Good morning fellow twentybuckers :)

Tonight will be another leftover tonight, we still have the ingredients to do the weekly meal plan. We just have far to many leftovers!  How crazy is that?!

Still lots of bean soup, and lots of Mother Hubbard soup.

We should be making the Caribbean chili this weekend (Well... I will!) and adding some meat in there. Nick is away this weekend so it will just be me. I am excited to finish up all the leftovers and be done with them! A fresh start next week.

As for Gas, $10 should last me to the end of the week. I have been working on driving slower, and being more cautious about revving the car. It seems to work.

I definitely need to check my tire pressure though. Due to the cold weather they are at 28PSI. Eeesh.

What a week...

We have so many leftovers, we are just eating them constantly. :-) I am starting to think the $20 a week plan could work out for a family of 4. Its insane how much food we have leftover.

Nick and I got home at 10pm tonight (I literally walked in and wrote this). We are too exhausted to cook and someone (...me..) forgot to put on a fresh slow cooked meal. It worked out well though. Far to many leftovers!

Its just one of those days....

Yesterday was one of those 5AM-11PM days. Let me give you a run down of both of our schedules..

Nick: 5AM wake up
5:30AM- Out the door to work
6:00AM-3:00PM work
3:00PM-5:00PM nap
5:00PM-10PM School

11PM- Sleep...

Katie:
5AM Wake up
5:30AM- Complain about waking up
6AM Breakfast
6:30AM out the door
7-8AM Training
8:45AM-5PM Work
6:00PM-9PM School
9PM-10PM- Pack Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner for Nick and myself, prepare all school work

11PM- Sleep


Today we are making the vegetarian chili. This time I shall take photos as it should be finished in around 4 hours. :-) We have so much food leftover, we are never hungry. There is a lot of leftovers for lunch.




As for surviving $20 a week on gas...This week I filled up last friday with $20, after 2 long journeys I had to finally fill up again today.  :-( I was doing so well..

Tip of the week to save money on gas= SHOP AROUND FOR THE BEST PRICE

I cant stress enough how much of a difference that makes. Every penny counts. :)

I will update later with a more coherent entry once I have had more coffee.

Good morning fellow twentybuckers :)

After a unsuccessful trip to a local farmers market, we have decided to stock up on the food at a local wholesale place.
The only highlight to driving out there was eating breakfast with Nick, Askim and Jackson (Nicks cousin). We will be doing another pasta tutorial later today, along with a bread tutorial.

It really is the key to eating cheap!

Off to film the bread tutorial now.

Happy New Year.

We just came home from our one year anniversary celebration. We are ready to rock and roll for the $20 a week journey. We have the food (Going shopping tomorrow), and we now have a pasta machine!
No more expensive pasta in the store, we can now make our own. Its our little anniversary present.

Pretty cool eh? :-)


Look at the size of the pasta we made (pre run!)

Please remember to get your "essential grocery" list tomorrow. The one labeled in the post below as "BJ's list". This will hopefully last you 6months through the winter and spring, so you can eat cheap and good.

As I said before...We are working towards finishing a short sale purchase on a house, and each week we will be putting the money we saved from buying food, towards an item we want.

This week we will be ordering the...
To go with our amazing pasta maker...Hopefully it will hold our long linguini.

If all turns out well, we may end up selling some at a farmers market on weekends!

Wishing you all a happy new year!

A thought for Vegans

This week Nick brought me home some rather odd looking sushi. Normally when I ask for my "Avocado Roll" I get a sushi roll topped by avocado. This time I sent Nick and actually got something completely different. It was some rice paper with avocado, cucumber and carrots inside. It came with a sweet red chilli dressing and it was very good.

The amount of calories in this dish was perfect. A round 200 calories and I was full for a very long time. However it did cost $6 when buying it from the store.

I found a way to buy the rice wraps online and save myself $4. And if I grew the vegetables at home, my cost would me minimal. I love avocado and cucumber. Its refreshing and very healthy.

So after all this research and thinking, it came to my attention that Vegans must have a really great immune system. As well as a cheaper shopping trip.
One week next year we will keep to the $20 budget, and eat completely vegan. I think we will loose a lot of weight. But I am also worried about loosing some muscle mass. Its definitely food for thought.

Happy Leftover Day!

It also happens to be "Black Friday" but since the blog is about food, I thought this subject was more apt.

I work at an electronics store, and today was HUGE for us, so we were working solid for about eight hours helping customers. We opened at 5:00 am, had people working at 2:00 am. Since it was so busy, the company bought us breakfast and lunch. Breakfast was coffee (desperately needed) and bagels with cream cheese. Lunch was ham sandwiches from the Honeybaked Ham Store, with chips and soda's and bottled water. Definitely beats the pants off of pizza, and way healthier.

Dinner was, of course, lots of leftovers. Turkey, stuffing, broccoli and potatoes (sweet and whipped). There was also blueberry and apple pies which were amazing yesterday, but the leftovers proved to be too filling. I might sneak out for a midnight slice, but the tryptophan in the turkey will probably freeze me in place for the night.

The dog also had thanksgiving leftovers... If Katie didn't mention it before, we found a can of wet dog food that was basically the doggie version of thanksgiving dinner including turkey, potatoes and other treats. He's a tiny little guy so he didn't eat it all, so the leftovers were chilled and he had them today.

The meal was originally pretty costly as far as dinners go with turkey and stuffing and several sides, but it was all put together by my mother and didn't actually cost us anything as far as I can recall.

Total cost for the day: $0.00