The Professional Domestic

Week 13 was a very tough week for us. Multiple evening meetings for both Scott and I, bakery orders, work, and two hour choir practices. Then on Thursday we drove down to Ithaca (two hours from us) for a new car and on the way found out Scott’s mom was taken to the ER with fluid on her lungs. We drove straight from the car signing to the ER to check on her. Scott drove to Elmira Friday to be with her and his dad, and Sunday brought her home from the hospital. Friday when he was at the hospital I spent the evening getting the parsonage thrift sale ready for Saturday and Saturday we both spent all day selling our hearts out until the storm hit in the afternoon. We were both exhausted by Sunday evening. Why am I sharing all of this? I guess because none of us really know what the week will bring at the start of it and unexpected things pop up. If I had been more prepared the stress of cooking would have been eased by just grabbing a prepped meal from the freezer. I definitely need to work on this!

I spent $102.96 this week on groceries. I can’t believe I got out of a Wegmans only spending $36 and I even bought salmon! I splurged on salmon and olives and dolmas. If you have never had a dolma it’s a rice mixture wrapped in grape leaf and pickled.

Last week I shared some items from my pantry that I wanted to use up and while some got used in recipes, I didn’t get to all of them because of the exhausting week we had. Here are a few of the meals we had and how I used some of those ingredients:

The macaroni pictured in that group I used for my lunch one day. I eat a lot of pasta with just butter and salt on it.

What I didn’t get to was the pumpkin and evaporated milk and the brownie mixes but the rest I used. Yay! Not bad!

Total spent on groceries week 13: $102.96

Total for March: $320.58
Grand total for the year $1243.78

That’s an average of $95 a week. Pretty good! I still want to work on getting that average down though.

How was your past week? Until next time! -MM

Week 12 I spent $46.25 on groceries at the store and $31.98 on Amazon for a 24 pk case of white tuna. That’s a total of $78.23

Here is what I bought at the store:

No deals here! I bought 9 items and it cost me $46! Eeeks! They were all expensive items pretty much but as the weather gets better I will more likely venture to other places for better deals. Isn’t that funny how that works? The crummier the weather, the less you want to slog yourself around.

We ate good this past week. Yeah I know I ate fish stix but I ate carrots and rice with it to make it healthier. 😉 Chicken Fajitas, a pasta bake (looked and tasted better than that photo), big salads, and homemade pot pie. Lots of leftovers too.

I do have something new I am going to try doing in week 13. I am going to pick some items out of my pantry/freezer/spice cabinet and create recipes to use these items up. I am trying not to waste anything so I will shop from my pantry as much as I can in the next few weeks.

Here are the items I have pulled from my pantry that I want to use this week:

If you are like me, you probably have small quantities of different kinds of pasta sitting in your pantry. I plan to use the macaroni, rigatoni, shells and a bag of fusilli pasta that my son got free at a food show. I definitely don’t usually have brownie mixes on hand but my husband has been cleaning out his mom’s pantry and she wasn’t using these so he brought them home. I’ll whip some kind of fancy brownie recipe up with them. I don’t like Ragu sauce, I am more of a Prego kind of gal if I have to buy a jarred sauce but again my son bought it so can’t let it go to waste. I also want to use the pineapple, oranges, pumpkin mix and evaporated milk too. Should be an interesting week!

If you’ll notice I already used some of the fusilli and the sauce and rigatoni in the above pasta bake recipe.

Ok that’s it for week 12

Total spent on groceries week 12: $78.23

Total for March: $217.62
Grand total for the year $1140.82

See you next week! -MM

Week 11 was all over the place in the meal department. Sunday we had a chuck roast with squash and veggies, Monday was my birthday! I didn’t want anything for my birthday but my husband did convince me to at least go out for dinner so we did do that Monday after work. Tuesday was again birthday themed with a dinner at my mom’s. I share my birthday with my niece so mom made soup, salad, fruit and cookies for the three of us to mark the occasion. It was fun with just us girls! Wednesday we had roast leftovers. Thursday we got a pizza because I was knee deep in orders for home delivery, Friday we ate the ever classic corned beef and cabbage for St. Paddy’s Day, which I cooked in the crock pot and Saturday we had a 60th birthday party for a friend and ate there. Looking back on all of this now I can see why my stomach was acting up yesterday! Don’t worry I’ll get back to cooking normally this week.

