Wednesday, February 13, 2013

St. Valentine's

Here is what i made for son 1's class. So cute! Son 2 didn't want them for his......

Monday, February 4, 2013

January 22nd to the end...

I cannot tell a lie. This was by far my poorest performance in the Eat at Home Challenge and I'm very disappointed in myself. It's not even that we ended up eating out it's that I forgot to take pictures of my meals (more often than not), I didn't find time to try new recipes as I normally do during challenge month, I didn't blog often enough and we ate an awful lot of leftovers from the freezer which were often too repetitive or too boring to mention.
I do have a few things to report in the last week though...one night Paul cooked butter chicken sausage from our local market with sautéed shrimp, saag (a curried spinach dish) and pickled mango chutney.
Another night I made a pork & broccoli stir fry plus I've recently discovered a love for home made cooked oatmeal. This had apples in it with a blueberry syrup drizzled over top...YUM!
Though we didn't exactly end the month with a bang, we did start February off well by contributing home made treats on Superbowl Sunday. We made a cooked tex mex dip (1lb ground beef browned with 1 packet taco seasoning and 7.5 oz of tomato sauce, 1 can refried beans, 500ml sour cream and 200g shredded Kraft Habanero cheese). Layer in a 12x8" flat dish in the order above and cook at 325 until bubbly. Eat with tortilla chips!
I also made a flourless chocolate torte with white chocolate raspberry buttercream and dark chocolate ganache since one of Paul's friends is gluten intolerant. Lastly, I made a giant chocolate chip cookie and decorated it with PC Dark Chocolate Sundae Sauce using a piping bag.
Hooray! I finally did some creative cooking/baking. Too bad it was in the wrong month!







Saturday, February 2, 2013

RoundUp: Park Household

Well on the first day of Feburary we did eat out.  Nathan went to his coveted Tim Hortons and had a donut.  He was so happy and it was so delicious.

All in all we did fairly well.  With two incidences through the month.  The first was when I went to the movies and had popcorn.  Movie popcorn is irresistible.  And then this week I had to go to Medicine Hat for a student and stay over night.  Well I ate out then too.  Darryl suggested I get a frozen dinner or cook something in the coffee maker, but I enjoyed a delicious dinner out.

Thanks everyone for participating and for lots of new good ideas and recipes. It was a hard month, but if I remember correctly it usually is.  But it does get me in the routine of planning ahead.  Having snacks in the car is important as well as bring snacks where ever we go.  It probably where we spend most of our eating out money.  When we aren't prepared but hungry.  Not very often do we "plan" to eat out.  It happens more out of hunger and necessity. 

One interesting thing of note is Darryl and I use Mint.  It's an online/app money management system.  I LOVE it!  Keeps all your banking together and helps you manage a budget.  When we first signed up it looked at average spending and set a budget for us.  If you are looking for a new way to manage your money I highly recommend it.  One of the interesting things about it is that our budget for Coffee Shops (which includes my Davids Tea) is 120$, Fast Food is 140 and Restaurants is 120$.  So in total last month we saved: $380.  That's huge.  And I did spend 39$ extra on groceries but still that's lots of money saved.

Jenn 
 

Blogger Templates by Blog Forum