The Third is NOT Always the Charm..

This week went awry very quickly. I guess the third week is not the charm.. I was quite disappointed in myself for not continuing my disciplined ways, but what can I say, I'm not the best example for consistency.

Despite my laziness, I did realize two positive things:

1. Doing most (hopefully) all of your prep work for ingredients (mainly for dinners) and preparing/package "to-go" meals (mainly for that week's breakfast item) over the weekend is ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE to success.
2. Even though a few of my fresh ingredients have gone bad, I still have many of the ingredients I will need to "recycle" the meals I did not use this week for next week's menu.

Anyway, here is my receipt from Sunday's shopping trip and my menu for this past week:

	Sat. 9/29	Sun. 9/30	Mon. 10/1	Tues. 10/2	Wed. 10/3	Thurs. 10/4	Fri. 10/5
B	Eggs & Breakfast Potatoes	French Toast with Bacon	Muffin Melts, piece of fruit, & yogurt	Muffin Melts, piece of fruit, & yogurt	Muffin Melts, piece of fruit, & yogurt	Muffin Melts, piece of fruit, & yogurt	Muffin Melts, piece of fruit, & yogurt
L	Leftovers:  Beef & Black Bean Burritos with Mex Rice	Out to Eat: Uptown Grocery  (4 meals = >$30)	Leftovers: White Chicken Cheese Lasagna	Leftovers: Crockpot Chicken & Noodles	Leftovers: White Chicken Cheese Lasagna	Leftovers: Dixie Pork Chops with Garlic Mashed Potatoes	Out to Lunch with Work Friends (>$10)
D	Out to Eat & Concert (>$50)	White Chicken Cheese Lasagna	Crockpot Chicken & Noodles	Weekly Dinner with Friends (>$10)	Dixie Pork Chops with Garlic Mashed Potatoes	Asian Beef with Veggies & Brown Rice	Empty Wallet Casserole

So, you are probably thinking, "okay, so she wasn't as crazy this week as she normally is.. so what did she do all week?" Well, I will admit that this week was rough at work and school, which reflected (too much) stress on my home life. Thus, I usually came home and plopped my butt on the couch and cruised Netflix till I fell asleep. (Wow, I'm spoiled!)

However, this week started off on a really fun note! Paul and I took his niece, Rachel, and one of his nephews, Jacob, to our favorite grocery store on Sunday. We had an awesome lunch there and looked around the store for an hour or so.

Jacob finally got it! EGGPLANT!

The kids, Paul, and I had a blast, especially in the produce section. Uptown carries a huge variety of produce, including some pretty exotic stuff. Out of nowhere, we started grabbing whatever weird fruits and veggies, and then tried to get the others to guess what we picked out. It was pretty random, but it was super fun!

While we were there, we noticed that the store offers a cooking class for kids in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned for another foodie fun post!

Homemade Weekend, part 2

Per the usual, this past weekend was a whirlwind! So, let's get right to it!

Friday is our "out to eat" day, and since we had not been already, we decided to hit up the Oklahoma State Fair.

credit: stephen moore, moorefoto.com

I mean who really goes to the fair for free pens and to buy random junk? No one! We all tolerate the taunting carnies and foul smelling people for the FOOD. Fried *insert random food item* on a stick! Turkey legs! Roasted corn! Cotton candy! Carmel-covered & candied apples! And, of course, beer!

Even though the fair is something every Okie should experience at least once a year, I always end up regretting the amount of calories I take in and the lack of money in my pocket. That being said, three hours and $80 later, I was ready to go home.
 
Since my work's annual "Employee Appreciation Day" at a local theme park would take up most of our Sunday, I declared Saturday my "crazy-all-day-food-planning-shopping-and-prepping" day.

For this week (Sept. 22 - 28), I planned out a little more complicated dishes than last week, just to see if I could pull it off, and so far so good! Here's this week's menu:
 

	Sat. 9/22	Sun. 9/23	Mon. 9/24	Tues.  9/25	Wed. 9/26	Thurs. 9/27	Fri.  9/28
B	Cereal	Cereal	Breakfast Burrito	Breakfast Burrito	Breakfast Burrito	Breakfast Burrito	Breakfast Burrito
L	Sandwich & Chips	Free Lunch @ Theme Park	Leftovers: Peach Whiskey Chicken & Potatoes	Leftovers: Pork Loin, Veggies & Corn Cakes	Leftovers: Pork Loin, Veggies & Corn Cakes	Leftovers: Tomato Cream Pasta & Bread	Leftovers: Shepard’s Pie
D	- Peach Whiskey Chicken - Whiskey Glazed Carrots -Twice Baked Potatoes (PW)	- Herb Roasted Pork Loin - Roasted Veggies -Corn Cakes (PW)	- Beef Beer Stew (PW) - French Bread	Weekly Dinner with Friends:         -Mushroom Cheddar Sliders (PW) -Baked French & Sweet Potato Fries	-Tomato Cream Pasta (PW) + chicken  + artichoke hearts -Garlic Bread	-Shepard’s Pie, using leftover Beef Beer Stew (PW) -Pint Night (>$20)	-Beef & Bean Burritos - Mexican Rice

