The Weekend

The Weekend always is a challenge. Part of the family wants to sleep in, another part wants to go out and do stuff. This morning we had a wonderful Meditereanean style breakfast. We had some garlic and cumin infused hummus with pita pieces, black olives, tomato slices, hard salami, avacado, cucumber slices, honey and our home made cheese.
The best part was everybody sitting around the table talking while making their own mini stacks on pita.

Lunch was very simple. Yesterday we took the watery whey and used it to make a couple loaves of foccacia bread. We ate one of those loaves for lunch with olive oil, Basalmic vinegar and dried oregano.

Dinner was the remainder of the Pesto Chicken and Rice.

Sunday we will keep it simple with oatmeal infused with raisin and walnuts.
Lunch and dinner are unknown at this point as I will go to the store in a couple hours.

Making Cheese for the Meditereanean Diet

My daughter and I have decided that we would attempt to make cheese for this diet. We walked to the store and picked up the milk and lemons.  We talked about how this is eductional under the following subjects. Science by adding acid to a milk, Home economics as we compared the price of 3/4lbs of high quality cheese to our cheese. Nutrition as we used milk and lemons, nothing else.

Either way this should be interesting to eat in about 4 more hours.

The below link is where we found this information.
http://www.mediterranean-food-recipes.com/how-to-make-cheese.html

Mediterranean Diet Day 1

Went to the gorcery store and bought some food for the beginning of our Mediterranean Diet. I will put my list on at the bottom.

The first thing we did last night was make some bruschetta with tomatoes, green onions garlic, and feta. I love this stuff it is so tasty. Later in the evening we had some mixed nuts with raisins. It turned out to be an awesome snack that kept the stomach happy until morning. I took the same nut mixture and added it to oatmeal for a fantastic breakfast. I just finished having a chicken stuffed pita.  I kept it simple, lettuce, olives, basil pesto, and Parmesan chicken that I had left over from a couple nights ago.

tonight I will be using the Pesto to marinate some chicken before I bbq it. Foccacia bread with olive oil basalmic dipping sauce with some rice should make for a nice hearty meal.

My grocery list was the following:

1 jar of artichokes, green onion, 2 loaves of wheat bread, 2 packages of pita bread, walnuts,almonds, pine nuts, spaghetti, green beans, tomatoes, potatoes, french bread, fresh basil, ground tumeric.

My total came to $39.51

My Kitchen The Burger Challenge

On the weekend I decided to give myself another challenge. Much like the T.V. show Survivor, I added a challenge that I think is appropriate to this blog. The challenge is to recreate a meal that we would normally eat when going out to a restaurant. This recreation could be from a fast food chain to a high end eatery. I have to complete this challenge while staying within my budget of $100 a week to feed the family. This may mean substitutions of things such as filet being replaced with ribeye as an example.

My first challenge was to take on In n Out burger. We normally eat 4 double double combos three with onions. The price tag is $23.00 plus tax. Tax differs from state to state so for this challenge I am only looking at the price.

I went to the grocery store and picked up all the ingredients I needed, hamburger buns, lettuce, tomato, onion, egg, Kraft American cheese slices, 1 pound of 80/20 hamburger, potatoes, 4 litres of coke product.

I made 8 patties using my old tupperware patty maker. We sliced the onion and  tomatoes. The thousand island dressing and mayo were such small quantities that I added $0.25 to my final total for condiments. I used a sharp kitchen knife to make the french fries. I already have a fryer with oil so I did not count the oil as an expense.

The end result was we were able to make our double double meal combo for $13.74. This created a significant saving of $9.24 compared to the $23 we would of had to pay.  I still like In N out but while on budget this will have to do.

Feel free to comment if you think I could do better or if you have suggestions from your favorite restaurant that I should try.
You can read the details of my Burger challenge at Ezinearticles titled "Having a Restaurant in My Home."

No more food Please

We have been eating the same foods for a couple weeks now. This morning we had pancakes and over easy eggs. Right now my food supplies are getting very low. I have been using leftovers for the last couple days. Running out of food kinda has me excited and nervous. In my feed a family of four for a $100 a week meal plan requires me to use the same ingredients throughout a variety of meals. Running out of food simply means I will be free to change the primary ingredients.
This change will allow us to focus on a new menu. My options are unlimited as I can cook just about anything.
I will head to the store today with 60% of my budget.My stomach tells me Italian and BBQ will enter the food chain.

January 20th Dinner Turkey Soup

I am getting a little excited as I go through this week. I am trying to use up a majority of the left overs I have accumulated over the past few weeks. This morning I pulled some frozen turkey breast out of the freezer for a turkey soup. I also grabbed a frozen portion of broth. Everything went into the slow cooker for dinner. I added some onion, garlic, poultry seasoning and a chipotle cube. With an hour left I added assoted frozen vegetables. With 20 mminutes left I took the rest of my homemade pasta noodles from the Lasagna and tore them into pieces slightly bigger than my thumb and put them into the soup.

I turned out fantastic. I put a little hot sauce in for some extra flavor.

January 20th Breakfast Yogurt

This was a simple one, I had a free sample of Kellogs granola, we mixed it with the yogurt and had a nice breakfast.
I like easy breakfast with not a lot of clean up afterwards