grocery shopping

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Grocery Report and Dinners This Week

Something happened today that has never happened before: Carla got a ride home from school with a neighbor. 

(I will pause here to note that I have extreme anxiety about my child traveling in cars with anyone besides a few specific people. Outside of school bus drivers – shudder [and now I feel like I need an aside inside my aside to clarify that I think school bus drivers are saints, and my shudder is not toward them but towards the idea of complete strangers driving a seatbelt-free vehicle full of children on a freeway] – and the occasional hotel shuttle driver, Carla has ridden with a literal handful of drivers. So this was A Big Deal in many ways.) 

I took this glorious opportunity to avoid the school pickup drive and… went to the grocery store. I do know how to live it up, don’t I? It was one of those times when I just needed Two Things For Tonight’s Dinner. I wanted to use up the leftover goat cheese from yesterday’s frittata (which was easy and delicious; the only thing I might change going forward is either choosing a more flavorful sausage or omitting the sausage entirely, because it was undetectable) and the only thing I could think of was a salad. But I wanted blueberries for the salad and also we had no lettuce. So! I figured I could breeze in and get those two things and then breeze out. 

It never works out that way, does it? Have you ever gone into the grocery store, intending to buy only X items, and left with only X items? If so, HOW????? Once I was inside the grocery store, I decided this was IT. I was not going to go to the store again. I went twice last week, plus I went to Costco, and that was too much. So I figured I better on-the-fly come up with a meal plan for the week. 

Let’s see. We have all the ingredients for the meal I planned to make for Mother’s Day dinner, and then decided against in favor of takeout Mexican food. My husband recently expressed a desire for Southwest Salad, and I’m plenty happy doing two salads in a week. I could go for a stir fry. And… something else vegetable-y. 

Here’s what I ended up with.

Dinners for the Week of May 12-18

  • Slow Cooker Shredded Beef Ragu: All the ingredients are in my fridge right now (Well. The pappardelle is in the cupboard. You know what I mean.) because I was hung ho about making this for Mother’s Day and then when it came time to make it… I did not want to cook dinner.
  • Southwest Salad: I make this with chicken for my husband, salmon for myself.
  • Sheet Pan Veggie Shawarma: I have some cilantro from something last week just languishing in the fridge. Hopefully it will survive long enough for me to make it into this sauce.
  • Szechuan Stir Fry: I got zucchini and bell peppers for this stir fry, and I have some broccoli in the fridge I can throw in as well.

Wow. All of my meals start with S this week. That’s fun. (Is it?)

Okay, back to my riveting grocery store experience.

I was really fortunate in that a) I had a lot of the non-perishable ingredients for these meals already and b) I didn’t need a ton in the way of “staples.” But I still bought two bags worth of groceries, for a total of $85.60. That’s probably about half of what I typically spend – maybe even less than half – but it feels like an impossibly small haul of food for that amount, doesn’t it???

The single most expensive item in my cart today was a bag of frozen Italian meatballs for $9.49. This is one of the items of questionable nutrition my child will eat, and we were out. Chicken was next most expensive at $8.09 for three boneless skinless breasts, approximately 1/3 of a pound each. 

The third most expensive item, at $7.99, was the pint of blueberries I bought. I cannot help it; I am addicted to these blueberries. They are enormous and so sweet. I just cannot get enough of them. Of course, they last about five minutes in my home. But it is WORTH IT. 

The dairy stuff we get is super expensive, and we go through it so fast. We drink Fairlife milk ($5.49 for 52 oz) because it supposedly is kinder on some people’s digestive systems, and some of those people live in my house. We eat Fage yogurt ($6.99 for 32 oz) like it’s the fountain of youth because it is so versatile and so high in protein. 

I also got three individual Siggi’s yogurts ($1.00 apiece, on sale) and a package of honey roasted pecans for tonight’s salad ($3.99, yeesh), but the entire rest of my shopping cart was produce. I feel pretty good about that. Which is not to say that I feel BAD when my cart is full of canned beans and pasta and cereal and other packaged food. I just felt like I really overshot my “Two Things” plan, and at least I impulse bought a bunch of veggies, right???

Of course, there was no corn on the cob for the Southwest Salad, and who knows if the two heads of lettuce I got for tonight’s salad will leave enough lettuce for the second salad. So clearly I need to return to the grocery store despite my promises to myself. 

