daylight savings: not my thing

BREAKING NEWS:

School + working full time + teaching + ministry duties + exercising + taking care of the house is really kicking my patootie.  I feel like I can't keep up with everything, so obviously the blog was the first to go.  HOWEVER!  Last weekend while grocery shopping I thought I lost my list (which contains the meal plan and actual grocery list) and there was lots of panic and drama.  I thought it might be a good idea to document the list and meal plan somewhere else, JIC.

And we just had Daylight Savings Time change.  NO!

If I can, I'll try to get back into blogging quick recipes.  And about my dogs, because they are my kids.  And my garden.  Who knows, like I said, I've got a lot going on...  This is all so exciting, hmmm?

Oh!  And the foot surgery was totally worth it.  Immediate recovery (first 2-3 weeks) were absolute torture (and I really mean that, not exaggerating!).  However, I am able to wear shoes and walk without my feet cramping up.  It's fabulous!

Anyway, on to the good stuff!

3-15-13 Friday night:  Going downtown with my Uz to walk around, enjoy the weather (a high of 80 degrees!  YES!), and eat some tasty hot dogs.  I plan to get the "Lindsay" dog.  I named it after myself.  Did you know my name?  Now you do.  Basically, it's a hot dog (or brat!) with chili, fritos, cheese, and onions...  a "Frito Pie Dog".

Saturday Lunch:  scrounge around, eat something in the freezer/pantry.  I am planting my spring veggies so it'll be whatever is fast.
Saturday Dinner:  Sausage-Stuffed Zucchini Boats (LINK)

Sunday Lunch:  baked red potatoes with corn/black bean salsa and pork carnitas (LINK), topped with argulua and fresh salsa.
Sunday Dinner:  Both CookingLight:  Baked Pita Chips (LINK) with a Creamy Garbanzo Dip with Sun-Dried Tomatoes (LINK).  Uz the Hubs will probably get some chicken strips to go with his, the little meat-eater!

Monday:  CookingLight Maple-Soy boneless skinless chicken thighs (LINK), stir-fried green beans (or asparagus), and a baked potato or skillet potatoes for Uz.

Tuesday:  TOSTADA NIGHT!  Baked whole wheat tostadas with crockpot pinto beans (LINK) and topped with leftover pork carnitas, leftover corn/black bean salsa, and arugula.  Also, roasted asparagus (or green beans).

Wednesday:  CookingLight Stir-Fried Shrimp with Spicy Orange sauce (LINK), stir-fried broccoli, brown/red rice mix.

Thursday:  leftovers or PB/fruit wraps (LINK)

One small-ish change that I've made to my/our diets:  we're on a reduced-sugar, reduced-white flour diet.  I can't say no-sugar, no-white flour because it's not true.  The main difference is that we are deliberately choosing when to say yes to sugar/white flour, and even white rice.  Our snacks have gone from Fiber1 Brownies, yogurts full of artificial sweeteners, "healthy" cookies/breads to trail mix (nuts and dried fruit), dried apricots, yogurts with real sugar/no artificial sweeteners (check it out! Wallaby yogurts LINK), fresh fruit and veggies, nut butter, whole wheat veggie/no sugar muffins.  Sadly, this means less yummy desserts like cake, cookies, and brownies.  Friday night is kind of my "cheat meal"...  hence, hot dog night!

So, sit back and enjoy the ride.  I'm warning you:  it might be short.

my current life:  studying.  at least I have two cute little study buddies!

grocery haul: getting tight

I was a little disappointed this weekend because I went over budget again.  AGAIN.  It's so frustrating because we're trying to eat healthy with a few splurges on a budget.  There's only two of us...  let's face it, one of us eats twice as much (and DON'T look at me!) as the other, but still.

So I did a little math..  and it's NOT the food that's blowing our budget.  It's things like my hair creme and shampoo and my husband's cute little snore strips (and thank GOD for snore strips!).  There's not much of a way for us to reduce costs there, unfortunately.  The hair creme is the only thing that tames my hair...  I have eczema so I can't buy cheap body washes/detergents/lotions/soaps/etc. 

Therefore, we have to live with it and work with it.  We've decided to allow a little bit of extra money each week for these expenses.

Anyway, I feel validated and all better and such so we can move on to the good stuff.

Wal-Mart:
Food Items:  $23.26
Non-Food Items:  $70.41 (eep!)

Sunflower Markets:
Food Items:  $79.72

Here, I bought ahead on some things...  chicken tenders were on sale for half off, so I got a big pack of those.  Also, they had our favorite gelato on sale for half off, so we decided to buy two of those containers in our absolute favorite flavors.  You can see I have 53 boxes of eggs there...  actually, there's three.  Uz needs 10 eggs for his breakfast crescent roll ring that he taking for work breakfast on Friday, plus eggs were on sale for almost half off, so we bought two boxes for us and one for his work breakfast.  We eat 3-4 eggs a day at breakfast, so we go through them FAST. 

