Applesauce

A couple weeks ago, Bill and I went to a local orchard and picked our own apples.  We felt a little guilty about doing this when Kayleigh was away at college but quickly got over it and picked apples like our lives depended on it.  We go through a lot of apples in the fall.  We make apple crisp, apple pie, apple fritters, apple cake, etc.  But we might have got a little too excited about picking apples.  We ended up with almost 40 pounds!  We can only eat so many desserts and raw apples so I had to come up with another use.  I decided to try to make applesauce.  I knew the basic idea was just to cook the apples until they fall apart so I decided to take the main flavors from an apple pie and turn it into applesauce.  I knew I succeeded when my mom called me and said that it tastes just like pie!

Applesauce

4 pounds apples, peeled and cut into large chunks

1 lemon

1 cinnamon stick

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup white sugar

1 cup water

Combine all ingredients in a large pot.  For the lemon, juice it into the pot then throw in the lemon peels.  Bring to a boil.  Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for about 30 minutes.  Stir every now and then to make sure the apples are breaking down.  Remove the lemon and cinnamon stick.  Mash the apples using a potato masher.  Store in the fridge or freeze.

I know there are certain apples that are best for eating vs baking vs making applesauce but we really just like honey crisp so that is what we used.

Here we are at Garwood Orchards in LaPorte Indiana picking way too many apples.  Thank goodness it was cold or who knows how many we would have came home with!

Healthy Happy Vegan Kitchen - Cookbook Review

Our lives are a whirlwind of graduation, award ceremonies, resident hall registration with Kayleigh and planning for Bill's return to Tour of America's Dairyland.  On top of all this, we still have to work, do laundry, go to the dentist, etc. so I'm a little all over the place right now.  I knew I wasn't going to be creating any new recipes and probably wouldn't have much time to think about anything really.  So, when I received this book in the mail I thought a review was the best solution to a blog post as well as what we are eating for 2 weeks!

Healthy Happy Vegan Kitchen

I first heard of the author, Kathy Patalsky, when she was in a You Tube video with Eco-Vegan Gal last Christmas.  I started following her channel and shortly after that, she came out with this book.

Before jumping into the details, I'll give my overall opinion.  I tested a lot of recipes in this book and really liked pretty much everything we tried.  I think we will get quite a bit of use out of it.  Kathy's cooking style and taste seems similar to mine which is good but also means that I already created my own favorite versions of the meals included in this book.  But you can always find something new and in this case, there are two recipes that we have already repeated because we liked them so much the first time.  I've also replaced two of my old versions of recipes with hers as our new favorites. These alone make the book well worth the money!  There is nothing fancy here but there is plenty of really tasty "normal" kinds of foods that anyone would like.

One of my favorite things from the start was that this book stays open, no matter what page you open it too.  I hate having to prop cookbooks open.  It is so frustrating!

The book starts with a three part introduction which includes some background information, suggestions for kitchen items (tools and ingredients), and 10 wellness tips.  Nothing new here for me but I always enjoy reading these sections in books, if for nothing else, to be able to make sure I'm not missing out on anything new and exciting.

From there the book has 14 chapters of recipes and a final chapter of suggested menus.  I made something from just about every section.  Keep in mind that we are currently in late spring and the weather is finally warming up so that influenced which recipes we picked,  Plus, for most of the meals, Kayleigh was doing the majority of the cooking.  She had no problem following the recipes except for one night which was not the book's fault and I'll explain below.  Also, it was very rare that we were all home at the same time and everything warmed up well later in the evening or the next day.

Breakfast
Garden Veggie Frittata - I've seen a lot of recipes for vegan frittatas but never tried one before.  We had this the night that we ordered Kayleigh's open house invitations.  That process took 3 hours, no joke, so it was good that this was easy and could be eaten while sitting at a computer.  It also warmed up well the next day at work.





Easy Cheezy Hash Browns - The morning I made these, I was absolutely starving.  This was actually my third breakfast.  I love hash browns and nutritional yeast and these were definitely easier than frying hash browns but the taste was just OK.  Not bad, but not very memorable.