How much do you want to bet I leave with just the corn and the lettuce????

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Dinner Adjacent Topics + Desultory Dinners This Week 

Dinner Topic the First: My daughter has made friends with a family on our street that has three kids. Occasionally, she will be playing with the kids and the kids will be called into dinner, and Carla will get kind of swept up in the mix and end up eating dinner there. This has happened… hmm. Three times? Four times? I’m not sure. I always say yes because a) whatever gets Carla jazzed about eating dinner is okay by me and b) I like the idea of Carla getting exposed to what other people eat and how other people “do” dinner. 

Anyway, the kids were playing this weekend, and Carla brought one of the neighbors in to use the bathroom, and the neighbor kid asked quite cheerfully if she could stay for dinner. 

Well. It was nearing five pm and I had no dinner cooking, and in fact had no dinner planned. Carla was busy offering the neighbor some chicken nuggets when the other kids rang our doorbell and said their sister had to go home for dinner. (Carla ended up eating leftover salmon, edamame, and rice for dinner. I had a microwave meal; my husband had leftover spaghetti with meat sauce and an English muffin with peanut butter. Clearly the neighbor child didn’t miss much.)

When the kids rang the bell, it was five o’clock on the button, by the way. Even on the rare occasions when I have specified a time for dinner, I usually give myself about a thirty-minute cushion because I am so unbelievably terrible at estimating how long things will take to prepare, cook, and serve. 

I was thinking, this morning, about how unbalanced it feels that Carla has been over to their house for dinner multiple times and yet we haven’t had their kids over for dinner once. 

The thing is, it will never be spontaneous. I could never just, on a whim, have people over. People DO this, I know they do. But I feel completely off-kilter just thinking about it. A big part of it, I think, is the specific way we typically “do” dinner. Which is to say: I make something for Carla that I know she will eat, and I also make a completely separate dinner for my husband and myself to eat. We have been better about eating together as a family, but there are still many, many nights when Carla eats at 5:30 or 6:30 or somewhere in that timeframe, and then my husband and I eat dinner at 8:30 or 9:00 after Carla is in bed. 

This dinner style doesn’t really lend itself to having surprise extra people at the table, you know? 

Anyway. I do try to have lots of snacks in the warm weather months (note to self: get more snacks) so that the kids can come in and grab a snack when they’re playing, and it isn’t always Carla depleting the neighbors’ snack supplies. But I think having them over for dinner would have to be planned, in advance. Maybe the next time I plan to make tacos I should invite them over? But that would mean making double the tacos, right? Because I would have to invite all three kids, right? And what if they don’t want to come over? 

Dinner Topic the Second: I am still reeling a little after spending just shy of $200 at the grocery store today. The amount isn’t wildly out of the ordinary, by the way. I was just rather shocked because I have only two dinners on my meal plan this week, plus “ham sandwich,” and I already had nearly all of the ingredients for one of those meals already. So what exactly did all that money BUY?

We eat a ridiculous amount of dairy, I think that’s the main culprit. My husband eats yogurt daily, I make a smoothie with yogurt and milk daily, my daughter eats yogurt confections for dessert (I tolerate them because they have some protein and calcium in them) and continues to drink hot cocoa on the regular. We all adore cheese. Half and half is a necessity. Yogurt is not cheap, folks! Sure, the stracciatella yogurts were on sale for a dollar apiece, but I bought EIGHT of them. (Carla only recently learned that they are delicious. I was eating them for dessert, and now I have to share them with her.) Okay, I was curious, so I added it up and $71 of my total bill was devoted to dairy. The cream cheese was $6.99 a 16-oz box, the Fage was $6.99, and the Fairlife milk was $5.49.

Tea was also on sale, so I got three boxes. I drink a lot of tea, but I also have writing partners who come over and drink tea with me, so I need a wider variety than I might otherwise have. 

Carla requested “meat sticks” and then specified that they be “the red Chomps.” Fortunately, the red Chomps were on sale, so I got a bag of small ones for $6.99 and few of the large sticks at a dollar apiece. 

Usually when I spend a big hunk of money at the grocery store, it’s because I’ve purchased a lot of meat. Like when chicken is on sale, I buy a bunch of it. But the only meat I bought today was a) two on-sale hamburger patties for Carla ($4.88), b) a half-pound of ham ($5.60), for my husband’s ham sandwiches, and c) ten grilled shrimp ($10.56) for the pasta primavera because I am sick of chicken. (The shrimp, by the way, were the single most expensive item on my grocery list. Prepared foods are so convenient but so spendy.)

