happy at home

EATING FROM THE PANTRY, 2 (pounding roasted chickpeas into flour to make socca)

I spent $85.38 at the grocery store last week, which is more than I normally spend in a week. I mostly stocked up on staples, as it was a good week for sales at our grocery store...most of the money I spent went towards stocking up on toilet paper, olive oil, peppercorns, wheat pasta, etc. as well as fresh vegetables we were running low on. I am trying to become consistent at shopping the sales cycle, so I stocked up on several items that I knew were the lowest I would find them for several months.

I went into our local produce place too, after several weeks of only shopping at the grocery store. I fell into a conversation with the owner and learned that they are perilously close to having to close shop, due to slower and slower sales. I am recommitting to spending at least $20 a week of my food budget at L & D produce...I love their local fruits, vegetables, honey, and yard eggs and want to do my part to support a great local family business. If you live in the same area as me, I hope you will shop at L & D too. We will all be missing out if they have to close and it is well worth the few extra minutes and the marginally higher cost to shop there, in my opinion.

I did well cooking out of the freezer this week and we enjoyed a nice variety of different foods. I will say though, my husband's job is to sell food to restaurants, so we do have a pretty varied stockpile. He is often bringing home samples or foods he bought on sale that can seem pretty random!
A few of the meals we enjoyed this week:

-Ostrich burgers in lettuce wraps with zucchini chips
-venison meatloaf with pureed cauliflower, peas, green beans, and corn on the cob
-socca wraps with lettuce, grilled chicken, greek dressing, and feta cheese
-ale-broth venison stew with homemade pumpernickel bread
-salad with black beans, corn, salsa, and cheddar
-salmon with a balsamic reduction, on a bed of spinach with gorgonzola and pecans (yummy!)
-homemade wheat waffles with agave (we were out of maple syrup)
-fried eggs on ezekiel bread
-green smoothies
-fruit salad (made from frozen mango, peaches, and blueberries)
-chocolate cake with icing
-oatmeal
-almond meringues ("cloud cookies")

This week, I plan to spend significantly less at the store, only buying staples and redeeming my rain checks from last week for almond milk.