Friday, August 17, 2012

Some food stuff

A few of my culinary creations that I want to remember:

- Eggplant fried in almond flour, with spaghetti squash, tomato sauce, and pork chops
-Balsamic glazed pork chops
- Steak fajita salads
- Chicken in a "peanut sauce" (almond butter, coconut amino, hot sauce, water, salt) with sautéed onions, cucumber, squash, and diced jalapeños.
- Non crumbly almond flour pancakes with eggs and veggies for "breakfast for dinner" flavor

I feel like we eat the same thing a lot, but I'm getting more creative at the same time I feel.  Sometimes you can't get around a good steak and veggies, or a ground beef scramble with veggies.  Avocado and guacamole make everything good.

I went shopping solo for the first time yesterday and I'm liking it so far.  Danny likes to come to pick out steaks, but I didn't do too badly I think.  We always overestimate what we need, and we usually end up losing a lot of our produce and sometimes our meat, which is a terrible sin to me.  So I tried to keep it simple:

- Four cucumbers
- Four green squash
- Four yellow squash
- Four not ripe avocados (Safeway didn't have any ripe avocados in the entire fucking store, I checked)
- Two crowns of broccoli
- A spaghetti squash
- Four sweet potatoes
- A bin of baby spinach
- A package of romaine hearts
- A package of blueberries and a package of raspberries
- Two bunches of bananas (we go through bananas really fast, plus I can freeze them for ice cream)
- 3 packages of guacamole
- A package of pork chops, a package of chicken breasts, 2 lbs of ground beef, 2 lbs of ground turkey, a package of thin steaks for fajitas, and a package of good grilling steaks.

We used to buy a bunch of sweet potatoes and yams, plus strawberries which we never, ever eat.  They would always go bad.  The same with all the squash, it would be hanging out in our fridge forever.  So this is an effort at reducing.

The pork chops and ground turkey I immediately put in the freezer.  Yesterday I cooked all of the chicken and today made the fajita steaks.  Tomorrow I will make a ground beef scramble for lunch, and for dinner I will make the spaghetti squash with meat sauce, plus veggies and we probably split a sweet potato.  That leaves only the grilling steaks in the fridge, which we may end up cooking tonight, which might fuck up all our plans because that will leave enough for breakfast tomorrow, which means that I'll have an extra pound of ground beef to use for maybe a scramble the next morning.  At the very least I will use most of the meat in the fridge by Saturday morning, and then over the weekend we can eat the ground turkey and pork chops in the freezer.

So I guess my point is that meal planning is nice in theory, and I've started to visualize what I'm actually going to make with all the food we get at the grocery, as opposed to buying a ton in bulk and letting a lot go to waste.  I'll probably have to hit the store again on Sunday, if not tomorrow because I neeeeeed almond butter.  I feel really good about the amount of produce we have left - two of each squash, two cucumbers, and all the broccoli.  Plus all the spinach and romaine hearts.

I spent about 200 dollars for about 5 days, which still feels uncomfortably large for me.  I did spend a good 30 on some makeup and shampoo and conditioner, plus other small sundries for the house, so it's not all on food.  But the bulk of it is, and that's mainly the meat.  We're talking about going half in with Danny's brother for a biiiig hunk of cow that we can freeze.  That would probably save some money.  I'd still need to buy turkey and chicken and pork chops, but it would take care of our steak needs (which is where the bulk of our meat money goes) for awhile.

I'm feeling pretty positive about life right now, despite the fact that I think we may have to push Seattle off again - Danny probably needs surgery on his hands, and that's going to take at least a month, so we may just wait until after the new year.  So we'll see.  But in terms of trying to take care of the house more, and eating better and feeling better, I'm feeling pretty positive.

Sweets are still the bane of my existence, and I have some bananas chilling in the fridge for ice cream, but goddamn I want waffles (still on my waffle kick, apparently).  If I had almond butter I'd probably make some pancakes, but ah well.

So anyway.  This is my domestic post of the week.

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