Triple Clicks

Saturday, May 12, 2018

Meal Planning and Budget Shopping For May/June

It never fails.  The grocery list price always hurts and I think it's getting bigger even though it doesn't seem like we are eating any more than we did a few months ago.  

If I put a recipe up and you're interested, please let me know and I'll share the recipe.  I forget so much, but I'll stick a reminder on my computer if I know somebody is interested... 

So the meal plan...   

Breakfasts are pretty normal.. I found a yummy cinnamon roll recipe that freezes them, then you thaw the night before-also uses the bread machine to mix the dough making it super easy on me.   

Saturday lunches we have Hawaiian Fajitas, meatball subs and smoky maple mustard fish fillets. 

Every other Sunday we do pizza for lunch.. the weeks we do pizza, we have BBQ Ranch Chicken Sandwiches for supper (mini hoagie buns from Sam's are surprisingly low in carbs!!).  The other Sundays we do hot sandwiches from a fast food restaurant for lunch with chips and drinks from home, and homemade pizza for supper.  I found a pizza dough recipe that uses the bread machine that we are loving.  One recipe makes two pizzas for us as we prefer thin crust... For now we are using regular cookie sheets, but round pizza pans are on my list so I can pre-make the entire pizza before hand and have them frozen.  

Weekday lunches aren't changing too much... I did find an entire turkey in the deep freezer, so that's going to meet the slow cooker and the kids and I will do something with it.  Along with Peanut butter and jelly with homemade bread (I'm really loving this bread machine). 

For snacks I'm making cookies (I freeze a bunch so they are not just sitting out on the counter), fruit, popcorn, we'll get ice cream like we usually do in the summer, and I'm hoping to find teddy grahams and m&ms cheap at Aldi's to make a popcorn trail mix for something different. 

Suppers...  Everything is on a repeat this month, so there's not that many different ones. 
Dorito Taco Salad
Honey Mustard Chicken, Bacon and Avocado salad
Teriyaki Marinated Chicken with broccoli
Simple Mexican Chicken with homemade refried beans
Easy Parmesan Chicken with broccoli and roasted potatoes
Five Spice Tilapia with fried rice
Slow Cooker Honey Garlic Chicken with bacon green beans and roasted potatoes
Garlic Chicken with salad
Oven BBQ Asian Chicken with fried rice


Ouch.  That shopping trip was painful. In more than just the sore back way.  Dennis isn't feeling well so he sat in the car with kids while I did the shopping.  He's not allowed to do that anymore. :/ lol 

Now I will say in my defense that I've never actually looked at the total pounds of chicken we use... This month I bought the pre-frozen chicken breast (10 lbs for $18, cheaper for us than buying it from the butcher counter like we usually do)... So while before I could write down on my list how many breasts I needed then count how many are in a package and get however many packages...  But this time I had to go by weight... so I made a guess and got 20 pounds of chicken... Which still seems like a lot of chicken, but I would have rather had extra than not enough.   

Also in my defense I point you to the baby belly, which was unchecked in the store lol... so in Aldi I grabbed a few extras-hey, they looked good! And Dennis should enjoy them, too.  I also picked up some sandals that were originally marked $30 and were $8.99.   Can't go wrong with that, right? Especially with my swelling feet not fitting into ANYTHING (yes I'm milking these pregnancy symptoms for everything I've got).   

That was really all the extra I picked up..  Ok ok, we spent $3.50 on a dozen donuts.  But cinnamon rolls DO get old lol.  

Now, we already have earned $2 back from the savings apps I have-Saving Star and Ibotta.  We're waiting on receipt verification from the rest, which give us points that are particular to the app, we have to earn so much to get a payout.  

Ok.  So... for the damage.  $683.71


Now that you've picked yourself up off the ground...  Yeah.. It's painful.  I'm REALLY hoping that chicken will last us a few months.  I also completely forgot what I was going to type... So...  



Have a good week! 

~Tabitha

Thursday, May 3, 2018

Oven Barbecued Asian Chicken with Fried Rice

So we're trying a lot of new meals this month.  One of the ones even the kids loved was this Oven Barbecued Asian Chicken.  

