Hey everybody! Man, its been a long couple of days. I missed putting up this post over the weekend because we had a garage sale. We made tens of dollars. It was awesome. I also had a work deadline as well as a daughter who desperately needed to go to the park. Anyway, here is a quick pic of the last dinner of the week: Pork Ribs w/ carrots, sweet potatoes, Yukon gold potatoes, and cornbread. I said it already, but this was the best meal of the week, hands down.

So I guess my experiment for last week was a success. I spent just under a $100 dollars and my family ate fairly well for the week. I think for this week I will spend a little bit more and make sure that my ladies don't have to eat the same kind of meat two days in a row. Doing this sort of thing isn't a huge step towards cutting down my family's environmental impact, but it is a step. I realized that it is not just about saving money and cutting down on bills. Hell, if everyone tried to spend less on food, even by just a few dollars, it would be for the better for the world. Have any of you tried anything like this or know someone who could successfully and consistently by less food but still feed their family a healthy meal? Send me a link or something and let me know. Have a good week! (BTW, my daughter LOVES dried cranberries, and I found that I love them myself. Buying these in bulk was a great idea.)

Sorry guys. I made dinner last night and as I was taking the last bite, I remembered that I was suppossed to be taking a pcture of it. Whoops. By I will NOT forget for tonight, because we are having ribs w/ slow cooker sweet potatoes and carrots. This will by far be the best meal of the week. Also, I forgot to leave the carrots in the vegetable crisper and they got all wilty sitting out. I had to go back to the store and by some yesterday. $1.97. So, I'm still just under the 100 dollar mark for the week and its Friday! So I guess it can be done. Although I did have to keep my snacking to a minimum, which is a good thing and a bad thing I guess. The meals for the week weren't all that hard to make (although last night's cranberry-fig chutney was damn good and I had to keep an eye on it to get the right consistency.) So, instead of a tasty pic of some good food, here's a stomach-churning video. Enjoy! (This happened right in Santa Fe. I'll be driving a lot less on the rural farm roads.)

Yo. Last night in the 3rd day of my sub-$100 weekly food budget, I made chicken parmesan. I forgot that I made italian-esque food the night before and subsequently the famliy will be eating pork twice in one week. Whoops. Today is my moms birthday, and she loves ribs, so that's what I'll be making. Here is a quick pic of last night's meal:

I ended up not using the side dish as described in the first post because I'll be using all of the ingredients for that with ribs. Yum.

Hey all. Here's a quick little snapshot of dinner for the evening. I had to run to the damn co-op today to pick up some parmesan cheese for tonight's dinner, and surprisingly, it was cheap. Relatively. I bought a .29lbs. of the yummy cheese for $2.32 including tax. Not bad. If you read the post from Monday, then that means I have around 6 bucks left for the week for misc. items. Don't get me wrong, I'll spend more if I have to, but I'm gonna try and see if my family and I can live comfortably for $100 or less. They have become my subjects in this penny-pinching experiment of mine and luckily they think its a worthy experiment to undertake. Here's a pick of the littlest lady in the house enjoying dinner. See ya tomorrow!

Notice the dog sitting behind the littlest lady humbly waiting for just the tiniest morsel from the diminutive princess. Said morsels will later be puked onto the light colored carpet behind the dog. Damn dog.  

Okay. My wife and I have just signed the papers for a new house. Yeah! We will be broke for the next 30 years. Dammit. Hence the lack of posts in the past week. So, in my continuous quest to keep our bills down, I believe that this week I have finally found the right combination for a sub$100 Whole Foods bill. All organic. All local fruits/ vegetables. All yummy. My final bill at the checkout stand was $91.38. Sweet. This is how I did it:

Some of you may remember a post that I put up earlier this summer concerning my trips to the local co-op. My conclusion: I'm not rich enough to spend $250 bucks a week for groceries, the people who work/ shop there are snobs, and lesbians hate me. 

Now remember. I am feeding a family of four (Lori my wife, Adriana my daughter, my mother, and myself) a home-cooked meal for a 5-day work week. We tend to eat out on the weekends, mainly to give me a break from cooking all week. Also, the cost of living in Santa Fe, NM is high. Really high. The Albertson's stores here suck too. The prepared meat section smells like feet and chicken feathers. Anyway, here is what I am making this week. Here goes:

Monday: (This is what I made for dinner tonight:)

Meatloaf

Collard Greens w/ Spinach (If you want this recipe, let me know)

Creamy Mashed Potatoes

Tuesday:

Cheese Ravioli w/ marinara sauce

Sautéed mushrooms + zucchini on top 

Wednesday:

Pork Medallions

Cranberry + Fig chutney (Home-made from dried cranberries and dried figs and apple juice. I'll put the full recipe up later.)

Wild Rice

Corn Bread (homemade, because there is no other way to make it. Seriously, make it from scratch.) 

Thursday:

Chicken Parmigiana

Sautéed yellow squash + spinach + black-eyed peas (sounds kinda wierd, but they are a GOOD combination together.)

Friday: 

Pork Ribs in the slow cooker

Chopped sweet potatoes and carrots in a sweet brown sugar/ pumpkin spice sauce. This is under the ribs.

(1) can baby corn and (1) can pinto beans on top. 

Hot-water cornbread. (or some kind of dinner roll. I still have 8 bucks left for misc. items.) 

The End. I didn't include that I bought milk, juice, eggs and a couple of bags of Pirate Booty in this. 91 bucks folks. 

Now you may have noticed that this isn't exactly the healthiest set of meals for the family, but damn, doesn't all of this sound good? It does to me.  Veggies and Meat. Also, for the whole week I only have to open three cans of food. Everything else is made fresh. I guess I could have bought the beans in the bulk section and soaked them, but that would have taken forever. I think I'll try to post a pic of each meal this week, minus today because I forgot, so you all can see how these all came out. Let me know how each of you are able to make ends meet and still put appetizing meals on your table. Hell, its taken me 16 months just to get this far. I'm sure some of you out there could give me some pointers. Any takers?