Oh, and, I bought the wrong kind of pork for our carnitas tonight...  It should have been the $6 or $7 pork shoulder blade roast, but I grabbed the package next to it and it was $15 boneless pork loin roast or something.  Whoops.  I'm sure it'll be fine...  twice as tasty, since it's twice as expensive, hmmm?

Farmer's Market: not pictured: $18.50 for a big watermelon, cantaloupe, and a ton of peaches.  I realize that this is more expensive than buying at a grocery store, but we have a few reasons for using the farmer's market:
1.  Support local farmers.  Normally I would buy more produce from the farmer's market, but with my own garden giving off lots of tomatoes and peppers and herbs, I'm "shopping" from my backyard instead of the market.
2.  No pesticides.  The farmer's I buy from don't use any pesticides.
3.  Taste difference.  With things like peaches, watermelons, cantaloupes, squash/zucchini, tomatoes, peppers...  you can really taste the difference and it's totally worth it.
4.  Peach tarts.  The first stand at the door is a baker who has the best peach tarts.  We get one every week.  :)

Totals:
Food Items:  $121.48
Non-Food Items:  $70.41

Next week I'm going to try to plan budget recipes, but also allow myself a little extra cash to cover for the non-food items that seem to really push us over the line.  We'll see how it all works out...  I really hate going over and having to use my debit card (we pull out cash at the beginning of every month, Dave Ramsey-style).  I hope I can do better next week.

What do you do to keep yourself on budget...  or do you really care? 

just lazy.

I was pretty lazy this weekend. I talked to my doctor about my fall, and he thinks it's probably a fractured tailbone. So my weekend consisted mainly of these few things:

1. Lay around.
2. Whine about how my booty hurts.
3. Sleep.
4. Take Aleve.

Repeat.

Not very exciting. I did make it grocery shopping though, and our approximate bill is $75 for everything. I had a short list, since we're trying to eat stuff that's already in the house. Mostly we got fresh produce.

At Sunflower Market, I purchased:
egg whites
Greek yogurt
olive oil
juice
blackberries
cherries
bananas
lettuce
red onion
jalapeno
roma tomatoes
grape tomatoes
romaine hearts
english cucumber
limes
bell pepper

At the local farmer's market, we bought some yummy cheese: Hot Cowboy Cheddar, Blueberry Cheddar, and Mixed Fruit Cheddar. And a couple scones (blueberry lime and orange cranberry) and a chocolate chip cookie. Next week, we're going to try to buy all our fresh groceries at the farmer's market! They have bread, produce, meat, butter, yogurt, granola, peanut butter... just about anything you could ask for! So that'll be a fun challenge. Anything I can't find there I'll grab at Crest.

We've had a lot of hail and strong winds, so sadly I've lost a couple plants in my garden that need to be replaced ASAP. I lost a zucchini plant and a green bean bush, and maybe a poblano pepper. And my "mini pumpkin" plant turned out to be another SQAUSH plant... so now I have three squash plants. I guess we'll be eating a lot of squash this summer.

My garden is starting to give off mini harvests, so I'm excited to see it really grow. We've been eating some small tomatoes here and there from my Green Zebra tomato plant and my cherry tomato plant. My peppers are getting close, and so are the squash plants. Pretty soon we'll be able to "shop" the backyard, instead of paying for produce at the store!

Anyway, so that's what's up. I also bought something for the house, so once my husband gets it hung for me I'll have to show it off. Hopefully, that will be this week. Or soon. Or at all. Hear that, honey? ;)

Happy Monday!

candy & tacos

This post is about candy and tacos.  Obviously.  I'm not very original with my blog post titles.  I need to work on that!

Friday afternoon my husband and I both got off work at 3:00 PM.  He mowed the lawn really fast (we had to borrow my dad's mower because ours blew up last Thursday... smoke and everything!), showered, and then we were off to begin the first weekend of "summer"!

First stop:  42nd Street Candy Shop before they closed...  cross that off my summer bucket list!

entry to 42nd Street Candy Co.

truffle, milk chocolate filled candy, dark chocolate filled candy

mmm... dark chocolate!

good stuff!

the remains.  there were none!

Second stop:  dinner at Big Truck Tacos!  We got gorditas (buffalo and beef), flautas (chicken and beef), and a 5th Amendment Taco!

5th Amendment Taco for Friday night was chile rubbed pork with slaw tossed in Caesar sauce...  really yummy!

Third stop:  the mall.  No pics to share here (actually, I have one, but it's pretty awful so I'm leaving it out!) but we ended up getting me a new pair of heels that I can actually wear for a couple hours, a new dress from GAP (will show that later!), and a new wallet for my hubs from Fossil.  We haven't been to the mall in ages, so it was fun and kind of a flash back to when we were dating.  <3

Last stop:  groceries.  Actually, it was two stops (Sunflower Markets first and then Crest).  We were in and out pretty fast.  Meat was on sale, so we bought up quite a bit of that. 

you can't see all the gorgeous produce here, but there was tons of it!

So that was our Friday night!  We had a lot of fun and it was a great start to the summer...  crossed one thing off my bucket list!

weekend recap!

