After our recent spending spree, I have vowed to cut back for the rest of the summer, as hard as that may be for me.  One way I was thinking of doing this is to refocus on my grocery budget, that I sort of gave up on the last couple of months.

There are a few website I like to view for inspiration in this department, however many of them tend to make a lot from scratch, of which I’m not great at doing.  I would like to, I just don’t make the time.

I found this blog today, These Mommy Moments, which talks about saving money while still eating healthy.  She shares my gripe about people boasting about only spending $40 a week on food for their family, yet often sacrificing on health in the meantime.  I want so badly to save that kind of money,  yet just can’t find those kinds of deals on the foods we eat.  However, in her post she lists another blog called, The Good Deal Gal.  This blogger does what I often do too, which is to email companies I buy from and ask for coupons.  She has gone one step further however and has listed all the companies she has had luck with!  Score!  What a great list!

So, I’m going to go down her list and start contacting the ones that I like!  So excited.  Looking forward to having the deals hit my mailbox.

Another helpful blog is Bargain Briana.  She has only recently started listing deals for Whole Foods, which is why I subscribed to her site.  She has a great post full of tips on saving money at Whole Foods.  And for those who think that Whole Foods is too expensive, I have priced many items at both Kroger and Whole Foods and Whole Foods is almost always cheaper.  Many just assume that it’s “Whole Paycheck”, when in fact it’s the better deal.  It just depends on the kind of food you normally buy.

Bargain Briana also has a 15 Days of Couponing to help newbies (like myself) through the art of couponing.  Think I need to go study up!

I am also going to have a baking day coming up and start menu planning again (not my favorite thing to do).

Summer is an easy time to save some money with all the fresh fruit and veg growing like mad and waiting to be either picked yourself (from a pick your own farm or out of your own garden).  I will be using my freezer to utilize this time for freezing fruit and veg that I can get cheap and in season.

If you have any grocery tips for saving on healthy, organic foods, please share them!!

I am always looking for new recipes or products to add some variety our meals.  And although I don’t really love to cook…I do love to eat.

It’s hard for me to find big blocks of time to cook with a 3-yr old and a 10-month old, who wants to be held all the time.  He’s such a baby! .   So, I like to find meals that don’t require too many ingredients and take only 30 minutes or less to prepare.

But, they have to be healthy too.  Here are some of my latest finds:

The other night we had Trader Joe’s Vegetable Masala burgers (with Indian spices) with salad and edamame.   These were the first time we had these burgers and they were fantastic!  I’m sure they be pretty easy to make from scratch too, if you were so inclined (which frankly, I am not).  They were very much like bubble and squeak , but with Indian flavor/spices.  I added sweet chili sauce instead of ketchup…yum!  I’m making myself hungry.

Recently, I started receiving emails from Eat Better America and it had these recipes for “Healthified” Mexican Pasta Skillet and Black Bean Pasta Cancun that both looked really good and easy to make (and easy on the pocketbook as well!).

I was also watching PBS the other day (love that channel) and saw this recipe for berry pie.  Considering we love us some berries in this household, we will be making this once berry picking season starts!  I liked this recipe because it has very little refined sugar and instead uses Agave Nectar.

Tomorrow I hope to make a couple of mushroom/asparagus quiches using Gruyere cheese and some bread in my breadmaker.

And although I’m not vegetarian anymore (I was for years), I still like to cook without meat most of the time.  I ran across this blog, Veggie Terrain, and she has some really yummy looking recipes.  I am going to try Crunchy Blue Corn Chickpea Tacos (are you detecting a Mexican theme here at all?) and Cuban Black Beans and Rice (this post actually has a clip from Flight of the Conchords, which is one of my fave shows…so double bonus!).  And it has radishes in it, which rocks since I was wondering what the heck I was going to make with the tons of radishes that Big D insisted on planting.  He doesn’t even eat radishes!?

Also, if anyone has any good, healthy recipes for picky eaters, please let me know!

This post is linking to We Are That Family and Works For Me Wednesday.

I participated in my first Menu Plan Monday last week and it helped me quite a bit, so I’ve decided to do it again.

I did so much blog partying and spring cleaning over the weekend however that I’m getting this post written later than I had hoped!

However, I’ve been thinking about it and this is what we are going to have for dinner this week:

Indian Korma Curry – we like to use these spice packets.  We just add potatoes, veggies (and chicken if you like) & coconut milk and pour it over rice.  Easy peasy.  You can find them in Whole Foods.

Spinach Pesto Chicken Quesadillas

Mushroom Onion Risotto

Burgers and Sweet Potato Fries – (Hubby is going to fire up the grill for the first time!  Woo hoo!)

Breakfast for Dinner! My son loves when we do this with eggs and pancakes.

Chili – leftovers that we didn’t eat last week since we got Chinese instead after our big Spring Clean on Saturday.

Homemade Pizza – well, mostly.  I use Trader Joe’s pizza dough (at $1.19 it’s a pretty good deal) and TJ’s pizza sauce ($1.99 jar covers about 3 pizzas, so not bad there either).  Then I throw on some mushrooms, sun dried tomatoes and peppers.

To see what other people are cooking this week, go to Menu Plan Monday over at Org Junkie!

I’m not very good at menu planning, so in an attempt to get better at this, I’m going to do the Menu Plan Monday thing over at $5 Dinners this week (it’s normally at Org Junkie).

I really need to go to the store, but since I went over on my grocery budget last month, I’m trying to keep it at a minimum this week.  So, I’m going to do my best to make dinners and lunches without having to buy too much at the grocery today.  Though, I have to go and buy some things as we need some basics.

Breakfast

• Cereal, oatmeal with fruit, toast and eggs and mashed fruit/cereal for the little one

Lunch

• Sandwiches or tortilla roll-ups with fruit are pretty much a staple around here
• Sandwich/tortilla fillings usually include Sunflower butter and jam; turkey and avocado; or rice cheese and avocado

Dinner

Not sure what night we will have what…I usually pick what I’m going to cook based on how much time I have available.

• Spaghetti – whole wheat pasta with tomato-based sauce, with veggies that I have on  hand

• Homemade pizza

• Roasted sweet potatoes with cuban black beans over brown rice – one of my fave, super easy, recipes

• Veggie-rice Pilaf – this is a great ‘fridge foraging’ recipe

• Lentil Stew (leftovers in freezer)

• Thai Carrot Soup (leftovers in freezer) – this is one of our fave recipes

• Chili (leftovers in freezer)

Note:  Our three-year old will eat all of these meals except the last three.  He doesn’t like things that he says are “spikey” like Thai or Chili and he calls most soups or stews, “yucky stew”.  Next year I will just say, “oh well, that’s what we are having”, but for now I just make him something different that’s easy.  I just don’t want the fight right now.  Picking my battles.  And the others are still a battle, believe me.

I can’t wait to see what everyone else is having for dinner to so I can get some new ideas and recipes!

I love watching cooking shows, but usually don’t attempt making anything from them (except maybe Rachel Ray) because they are typically far more complicated than I like to get with my limited cooking time and abilities.

On Oprah today (though I only got a watch a little bit) they had three celebrity chefs on showing everyday families how to cook easy, relatively inexpensive meals with a lot of variety.

You can get the meals and recipes on Oprah’s website from Iron Chef’s Cat Cora, Food Network’s Tyler Florence and super cutie Aussie, Take Home Chef’s Curtis Stone.

They all have a week’s menu plan, recipes, some tips and some of the recipes look super tasty.  I’ll definately be giving some of them a try!