The latkes are no more

I had this genius plan to make turkey stuffed cabbage rolls tonight, but I unfortunately ran out of time while working on dessert.  So when I called hubby to ask when he was coming home, he actually answered that it was about a half hour.  Then I looked at the recipe and saw 65 minutes but the steps suddenly seemed overwhelmingly onerous (i.e. boil water, blanch cabbage leaves).  [I can see somebody saying "wun-russ"?]

So in my haste, I decided that the butternut squash mix was going to become quiche in a hurry.  I added two strips of bacon (could have used more), and egg-washed the frozen pastry, then egg washed the top with the rest of the egg, dumping it in.  Baked it for about 45 minutes at 400 F and served it with frozen peas.

Tonight's dinner + hubby's lunch tomorrow = 3 meals

$0.20 = peas (I know that the big itself was $1.99)
$0.10 = onion (it was around half from the butternut squash mix)
$0.49 = eggs (there was some in the mix already and then I used 1 more)
$0.00 = butternut squash (rescued from parents' house as it was getting old)
$0.10 = bacon?  I dunno ... there was only a little bit
$1.25 = one pie crust (I know this because I make a fabulous beef and vegetable pie and always wait for the pie crusts to go on sale for $2.50 each)

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$2.14 / 3 = $0.71 per meal

Wow, it's really exhausting keeping this giant grocery database in my head.
Please don't think I calculate every meal that we eat.  I only do it if I'm really proud of myself and can actually figure it out.  And it's sort of my campaign to prove that you can eat healthily on a tight budget.

Friends of ours came over for dinner this one time, and I calculated it then, only because we usually go out and spend quite a bit with them.  It turned out that I'd spent about $16 for the four of us to eat at our house.  And then hubby played along and guesstimated (all by himself!) how much we probably would have spent had we ordered the same things at a restaurant.

It's so funny - he's becoming more and more Chinese as the months go by.  He knows to save the "good takeout containers."

I was actually quite proud of hubby tonight.  I was all in a huff when he got home because of my dinner cooking plans going off schedule (and off the week's menu schedule too).   And just when I was about to freak out about how this isn't supposed to be my life for where we live, he became Super Duper Husband.

He:
1) did the dishes
2) set up the laundry
3) cleaned our master bathroom 
4) didn't complain at all about having to wait for dinner to be ready
5) walked with me to the library
6) enthusiastically complimented the apple and pear crumble with real whipped cream that I made  AND asked for it as a snack with lunch tomorrow
7) gave me cash so I don't have to go to the bank tomorrow
8) answered all my semi-leading questions with the right answers i.e. do you like not having to worry about food and meals?  Do you like the surprise of finding out what's for dinner when you get home?

Sigh.  Yes, what a keeper.   




This is a get-out-of-me-being-mad-at-you-in-future-card, Husband.

Totally redeemed myself for disaster breakfast. All in a day's work.

I don't know why poor people go vegetarian or eat such crap food.

Dinner tonight for 2 people:  $4.35

$3.00 = Delicious, tender, fall-of-the-bone pork ribs for 2 people ($9/3 since we only ate a third of it; also used slow cooker on high for 5 hours because they were still kind of frozen)

$0.50 = Half a bottle of Kraft Chick'n Rib BBQ sauce used to marinate ribs

$0.10 = Russet potatoes with butter ($0.88/20)

$0.75 = half broccoli bunch

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I say suck it, Swiss Chalet, because that same meal would have cost me something like $15 + tax + tip.

I get really annoyed when "baked potato" is a side option at restaurants.  I'll take the fries because at least I know more labour went into making that than wrapping the potato in foil and flinging it the oven, only for me to dress it up by myself.  I also get annoyed with restaurants that serve ordinary, every day pasta.  It's like art: if I can do it myself, I'm not impressed.  

 

I was going to put a list of really cheap foods that fill you up here, but really, it only boiled down to how I get SUPER ANNOYED at seeing TV shows about obese people in trailer parks.  I just don't understand it.  If you're that big, and eating that much food, then I think you've got way too much disposable income to live in a trailer.  

If you don't have a job, first thing you cut is car and TV cable. So you should spent a lot of time outdoors and walking to wherever you want to go. 

