neverhomemaker: nhmweeklymeals

Showing posts with label nhmweeklymeals. Show all posts

Weeknight Meals: Vegetarian Tikka Masala

>> Thursday, January 10, 2019

I keep posting photos of myself making this meal on Instagram, but I don't think I've ever formally written out the recipe on the blog. We make this Tikka Masala in the crock pot at least once every two weeks, if not more frequently. It's highly adaptable, so if you have other veggies on hand that you think would work -- use them!

Oh, and I should note that this recipe is made using sauce from Aldi. Here's where you can find all my other Aldi tips, tricks, and recipes.

VEGETARIAN TIKKA MASALA

1 can chickpeas
1 large onion (approx 1 cup), chopped
1 large sweet potato (approx 1 to 1.5 cups), chopped*
1 to 1.5 cups frozen peas
1 jar Tikka Masala sauce from Aldi

* I often use carrots or white potatoes in place of sweet potatoes.

Then just toss everything in your crock pot and cook on high for 3 hours. If you want to get extra fancy, you can make your own paneer, which is an Indian simple cheese you can easily make at home. And your own naan, which is Indian bread to have on the side.

Homemade Almond Milk
Our Go-To Pizza Dough
Homemade Ciabatta Bread
Homemade Muesli
Adventures in Cereal-Making
Homemade Bagels
White + Whole Wheat No Knead Loaf
Three Seed Crackers
Expanding Our Homemade Pantry
Homemade Flax Crackers
Homemade Pancake/Waffle Mix
Awesome Couscous Crackers
My Favorite Hummus
Stephen’s Homemade Pickles
Homemade Applesauce
Red Curry Kimchi

Aldi Haul

>> Monday, May 2, 2016

Here are my top five favorites from this week's Aldi haul. Organic seedy bread. A gigantic package of strawberries (for just $5!). Eight (!!!) avocados that were like half price. Canned pumpkin -- again -- at a half price steal. And Boca burgers for crazy weeknights.

I'll admit that I got really lazy and started going to Wegmans for the bulk of my shopping in recent months. It had everything to do with my cravings, but I can't believe how much our grocery budget got out of control. Last night, we filled our cart to the brim with more than a week's worth of food at Aldi for $101 . . . and I didn't even write a list. Score.

We got:

Organic tortilla chips
Greek yogurt
Organic whole milk yogurt
Cereal
Organic popcorn
Large package rolled oats
Organic apple instant oats
Organic honey
Unrefined coconut oil
Pound of walnuts
Organic soy milk
4 cans chickpeas
4 cans pumpkin puree
2 packages whole wheat tortillas
Loaf organic seedy bread
2 blocks of cheese
1 package queso fresco
Package string mozzarella
Organic bananas
Strawberries
Green onions
Carrots
Zucchini
Onions
Large container spring mix greens
Small container arugula greens
Multicolored bell peppers
8 avocados
2 packages Boca burgers
2 packages of unsweetened organic applesauce
Organic linguine noodles
Organic pasta sauce
Organic quinoa
Pizza sauce

I'm ~~probably~~ surely forgetting something. Anyway, if you haven't shopped Aldi in a while -- GO BACK. I'm not paid to write this. I just feel super enthusiastic about the store. I feel like in the few months we haven't been there that they've started carrying even more delicious organic items. I was skipping around the aisles.

Meals for the week are pretty basic.

Breakfasts will be either oatmeal or cereal with strawberries and/or banana. Plus we have yogurt on the side!

Lunches will be hummus melts or large salads. Ada usually eats PBJ. Sliced peppers or carrots on the side with applesauce, misc. pantry snacks (popcorn, etc.).

Dinners will be veggie burgers, slow cooker soup + tasty biscuits, veggie quesadillas, linguine + veggie pasta, breakfast for dinner, something with quinoa, and a few I'm not sure of yet.

My favorite snack/dessert this week: Vegan chocolate + peanut butter no-bake cookies -- no refined sugar. Stay tuned for that recipe soon.

What's on your menu this week? Read more Aldi posts + recipes here!

Weekly Eats, Recipes, and Babymoon

>> Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Hey, guys. Today is the BIG day. My anatomy ultrasound is this afternoon! To distract myself, I thought I'd pop in and share a few recipes I've made lately. I haven't done anything particularly revolutionary with recipe writing lately -- instead, my focus has been on stopping our takeout cycle. This month, I estimate that I've saved our family between $200-$300 on going out to eat. Add this to the $25 I've shaved off the grocery bill, so that's a maximum of $400 saved this month.

Yahoo!

