Tag: low spend month challenge

It is another beautiful day here, sunny and 71. Hubby was out watering all of the flowers in baskets and pots.

While he was doing that, I cooked up a package of uncured bacon that I found in one of my freezers in the refrigerator. I don’t usually buy uncured. I think I had purchased it sometime before the virus came. At that time my sister and family were coming in April. My BIL can’t have regular bacon. That trip was cancelled because of the virus. Until we have a vaccine, we will not reschedule their visit so that we can keep all of us safe.

After the bacon was cooked and drained, it was calling to me. So I made a bacon and scrambled egg wrap using a Keto wrap. It tasted so good that I may do that again this week for brunch. My original plan was to have a broccoli omelet but I finished the broccoli yesterday. 

Now I am off to the treadmill to get in my daily exercise. I don’t really feel like doing it today but I must.

Neither Hubby nor I were very hungry at dinnertime. It got up to 77 here today and it just felt hot. I think that is why we weren’t really hungry. So Hubby decided he was going to eat a little bit of spaghetti and meatballs that were leftover. I cooked a piece of salmon that fell apart while I was cooking it. That is all I ate. Menu plans don’t always get eaten as originally planned in this house. To keep food waste at just about none, we move things around. 

It was a good productive day though. I cleaned our master bedroom from top to bottom. I even tidied up and cleaned out all of the drawers in our dressers and nightstands.

I hope you all had a good day!    

We had a very busy day of appointments and grocery shopping. We were up and out very early this morning to make the trip to the next town to see our doctors. We spent a bit of the morning there. I am happy to report that since my hernia surgery a year and 8 months ago, I have managed with my diet to stay off of 4 prescription pills that I had been taking daily for years. The doctor was so happy with my blood work. I had been released to my primary from my specialist 8 months ago. They said keep up the good work. We don’t want to see you again for a year. You can bet I am not going back on any of those pills. It is amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t eat sugar or carbs 99.9% of the time. It is also amazing how good I feel for an “old lady”.

Before I went out, I cooked up some eggs with cheese for breakfast.

 

Since we were in the town that Target is in, Hubby said he would take me there to use the $10. gift certificate so that I don’t have to keep track of it anymore. I went in planning on buying some meat with it. They had beautiful looking boneless chicken breasts for $ 1.99 a lb. So I purchased this large package. 

As you can see, after the gift certificate, I paid $ .65 out of pocket. So that left me $ 249.35 in my grocery budget for this month.

Tomorrow, I will food saver this and a large piece of salmon that I also purchased today. Then I will try to fit it all in the freezers. I will include my other grocery shopping trip in my post tommorow. I am just too worn out today. 

Tonight, I cooked linguine with spaghetti sauce and meatballs for Hubby. I put mine on riced garlic and herb cauliflower. Mine is pictured.  

Neither one of us wanted garlic bread so I didn’t make it.

I hope you have a wonderful evening. I am off to go sit outside with Hubby. It is the coolest weather we have had in over a month. We have our windows open airing out the house. It feels so good!  

I stayed home again today. So no money was spent.

We didn’t eat today until after 12 noon so we had salads for lunch. I had just a simple salad of lettuce, cucumber, bacon, avocado, black olives and a couple of small pieces of monterey jack cheese. Hubby added chicken leftover from last night’s dinner to his. 

So for dinner tonight we had our planned Chef’s salad even though we had salad for lunch. It was lettuce, veggies, onions, cheese and ham. Here is a picture of Hubby’s before he put his salad dressing on it. He also eats some green olives on the side. They were delicious. We love salads so much that we could eat them all week long. 


It’s been a very busy day for us so I am going to bed early.

See you tomorrow.

My son and grandson came to visit today. We were happy to see them. Family is about the only company we can have these days. West is getting so tall.

I made Keto chocolate chip pancakes for West and blueberry ones for the rest of us. I served them with their choice of SF syrup or pure maple syrup. I also cooked up some sausage patties. I had a half a bottle of apple juice to use up so that was our drink. We were having so much fun chatting that I forgot to take a picture of our cooked breakfast.

My son brought us two huge cucumbers, an eggplant and 2 tomatoes from his garden. The tomatoes are not quite ripe(everything is late this year because we had winter until the end of May) but I will put them on my windowsill and they will ripen.

He also made us some homemade dill pickles. He knows how much we love them.

After they went home, I scanned the grocery ads this week for the cheap deals. I am still debating on the bacon at Top’s. They also have Chef Boy ar Dee products for $1.00 a can. I could use more for my stockpile. Since I get the 6% discount on Tuesday, I may buy some more. They also have Manwich for the same price if anyone needs it. We don’t eat it. They have mayo with a Top’s super coupon for $ 2.99. That is a stock up price here. I may add 1 jar to the stockpile depending on the best buy date. 

Aldi has salmon for a decent price so I may buy some of that this week since we have none left. They also have boneless chicken breasts for $ 1.89 a lb. but we need no chicken. I do need provolone cheese so if I can get that for $ 1.49, I will. I was going to buy  fresh produce for salads but since my son brought me plenty, I don’t need it. If anyone has eggs at a decent price, I will pick up a dozen or two.

I made shake n bake chicken, some roasted potatoes, and broccoli for dinner. 

