Mmm, yes, soaking Beans. I am home today so I thought I would make some bean and ham soup with some cornbread for dinner. Such a hearty meal and just right for this time of year. And, we have been eating these cookies for dessert. Easiest Recipe Ever, although, not very healthy. Yum.
Recipe:
Any flavor box cake mix
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
Mix all ingredients together, roll into one inch balls, dip in powder sugar and bake on greased pan in a 350 degree oven for around 7 - 9 minutes. That's it. So good.
So, it's the New Year and instead of resolutions, I usually give myself goals and challenges. One of my challenges/goals will be to reduce my grocery budget. In 2015, I averaged around $108.34 a week for groceries, which for a family of four adults doesn't seem so bad.
But, I have some pretty large savings goals I put in place for this year (I will talk about in another post), so one of the best areas to cut back in is usually the grocery area. I was wanting to do $50 a week, but that might be to constricting. After all, there are some weeks where I need to buy a lot of basic items that are larger items and eat up the grocery budget like, coffee, laundry detergent, cat food, kitty litter, toilet paper, to name a few and then there is the bulk buying items, like going to the farm to stock up on meat (we like to eat organic, so we get our beef from a local organic farm) and so I try to stock my freezer every quarter with beef and chicken; and I try to alternate those buying times so that they don't both fall in the same month. I stock up on on bulk butter, oats, flour, sugar, other baking items and some specialty items at Sam's Club/Costco, whichever I happen to be a member of. Most envelope systems give themselves $50 a week and when the money is gone for that week, no more shopping. I am not sure that will work for me, so I just average the money out monthly.
On that note, I have taken the Month of January and divided 31 days by 4 and that gave me 7.75 days in each grocery shopping week that I would need to make dinners for. I don't necessarily make breakfast and lunches, but we do eat eggs, oatmeal, bagels, hashbrowns, cereal, leftovers and sandwich items. I only write out a dinner menu plan. So for the first week of January, this is our meals and I have spent $49.48 on groceries. I use what I have on hand to help fill in the menu. But this coming week, I will need to go over that $50 mark due to needing the extras.
homemade cinnamon rolls (Pic is without the frosting). I am also gone a few nights out of the week, so the Dinner the night before usually becomes the leftover dinner for the nights I am not home.
Saturday, January 1 - Went out to Dinner.
Sunday, January 2 - Chicken/Veggie Wraps and Steak Fries
Monday, January 3 - Spaghetti, Salad, homemade breadsticks
Tuesday, January 4 - Chili and homemade bread in the breadmaker, leftover salad
Wednesday, January 5 - Tuna Melts and leftovers from above
Thursday, January 6 - Bean soup with leftover ham (I had the ham from Christmas in the freezer) and Cornbread.
Friday, January 7 - Cracker Chicken and Fettucini Noodles.
That was our first week. Hope it gave you some ideas for dinners.