After comparing what I needed for this week's meals to what was in my fridge and pantry, I made a list of everything else that we would need. Again, I organized my list by where each item was in the store (produce, meats, dairy, dry goods, frozen, etc.), and again, this made for a swift and fairly inexpensive shopping trip. We beat our last shopping trip about $10!

As you can see, we really try to implement my "$2 rule" and came out with only 20 out of 69 items that were over that limit.

This week was fairly sucessful, and every meal was WONDERFUL! I have included the recipes and pictures of some of the meals we had this week. Enjoy!

the final product.. AWESOME!!

Pioneer Woman's Peach Whiskey Chicken           
Prep: 10 min   Cook: 2 hours   Servings: 6

Ingredients

• 12 whole chicken legs (bone in, skin on)
• 2 tbs olive oil
• 2 tbs butter
• 1 whole onion (diced)
• 1 1/2 cup or 12oz whiskey (I used Wild Turkey's American Honey, YUM!)
• 1 1/2 cup or 12 oz BBQ Sauce (I used a whole med. jar of Head Country Original)
• 1 cup or 8 oz peach preserves (I used sugar-free to keep the sweetness down)
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 tbsp Worcestershire
• 4 cloves of garlic (I used 2 tbs of minced garlic from a jar)
• 3 peaches, pitted & sliced
• 3 whole green onions (I left these out)

 
Instructions

• Preheat oven to 350° F.
• In a large skillet, heat oil and butter over med.-high heat. Place 4-6 chicken legs at a time in the skillet for about 3-4 minutes on each side, until all sides are browned. Place on plate & repeat until all chicken is browned.
• Pour out the majority of the grease (NOT DOWN THE SINK! Paul taught me to drain off grease into a used metal can and throw it out once it cooled; what a smarty pants!), and return to the stove. Add diced onion and cook for 2 minutes.
• Pour in the whiskey (be EXTRA careful if you are cooking over an open flame). Stir and scrape the bottom of the pan, and allow whiskey to reduce for about 3 minutes. Pour in the BBQ sauce, preserves, garlic, water & Worcestershire. Stir until combined and let cook for about 5 minutes.
• This is where I ventured off from the original recipe since my skillet was too small: place chicken in a casserole dish, stick peach slices in open spaces between chicken pieces, and cover with sauce in skillet. Cover with foil, and place in oven.
• The Pioneer Woman suggests cooking for 1 and a half hours, but by 45 minutes my dish was boiling over and all over the oven. Be sure to check on the chicken at least every 15-20 minutes to prevent a HUGE MESS. I also put my dish on a baking sheet to catch anymore spillage.
• Pull dish out of oven and let cool for at least 5-10 minutes. The dish and its contents will be VERY hot.
• Suggestions: I served this with twice-baked new potatoes and whiskey-glazed carrots.

Pioneer Woman's Herb Roasted Pork Loin               
Prep: 5 min   Cook: 25 min  Servings: 6

Delicious dish!

Ingredients

• 2 whole pork tenderloins
• 8 tbsp Herbs De Provence (these were expensive, not going to lie.. but man, oh, man! They make pork absolutely delightful!)
• 1 cup or 8 oz preserves (I used the rest of my peach preserves from the Peach Whiskey Chicken, but you can use something like plum, fig, etc. Please avoid grape though.. ew)
• 1 cup water (my sauce was VERY watery, so I would reduce this amount to 1/4 cup and add a little more if needed; do not exceed 1/2 cup)
• 1 tbsp white vinegar

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 425° F.
• Season tenderloins liberally with salt, pepper, and Herbs De Provence, pressing them onto the pork so they stay put.
• Place the tenderloins on a baking sheet and roast in the oven for 15 - 25 minutes. After center is no longer pink, remove from the oven and allow pork to rest for at least 10 minutes.
• While it is resting, combine preserves, water and vinegar in a small pan, and bring to a simmer for a few minutes. Reduce heat and allow to thicken.
• Slice pork into pieces about 1 inch thick, and spoon sauce over the slices when serving.
• Suggestions: I served this with roasted veggies (parsnips, carrots, zucchini, yellow squash, red and yellow bell peppers and onion) and corn meal cakes (the few that turned out weren't bad, but they were not quite worth the disaster they created).