Pretty in Pink Lemonade Parfait - Really depends on your strawberries I think.  It was good but I think it would be better later in the season.  It's still a little too early for strawberries here.  I only have a picture of the pudding ingredients in the blender for some reason.





"Save the Day" Toast - This was breakfast number two on that same day.  Yum, yum, yum.  I wasn't able to keep my banana in long slices but it was still delicious.  Obviously, I made two!

Bakery
Maple Bar Baked Donuts - They are donuts and the picture in the book was so happy looking, we had to try these.  We might make the frosting again but we didn't find the donuts to be too thrilling.  Kayleigh  tried adding sprinkles to hers to perk it up but she could taste the bananas too much.   I was just kind of underwhelmed.




Sandwiches
Chipotle Tofu Sandwich - We had this on a night that I wasn't expecting Bill to be home.  Then it rained and he got to eat a big slab of tofu!  In his defense, he tried it and managed to eat about half.  That doesn't normally happen.  Kayleigh and I love tofu and both liked this but thought we should marinate the tofu first next time to get more flavor in it.




Burgers
Turmeric Hemp White Bean Burger Patties - Dinner this night was just me and Bill.  We both liked this.  The last thing we need are more burger recipes but we got one!






BBQ Peanut Burgers - I loved this.  I'm a big fan of BBQ anything so this made me happy.  I ended up putting extra sauce on mine but Bill ate his plain.







Veggie Sides

Roasted Beets with Ginger and Citrus - Bill heard that beets help you recover after a bike ride so he keeps asking for them. Therefore, I jumped on this recipe because I was getting tired of plain roasted beets.  These were pretty easy and a nice change.

Cakes Balls and Fritters

Green Island Fritters - Mine weren't really fritters because I baked them.  Bill and I thought they were OK.  These are Kayleigh's kind of thing but she had to work that night so I'll have to make these again sometime.  They were really crumbly but not in a bad way.  It mimicked the texture of fish fritters.

Salads
Maple-Mustard Raw Chard Salad - Another recipe that only Bill and I tried.  Bill was pleasantly surprised because he doesn't like chard.  It was somewhat bitter but went well with the rest of our meal.  I took the leftovers to work the next day and they were terrible.  Definitely much better when fresh.





Farmhouse Ranch Chickpea Peach Salad - I couldn't find any peaches so we used mangoes instead.  None of us are big on salads but we all really liked this.  Creamy dressing and chickpeas make a salad much better!







Blueberry Farro Spinach Salad - As I was preparing this post today, I came across this recipe and decided to add it to our dinner.  We were working in the yard and Kayleigh had a friend over so I was very distracted and completely forgot about the almonds.  They sound delicious but it was still really good without them.




Bowls
Cajun Tempeh Sweet Potato Bowl  - Here is the big winner in this cookbook for us.  This is also the recipe Kayleigh somewhat messed up just because she didn't read it all first.  She didn't realize two sauces needed to be made before making this recipe.  Luckily I got off work early and so we had time to get it all done and it ended up going faster than we thought.  We both loved this recipe.  Bill didn't eat until after 10 that night so he had the leftovers and really liked it as well.  Actually he liked it so much, a few days later he asked to have it again.  It was just as good the second time around.  Kayleigh and I had it on couscous, Bill on rice.

Appetizers, Sides, Snacks, and Party Platters

Pink Beet Walnut Dip - More beets so I had to try it.  I made pita chips to go with it and we liked it but I don't know that I'll make it again.  The texture bugged me a little.  By the way, we didn't think it tasted like beets or walnuts so that may be a plus for some people!

Entrees

Favorite Vegan Mac and Cheese - This recipe is well named because, after trying at least 10 million vegan mac and cheese recipes, this really is our favorite.  It is super creamy and warms up well the next day.






Lemon-Pepper Fettuccine Alfredo - Vegan fettuccine Alfredo is another thing I've tried over and over and this is the first version that I've liked.  Kayleigh also enjoyed it.  I want to make this again for Bill to try.  This warmed but surprisingly well at work. ( Yes, I forgot to take a picture until I was almost done with dinner!)




