A bunch of dinners

Okay, so I'm a slacker. It thought blogging about my meals would be cool. It ended up being boring and I don't really feel like blogging about them anymore, but I'll finish what I started. So, Thursday night, we went to Sam's Club and got one of their whole chickens. They have the best ones. They are the biggest, they taste the best and they are the cheapest too. We had that with wild rice and steamed broccoli. I didn't take a picture that night. I didn't make the meal at all, I just went and bought the chicken, made the rice in the steam it in the microwave bag and steamed the frozen broccoli, but I'll still show the grocery bill.

Whole chicken $5.00
Wild Rice $1.96
Broccoli (already had)

Total=$6.96

Friday was our 5 year anniversary, so we took Jackson to Christopher's house and we went out to Maggiano's for dinner. It was delicious and way more expensive than we would normally spend, but it was our anniversary, so, what the heck.

Saturday we were back on track for our final meal of the week. I made a cajun pot roast. I don't like spicy things. AT ALL. But, this is pretty good and not too spicy, just flavorful.

Shopping List:
Chuck roast $7.88
Mexican Stewed Tomatoes $1.14
Quick Cooking Tapioca $2.78
Mashed Potatoes $2.93 (I get the already made/Bob Evans or Country Crock kind)
Celery $1.32
Cajun Seasoning (already had. I use a Creole seasoning)
Onion (already had)
Garlic (already had)
Oil (already had)

Total=$16.05

Directions:
1) Trim the fat from the roast
2) Rub the cajun seasoning over the roast.
3) In a large skillet, brown the seasoned roast in the oil on all sides.
4) In a crockpot combine the undrained tomatoes, onion, celery, tapioca and garlic. Place the meat on top of the mixture.
5) Cover and cook on low setting 10-12 hours or on high for 5-6 hours.
6) Slice and serve with mashed potatoes.

Soooooo....the grand total for the entire week for 6 dinners was = $58.12! Not bad. Now, of course we had other expenses this week. We got staples, like milk, bread and fruit, and a few other things that we were out of, like breakfast sausage and frozen french toast sticks for Jackson's breakfast. Our goal is to try to rotate things we need so we don't have weeks where we have to spend lots of money. On weeks when we have to buy diapers, for instance, we have to cut back on other meals and maybe make something that doesn't take a lot of ingredients, like Skyline or Spaghetti. We also try to make things last for lunches the following day. This week I'm making a ham with cheesy potatoes. We'll be able to eat that for lunch at least 2 days, and I'll also make bean soup to go with the ham. I could host a soup kitchen with the amount of beans soup I'll make. We are also having gyros again this week, because I still have left over sauce, lettuce, cucumber and flatbread from last week. All we need is another tomato and the chicken. We are having Turkey Skyline also. We already have the ground turkey, from a couple weeks ago when we bought it in bulk and froze it, and the seasoning is in our pantry. So all we needed to buy was pasta for $.88, a small can of tomato paste for $.40 and a bag of shredded cheddar, which we needed for the cheesy potatoes anyway, we just bought a bigger bag. We can have Skyline for leftovers for lunch too! Because we are saving so much money on THOSE meals this week, we were able to go to Sam's and get a 4 pack of huge New York Strip Steaks. We had 2 last night and we'll have 2 this weekend and we are still under budget. The whole idea behind our food budget is planning ahead and sticking to the plan. If anyone has any other quick, easy or cheap meal ideas, send them my way. I'd LOVE to hear about them!