Let’s see. Tortillas, beans, and chocolate chips were all on sale, and we tend to eat a lot of each of those things, so I loaded up. I bought broccoli for… some fleeting reason that has since been left behind. No worries; I’ll eat it. Eggs, powdered sugar, cream cheese, butter, carrots, and (ew) golden raisins are for my Easter baking projects. Lettuce and onions because I use those things regularly. Jalapeños for a recipe, green beans for Carla. Tomatoes and bananas are for Carla snacking purposes. I bought apples because I am in the mood to make muffins. (My writing partner always has home made muffins for us to munch on while we write. I’m feeling some 100% self-inflicted muffin guilt, which I will address with muffin reciprocity.) Kind bars were on sale, and they have a good amount of protein, so I will stow them in my car for those days when I am in the car during mealtime. Nutella because Carla loves Nutella. Canned pumpkin even though it turns out I already had two cans of pumpkin in my pantry. Rolls for my husband’s ham sandwiches, hamburger buns for Carla, and sourdough bread because Carla is on a toast kick. It’s not nothing, that’s for sure, but is it really $200 worth of food???

I still need to procure lemon curd for the cupcakes this weekend, and coconut milk for the curry I’m making later this week. Trader Joe’s should have both, hopefully at lower prices than at my regular grocery store. 

And what dinners will I make with these groceries, you ask?

Dinners for the Week of April 14-20

  • Pasta Primavera with Shrimp: My husband is not excited about this meal and may be less excited still once he realizes the protein is shrimp. I am looking forward to all the veggies. 
  • Coconut Curry Chickpeas with Pumpkin and Lime: This was my husband’s request; I am not looking forward to it, although we’ve had it before and I like it okay. As is my custom with curries and stir fries, I will add bell peppers to amp up the veg quotient. And maybe the random broccoli I bought?
  • Ham Sandwich: One night this week, I am going on A Fun Adventure with a friend, which I am very much looking forward to, and I am leaving Carla and my husband to fend for themselves, dinnerwise. Hopefully the ham stretches to cover a few additional meals this week, as well. 
  • Easter Dinner with My Parents: A meal I do not have to cook! Cannot wait! 

What’s on your meal plan for the week? Do you have A Specific Time when dinner is on the table, or are you loosey-goosey like me? What was the single most expensive item you bought on your last grocery run?

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Saturday Randomosity: Oh By the Way We Went on Vacation Edition

Oh hi! It’s the weekend and it’s AUGUST. The second weekend in August, in fact, even though that seems impossible on multiple levels. We just got back from vacation and are not fully adjusted back into Real Life. Let’s have some randomosity, shall we?