Spicy Peanut Soba Noodles with Veggies - Here's our big dud.  Kayleigh and I have a great fondness for peanut sauces but something was off with this one.  We ended up throwing it away and making something else.  I don't know if we did something wrong or it just wasn't too our taste but this was a giant no for us.  Plus I forgot to take a picture so it was a bad night all around.

Soups
Rainy Day Tomato Soup - I already had a favorite tomato soup.  This one is better!  I had a picture but it didn't look anything like in real life and, really, it is tomato soup.  Everyone knows what that looks like!

Desserts
Kathy's Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies - These are now Kayleigh's favorite. This was the first thing I made and last night I revealed to her that I had froze a couple cookies.  She was ridiculously happy!  They didn't actually taste like chocolate chip cookies to me.  I'm not sure how I would describe them but they were good.




Soft Ginger Molasses Cookies - Ginger and molasses?  I have to try them!  Very good, as expected.

Peanut Butter Brownies - I knew I had messed this up somehow when the recipe said to "pour" the batter into the pan but I had to press mine like a pie crust!  I continued on though and they actually tasted good even though I don't think they were at all what they were supposed to be.  Still haven't figured out where I went wrong.






Drinks, Sips and Smoothies

Watermelon Frosty - I remember watching one of Kathy's videos where she talks about putting frozen watermelon in a smoothie.  My thought was "there is no way I'm buying a watermelon, chopping it up, and freezing it".  Then Kayleigh's friend stayed the night and she likes watermelon so I ended up buying one.  Since I had it, I figured I may as well freeze some of it and try this smoothie out.  Seriously?!?!  I've now bought two more watermelons and have had this almost every morning since.  I can't even describe the taste other than to say it is delicious and perfect for the warm weather.


For The Kids
This is the only section we didn't try anything from.  More evidence that my kid is now officially an adult.  I feel old.  Better go make more chocolate chip cookies to cheer me up!

Potato Salad

A few weeks ago I came up with several ideas for blog posts so I put the ideas on little post it notes and scattered them through my calendar.  Unfortunately, that did not motivate me to post.  Instead I kept moving the stickers forward until pretty soon, my calendar looked like this:

Despite all those ideas, I decided to post something else today.  Last week I had a terrible stomach thing which resulted in a day of resting and recuperating.  I wanted some kind of potato which usually means baked fries (that's on one of those post it notes for a future post!) but this time I wanted something different.  Maybe I should get sick more often because I threw this recipe together and I've been obsessed with it ever since.

This is what one pound of potatoes looks like.

It is super easy so I've been able to give in to my obsession and have it almost every day!  I even have time to make this in the morning before work.

Tastes better than it looks.  Not the most photogenic recipe!

I hate to call it potato salad because it is so much better than a normal potato salad but in the end, that is really the best name so I'm stuck with it.  I found that I like this better at room temperature than straight out of the refrigerator but both ways are good.  This serves one person if that person is me and it is lunch time!

Potato Salad

1 pound small Yukon gold potatoes (or your favorite - a few days ago I used a combination of all the left over potatoes in the bottom of our drawer).

Boil until a fork easily pierces them.  Usually about 20 minutes.

Mix together in a large bowl:

2 T Dijon mustard (I've also used sweet and spicy mustard which was delicious)

1 pickle spear, thinly sliced

2 T pickle juice

When the potatoes are cool enough to handle, slice them and add to the mustard mixture.  You want them to still be a little warm so they soak up the flavors better. Add salt and pepper to taste and then mix everything up.  If it seems too dry, add more pickle juice.  Let chill for at least 30 minutes.  

If this is too vinegary for you, add about a tablespoon of vegan mayonnaise.  Personally it is perfect for me without the mayo but I love mustard and pickles.

Spicy Tempeh Sandwich

This is going to be a quick and easy post for a quick and easy recipe.  I came home to a completely stressed out Kayleigh and we literally threw this together.  We all loved it and I've been craving it ever since!