If there's very little space in the trailer, you'd probably have to do a daily grocery run to replenish your supplies.  Even if you drove there, you'd have to at least walk in the grocery store!

You'd probably also want to make your clothing last longer, so if you knew that you could fit two of you into a shirt and make that shirt into two, or use that obese shirt as a towel, that's sort of motivation to lose weight there.

And if you don't have a job, and have bills to pay, then you're probably pretty stressed out, and then the combination of drinking, nervous fidgeting, chain smoking and stress would make you lose weight.  Right?

Yeah ... I just don't get it.  Maybe obese people are just shipped in for those particular episodes.  Unless you say, "You've literally eaten us out of house and home."  Hmm ...

I get all this because I watched one episode of Wife Swap. It just happened to be on ABC when I'd finished watching something on the PVR, and it was like a mesmerizing train wreck.  I couldn't look away.  This obese woman lived with her family in a trailer park with her husband and two sons.  She swapped with this perky family of entrepreneurs where the mom was really into self-affirmations and positive thinking.  The whole family was into salads and exercise, and lived in quite a large house.  So in one challenge, the moms had to prepare the other mom's recipe for a typical dinner.  Obese Mom had a recipe using a whole stick of butter and some pretty super fatty stuff.  And for that segment, I just thought, "Hunh.  Butter's kind of expensive when you use that kind of quantity all the time."

OH ... I almost forgot to tell you that Butternut Squash Latkes Attempt #3 went alright.  Made smaller patties, squashed them down in a smaller frying pan, and letting them set in the fridge helps to maintain the shape until cooking.

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In case you're reading this as a separate page and got separated from the post two minutes afterwards:

I should clarify here that when you read the previous post, it is NOT that I have a dislike of big/overweight people in general. 

But food-related obesity in people other than chefs FREAKS ME OUT.  

With chefs, you can't always trust a skinny one.  With medically-related obesity, patients can't help that.  With food-related obesity, I just want to tell people to walk the fucking 10 minutes to work instead of driving for 1 minute.  Seen it, true story.


(I actually am trying to prevent obesity in this household.  My workout today was substituted with cleaning.  It made me sweat, and I called it a day.)

I’d written something here but now it’s altered because it was boring.

Poopity poop poop.  My whole thing with launching this website early in the year was so that I’d actually be using the web hosting service for which I pay, instead of letting it sit around for half the month.

So it turns out that my web skills aren’t as retarded as I thought.  I started out on a good foot, connecting with the FTP thing, and suddenly this morning, it stopped working.  So half an hour later, the tech support guy says that there’s a problem that needs attention from an administrator, and he’ll call me back in 15 minutes or so.

ANYWAY ... my day is going to be consumed with cleaning my house and pre-cooking for a small get-together tomorrow.  Please don’t feel offended if we didn’t invite you, it’s only because I can’t cook for more than 8 people at a time, and I’m already pushing it at 9 including the two of us.

Hubby is surprisingly easygoing about the amount of entertaining that we do in this house.  Maybe because he knows that every day, his meal is like a practice run for meals that may be repeated for things like potlucks.    He likes the variety of food that he gets in this house because our menu is really dictated by whatever is on sale at the local grocery stores.  I thrive on my frugality, and will often Twitter (@DebChantson) about how much I spent on dinner ingredients.  Last night’s dinner I think was maybe $6 and lasting out until tonight.  The sad thing is that this cabbage seems to be lasting forever.  It’s like a big leafy green bowling ball in our crisper that doesn’t seem to go away.  Hubby has had a break from it for the past two nights, but I think that cabbage has got to resurface or else it’ll go to waste.  And even though it was only CDN $1.50, I still loathe throwing away food.

Once you’re a writer, it seems that it’s hard to get out of that writer/freelancer bubble, which is a good thing since that’s what you were striving to be anyway.  But then you can’t do normal civilian type temp contracts for “a couple of months” because then that takes away from what you actually do that fulfills you and makes you happy.  I’m good at what I do.  The problem is that it’s not as frequent as I’d like it to be at the moment.  I suppose that is why so many writers pay rent and don’t own their houses.

So that is why you will eventually see Google Ads here.  Sorry.  But we all have bills to pay.