Groceries were again minimal this past week with $65.09 spent.

Most of our groceries this week were centered around St. Patrick’s Day with a corned beef roast, carrots, and cabbage. I didn’t find any earth-shattering deals, just picked up a few things we needed.

Total spent week 11: $65.09

Total for March: $139.39
Grand total for the year $1062.59

Did you find any great deals this week on groceries?

See you next week! -MM

Happy week 10! We ate a lot of turkey sandwiches this week for lunch after last week’s 23 lb turkey!

Groceries were very minimal and I only spent $72.30. I was only going to pick up a 1 lb package of ground beef to make meatballs but Caledonia was offering 80/20 big packs for $3.99/lb instead of $6.09/lb for the 90/10 1 lb. that was a no brainer for me. I divided the package when I got home and made more meatballs and froze 3 packs for later use.

It was an extremely busy week. I had 4 bakery orders going out between Friday and Saturday and I was swamped trying to get other things done but I did manage to get a few good meals made.

Sunday we had spaghetti and meatballs
Monday we had leftovers
Tuesday we had chicken stir-fry
Wednesday we had big salads with leftover turkey
Thursday we ate out
Friday the hubs and I split a fish fry
Saturday we went to a party

For some reason I took no photos of the meals we ate this week. I’ll do better with that!

I get asked a lot of questions about my grocery posts and one is what about eating out. Eating out is not included in our grocery budget. Meals out come out of the entertainment budget and I specifically asked our kids to just give us gift cards to restaurants for Christmas because it’s hard to buy for us sometimes, and they obliged :). Being able to use a gift card is awesome because I don’t want to cook on Friday nights after work.

I also get asked how we spend so little on groceries especially now with grocery prices being so high.

1. I shop specials and I order from the store ahead of time if there is a particularly good deal coming up. I get info for the 1 day sales at Caledonia before everyone else because I have to post those sales on Facebook for them. If you see a sale item that you know you are going to use a lot of or can store it long term don’t be afraid to stock up or call a store and talk to the managers. They would be more than happy sell you a large qty.

2. I use what I have instead of running out to get things for a recipe. If you have run out of an item for a recipe try using a substitution instead of running to the store. I didn’t have macaroni one day when I went to make goulash but I had a brand new box of rotini pasta. That same recipe I used two green onions in the dish that I had in the garden instead of buying onions. Shopping from your pantry stock really helps keep grocery trips down.

3. I try not to waste food. We all do it, I am no different, but I have really been cracking down on our food waste. I have stopped throwing out stuff from the freezer now that I have dedicated myself to using my Food Saver vacuum sealer. It’s a game changer.

4. I grow as much of our veggies, fruits and herbs as possible. I haven’t bought sage, basil, parsley, jams/jellies, or onions, etc. in a very long time. I finally broke down and bought a bag of onions last week because our onion crop sucked this last year but I am proud to say our potato crop lasted us 5 months!

5. I make pretty much everything we eat from scratch. Sometimes I cheat, like having Eggo waffles or fish stix in a pinch, but even the teriyaki sauce we had on our stir-fry I made from scratch.

6. The hubs and I share a lot of meals. Literally! We will buy a large sub and halve it. Friday nights we have been sharing a fish fry. You may think that guys need a lot of food to feel full but they really don’t. Guys tend to over eat in my observations! Plus sharing a meal is almost intimate in nature. I watched a couple I know share a meal out at a meeting and it was so sweet to watch one take a fork full then let the other one take a fork full. Quality time and save money…that’s a win!

7. I don’t include things we don’t eat in our grocery budget. You can’t eat toilet paper!

Total spent week 10: $72.30

Total for March: $72.30
Grand total for the year $923.20

Do you share meals with your spouse?

See you next week! -MM

Week 9 groceries were pretty significant for us. I always say buy only what’s on your list when you shop, but last week I made an unexpected purchase. A 23 lb Butterball turkey jumped right into my cart! Yes it was the last frozen turkey from the Thanksgiving season and it was only 99 cents/lb. You bet I grabbed it. Other significant purchases last week were a London broil for $10.68, 6pk pork chops for $6.39 (great price and I froze 3) and of course creamer for $8.99 (I need to work on getting a better price). I also had 2 doz eggs delivered from our farmer friend who came at the right time to push my sons car out which was stuck in the driveway. What service!

