Well, I’m here to report on what Kyle and I have been eating! You may have noticed we post our meals quite frequently on Facebook 
We used to go all out, meaning super gourmet, non-healthy and expensive meals, but for about 6 weeks now we’ve been eating healthy and being cost-conscience!
First a little bit about the cost-conscience part. We admittedly do not have a set budget, but have found that we spend about $60 a week, and that includes a $4 bouquet of flowers, and drinks. We plan our menu on Sunday or Monday and Kyle does the shopping on his day off (Tuesday) and hits Aldis first and then Martins. I really don’t know if $60 is a low food budget, but we feel good about it. Here are two things that help us keep food costs down (not revolutionary, just sharing!):
1. keep waste down: we’re careful to not buy produce too far in advance, and the produce we do buy we clean and store appropriately to help it last longer (don’t just leave green onions in a bag, clean them, trim them and put them in a container with a dry paper towel). Also, we try not to buy things that we don’t foresee using frequently, like spices, we try to use fewer spices creatively rather than always buying every spice that a recipe calls for. We’re also digging into our pantry and building recipes around stuff we have, for example, I brought a lot of rice into the marriage (haha) so we’ve been enjoying rice, and not just at lunch or dinner, but even at breakfast!
2. figure out what you like and where/how you can get it cheaper: example 1 – we like high fiber, low calorie, english muffins and we can get them at the “Bakery Thrift Store” (where name brand, short-dated foods are sold for cheap!) for $1 (package of 6) vs. the $3-5 that they cost at the grocery store. example 2 – we love having bagel and lox for breakfast (except instead of a bagel we use the aforementioned english muffin) and instead of buying an expensive piece of smoked salmon, we can buy a tub of smoked salmon trimmings at Martins for $4 and that lasts us 2-3 breakfasts. example 3 – we LOVE the house dressing at The Down Under (a restaurant in Syracuse) and for a couple weeks we bought a to-go container of it once a week for $7. Well, Kyle has since created our own version of it that is delicious and it involves a $2 bottle of salad dressing from Aldis, a squirt of anchovy paste, and some fresh herbs (parsley or cilantro)!
Alright, now onto what we’re eating. Here’s a few of the meals we’ve made in the last few weeks. Our goal is healthy, quick and easy!
We have salad before every dinner.
Blackened Chicken w/ Brown Sugar Rice: chicken breasts fileted, sprinkle both sides with blackening seasoning, heat a cast-iron skillet on medium high (just use non-stick spray, no oil), cook each side till the chicken comes loose from the pan (about a minute a 1/2). cook white rice and add a pat of butter and Splenda brown sugar to taste. This was an awesome meal, we absolutely love blackening seasoning and have been putting it on everything! This recipe also works with fish (maybe even better!) and tonight we had it with sole filets that cost $1.50 total!
Grape Tomato and White Bean Pasta: got this recipe out of a Weight Watchers cookbook, it was tasty, easy, healthy and cheap! We substituted fresh basil in this recipe for prepared basil in a tube, that way we could get some longevity out of it.
Black Bean Burgers: another AMAZING recipe (and SUPER cheap!) from the Weight Watchers cookbook, first time we ate them on hamburger buns, but next time we’re going to skip the carbs and eat it on its own, it had a very mediterranean flare because it had cumin in it.
That’s all for now!
So we ate at A Constant Spring… It was good bar food, but still bar food. Oh well, what mattered was spending time with my best girls!