Spicy Tempeh Sandwich

1 tablespoon oil
1 package of tempeh, sliced thin
1 red bell pepper, sliced into thin strips
1/2 cup hot sauce similar to Frank's Red Hot (we used the Aldi version)
2 tablespoons vegan margarine

Heat the oil in a large skillet and cook the tempeh until it is lightly browned.  Add the peppers and cook another 1-2 minutes.  Stir in the margarine and hot sauce and cook until the tempeh and peppers are coated and everything is heated through.  Serve on hamburger buns.

Chickpea and Kale Piccata

I'll start off by saying that I'm not sure if this is a piccata or not.  I was calling it that but then I realized that anything with capers and lemon juice, I tend to label as piccata.  I really should research what that actually means.  Oh well, it was delicious, and I loved it, and that is the name I have in my head so I'm sticking with it!

The great thing about kale is it holds up well which makes the leftovers perfect for lunch the next day.  It might turn a little olive green because of the lemon but it tastes just as good as the night before.

Chickpea and Kale Piccata

4 tablespoons vegetable broth (for sauteing)

1 cup sliced onions

6 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped

2 1/2 cups vegetable broth

1/2 teaspoon ground thyme

3 tablespoons capers

2 cups chickpeas, drained and rinsed

4 cups kale, chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

Juice of 1/2 a lemon

In a large skillet, saute the onions in broth until they are soft.  Add the garlic and cook for 1-2 minutes.  Add the vegetable broth, salt, pepper and thyme and bring to a boil.  Reduce the heat slightly and cook for about 5 minutes.  Stir in the chickpeas, capers, and kale and cook until the kale is wilted, about 5 more minutes.  Remove from heat and squeeze lemon over the top.  Serve on  mashed potatoes.

Our Pantry is Empty! What We Learned From No Spend March

We survived a month of "no spending".  Overall we spent about $150 in groceries and only paid our regular expenses.  We didn't buy anything extra or spend any money on entertainment.  Although we weren't able to keep our weekly groceries under $20, we did pretty good.  Here are some of the things we learned through the month:

The Italian and Mexican shelves suffered the most!

• Things last a lot longer than we thought.  The whole month I thought we were going to run out of ketchup and my facial cleanser but we never did.  Turns out I was really bad at judging how much is left in the container.
• Meals can be easy, quick, and cheap and still taste really good.  We went back to our old favorite recipes and remembered why they used to be our favorites.  We didn't get bored at all although by the end of the month, I was craving more fresh vegetables.
• You can survive a month without peanut butter and all purpose flour but not tamari.  We ran out of all of these the first week but the tamari is the only one we bought in March.  
• The world doesn't end when you pull the last non-dairy milk carton from the closet.  I always have at least 4 or 5 cartons in the closet so that I never run out.  By the last week, we were on the last soy milk but it lasted and I didn't even have to skip a smoothie.
• Speaking of smoothies, it is fantastic having a month's worth of greens and bananas in the freezer.  I'm going to buy those in month-long quantities from now on instead of every week.
• Lemons and limes make your life happier.  We ran out of both mid-month and our meals suffered.  
• There is something very satisfying about seeing the food in your pantry actually decrease.  It made me just as happy as when I would see it fully stocked.

Overall it was a really good experience and worth the time and effort.  We saved a lot of money and learned what to buy and what not to buy.  There are a lot of pre-made sauce kind of things still sitting in the pantry which we obviously don't like so I am determined not to buy them ever again.  Bill and Kayleigh were very supportive through the whole thing and very patiently waited for April to arrive!  

Potato Tacos

For some reason I thought I already posted this recipe.  I'm assuming I had planned to back when my life was absorbed with studying and never got around to it.  While looking through my posts to make sure it wasn't a repeat, I noticed we eat a lot of Mexican food.  Not real Mexican food, but our strange version of it.  It is so easy to turn vegan and it is generally inexpensive so that meets our main food criteria.  Plus we really like it.  So here's another one.