  • Perhaps you recall that Carla accompanied me on a recent grocery store trip. My policy is to pretty much say “yes” if she points out a food she wants to try, although I reserve the right to limit the number of sweet things I let her put into the cart. I kept close track of the things she actually ate from that trip. 
    • Extra Sharp Cheddar Cheese: I am pretty sure this is still unopened. But that’s because we left town for a week. She did eat most of a giant block of cheddar that was in my mother’s fridge, though.
    • Demi Baguette: Carla ate half of this baguette in the car and the other half for dinner. 
    • Chobani Flip Cookie Dough Yogurt: She ate all but one before we left on vacation.
    • Watermelon: I kept reminding her it was in the fridge and she kept saying she would eat it and then… it went bad. SIGH.
    • Fully Cooked Bacon: I think she ate four slices immediately and then forgot about it.
    • Black Seedless Table Grapes: She ate some of these, but not all of them. I consider this a half win. Next time, I will take my grocery store at their word that we can take a smaller portion out of the grapes bag and buy that instead of an entire huge molds-before-we-can-get-to-it amount.
    • Crepes: She has been eating these pretty regularly, both before and after our trip! She put sliced strawberries in the first one, then moved on to Nutella. (I tried one, too; I found a recipe for a lemony yogurt spread to put inside and it was so awful I couldn’t finish it. The crepe was good though.)
    • Golden Berries: I washed the whole carton of these little guys and ended up eating a few. They had a texture I don’t love, but the sour-sweet flavor was enjoyable enough to override it. Carla ate ZERO. This may be my fault, though; when I ate the first one, I mentioned it was sour, and then she kept asking me if they were as sour as WarHeads. She LIKES WarHeads, so I don’t really know why “sour” would have been a deterrent, but maybe she doesn’t like sour fruit?
    • Raw Slivered Almonds: This container remains unopened in the cupboard.
    • Wax Beans: Carla ate about half of these before we left. Next time, I am going to buy fewer than AN ENTIRE PACKAGE.
    • Ham: Carla ate the entire quarter pound of ham!  
    • Protein+ Spaghetti Noodles: Carla has made several pots of spaghetti noodles.
    • Wholly Guacamole: We still have a whole package left, and I ate at least half of the other package myself. 
    • Cookie: Not eaten on account of walnuts.  
  • Our vacation was lovely and relaxing. We had a mix of rainy days, during which we stayed inside and did things like read and watch movies, and sunny days, during which we went swimming and boating and hiking. On our last hike, Carla managed to attract a dog. This is much more surprising than it sounds, considering the nearest neighbor lives about a mile away in the middle of a very isolated and remote forest. Leave it to Carla to find a dog wherever she goes! The other highlight of our trip, for her at least, was a bird that fell down the chimney into the wood stove. The four of us had to team up to remove the bird (who was sooty but flew away, seemingly unharmed) and Carla thought it was The Best Thing Ever. 
Lake time.
Front yard.
  • Carla and I have been getting into hair styling videos. I have never been Good At Hair. My hair has been pretty much the same style since high school. I can form a rudimentary braid, I can pull it back into a ponytail, I can stuff it into a claw clip. That’s really the extent of my hair styling abilities. So I’m always intrigued by videos on Instagram that show Super Easy Ways to Braid! I have saved a bunch of these videos but have not tried any of them. Carla tried a braid on me the other day. She decorated it with those little plastic rectangles you use to close a bread bag. Slay. 
  • Another recent purchase was a big hit, though. My daughter is always asking, “What does that mean?” when my husband and I use idioms, so I got her this book to explain what a bunch of common phrases and sayings mean and where they came from. She LOVES IT. Oooh – it looks like there’s a whole series of these books! Maybe I need to get her another one for Christmas or Hanukkah?
  • My “vegetable garden” is finally producing some vegetables. Tomatoes are starting to ripen, peas are podding, strawberries are somehow surviving the birds. I have only had ONE LONELY ZUCCHINI. Next year, I think I will plant multiple zucchini plants and only one cucumber. I don’t really LIKE cucumbers, and the two cucumber plants I planted have been prolific and weird. One of them produces round cucumbers. The little card that came with the plant has a picture of totally normal oblong cucumbers on it… so I’m not sure what I’ve done to produce globular cucumbers. I’m just letting it do its thing. 
Zucchini and a normal cucumber.
Why is it round and why is it yellow???
  • Speaking of plants behaving oddly… Do you remember a million years ago when I was complaining about the state of my front stoop? Well, I buying a couple of little evergreens that I LOVE. I bought them from the same garden center, on the same day. I planted them in identical pots, at the same time, with identical soil and fertilizer. I have watered them identically. And yet… one of them has done rather poorly. 
Tree on the left: thriving! Tree on the right: has given up on life.
  • I am thinking about starting a beef with our FedEx driver. Is that the correct way to say that? “Starting a beef”? Sounds more like prepping dinner than I intended, but oh well. We have a front door with a covered stoop and UPS and the mail person leave packages there. This is nice, because they are protected from the elements, plus we know that someone left a package there because we have a video doorbell that alerts us. The FedEx driver does not leave packages on the stoop. He leaves them by our garage, right out in the open. Which is why we did not know that a package my in laws had sent us – full of fun gifts and snacks from Europe – had been delivered until the next morning, when my husband went to work and found the box in a mess of candy wrappers. Some grateful raccoon mistook our package for its own, broke in, and ate every single edible thing within. 
  • Do you know a Cat Lady for Kamala? A friend of a friend created this coloring book and I am in the mood for a little giveaway. Let me know in the comments if you (or someone you know) are interested in having this coloring book, and I’ll choose a number at random and send a copy to the winner! 

That’s all I have for you today, Internet! I hope your weekend is off to a great start!