More homemade Peanut Butter cookies with a ready cup of milk.
Cookies and Milk
The peanut butter cookies are still going strong. I’ve baked at least one cookie sheet a day since I mixed up the batter on Monday. Still have more batter in the fridge too. We’re enjoying PB cookies and so are our friends, postman and auto mechanic. Home Food to share…it doesn’t get better than that!
Challenge 8: Getting Schooled On Grocery Prices
Glad I kept some money aside for necessary purchases during the week because we ran out of milk (probably because of the cookies). Thanks to the Hunger Challenge I’ve started comparing the prices of the basics like the 1% milk I purchased today. The results surprised me. Prices last week varied considerably at my favorite stores:
Half Gallon 1% Milk
Fred Meyer $1.59
Safeway $1.69
Grocery Outlet $1.79
I’m a careful price-watcher, but this one got by me. Until now I’ve been thinking that the discount store, Grocery Outlet, would be the cheapest, because they are cheaper for so many items. Well, I’ll be.
My price notebook and the basic tools to get the best prices.
Why does this matter? We use at least a half-gallon of 1% milk a week, often more. At a price difference of $.20 each this means a potential savings of a least $10 a year by always buying the least expensive choice. I wonder how many of our usual items have this kind of price differential? From now on I’ll be using the little notebook I started to record price comparisons for this Challenge.
Final Shopping Tally; total spent $58.68
Bought a Safeway bakery baguette ($1.29) for dinner tonight with the milk ($1.69), at a total cost of $3.08 Spent $55.60 earlier in the week for a total spent of $58.68 This leaves $1.32 from my original $60 budget for two people. Not enough for a cup of Starbucks coffee. Oh well.
Day 4 Meals: A Culinary Stutter Followed by Cuisine Rapide
Because we were going out, I had to swap around today’s menu plan with Friday’s so we could have a fast dinner tonight. That meant a culinary stutter, the same breakfast and lunch today as yesterday. Hey, they’re favorites, so it worked out. Breakfast was oatmeal with raisins. Lunch was grilled cheese sandwiches with orange slices.
A fast dinner: Grilled chicken on Assiago topped baguette. Garden salad topped with creamy avocado lime dressing.
Dinner was a fast fix: grilled chicken sandwiches on fresh Assiago cheese topped baguette and a green salad. I’ve found that these fresh supermarket baguettes ($1.29 Safeway) make a very nice dinner sandwich with a little mayo, lettuce and tomatoes to go with the chicken.
Made a new flavored mayonnaise salad dressing. This one contained a mashed avocado ($.69/ea), a juiced lime ($.25/ea), a minced garlic clove ($.34/head) and a little milk.
Avocado Salad Dressing:
http://www.bestfoods.com/recipe_detail.aspx?RecipeID=2401&Version=1
The bread loaf was actually larger than we need for two sandwiches, so I’ve frozen the remainder to make croutons for future soups or salads. Freezing is necessary because this bread is lovely and moist when fresh, but it will dry out while you are looking at it. No preservatives maybe? I wonder.
I Heart George Forman
Cooked the chicken on our large George Forman Grill with the removable grill plates. It has to be one of my favorite cooking implements. Have already worn out two others with non-removable plates; this one is the best. It’s fast and does a fabulous job, especially with vegetables like peppers, mushrooms and sweet onions. Fish and chicken are really good too. I’d take this appliance with me to a desert island if the island had electricity.
March 28, 2011 at 6:00 am
[...] my go-to girl. I made her peanut butter cookies for the fourth day of the 2010 Hunger Challenge http://dhomefood.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/thursday-12810-day-4-learning-cuisine-rapid-fast-food/ and they were great. If it’s possible, her oatmeal cookies are even better. I learned [...]