Menu Planning

We are down to some pretty bare cupboards and refrigerator, seeing as how we've been waiting for payday so we could pay all the bills and see what was left over from paying all the bills, hoping there will be some grocery money there somewhere. Now that it's payday I have to figure out some kind of menu for the week so I can make my grocery list. Ugh.

It's difficult to come up with cheap but healthy dinner options when you can't have pasta, rice, or potatoes. Or bread. Every cheap dinner I've ever seen either has pasta or rice in there somewhere. Like the old standby of mac and cheese or spanish rice or spaghetti or tuna noodle casserole. We have had tacos this week even though tortillas are basically bread and starchy and all that, but tacos are cheap and easy. Last night I made a burrito casserole. It was not good. I had found this new! packet of seasoning from Lawrys for a Chimichurri Burrito Casserole that sounded good, you mix the seasoning with tomato sauce and water, cook up some hamburger and black beans, add some of the seasoned tomato sauce and roll that up in tortillas, then put more sauce on top and some shredded cheese and bake for a little while. But the seasoning was really icky. We ended up eating some because we were so hungry and then throwing the rest of the casserole away. So much for saving money when you throw your food away because it tastes so nasty. It was just way too weird spicy, not burrito good spicy, but icky spicy.

I did make some swiss steak this week and that came out okay, but swiss steak without some mashed potatoes on the side just doesn't quite do it for me.

And Keith is getting really tired of chicken. So. What to cook?

We are still in summer weather here, with a little week long break of nice cool weather and then right back into the 90's all this past week. We are finally promised some fall type weather starting next week and maybe even a chance of rain! Rain! We do get excited if it rains here, we live in what's basically a desert and rain is an unusual occurrence around these parts.

I'm looking forward to cooler weather so that I can finally stop wearing the three t-shirts that I bought in the spring and have been wearing every. single. day. since. I really liked the t-shirts when I bought them, they have a kind of gathered v neck and a little cutout and tie on the back of the neck so they are a little more feminine than just a t-shirt but damn am I ever sick of wearing them! I am going to throw them away as soon as the weather is consistently cool enough. They are not even worth donating somewhere what with sweat stained armpits and having been washed once or twice a week for the last 6 months. And did I say I'm totally sick of them?

Okay, back to the menu planning and I still don't know what to fix for dinner this week.

I think I will make some spaghetti even though it has the dreaded starchy pasta in it. I use the whole wheat spaghetti so it's not as totally bad as just plain old starchy spaghetti and with the 89c cans of spaghetti sauce over at Winco, 89c cans of Hunts sauce that ACTUALLY TASTES PRETTY DARN GOOD! it's a budget friendly meal. Even if it is pasta. Which I'm not supposed to eat.

Anyway...

It's Fall?

We had an absolutely beautiful day here yesterday, and today promises more of the same. Until this weekend when it's supposed to get back up into the 90's anyway.

I had the windows open all day and the a/c turned off and the breezes were breezing and it was very pleasant up until the gardeners started up with the lawn mowers and leaf blowers. We can't afford a gardener but every other person in the neighborhood can so our yard always looks a little scruffy while everyone else has a perfectly manicured lawn. Noisily perfectly manicured that is.

I've been looking forward to the new fall season on TV- yes I am BORING! However, the shows that I am interested are on opposite each other while the rest of TV land is filled up with crap like The Biggest Loser which I'm sorry, I can't watch fat people being tortured and abused.

The new show Lone Star looks good, and we really enjoyed Raising Hope but the show that came on after Raising Hope was just painful to watch, so we turned that one off. The new cop show Detroit 187 shows some promise, and I liked the new Defenders that was on last night. Can't wait for the premiere of The Big Bang Theory tonight, but why oh why did they have to put it on opposite The Office? Arghh.

Okay, enough about TV.

But there is not much else to talk about. Because we are BORING.

Fresh Air

The weather is weird here. It's like someone up there decides that hey, summer is over and let's get some fall weather going. Overnight. One day it's over 100 and the next day it's downright chilly in the 70's. One day you've got the air conditioner going full blast and the next day you're hunting for your blankets and sweaters. The cats love it because we can finally open the windows and doors. I love it because it means our next electric bills won't give me a heart attack when I open them.