This recipe comes with a free tip that I learned from the always useful Internet.  Aldi's sells jalapenos in a bag of about 6-8.  This always seems like a great deal to me and I can't help myself from buying the bag instead of the one jalapeno that I actually need.  Then, of course, at the end of the week I'm left looking at a mostly full bag of jalapenos just waiting to go bad.  My solution is to mince and freeze them.  This is obviously a good idea but leads to terrible, burning hands caused by chopping way too many hot peppers at once.  Usually I was my hands, wait a little bit, and I'm fine.  The last time though, I was a mess.  The pain was actually getting more and more intense.  Out of desperation, I had Kayleigh type "how to stop hands burning from jalapenos" into Google and she came up with the crazy solution was washing your hands in cold water and mustard.  This seemed very weird to say the least but I was desperate so I squirted some plain old mustard into my hands and washed them.  I kid you not, the burning stopped immediately.  Amazing.  I also smelled like hot dogs all day!

I adapted a recipe from "Color Me Vegan" by Colleen  Patrick-Goudreau.  Several year's ago I received this as a birthday present and we spent weeks trying recipes from it.  It got to the point where we'd be checking out at the grocery store and Bill would say something like "So I guess we are doing purple this week?"!

Potato Tacos

2 cups sweet potatoes (1 inch dice)

2 cups Yukon gold potatoes (1 inch dice)

1 cup onion, diced

2 red bell peppers, diced

1 jalapeno, minced

1 clove garlic

2-4 tablespoons vegetable broth (or water)

Salt & pepper

Hard shell tortillas

Toppings such as salsa, guacamole, cilantro, etc. (doesn't really need any toppings in my opinion)

Using a steamer, steam both kinds of potatoes until soft but still holding their shape (10=15 minutes).  In a large skillet, add 1 tablespoon broth and saute the onion and peppers until soft.  Add additional broth as needed. This takes about 10 minutes.  Add the garlic and cook one additional minute.  Add the potatoes to the skillet and season with salt and pepper.  Cook until all ingredients are well blended.  Slightly mash the mixture so that it somewhat sticks together (to make an easier taco  filling).  Place into taco shells and top with your chosen toppings.

Steamed

Sauteed

Mashed

Tortilla Pizza (or what to eat when everything goes wrong)

We've had to get creative several times this month as we attempt to limit our grocery shopping.  One meal, in particular, really challenged us.  I had planned pizza.  Usually I make my own dough but I had a mix hiding in my pantry (I think it came in a subscription box but can't be sure).  It was supposed to make two pizzas so we decided to give it a try.

I mixed it up first thing in the morning.  It looked like a tiny puddle of nothing but I covered it as directed and waited.  3 hours later, nothing had happened.  Maybe the yeast in the mix is old?  We added a sprinkle of yeast and waited some more.  By mid-afternoon it was obvious this was not going to turn into pizza.  No problem, There's still time to make our regular pizza crust... Seriously, is this all the flour we have??  Great.  Thank goodness for tortillas!

We have often made quick lunch-time pizzas using tortillas.  The nice thing is that they are individual size so everyone gets their favorite toppings.  For Bill and Kayleigh that is basically cheese.  For me it is a variety of sauteed vegetables.  This time I used mushrooms, onions, spinach, olives, and garlic.  I meant to add artichokes but completely forgot.

But wait, we weren't in the clear yet.  I heard my daughter say "where's the pizza sauce" and I wanted to scream.  How can we be out of pizza sauce?  Probably all those lunchtime tortilla pizzas!  No problem.  We grabbed anything that sounded like it would make pizza sauce and mixed it together.  Shockingly, it worked!

What a ridiculously easy and yet exhausting meal!!

Panic Pizza Sauce

1 can diced tomatoes with juice

1 can tomato paste

1 tsp oregano

pinch of crushed red pepper

1 clove garlic

1/2 tsp onion powder

Salt and pepper to taste

Mix it all together and mash the tomatoes a little.  If you don't want any chunks (like Kayleigh) blend it.

Tortilla Pizza

Flour tortilla - any size but smaller usually works better

Pizza sauce

Toppings of your choice

Assemble the pizza on a pan or stone.  Place in a 425 degree oven for 10-15 minutes until tortilla becomes slightly browned.  Slice like a pizza and eat.  

