Rough draft

As previously mentioned, the plan is to share my attempts to get the ragamuffins I live with back onto some semblance of a grocery budget. I haven't quite worked out how I intend to post but I know it will involve two posts a week, one with the plan, the other with how it all worked out. I'll throw in average cost of the meals as well as overall grocery spending, complete with follow up trips for forgotten items, sudden cravings for ice cream, and pretty much any and all food planning/spending either intended or spur of the moment.

I realize that reading this made some of you think about pouring yourself a big old glass of Jonestown Kool-aid and for that I apologize.

But here's this week's menu, just to get the ball rolling. I spent about $90.00 on Sunday afternoon and a combined total of $35 bucks on extra trips for missing items and light bulb items, aka things you didn't know you needed but suddenly couldn't live without.

Monday's dinner was a Cuban black bean stew with what pete lovingly refers to as orange rice. The stew came from my previously mentioned America's Test Kitchen Cover and Bake cookbook and let me tell you, that ish was BANGING! It was well work the effort of chasing down a tube of chorizo. Yes, it was meat and it was in a tube. Make the stew anyway. Oh, the orange rice you say? You just throw a couple packages of Goya Sazon into your usual rice preparation and presto, bammo, orange rice. I'm sure there's a technical term for it but that would take effort and I'm all efforted out today. Blame it on the beach.

There was so much stew, we had repeats on Tuesday. It should  be noted that this recipe becomes even more awesome when given a day to meld flavors. My mouth is salivating for more as I type. I've already promised pete Cuban black bean stew will be a regular rotation from now on.

This is what you get when you
google funny plantains.

Wednesday was the 4th. I planned the picnic previously mentioned but for a refresher, we had grilled chicken skewers with balsamic glaze, broccoli slaw, fried plantains that I'd planned to make with the Cuban stew but weren't ripe enough at the time. We followed it up with white cake, strawberries, and blueberries topped with lemon cream.

Yesterday, I used the leftover chicken from the fourth to make chicken fried rice instead of the Sweet and Spicy Chicken thighs I'd originally planned. Look for that recipe next week.

Tonight, we made grilled steak kebabs which turned out less than stellar thanks to my sub par grilling skills. Apparently, this heifer done forgot how to light a damned grill and keep it lit long enough to produce something worth eating. Thank God I live in an age where you can just use a damned oven. I would never cut it in an agrarian society, tyvm.

Tomorrow, peteybird has requested bean burritos in lieu of the bacon and mushroom quiche I was planning to make. I'll be squeezing this into the budget/plan with no issues thanks in part to leftover chorizo, a bag of pinto beans I already had in the cabinet and the tortillas and shredded cheese I'd bought for Mr. Man's breakfast but he's conveniently forgotten to eat.

So there you go, one week of dinner for under $150.

Challenge met.