We went grocery shopping for this week last weekend. We had a $25.00 American Express gift card from Christmas that we used toward the bill, so it put us under our goal… but I’m not going to include that for the total because it isn’t what we actually spent. I used a couple coupons and the Kroger plus card. I consulted the weekly ad before we went but, honestly, this week was kind of a dud. The only deal I really got excited about was blueberries and strawberries being on sale for 2 for $4.00.

Budget – $75.00
Actual spending – $72.39

This week for breakfast I am finishing up some Kashi cereal already in the pantry, and adding a banana every morning. That ran out yesterday, so today I had a green smoothie (2 cups spinach, 1 green apple, a handful of blueberries and ice). The rest of this week will likely be oatmeal with blueberries and milk – possibly even the baked oatmeal recipe I saw on Sometimes Sweet yesterday morning. It sounds delicious!

Lunch for me is leftovers from recipes last week. I made Crockpot Santa Fe Chicken on Saturday since we were staying in to watch the  playoffs (which means we stayed home to watch the Bengals throw away ANOTHER playoff game) and those leftovers have lasted me until today. There are some leftovers from dinner last night, though, so I’m covered until the end of the week. I did buy a tomato, some bacon and a head of Boston lettuce to try this recipe out though – BLT Lettuce Wraps.

Here’s what our dinners look like this week:

Sunday – Out with my family (we had Thai food, yum!)
Monday (01/09) –  Rosemary Skillet Chicken
Tuesday (01/10) – White Bean Turkey Chili (I adapted this for a slow cooker)
Wednesday (01/11) – Autumn Penne Pasta with Brussel Sprouts
Thursday (01/12) – Chickpea Hummus Burgers with Zucchini Fries
Friday – Baked Parmesan Garlic Chicken with some veggie side… haven’t decided yet. Probably corn. Boooooring.
Saturday – We are seeing Tim Gunn Saturday night (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) so dinner will likely be out somewhere with my family

Can you tell I like skinnytaste.com? They have so many amazing recipes that are really healthy. Plus, if you are on Weight Watchers the points value is already calculated for you.

There is one other recipe I bought for – I wanted to make Alex some homemade breakfast hot pockets that he can grab out of the freezer and microwave on his way to work. I was using the dough from a Taste of Home recipe and the filling is coming from a Cuban Picadillo Skinny Taste recipe. I made both of these things last night. The dough was a complete and total fail. I followed the recipe to the letter, but the dough was so sticky. It clearly has too many liquid ingredients in it. I should have added more flour or something to compensate but since the recipe says to not knead it, I didn’t realize it was sticky until after it had risen for an hour.

The picadillo, on the other hand, was delicious. But I actually didn’t follow that recipe. Instead, I browned ground turkey in a skillet, added half a red onion, a full red pepper (both finely chopped), about 2 tsp of minced garlic, a couple shakes of cumin, a couple shakes of red chili pepper, some garlic salt and some pepper. Then I took 3 eggs and lightly beat them and added them to the mix and the whole thing cooked for probably 15 minutes in the skillet on the stove. It was super delicious!

So, since the dough was a fail, I took the filling and froze it in individual servings. Alex is just going to put those in a tortilla and make a breakfast wrap. If I do this again, I’ll likely just buy a pre-made pie crust and make the pockets that way.

This week for recipe planning, Pinterest and Skinny Taste were a HUGE help. For months, I have been feeling so uninspired in terms of cooking that we had been eating out so much. But finding fun, interesting recipes really keeps me going in the kitchen. I would like to expand my cookbook collection. I haven’t gotten any new cookbooks since I got married, 4 years ago. My two main ones are the traditional Better Homes & Garden cookbook every bride gets and I also have a Taste of Home cookbook. I love both… but they are pretty traditional and limited in scope. If you have a favorite cookbook, please comment about it!

Participating Blogs in Project: Food Budget –

• Emily Levenson
• Dairy-Free Cooking
• Test Kitchen Tuesday
• Red Pen Mama
• Acquired Tastes
• Fit Flexitarian
• Warm As Pie 
• Katy Rank Lev
• My Inner Healthy
• Little Blue Hen
• xox, b
• What da Health?
• Project Food Budget 2.0
• A Nice Heart and a White Suit
• Fresh…A New Chapter
• Chandeleah
• Two Eggs Over Easy
• That’s Just Me
• Eat Whole Be Vital
• Four Happy Violets
• Naturally {Un}refined
• Pgh Dad
• yogabeautylife
• naMAMAste

Edited to Add: I did try the BLT Lettuce Wrap recipe that I link to above yesterday for lunch. While it was a good recipe, it isn’t exactly filling. I probably would need to eat like 4 of them to get full. So I’ll keep the recipe around for a quick snack idea but it isn’t substantial enough for lunch.