The 50 Cent Meal Challenge week two and What we ate last week

      The 50 Cent Meal Challenge is a joint effort between two sisters in different regions and with different challenges.  Tina lives in Ohio with her husband and son, and is learning to stretch her shrunken budget while trying to develop an old fashioned, basic approach to cooking.  Jen lives in New Mexico with her husband and they are Foster Parents who are learning the art of flexibility. They live on a single income and are joining this challenge for the sake of the challenge.  Tina and Jen are planning their family groceries on a 250.00 budget for 6 weeks.
                                                                 August 22-28
                          I blew it!!
 I did, I blew my budget! By 28 dollars and 2 cents! But we had company this weekend and lots of it. Eleven peoples worth!! They came to town for The Great American Duck Races. Yes, its a real thing. We race ducks. Our town motto is Pure water and Fast ducks. We even have a duck crossing sign.. And Remember when I said I might have a challenge within a challenge? Well I got one! On friday night I got a foster placement of three little cute girls. 


Oh and I bit the bullet and got 25 pounds of fresh roasted New Mexico green chile, they're isn't going to be a second picking this year because of the drought. So, see I HAD to. That was $12.


So this is what we ate last week..

For breakfasts we had breakfast burritos. I made a bunch of them on Sunday night and froze them so in the morning we can have a quick meal. They were potato, green chile, cheese and egg. Sunday we had pancakes. Lunches were sandwiches or leftovers.

• M-Green chile and cheese quesadillas.
• T-Eggplant parmesan (eggplant from the garden)
• W-leftovers with steamed zucchini(from the garden) 
• T-Curried lentil and brown rice salad with fried zucchini and green beans (veggies from the garden)

Time out... Lets take a minute and talk about the curried lentil and brown rice salad. We had an old friend over for dinner that night and I honestly forgot she was coming until she texted me at 1:00. Oops. So I "knew" I had all the ingredients for this salad and fresh veggies to make, she is a vegetarian. So, I procrastinate as long as I can before I start to make dinner....And it was a mess!  My flat leaf parsley was cilantro, my dijon mustard was stone ground mustard and my tomatoes were moldy! I used the stone ground mustard and left everything else out, it came out ok but could have been better if I had my act together!
Time in...

• F-Pasta primavera, green beans and bread (all store bought)
• S-Chicken makhani (Indian butter chicken), rice, corn, green beans a bread. (all store bought)
• S-Leftovers and friends brought over some fried chicken

Friday-Sunday is when we had all the company, 16 of us all together. It was nice, they are all like family. 


I did have to purchase some things I usually have a pretty good supply of like olive oil and Parmesan cheese. And I have some things left over that I didn't use over the weekend that I planned on which will help me stay on budget next week. Technically I have 25.63 for this week since I went over last week. We'll see if I can do it. 


Weekly budget 41.66
Amount spent -57.68
             -16.02 


166.37 Left in budget. 4 weeks to go. Yikes!


          The 50 Cent Meal Challenge
                          Track Tina's progress here