Here is my plate. It was very delicious. I don’t normally eat carbs(except for pizza once or twice a month) but decided that I could have just a few pieces of potato.

Lastly, my son purchased a huge lot of of office furniture and a 75 inch big screen TV for a great price from a company who was going out of business. The TV was really what he was after. Most of this was in great shape. Hubby’s office chair is falling apart. So my son brought us one of the chairs. Hubby is going to try it out to see if it is comfortable for him. If not, I want it.  My son, grandson and DIL also each kept new desks and chairs. The rest of the things he is selling and will most likely recoup his money. Yes, both of my sons know how to work a deal! 

Hubby and I so enjoyed watching the space shuttle undock and the landing for a few hours today. We saw the first one many years ago and have watched them all since. To us each one is just as exciting as the first one. Now we are watching golf.

I hope you all are having a great day!
 

I didn’t even leave our home today. No grocery or any other shopping. I did look at one of my grocery shopping ads for tomorrow. They have badly needed bacon on sale. It is B2G3 free. They usually up the prices of the two you have to buy to $9.99 each which means the 5 would be about $4.00 each. However, I can get a 6% senior discount on Tuesday so it would cost me $ 3.76 each. I still think I can get bacon at Aldi’s for about $ 3.49 each if the price hasn’t gone up. The problem is the last time I was there, they had no bacon. So I will have to think on this some more and check Aldi’s stock and price first before I go to the other market. They also have 80/20 ground beef in large packages at Top’s for $ 2.99 a pound for anyone who needs it. We hate their ground beef which is why I buy the grass fed from Aldi’s when it is on sale. 

For brunch this morning, I had a couple of pieces of bacon and some scrambled eggs with monterey jack cheese in them. I cooked a pound of bacon in the oven yesterday. We used some of it for breakfast yesterday and on salads for dinner last night. 

Hubby was still sleeping. I am the early riser. Him not so much. So I took my breakfast out on the patio and ate it. It is such a beautiful day. It is sunny and the coolest it has been in a month. I stayed out there after I ate and did some reading.

Hubby made himself a pastrami sandwich about noontime. 

These are the things that I will be making dinner with tonight. I had to thaw the dough and the pepperoni since they were in the freezer. I will adding a lot of spices.

Here it is all made. Hubby loves pepperoni on his pizza. I don’t like it cooked. So I have just the two cheeses on my side of the pizza.

Fifteen minutes later it came out of the oven. Hubby started cutting it before I could get the picture. It was so delicious and we have some leftovers for a lunch or a snack. We each had a small side salad with the pizza.


We are now watching NASA. I hope you all have a good evening.

We will be starting our low spend month challenge tomorrow. As you can see, I have my $250. ready to go for shopping this month. It is 1/2 of what I normally spend. For those who are new and don’t know, there is just Hubby and I in this household. Our children left and married a very long time ago and have their own families.

So to get ready for our low spend month, I looked at my inventory and menu planned yesterday for the next week.

We only eat two meals a day. We have breakfast, lunch, or brunch late morning. Then we have dinner between 5PM and 6PM. 

Most of the time we each fix our first meal ourselves. Sometimes we want the same thing and one of us cooks. Dinners, we both take turns cooking. 

We usually pick from this list for our first meal of the day:

Sandwiches: Chicken, tuna, BLT’s, or cold cuts 
                   Soup
                   Leftovers from dinner
                   Hamburgers or cheeseburgers
                   Hot Dogs
                   Eggs
                   Pancakes or Waffles
                   French Toast
                   Salad
      


Here is our dinner plan starting tomorrow:

Sat. Homemade Pizza, salad
Sun. Shake n Bake Chicken,broccoli
Mon. Chef’s Salad
Tues. Spaghetti and Meatballs, garlic toast
Wedn. Leftovers
Thurs. Fish sticks, brussel sprouts 
Fri. Taco Salad made with ground turkey 

We rarely have dessert. Once in a while I will make SF jello or pudding or we have a little ice cream.

We drink iced tea or water with our meals. Sometimes if it is a special dinner like steak or lamb chops, we will have a glass of wine.

In the summer, I try to make simple meals. I cook them the cheapest way I can to save on my utility bill. For example, sometimes I cook pizza in the toaster oven if is a frozen circular one. My homemade one is rectangular and goes in the oven. The shake n bake chicken will get cooked in the air fryer. 

I have a bag of leftover broccoli in the freezer that I want to get rid of so that will be cooked in the microwave. The same for the brussel sprouts.


I make my own garlic toast out of leftover hamburger buns and bake that in the toaster oven. 

The spaghetti sauce and meatballs will be cooked in the microwave. The spaghetti is leftover from another meal and is in the freezer. It will be warmed up quickly in a skillet. I cook cauliflower rice for me in the microwave. 

I will tell you a secret. I hate fish sticks. Hubby loves them. They are leftover from the week that I was in the eastern part of the state. So I will eat them this week because I want to get rid of them. Yuck! 


We always have leftovers hanging around so we always have a leftover night or two.


I cook the taco meat on the brown cycle in my pressure cooker and season it too. 


We have everything that we need for this week’s meal plan in the fridge, freezer and pantry. So if I shop this week it will only be to pick up an exceptionally priced item that I can incorporate into a future meal plan. I may need produce also for the next week. So I don’t plan on spending much of that $250. next week.