Around the world and back again... at least, that's how I feel about this weekend!  I've been all over the city...  Friday night, my husband and I managed to get out and go eat at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants, Pepe Delgado's.  He was feeling pretty sickly, but even a sick man has to eat!  We were able to sit at my favorite table...  the one right next to the window facing the street.  What better way to pass a meal than creepily watching people out the window?

Anyway, I got my usual plate, #14:  2 tacos (spicy pork, and dear Lord they are FABULOUS), rice and beans (I usually don't eat but a couple bites because I get so full, but they are wonderful!), and a cheese enchilada.  Friday night they also had tamales as a special, and since my husband is on very friendly terms with the owner, he let us order a veggie tamale a la carte.  It had cabbage, carrots, and some other veggie and it was covered in a green sauce with cheese.  YUM!!  My husband ordered Rajitas...  chicken smothered in a chipotle sauce with cheese, rice and beans, and flour tortillas.  His chicken was so, so, so good.  I kept taking little bites, and he had to fend me off just to finish his meal.  Whoops!

enchilada, two spicy pork tacos, rice and beans

close up of the fantastic pork tacos... mmmm!!

veggie tamale with green sauce and cheese

rajitas (chicken smothered in chipotle sauce), beans, rice

On the way home from our fancy "date night", we made a stop at Target for a popsicle run...  I was craving popsicles, what can I say??  We came home and I crashed while he watched the Thunders vs. Lakers game.

sickly hubs and extremely stuffed wife... maybe I should work out instead of stuff my face!

We weren't able to go out and do the "activity" part of my date because he was feeling so poorly, so I'll save it for the next time we have a date night out.

Saturday I was up early cleaning the house and then off to a baby shower.  No pictures, but it was a lot of fun!  There were cute little outfits for a baby boy, and baby stuff out the wazoo.  Unfortunately, I didn't eat lunch before I came so I was starving...  Thankfully, there were plenty of cupcakes and lemon cake balls to munch on.  The decorations were simply adorable...  almost cute enough to make me want to grow a little behbeh of my own.  Almost... but not quite.

I stopped by my grandma's on the way home to chat for a bit, and ended up being sent home with a box of KFC chicken strips for my sickly man, 2 bags of pecans, and a cutting board in the shape of a pig.  I love stopping by grandma's!

Saturday night I tried to nurse my man back to health.  Really, I just fed him the chicken strips, ate some pizza, took a nap, cleaned the house, and watched Charade with him.  I don't think you can really call it nursing, but I did what I could!

Sunday we got up and managed to go to morning church.  I thought he might have to stay home, but he really wanted to go so I packed him in the car with a box of Kleenex, and off we went.  He looked really cute carrying around his own personal box of Kleenex...  Realllllllly cute.

Sunday afternoon was spent grocery shopping and cleaning the house.  I started our 10 loads of laundry (no, really, it was 10 loads) and our dryer broke halfway through.  So right now our house is covered in laundry trying to dry out.  Also, my dear husband passed on his sick germs, so now I'm sniffling and sneezing with the best of them.  Thanks, babe!  :)

My grocery spoils:

I thought it was going to be a "small shop", but once I did a pantry sweep I figured out that we needed some staples.  Whoops!

new Cheerios flavors!  and some flowers my husband brought home for me on Friday.  I need to arrange them better... can someone take care of that for me??

Fiber One brownies!  So I don't pay $1.00 in the vending machine for one at work.

See that cute little sticky note on the back door?  That's the one that says "ALARM" in big letters that I manage to ignore in the morning.

I did come in a little under budget, but not as much as I thought I would because I bought a lot of pantry staples.  I didn't buy any meat (except some hot dogs for this weekend), so that helped lower the bill.  Also, I spent $13.40 at Wal-Mart for my hair creme (that stuff is like GOLD, people!) and $3.00 for a few packages of toy dinosaurs for my piano students.  Can you spot the dinos?

Sunflower Markets: $72.77
Crest:  $39.60
Neighborhood Wal-Mart:  $31.22

I know it seems like a lot, especially when some people set their "grocery budget" to $75-100 for a 2-person household...  but our grocery budget isn't just food:  it includes personal products (hair, face, body, etc.), household products (TP, paper towels, cleaning supplies, etc.), and any medicines or miscellaneous products.  So, I'm done validating my grocery and household expenses...  I'm hoping this will help keep me in check... and so far, it's done well!  Knowing that I was going to share my grocery shopping results kept me from throwing random stuff in the cart.  I ended up with $10 extra.  Not nearly as much as I thought, but I'll be happy with $10 extra dollars.  Lunch is on me, guys!

Anyway, today I'll be calling the appliance man to look at our dryer.  I guess I should hold on to that $10 just in case...  I still have a few loads of laundry to do.  I guess I learned my lesson about waiting to do all our laundry at once!  Not smart, y'all, not smart at all!

Oh, by the way, did anyone get a chance to watch this?

Happy Monday morning!

credit: http://www.iheartrunwithscissors.com