Filled with a sea of middle school students, we hosted a discipleship weekend for our church. There was plenty of great food, junk food and miscellaneous food still to be determined, but it was a blessing to share life with these kids for two days.
Our last week has been a whirlwind of activity and I am so anticipating life slowing down.
After April, many of my leadership responsibilities and activities are wiped “clean”, and I can breathe with absolute nothingness for three months. I can then try some recipes that are a step above my typical “comfort/feed your belly food.” But for now, that is what I know and do well, so I’ll stick with it. Since I completely fell asleep with my daughters last night and didn’t budge for WAY TOO MANY hours, I didn’t finish loading all the pictures and recipes that I had planned, but I will…someday.
I am slowly working on a recipe addition to my site, so that you won’t have to guess where you found my latest creation. Excited about this feature is an understatement, but it is taking a LOT of time to go back and rework my recipes into separate posts. Beware if you see a bunch of recipes come through your reader; it will be worth it in the long run.
Check out what I have so far. It’s not much, but they are coming, and the photo feature is the highlight. Mathematically, if I can do one a week, it will be ready by…ah…next year. 
hee hee
Onto our meals for the week.
Breakfasts this past week were:
The above yummy and very easy breakfast casserole, cheesy scrambled eggs, fried egg sandwiches on bagels, cereal, oatmeal, toast in the car on the fly (yes, real life)
Lunches consisted of quesadillas, burritos, pizza, cheesy noodles, make your own sandwiches, and fruit salad. (I get so many requests for this recipe which cracks me up. Don’t tell my secret….mix in strawberry yogurt to the fruit. So delicious and beautiful.)
Dinners consisted of only four sit down meals together for dinner. Lots of activities were happening this week, so some of the meals were eaten when kids got home.
The pride of my dinners was this gourmet addition below…;) Obviously, I am jesting, and laughing that I am sharing this photo, but in real life sometimes just getting things on the table supersedes anything else. This would have been an easy night to justify some costly, convenience item from the store, but taking a few minutes to stop and think saved us probably $20.
The cost of this meal? Literally, probably $1 for all of us. In the crock pot, I cooked up six pounds of sausage links that a friend had given us. Typically, I never purchase these, so my boys loved snacking off of them all week whenever they were hungry. The rice and cheese concoction came from my stockpile when I purchased frozen veggies for anywhere from Free to only $0.50, and the biscuits were free during a major sale.
Other dinners were spaghetti, chicken casserole, pork tenderloin, Pot Roast which made three meals spread out throughout the week – traditional, beef shredded onto sandwiches, and then I made soup. So, even though I used the same “base” meat, each meal tasted very different.
So again, by keeping track of my expenses, and shopping from this weeks grocery budget, we have eaten well, eaten a lot, and kept the cost of our eating to a minimal.
How have your meals come along this week? Anything you’ve tried differently to help with organization or budgeting?
Don’t forget to go check out what Kate and Toni are doing in their kitchens this week….we’re all in this together.
{ 1 comment }
Jen, you really are an inspiration. It’s wonderful to see how just a bit of planning can save so much money. And if you can do it with your busy schedule and a big family, we can all do it!
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