It had dawned on me that as we were going through planning meals... we forgot to plan sides.  OOPS.  I did pick up potatoes and frozen broccoli-but there's some things you just don't want potatoes and frozen broccoli with.  Like this.  So I took to Pinterest and found a fried rice recipe

As if I wasn't wary enough about making Asian food, I had to throw in fried rice on top of it.  But you know what? IT WAS GOOD.  Good enough we're doing again tonight.   

Some of these ingredients we failed to find at Walmart..even though the website said they had them.. I don't know if we just couldn't find it because we were looking in the wrong spot, or if we couldn't find it because it was the last store and we were exhausted and a little worried about the impending blizzard.  So it's what we went online and found.... The fried rice I left out some veggies, the eggs (due to allergies in the family) and I didn't have some of the sauces... So we just left them out.  

I'm also told there is a better alternative to the soy sauce that has the same flavor... So since this meal is definitely going in the rotation-we'll be keeping that in the house now.  It's called Braggs Amino Acid.  

Oven Barbecued Asian Chicken 

1 bunch scallions
1/4 cup hoisin sauce
1 TBSP reduced sodium soy sauce 
1 TBSP minced fresh ginger
1 TBSP minced garlic
1 tsp Asian hot sauce, such as Sriracha, or to taste (I use red pepper flake)
1/4 tsp Chinese five-spice powder
4 bone in chicken thighs (1-1 1/4 lbs total), skin removed, trimmed (nope.. didn't trim it)
4 chicken drumsticks (1-1 1/4 lbs total), skin removed, trimmed (again.. nope.. didn't trim it... 
1 1/2 tsp toasted sesame seeds 

Preheat oven to 350. Coat a 9x13 inch baking dish  with cooking spray.
Thinly slice 1/4 cup scallion greens; set aside. Mince the white. Whisk the scallion whites, hoisin sauce, soy sauce, ginger, garlic, hot sauce and five spice powder in a large bowl. Add chicken and toss to coat. Arrange the chicken in an even layer in the prepared baking dish, meatier side down. Pour any remaining sauce from the bowl over the chicken.
Bake, turning once halfway so the meatier side is up, until an instant read thermometer inserted into the thickest part without touching bone registers 165 F, about 1 hour (or let it cook an hour, cut into it near the bone and hope it doesn't bleed lol).  Transfer the chicken to a serving platter and top with any remaining sauce from the baking dish. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and the reserved scallion greens. 



Now-this could easily be a freezer meal. Put the coating and the chicken in a ziploc bag and shove it in the freezer, thaw then throw it in the oven. Or, if  you don't want to freeze it, you could make it the day ahead and just have it ready to go in the oven..

We also used the leftover sauce to go on the fried rice... Mmmmmm yummy. 


Now.. I'm told (from the blog I got the recipe from) that cold rice makes the best fried rice.  So, you could easily make your rice a few days ahead of time.. The fried part only takes about 20 minutes-so start on that when you turn your chicken halfway. I'm going to leave out the ingredients I didn't use.. So this is an egg free recipe.. But just click on the link to get the original recipe.

Fried Rice
3 TBSP butter, divided 
2 medium carrots, peeled and diced
1 small white onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/8 tsp each salt and pper
4 cups cooked and chilled rice
3 green onions, thinly sliced
3-4 TBSP soy sauce, or to taste
1/2 tsp toasted sesame oil (I used avocado oil since that's what I had-but I next month we're getting sesame oil)

Heat 2 TBSP butter in pan until melted. Add carrots, onion, garlic, salt and pepper. Saute for about 5 minutes or until the onion and carrots are soft.  Increase heat to high, add in remaining 1 TBSP of butter and stir until melted.  Immediately add the rice, green onions and soy sauce, stir until combined.  Continue stirring for an additional 3 minutes to fry the rice.  Remove from heat and stir in sesame oil until combined.  


Honestly, I was more than a little wary about my cooking abilities with this one... I've tried Asian foods before and they've never come out great.... So I was really excited when this one was yummy.  


Enjoy! 

~Tabitha

I also just realized I forgot to get a picture... But I promise it looked and tasted yummy!