Oh, and that pizza dough mix didn't go to waste.  I added tons of whole wheat flour to it until it kind of formed a ball and then made bread sticks.  They were ridiculously salty so I guess it was a good thing we didn't use that for our crust.  Further proof that homemade is always better.

March Grocery Challenge Update

Just to recap, our goal for this month was to spend $100 the first week and then $20 each of the remaining weeks.  Along with the groceries, we've tried to spend less on other things as well.  I didn't realize how much impulse buying I was doing lately until we tried this experiment.  So many times I've been tempted to run out and grab something but then I stop and think about if I really need it.  So far, every time the answer has been no.  There may be a few items that we end up buying next month but nowhere near what we would have bought if we weren't doing this.  So that is good and hopefully we've all broke some bad shopping habits.

As far as the grocery part of the challenge is going, it hasn't been as good as I hoped but not too bad.  On March 7th I sent my husband to the store with a very short list.  He didn't pay any attention to what he was spending but came back with $23.16 worth of food.  Even though that is over the budget, it isn't too bad.  We would have been well under except we discovered the first day of the challenge that we were out of tamari and that wasn't going to work for a month so he got that.  He also got 3 bags of cheddar cheese because it was on sale.  That will keep in the freezer so that's OK.

The beets and beet greens provided 3 side dishes for the week and there are still two beets in the fridge.  Nothing was thrown away this week so - Hurray!

On March 14th, my mom had asked us to run to a store in a neighboring town for her because that is the only place that carries the soy milk she likes.  That's when I made the terrible decision to just buy all our food there.  My list was so short that I thought it would be fine.

Well, all I can say is it's a good thing that list was so short (and that I forgot to get the salad dressing and Kayleigh had leftover rolls) or who knows what we would have paid!  Also, they didn't have Kayleigh's yogurt so we still ended up going to Meijer.  I'm having major buyer's remorse!  Our total came to $27.22 (including $1.79 for Palmolive to clean my husband's bike).  Hopefully we do a little better the rest of the month.

Here's the breakdown of our purchases:

3/7 all from Meijer
2 bunches of beets with greens                 $3.98
Yogurt                                                       $2.69
Mushrooms                                               $3.99
Ham                                                          $3.50
Tamari                                                      $3.00 (on sale)
3 bags of Cheddar                                     $6.00 (on sale)

3/14 from local grocery store except yogurt (Meijer)
Palmolive                                               $1.79
1 bag iceburg salad                                $2.49
2 bunches of broccoli                             $5.98
2 heads of cauliflower                            $5.98
Ham                                                        $3.00 (hmmm... surprisingly cheaper than Meijer)
2 loaves pumpernickel bread                 $5.98
Yogurt (Meijer)                                     $2.00 (on sale)

Spanish Grains

We are about half way through our March grocery challenge.  The main focus of this month is to reduce our grocery bills but a side effect I was hoping for is that we'll use up some of the items that have been sitting around for way too long.  Last week I was looking through some of my mom's cookbooks and I came across a recipe that uses quinoa, amaranth, and farro.  I have all of those items and, while we use quinoa all the time, the other two just sit there on the shelf.  I'm sure I had something in mind when I bought them but I have no idea what it was!

The recipe I found had a lot of steps and created a main dish.  Tonight with dinner I was wanting something similar to Spanish rice but with other grains so I borrowed the cooking directions for the grains and then went from there.  This turned out to be the perfect side dish to have with our enchiladas and I'll definitely be making this again.

Spanish Grains

1/4 cup quinoa, rinsed well (I had tri-color but regular quinoa cooks the same)

1/4 cup amaranth

1/4 cup farro

2 cups vegetable broth

1/2 tsp salt

1 can diced tomatoes with chilies

Combine the broth, quinoa, amaranth, and farro in a medium saucepan.  Bring to a boil and then partially cover and boil for about 20 minutes, stirring once or twice.  Lower the heat to medium-low and add the tomatoes with their juice.  Continue to cook until all the liquid is absorbed, about 10 - 15 minutes more.  Taste and add salt if needed.