Homemade Weekend, part 1

Whew, what a weekend!

It never fails.. By Friday, there is nothing in the fridge but ongoing science experiments..

So, if you couldn't tell, we said "screw it!" and we went out to eat at one of my favorite Okie-grown Mexican restaurants, Chelino's. I grew up on this local joint, and I never turn down a chance to go!

Since I've been on a pretty tight budget, I decided to be super productive and efficient this weekend.

Saturday morning, I made breakfast with what I had around the house (scrambled eggs, homefries, and toast). While eating, I looked through my new cookbook in an attempt to plan out our meals for the entire week ahead.  I chose recipes that I thought would be fairly inexpensive, easy to prepare, and tasty, of course. I wanted to find meals that would fit in to our schedules as best as possible because I was sure that if I could make the first week work smoothly that I would be more likely to continue meal planning. So, this is the plan:

Per the usual, Paul didn't really want to go shopping with me, but I coerced him with lunch at Uptown Grocery. They have a really good hot food bar with an awesome selection. We both got their "lite lunch special" for $4.99 that includes one entree, one side, and a roll. I got baked chicken breast, and sauteed yellow squash, zucchinni and green beans, while Paul chose the meatloaf and loaded mashpotatoes (what he almost always gets since this girl isn't a fan of meatloaf, haha). For under $15, we were able to have a really nice meal! If you ignore the styrofoam, it's almost like going to a pretty nice restaurant and still walking out with money in your pocket.

With full bellies, we decided to start browsing. Before we left the house, I made a very specific list of everything I would need to make each meal for the week. I divided all the items by the section they would be in at the store. Without a list, I am liable to walk out with a cart full of nothing I actually need.

This is where my "$2 rule" comes into play: if it is over $2, it doesn't go in the cart. Now, with rising living costs, it is getting harder to follow, especially with dairy (milk & cheese), out of season produce, and meats. Although some of these things are necessary at times, I try to search for the best deal bycomparing products and avoiding name brands.

After about an hour of shopping, we hit the register. Paul and I always make a game of trying to guess the total amount we will spend: I think he guessed around $170 and I said about $160. We were both happily surprised to see that we did better than both of our guesses with a ticket for $155!!

As you can see, I circled everything that was over $2. Only 16 items out of 68 were over the limit!  It is always so gratifying when you see that you have everything you need but still saved money!

SATURDAY NIGHT

Following this week's menu planner, Saturday night was homemade pizza night. We had so much fun with this! All I had to do was make the dough about an hour before we were ready to eat, giving it time to rise.



The Pioneer Woman's Pizza Dough
1 scant tsp active dry yeast         3/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup warm water                   3 tbsp olive oil
2 cups all-purpose flour

1. Combine yeast & water into medium bowl. Allow to sit for 10 minutes.
2. Add flour to the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment.
3. Sprinkle in the salt.
4. Turn the mixer on low, and slowly pour in the olive oil.
5. Finally, pour in the yeast/water mixture.
6. Stop the mixer when everything comes together.
7. Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled/Pam'd bowl and cover with plastic wrap.
8. Allow the dough to rise at least 1 hour before using.

    *This dough can be stored in the fridge for several days before using.
     *The receipe can be doubled or tripled depending on the amount you need.
     *Reducing the receipe is not recommended since baking relies heavily on chemistry.

After the dough rose, Paul, who apparently is a pizza extrordinare, kneaded and rolled out the dough a few times, then tossed it so it would fit our new pizza pan! We decided to do our own thing from here, instead of attempting one of PW's fancier pizza receipes. Don't forget to Pam the pan for easier clean up!

We spread Prego's vegetable pizza sauce ($#.## for a # oz jar, using about 1/3 per 12" pizza) on the dough, leaving about a half inch of un-sauced dough around the outside for the crust. Then, we used 2 cups (one med. bag) of shredded mozarrella cheese all over the pizza, making sure to have a pretty thick layer of cheese near the crust. My first "real" job was at a local pizza place in Lindale, TX, and one thing I learned about the art of pizza was to make sure there was enough cheese around the crust to hold all of the toppings on to the slice once it was cut. If there isn't enough cheese, all of the toppings will just slide off when you pick it up. Awesome!

This is where it got really fun! We started pulling all sorts of things out of the fridge that needed to be used anyway, and started throwing them on the pizza. Paul stayed simple with pepperonis, black olives, and some parmesan, but I "vegged out" with chopped spinach, mushrooms, black olives, and fresh tomatoes.

Next, we baked the pie on the lowest rack in a 450 degree oven for about 12-14 minutes. It turned out wonderful! The crust was cooked perfectly, not doughy but not hard as a rock either. Success!