I won't go into the details of our grocery shop this week (here's more about the whole #nhmweeklymeals thing). We spent $90 between Aldi and Wegmans. I didn't end up having one of those no-shop weeks I was hoping for because we are using what we're buying and -- therefore -- needing to replace pantry items on the regular. Next month I want to experiment more with bulk buying on certain ingredients, but I'll get to that in another post.

Bulk Hummus

This recipe is really easy, but it ends up costing around $2 (+ 5 minutes of time) versus $7 at the store. Just combine two cans of chickpeas (rinsed) with 1/8-1/4 cup tahini, a squeeze or two of lemon juice, and then whatever you want to flavor. We toss in a couple small cloves of garlic, smoked paprika, salt, and pepper. Then blend in your food processor and add water until you reach your desired consistency.

Brussels Sprouts Frittata

Our favorite meal last week! I roasted a big bag of Brussels sprouts and refrigerated them until dinner time. Then I modified this recipe on Kitchen Riffs to work with the ingredients we had on hand. It came together fast with all three of us chopping and cooking. Ada loved whisking the eggs.

Peanut Butter Banana Bread

This recipe is an old favorite that you can find in the archives. You need two really ripe bananas, and the rest whips up in no time. We added mini chocolate chips for extra flavor . . . and our tip? Once it's cooled, toast thick slices and drench in Earth Balance. Yum!

Avocado Egg Salad

So many of you asked me about this recipe! It's been on the blog for years! I just mash up half a ripe avocado with two hardboiled eggs. Then I add a squirt of brown mustard, salt, and pepper to taste. One of my favorite quick and healthy lunches -- especially atop a homemade bagel.

Pecan Chocolate Chippers

And, I think I have shared it WAY too many times, but my FAVORITE cookie recipe ever will always, always, always be the Pecan Chocolate Chippers. It's so good. With or with pecans. But, really, with pecans.

So, what exactly are we doing with the $400 we saved this month?

We're going on a babymoon!

Well, sort of. My in-laws will be up visiting this weekend, and they generously offered to watch Ada for a night while we go somewhere. I'll write more about that soon. Would you believe that we have never been away overnight at the same time? Nope. Cue the unnecessary anxiety.

Alright: Now I need to pass the time before 3:45 rolls around!

Weekly Meals + Cost

>> Thursday, January 14, 2016

I’m back again with more about our grocery bill and eats for this week. (Don’t miss last week’s post about our fresh start for the new year.) The grand total we spent at Aldi was $60. At Wegmans, we spent $48, bringing our total grocery bill to $108. Here’s more about what ingredients we bought and how we’re using them.

PS: You can follow my cooking on Instagram at #nhmweeklymeals!

The List

Aldi:

Shredded wheat cereal
Hazelnut spread
Sleeve Kumato tomatoes
Bag sweet potatoes
Goldfish crackers (Ada’s choice)
La Croix 8-pack
6 avocados
4 pounds bananas
Bag carrots
Package green peppers
Bag local apples
2 packages block cheese
Deli sliced cheese
Cocoa powder
Bag Mandarin oranges
Package zucchini
6 cans organic beans (still on sale)
Tub Greek yogurt
Pickles (Stephen and Ada love them!)
Peanut butter
Local BBQ Sauce
Can crushed tomatoes
Olive oil
1/2 gallon 2% milk

Wegmans:

Tempeh
Tempeh bacon
Jar of yeast
Kefir
18 pack Eggland eggs
Frozen Tex-Mex veggies
Bulk bag sweet potato fries
Roasted Mate tea
Tub tahini
Tub organic arugula
Large tub organic super greens mix

The Plan

Since breakfasts and lunches have stayed relatively consistent since last week, I’ll skip over them in list form. We eat a lot of oatmeal and cereal for breakfast with green smoothies. For lunch, it’s crazy big salads (for Stephen) and PBJ or grilled cheese for Ada. I like homemade hummus melts or egg salad.

Dinners

M: Leftover Pumpkin Chili with homemade biscuits

T: Veggie Burgers (made them in bulk) with sweet potato fries on homemade buns

W: Eggs, roasted sweet potatoes, and PPK Banana + Zucchini Bread

R: Carrot + Chickpea Tagine dinner (made by Stephen)

F: Family Pizza Night, pumpkin dough w/ olives, peppers, onions, zucchini

S: Homemade ciabatta bread sandwiches with orange-glazed tempeh*

S: Pasta with homemade pesto + faux meatballs

Dessert + Snacks

Mix of quinoa energy bars (we bought it in a school fundraiser)

Crock Pot Applesauce

Chocolate Chip + Pecan Cookies

* This is the one night we don’t do family dinner. Ada usually eats freezer leftovers. This week she’ll be having some frozen stuffed shells (she loves them!).

