More posts about food

Let's see, last time I posted on my food shopping we were at $138 for the week. We went to KC over the weekend and probably spent another $30 on food to bring to DW's folk's house. So that brings the total to $168, which is $18 over.

KC has a supermarket with a pretty large kosher meat section, so we stopped there on Monday morning before driving back. I really went in to get this fake shrimp that we like, we have a recipe for fake-shrimp and tofu in ginger and black bean sauce, but the stuff costs like $9 here so we never by it. In KC it cost $7, which is still ridiculous but better by comparison. So I bought 3 of those, that should keep us for a while.

I also bought some hotdogs, some sausage, some cold cuts and a sandwich for the ride. I made a special effort to avoid Rubaskin's, which I'll explain in another post. Total - about $58. This is obviously not all for this week, so let's amortize it for the month. $58 / 4 = $14.5. That means my food budget for the next four weeks is 150 - 14.5 = 135.5.

Then the meal planning: we didn't make the garbanzo/shroom curry or the abba mac'n'cheese, so they went back on the schedule; then I found a veggie burger goulash recipe in the Linda McCartney book that looks reasonable, and a portabello mushroom and polenta with red pepper relish thing that I found in veggie cookbook that looks really good.

So today I did the main shopping at Dillon's. I bought a box of boca burgers to replenish the pantry for what I'm using in the goulash ($3.50 per box of 4 on sale). I bought the stuff for the portabello thing but then realized that maybe I shouldn't have - the ingrediants for the relish (tomatoes and peppers) is out of season and expensive. If I buy fresh tomatoes at this time of year (I usually only use canned) I'll only buy organic because conventional tastes like cardboard, so you see the thing added up.

So what do you do when you bought stuff for a meal that's too fancy? That's right - Shabbat! So that's our special Friday night meal for the week. But I'll have to make the relish in advance so the tomatoes don't go soft.

The total for the shopping trip was $101. Add $14.5 = $115.5. I still need some tofu and yogurt which is a health food store purchase, and I also reckon I'll spend may $15 or so at the farmer's market tomorrow. So I'm more or less on target, but do have to come up with one more meal for the week that basically only uses things we have in the house. We do have some potatoes that have started to sprout...