MrBalentine and I had a wonderful weekend together since he is still on vacation.
Friday evening was spent hanging out and working on our individual laptops. It was a quiet evening. I spent my time going thru a mountain of email, and unsubscribing to as many lists as possible that are not super important to me. Deleted a ton of unnecessary emails, and although I still have quiet a few to go thru, it is much more manageable.
Saturday was spent out of the house. We bought Denver a couple new toys, because his favorite one was accidentally run over by the lawnmower. I stopped in several stores to look for an affordable immersion blender. I purchased a silicone spatula at Marshall’s. I’ve been looking for one to make the most of each drop out of jars in the kitchen. My last stop was Old Time Pottery where I didn’t find a reliable looking immersion blender, but I got a set of 2 cooling racks for $2, and a 100 count package of cupcake liners. I read an interesting blog post about freezing muffin batter to bake later. I’m definitely going to do this. Using that method I can bake less at one time so none goes to waste.
We were starving when we got home. I had gathered a menu together from Pinterest that gave me a selection of things to pick from to make. We picked the thing that took approximately the least time, which was egg noodles and cabbage. Egg noodles are very cheap to buy, and make several meals out of a single package. We cooked the noodles to al dente, and in a skillet we put the butter and olive oil. I chopped some onions, and while they were cooking MrB sliced up a head of cabbage. After everything cooked we mixed it all together, and put a bunch of pepper on it. It was a very economical meal, and we have plenty of leftovers.
I have some special trees that are intended to be planted soon as a symbol of something important to me. MrB bought two pear trees on sale, and they’ve been living on our back deck. I went outside Saturday afternoon after noticing a strangely colored sky after a storm, and one of my trees had little white flowers all over it. It made the tree even more special to me. We put them downstairs to get better light and rain.
Although we spent money Saturday, it wasn’t a massive amount. Also, we didn’t spend anything on food.
Sunday started out rainy, but ended with sunshine. We hung around the house all day. I had scrambled eggs, and veggie sausage for breakfast. Lunch was leftover pasta from a couple days ago.
Sunday dinner was deep dish pizza. Saturday night I mixed some bread flour, yeast, salt, and room temperature water together, and put plastic wrap over it to sit for the night. Sunday afternoon I put about a tablespoon of olive oil in the bottom of my trusty cast iron skillet. I floured the dough a bit, and stirred it until it made a ball. I transferred it to the skillet, and pushed the dough around trying to get it to fit into the skillet. I then covered the skillet with a plate, and let the dough rise for another two hours. Mr.B shredded some cheddar cheese. I put on pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese, the cheddar, chopped garlic, and diced red onion. It cooked in a very hot oven for about 14 minutes. It was the first time I’ve made a from scratch pizza, especially one where I made the crust as well. We were pleased with the results.
Pleased to have another day of no food purchases. I think we’ll need to buy some fruits to snack on, but we have $13.14 left. I’m hopeful that this first month of our grocery budget challenge will be successful.
Balentine Cove 