It's been over a month since I last wrote a Takeout post. Summer ended and the new school year started. We have new routines now. I knew this was going to change and that's partly why it was hard to continue this series. I used to have to cook completely on Sundays because I was out of the house between 9:30am-2:00pm most weekdays and that only left me 1-2 hours before I had to start teaching. My schedule now is actually quite the opposite. That same block of time is when I am actually free, and most days, at home.
This shift has brought about some changes to our household - some good, some bad. Good: I no longer have to mass cook a week's worth of food on Sunday afternoon for 3 hours. Bad: I'm getting lazier about meal planning and sometimes, the day's food plan comes on a whim.
This week's food was definitely on a whim. We got home on Monday after being out of town for the weekend. We thankfully had some leftovers courtesy of a friend which turned out to be a meal life saver. For ease of this blog that will not be counted since I didn't buy/make it. On Tuesday, I went grocery shopping for some last minute ingredients to finish a recipe I was making. Along the way, I found some bargain finds which turned into more meals for the week.
This is probably the epitome of my "lazy food" from this entire year. Honestly, it kind of feels like a treat for us because we don't eat like this very often. So while I do enjoy nice homemade cooked meals, sometimes the lazy food is fun 😛.
Here's our food for the week:
Clam Chowder (7 servings @$7.00/ea): $49
Sandwiches (4 sandwiches @$5.00/ea): $20
Pizza: $8
Total: $77.00
Tax: $6.35
Grand Total: $83.35
PIZZA
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| Take and Bake Pizza |
The pizza was a bargain find from the grocery store. I bought two and put one into the freezer. The other one was in the fridge for us to eat sometime this week. Sometime this week turned into 5 hours later. This pizza is a 12 inch pizza. The kids ate about half of it by themselves and then I ate a few small slices as a second dinner after working. We ended up with 2 slices leftover in the refrigerator which will probably end up being a meal for one child. I paid less than $8 for it but we're assuming this was a takeout price which is why it's priced accordingly.
CLAM CHOWDER
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| Clam Chowder |
This is the only truly homemade item on the menu for this week. I decided to make clam chowder because we had a surplus of potatoes I needed to use before it became expensive compost. The recipe I use is one I wrote down a long time ago when we first got married. I can't find the exact one on the internet anymore but this one comes pretty close in terms of ingredients and proportions. We don't have fancy bread bowls at our house but some toasted bread goes along way with this chowder.
SANDWICH
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| My daughter's sandwich for lunch. |
I don't know about you but sandwiches are kind of a treat for us. We don't eat them often, and when we do, it's usually when we go out of town. I ate them all the time during the summer as a kid and got super tired of deli meat between bread, but now as an adult, it's a nice change from hot meals.
I found deli meat at the grocery store marked down when I went this week. I guess I've never gone at the right time or wandered the section to find it, but this time, I found it and decided to get some. Sandwiches aren't a go-to food for us because it's not budget-friendly when done well. Yes, I could buy the cheap meat and cheese and put something together for a few dollars, but that's really not worth it in my opinion. If I'm going to buy deli meat for a sandwich, I'm going to be paying around $7+ per pound for my deli meat. Finding this as a markdown item meant I was able to get my meat for closer to $4 per pound. That's almost half!
About a month ago I actually came across some marked down packaged deli meat which I threw in the freezer to save for later. It ended up coming in handy for our trip this past weekend. It was a partial experiment because I had never frozen deli meat before. I was curious how it would turn out. With proper thawing (must be all the way - not a single ice crystal), it still made a decent sandwich. The added mayo and mustard helped to maintain the moisture within the sandwich. If you eat the deli meat by itself (which I did eat a small bite,) it would have been slightly drier than fresh deli meat due to the change in moisture content due to freezing and thawing. I asked my husband if he would go for frozen deli meat again and he said he would. In the future, I'll keep an eye out for deli meat markdowns and then freeze them. There might be a post in the future specifically on freezing deli meat and how to keep it manageable. Someone may have to remind me.
I love good homemade dishes, but sometimes, we could all use some lazy food. 😄
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