Cheap Eats

Well, too bad I decided to start doing the food blog soon before we went on a trip to Europe. We've been saving (and X-ing the calendar) for what seems like forever leading up to this, but we still planned to do a grocery spending freeze as part of the last month of savings plan.  We basically ate every food out of our freezer, refrigerator, and pantry. Even the chicken broth, all pasta, and frozen veggies that had been there for maybe years. I have to admit only half of the freezer bag was edible because of all of the excess freezer burn. Anyway, it's all worth it, and I'm hoping this down to the wire saving allows me to come back with some cool souvenirs. I specifically want to find some cool street vendor or market paintings/sketches that we could take home and frame later of beautiful scenes that my camera won't be able to do justice for.

Anyway, we'll be gone for 10 days, so no cooking for that whole time! I'll have to post pictures from our food over there....and yes, sadly that will be about half of my pictures. That IS a lot of the culture to me. I just like to dive in and eat/drink/do what they do over there. I'll try the weird stuff, but I'm thinking that I won't consider anything weird...just YUMMY!

So, here was one of our last "clean the pantry/freezer" meals before Europe and Matt made an ordeal of it. It was sweet because I had come home from a LOOOONNNNGG day at work. Not bad, just a late one, so I was starving and this concoction hit the spot! :)

Macaroni and Cheese takes over

      *****this picture is not of my from the box dinners, but I thought it was pretty:)
          
This week was a macaroni and cheese week. It was interesting. Sorta weird. I went to Kroger on Sunday after a baby shower I went to, and I was feeling nauseous for some reason, so NOTHING looked good. I got what Matt eats for lunches, but nothing looked good to me, so I couldn't bring myself to buying any of our normal foods. I ended up coming home with Matt's stuff, numerous boxes/assortments of macaroni and cheese, and hot and spicy pork rinds. Yes. Disgusting and strange, I know.

Seriously, I went down the mac and cheese area and bought no two like items. I got the off brand box kind, the velveeta 2% fat box kind, and then four different types of individual mac and cheese meals: white cheddar, triple cheese, original (all kraft), then 1 velveeta. Matt thought I'd totally lost it. I can't even try to explain. It was like I passed out and came home with a lifetime supply of the goodness.

So, we ate that all week.

Plus, Matt went to the grocery store (probably disgusted with my purchases), and bought a few things he could make. One thing that was good was freezer food egg rolls. They were good.

This week has been a go out for lunch week, too. When I wasn't eating mac and cheese for lunch, I had sushi with my group at work, then today we celebrated one of our old co-workers being home by going to her favorite Memphis spot, Huey's. She lives in Baltimore, now, so it was a treat!

Then, tonight Carrie had a CA-bi party, and I got to eat her good food for dinner. There was chicken salad, spinach/artichoke dip, chocolate covered strawberries, and a vegetable tray. I was all over the dip, and the chicken salad is so good. I need that recipe to share.

Anyway, that's it for now! It was a lazy 64 cent meal week (yes...one of the off brand boxes was 64 cents)

awesome.