Total spent on groceries: $133.13

Although I was super excited about the turkey I picked up, I did have an epic fail last Wednesday night which REALLY upset me. I have been reading Mavis Butterfield’s blog for a very long time and in her latest posts she is trying to use up what’s in her canning cabinet before summer starts. To use up her home canned goods faster, she has been setting out a few jars each week with the intention of using the contents in a recipe. I thought that was a fantastic idea but instead of just my home canned goods I would also use something that had been in my pantry for a bit.

I decided to make Mavis’s recipe for Saturday night beans and the reason I was so excited was that I had two packs of pulled pork already frozen in my freezer and I had a bag of dry navy beans in my pantry I needed to use. I talked about these beans all day at work. I spent my lunch preparing them and putting them in the oven and I skipped down the back steps at the end of the day and couldn’t wait to get home to check on their progress. When I got home I checked and they weren’t done yet so waited another hour and checked again. And checked again, and checked again. The beans just never softened up even though I had done everything I was supposed to (soaking overnight etc.) Finally at 8:00 pm I just ordered a pizza. I was crushed. Seriously. My son thought I was being ridiculous. It wasn’t such a big deal, Why was I so upset? I wasted 6 hours of energy cooking in my oven and wasted all of those ingredients and I had nothing to show for it. I threw the whole thing in the trash.

After sulking for a while I got online and realized my dry navy beans were too old. Yes, dry beans that are too old will not re-constitute. Who knew? I didn’t know that. I didn’t think they were that old actually. The article said best to use old beans as a pie weight. Great. sigh….

Lesson learned. I won’t make that mistake again, but I will try Mavis’s recipe again with fresh ingredients. I’m sure those beans are fabulous!

We did however, eat that big boy turkey on Saturday with four other friends and we had a fabulous time together. I think we all need to go back to eating with friends and sharing meals with each other. Can you imagine what it would have cost to feeds seven people out at a restaurant? No thanks lol!

Here are some of the meals we ate in week 9:

Total spent week 9: $133.13

Total for February $133.13
Grand total for the year $850.90

Have you ever had an epic fail in the cooking dept?

See you next week! -MM

In week 6 I tried not to buy much of anything in the category of groceries. I used what we had in the pantry and freezers and came up with some pretty great meals for us. Total spent in week 6- $34.39

I had a lot of ground beef in the freezer so tacos and chili were made, one night we went to a friends for dinner, one night was just fish sticks, rice and broccoli and two nights were leftovers. Super bowl Sunday I made pulled pork sandwiches with coleslaw We went to mom’s on Tuesday night and she made mac and cheese and fruit and salad so we wouldn’t have to cook before we left on vacation. She’s the best!

Week 7 & 8 we were on vacation! Alright not that entire time. We left Wednesday the 15th and got back Wednesday the 22nd. Yes the hubs and I drove from NY to FL and back in eight days. We traveled through eleven states! For three meals on the road we used the gift cards we received from our kids for Christmas. We were pretty sick of restaurant food by the time we got back for sure.

As far as groceries during that time, my son, who was still at home, shopped and cooked for himself. I reimbursed him for the money he spent. In week 7 he spent $69.56 and before we left I spent $55.78 getting odds and ends he might need. The meals he made for himself were spaghetti and meatballs, (he made the meatballs from scratch), beef and broccoli and rice, (he made the teriyaki sauce from scratch), steak and glazed carrots, and tacos for taco Tuesday. Pretty impressive if you ask me! He had some trouble making the meatballs and teriyaki sauce but he said they tasted good so that’s something we can work on together soon.

We got home Wednesday night to a lovely snow and ice storm, I was too tired to cook so I just made myself a bowl of spaghetti. On Thursday I made a full on dinner of pork tenderloin wrapped in bacon with roasted mushrooms and sweet peppers and corn from the freezer. Friday we split a fish fry for Lent and yesterday I baked two large split chicken breasts and had butternut squash and stuffing mix to round it out. The only things I picked up at the grocery store for week 8 were stuffing mix, milk, Lactaid and English muffins for a total of $17.78.

Total spent week 6 – $34.39

Total spent week 7 – $125.34

Total spent week 8 – $17.78

Total for February $314.31
Grand total for the year $717.77

Tell me what YOU ate this last week and hey egg prices are finally falling in our area!

See you next week! -MM