Highlights

//1: We wasted basically no food last week. I even froze the leftover pizza sauce to save for this week’s pie! It feels really good to look in my refrigerator at the end of the week and see that it’s almost empty. There are some ingredients that are hearty and can last longer, so if we’re nearing the weekend and more fragile ingredients are getting droopy -- we’ll make a plan to use them up and save the carrots, oranges, potatoes, etc. for next week.

//2: We also shifted our shopping to Saturday mornings. I didn’t know this would make a difference, and we didn’t even do it on purpose -- it just worked out that way. But WOW. Talk about a great way to combat weekend takeout! Our pantry and fridge are full of food so we don’t have as much temptation to grab a takeout menu.

Making food at home has become this huge part of our weekend activities now. So, it’s also serving as a source of entertainment (trying new recipes is really fun!), saving us even more money.

//3: We’re trying to avoid eating the same meal over and over again, so I will start doing more freezer cooking as the weeks roll on. The veggie burgers I made (24 in all) will last a good while. That being said, it does take some energy to make sure that all our meals are utilizing similar ingredients. My trick is having a “breakfast for dinner” night where I can just roast a good number of veggies that need to be used up.

//4: We’re trying to stick below $100 total for food each week. This is a big improvement because I estimate that we were spending about $130 at Wegmans PLUS at least (at LEAST!) $50 on takeout per week in recent months. That’s an $80 savings per week we’re striving toward, all while eating healthy foods and connecting better as a family. I do think we’ll spend much less at the store this week, but time will tell.

//5: Oh, and we’re also going to occasionally try “no buy” weeks where we dig deep into the cupboards and freezer drawers to use up what we already have. Of course, we’ll need to get basics -- but I think it’s a great way to save in a pinch.

Looking for more tasty inspiration?

Here’s our Clean Eating Guide with affordable meal options.
Here’s a bunch of Sunday Meal Prep Ideas from the archives.
Here’s more great meals (and savings!) you can make with Aldi food.
Here’s our Recipe Archive full of great vegetarian and vegan meal ideas.

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On Planning Meals (Again)

>> Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Meal planning is an area that totally fell off the radar last year. I don’t even want to know how much money we spent on food. There was just the regular everyday food. Then the comfort foods (so many of them). The many, many nights of takeout. And, of course, the ever-changing list of foods I could and could not eat during two different first trimester morning sickness phases. Ugh.

In other words, we spent hundreds more on food each month than we normally do. I didn’t lift a pen to plan a week of meals maybe the whole year. We stopped shopping smart. We stopped hitting up stores like Aldi for better deals. And, yes, despite the money suck -- it was sort of awesome to just eat whatever, whenever we felt like it.

BUT for the first time in forever, I wrote out a plan for the first week of the new year. I wrote up a grocery list and headed to Aldi. I even grabbed a few things that weren’t on my list (including a major stock of organic beans that were on sale!) and still spent only $97 for a hulking cart of food!

Why, why, why did I ever stop doing this? I had a smile from ear to ear the rest of the day. It definitely helps that I’m now 15 weeks pregnant and can actually enter my kitchen again without gagging.

The List

Stephen tossed our receipt (I’ll save them in the future), but here’s approximately what we bought. The list will look weird, but it’s the order in which I picked everything up at the store. Oh, and shopping took maybe 15 minutes from entering to exiting the store. Score.

Organic teddy graham snacks
2 jars medium salsa
Strawberry jam
Organic honey
Large tub rolled oats
Steel cut oats
Organic honey toasted oats cereal
Aldi version of Lucky Charms (I know, I know...)
Organic dark roast coffee
Block cheddar cheese
Block Jack cheese
Block pepper Jack cheese
Ball mozzarella cheese
Bag shredded mozzarella
Organic string cheese
2 packages (10 each) whole wheat tortillas
Sea salt grinder
4 cans organic black beans
4 cans organic chickpeas
4 cans organic pinto beans
4 cans organic kidney beans
2 cans organic fire roasted tomatoes
2 cans pumpkin puree
Zucchini
Garlic
Bag of onions
Bag of local apples
Bag of Meyer lemons
Bunch bananas
Sleeve Kumato brown tomatoes
Organic baby kale
Organic arugula
2% milk for Ada
Eggs
Plain Greek yogurt
Loaf sprouted grain bread
Jar pizza sauce

I swear I’m forgetting several things. But that’s the gist. Like I said, we hadn’t been to Aldi in a long while. I was sort of astounded at all the new organic and natural food offerings. Especially the sprouted bread!