weeks ago the idea of possibly doing this and he kind of gave me a funny look and went along with his buisiness. It wasn't too big of a deal with me so I let it go. Today Schmoop brought it back up and asked if I was serious about it, if I was he was cool with trying it out. So on the way home I stopped and got a barrage of books to read to start out this week. I ended up doing my whole menu plan from two cookbooks I already have, Cooking the Whole Foods Way by Christina Pirello and New Indian Home Cooking by Madhu Gadia.
On deck for this week we have
Monday: Samosa's, Cauliflower Mixed Vegitables and Lentil Soup
Tuesday: Fried Rice and Veggies
Wednesday: Millet and Veggie Burgers and Grilled Veggies
Thursday: Potatoe Stuffed Roti, Lentil Soup (leftover) and Cauliflower Mixed Vegitables (leftover)
Friday: Mushroom, Brocolli Quiche

I will be preparing what I can on Sunday and will post pictures each day of that days meal. This will be our experiment week, no matter what I know in the future we will have an increase in organic foods and fruits and free reign meats. The whole menu for this weeks dinners are vegan, I will be adding in some dairy for breakfasts, snacks so its not entirely but we'll just see how it goes.