Freezer Inventory: December

Here's an update on what's in the freezers headed into the new year (beginning in January, these posts will move to my new blog):

Food This Week 25

Wow - with a whirlwind of holiday with the family and some scheduling mishaps that seemed to shorten the event, I was happy to fall into my bed last night after dragging piles of presents inside from the car. Highlights this Xmas:

• a red cloth coat
• hers-and-hers Sonicare brushes
• 4 large Kilner jars for pantry storage
• a homeowner's journal, in anticipation of our upcoming status
• a fancy rolling pin (for my sweetie)
• roast beast dinner
• turkey dinner
• hiding all of my sister's presents and leading her to them on Xmas morning! (in the garage, on the bookshelf she asked for)

Food This Week 24

Last week saw multiple restaurant meals and potlucks -- the social season is truly upon us! This week's menu includes big family meals at other people's houses, so the meals we eat at home will be fairly simple. Both of us have to work on the 23rd (and my wife works during the day on the 24th), but we'll be with my parents and sister and the extended family for Xmas Eve and Xmas Day.

Food This Week 23

Today I was out in the world so much! I met coworkers for lunch (missed my direct bus, so took a different bus, a train, and a shuttle instead), came back home, and then set out for the eye doctor's a little later. I get to have laser vision correction in a few weeks, it turns out. Yay! Being able to see what (it seems like) everyone else can see! It's a present to myself. 'Tis the season, after all. This weekend is my wife's birthday; she shares it with a friend of ours, so there will be much celebrating! She always gets a separate birthday present from me -- no lumping it in with Xmas. It's driving her crazy that she can't open the box yet.

Food This Week 22

Is everyone surviving their Thanksgiving leftovers? We had more than I'd planned for, which is really a lovely worry. Extra food (a HUGE banana squash, soup, garlic, and packet of ham from my mom, donuts from a coworker, cupcakes we had an expiring voucher for at a nearby bakery) made appearances several times. My wife brought home a whole bunch of extras from her work's catered dinner (she had to work a midnight shift on Thanksgiving), so we've had turkey cottage pie, turkey soup, and plates of plain leftovers for a while. She made a mole de pavo that's on the menu for tomorrow after we run some errands. Everything's been repurposed and eaten or frozen by now, but it will reappear! (Spaced out a bit, though.) I don't think we need anything from the grocery store this week, either. We'll see how boxed mac & cheese tastes with almond milk, which is all I have in the house...

Food This Week 21

Last week my coworkers and I left the office -- they're doing some major construction and we'll all be relocated until the new year. Some people will be working in a temporary office space in the city, but my team gets to work from home instead. So I am looking forward to hot lunches! I hope my hard-working wife will be able to come home to a cooked meal on frequent occasions. And, yes, I will be happy to work in my pajamas.

Happy Turkey Day!

Posting from my parents' place. I was reminded of the holiday this morning, more than once. In some ways, today is just a Thursday I don't have to work. (I hope -- I'm on call in case something catches on fire at work.) But it was nice to wake up and take a walk with my dad and the dog, and then come back to make a big breakfast for the 4 of us (my sister will appear tomorrow, boyfriend in tow).

We'll have an early evening turkey dinner tonight at a local family friend's. Tomorrow we'll be at my aunt's, with about twice the number of people, for Friday Thanksgiving. I made "real" cranberry sauce for that. Hmmph. Oh, and last weekend I made another turkey. Used a pesto rub and roasted it breast-side down, and it was crispy and good. We had a couple meals of white meat, cranberry sauce (from a can! my favorite), and roasted sweet potato fries. Already broke down the bones for stock, and the leftover meat will become turkey burritos, turkey pasta, and turkey soup.

Hope that you're able to take a rest today (amid work, family, and kitchen duties) and appreciate all of your blessings. See you next week!