I wish I had thought to take a picture of it on my plate but I was too hungry so all I have is the picture of it cooking.  The can of tomatoes was also from our pantry.  We had bought it at Whole Foods and it was tomatoes with jalapenos and cilantro.  A can of plain diced tomatoes with a can of diced chilies would work fine too. If it isn't spicy enough for you, you can add some chili powder when you add the tomatoes.

OK I didn't think the cooking picture did it justice so here is a picture of it in the leftover container.  Not much better, but a little!

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March Grocery Challenge

Instead of making New Year's resolutions like everyone else, I seem to always challenge myself in March instead.  Last year I picked several items such as drinking a glass of water every morning and parking in the back of the parking lot at work to do every day for a month.  This year I had already mapped out an exercise and food challenge but then I got a better idea.

Now that I don't have to spend all my spare time studying, I seem to have a lot of extra time. Through February I used most of that time to declutter our house.  When I first mentioned this, Bill and Kayleigh looked at me like I was crazy because they didn't think there was anything left I could get rid of.  But there was!!  I cleaned every room, closet, and drawer upstairs.  The basement still hasn't been touched - maybe next year!  But during this process I realized that we really have a crazy amount of food.

I have two big pantries in the kitchen and 3 other cabinets and a drawer that we keep food in.  We also have the refrigerator/freezer as well as a separate freezer downstairs.  All of these are packed full but somehow that wasn't enough space so I took over the closet in one of the spare bedrooms as well.  Is this really necessary?

So, to help us get through some of this food as well as to save us some money (college is creeping up quicker than we'd like) I came up with the idea of not grocery shopping for a month, kind of.  We are used to eating a lot of fresh vegetables and we each have specific foods we rely on that I didn't want to eliminate.  It was meant to cut back our stash, not make us miserable and unhealthy.  So I decided that we would have a $100 grocery trip to get enough of some items that we use all the time for the month.  We weren't allowed to stock up on random things though.  Although Bill and Kayleigh both readily agreed to this challenge, I didn't feel it was fair to make Kayleigh change her lunches.  Every day she takes the same lunch (warning - it is pictured below and will make all vegans scream in horror - I've learned to just not think about it!).  Plus we can't live without any fresh vegetables for a month.  So each week we can spend up to $20 for her lunch items and 2-3 fresh produce items.  If there is enough money we can also use this for bread items depending on what is planned for the week.

Earlier this week I planned out a month worth of meals and the grocery list for the beginning of the month.  Today we went to Sam's Club, Aldi and Meijer.  Here are our results:

5 bunches of bananas that will be frozen once they ripen for my breakfast smoothie, 2 bags of flour tortillas, 2 2-pound bags of carrots, 1 bag tostada shells, and a 5-pound bag of Cuties.

5 boxes of hard shell taco shells, 4 soy milks, 3 almond milks, lasagna noodles, jumbo pasta shells.

15 pounds of baking potatoes, 10 pounds onions, 5 oz baby arugula, 2 8-oz bags of baby spinach, 1 pound baby spinach, 1 pound kale medley (all greens are frozen for my smoothies), 1 head iceberg lettuce,

2 loaves wheat bread, 2 baguettes, 2 pounds garlic (there were 21 bulbs in there!).

For Bill - granola bars that he eats for breakfast and iceberg salad.

And here is Kayleigh's horror of a lunch:

Brioche buns, yogurt (from a cow) and (yes, that is a deli bag) ham, What can you do?

Those are Kayleigh's favorite buns and they don't always have them so we bought one bag for this week and one bag to freeze.

Our total spent was:

Aldi                 $20.23
Sam's Club      $48.54
Meijer              $35.46

TOTAL           $104.23

Not bad.  If we hadn't got the second bag of buns we would have been good but that is money we will not have to spend another week.  I was hoping Sam's would have big bags of greens but they didn't.  They did have all that garlic, though, that wasn't on my original list.

So we are off to a good start.  We'll see how this goes!