Freezer Inventory: November

Here's an update on what's in the freezers right now before Thanksgiving:

Food This Week 20

Thanksgiving is here! Almost. We'll be eating a minimum of 3 turkey dinners next week, because the fixings are on sale, and because I loooooove turkey barley soup. This weekend I'll make a low-key turkey dinner and put up the turkey carcass for soup and extra sliced/shredded meat for planned leftovers. On Thursday, which most people in America know as Thanksgiving Day, my wife and I will be with my parents, sister, aunt, uncle, cousin, and grandfather (and perhaps assorted others) for dinner. This is a surprising twist, because my family always celebrates Thanksgiving on Friday (an excellent tradition). We'll be doing that as well, with a slightly different cast of characters -- largely because my wife has to work a double shift. (Customer service is like that.) So I'll have a weekend with my family, and she'll have a weekend of... driving.

Surprise Soup Sale!

I saw my favorite flavor of Progresso soup -- Vegetable Italiano -- on deep discount at Lucky this week.

Food This Week 19

I've resigned myself to exceeding this month's grocery budget, because the holiday sales are so good. For example, this past week I scored a free turkey, but had to make a $25 additional purchase. Specific flavors of Progresso and Chunky soup (which I grew up eating and like to have in the house) were only a dollar a can (down from $2.99), and frozen pumpkin pies were BOGO. I stretched a little. We're getting food that will keep and that we'll enjoy eating, at a good price, and we have the money, so it's worth it to me. Also, did you know that hams are really expensive? I'd never bought one before, but I've been pricing them out at several stores. It helps that I'm getting a 10% discount because I answered supermarket surveys with the info on my receipts. Still over budget.

Food This Week 18

November is Eat at Home month -- no restaurant food until December. The freezer has lots of meats, and the pantry is fairly full, too. With so many holiday deals at the grocery store, I expect we'll have lots of yummy meals. I am especially looking forward to the traditional post-Thanksgiving turkey barley soup.

Goals Check-in: October

Here's my end-of-the-month wrap-up regarding my 2013 goals:

Food This Week 17

Freezer Inventory: October

Here's an update on what's in the freezers (YES! I have TWO of them) right now:

Food This Week 16

I have been enjoying my BEAUTIFUL new chest freezer. It's a smaller model than I had planned on getting (5.1 cubic feet as opposed to 7.2), because the closest store didn't have the first one available. I could have ordered it online and had it shipped to the store, but I saw the smaller one in person and realized that it had plenty of space for our current needs. Given that it would be easier to move, take up less space in the kitchen, and was about $30 less, I thought it was okay to change plans. (Plus the price recently dropped, and because of Sears's Price Protection policy, I got an additional credit when I followed up.)

Food This Week 15

My wife and I are headed out of town this coming week, on a trip to celebrate our first wedding anniversary. I planned it all and managed to keep my mouth shut even when I was dying to tell her (she wanted it to be a surprise), and there will definitely be some yummy restaurants on the itinerary. The meal plan for this week is therefore very simple! Just know that we will be enjoying fresh local foods from our B&B, at least one picnic lunch, and a variety of dinners that neither of us has to cook.

Tomato Overload!

I was surprised by a gardener's gift of green tomatoes: her plants were at the end of their growing season, and she'd already put up 40lbs? 60lbs? (A WHOLE LOT) of cooked tomatoes. Sounds like she's tired of them by now! So when she uprooted the plants while I was visiting, I got the green globes -- and a few half-ripened ones -- that were still clinging (instead of them going to compost). Now what to do with them?

Food This Week 14

Ah, serendipity! When I find myself wanting to make a meal with ingredients I don't have on hand, I add those ingredients to the "when it's on sale" grocery list. Sometimes they sit there for a while, but it reminds me to keep my eye out for a good price on those items, especially if they aren't advertised. This week, when I opened up the store flyer, I knocked off a handful of those ingredients -- one that had been there for about a month, and several that I'd recently added. Guess I can have pesto pasta, pastry, brussels sprouts, potatoes with my pot roast, and apples with peanut butter after all!

Weekend Catch-up

I know this blog's become more about life stuff recently. Groceries and meal planning, frugal living, and personal achievements aren't the only things going on for me right now, but I'm out of library school and there's not much library stuff I can talk about right now. I hope to come back to it in a while. In the meantime, here's what I've been up to this weekend!