We Spent Less than $60 on Groceries This Week! • Realistic Budget Cooking & Meal Ideas

Hey friends, y'all know I love making videos showing how I would work with a teeny tiny food budget, but I also like sharing with y'all our normal everyday household food budget because I think it's still pretty budget-friendly and honestly lower than most people I know in my everyday life. For context, my household is made up of three adults and we live in Raleigh, North Carolina, so prices are of course going to reflect that. I typically aim to spend between 40 and 60 dollars a week on our groceries, so I don't have a super hard-line budget, but I try to hit somewhere in that range. I achieve this by shopping sales, by shopping markdowns, by buying things that are seasonably low priced right now, and then by buying staples that are kind of always going to be affordable. And finally, we are a household with no dietary restrictions, so that definitely helps us keep the budget down. I mention all these things because I know that budget and diet are very personal things. So I make these videos just to show you a snapshot of what my life looks like here in Raleigh, and if it gives you any ideas or inspiration for your own grocery shopping and cooking, even better. So let's jump straight in and I'll show you what I got. I just got back from the grocery store, or stores rather, because I went to three stores, Food Lion, Aldi, and Harris Teeter. I spent about $38, which is a little bit more than I was expecting to spend today, but it's probably a good portion of the groceries that we're going to need for the entire next week. So to start off with, I spent about $9 at Food Lion. I got just under a pound of broccoli for $1.59, a five-pound bag of russet potatoes for $1.99, this pound of ground sausage for $2.27, and then a pound of pork chops here that were marked down to $2.99. Next is Harris Teeter, where I spent about $10.50. I got a three-pound bag of onions for $1.99. I told my mom I would grab her a box of these crackers. They were on sale for $3.50. And then I always check out the cheese section to see if they have any discount cheeses, and today was a good day for that. So I got this very large log of garlic and herb goat cheese for $3, as well as these two containers of Borson Bites. I've gotten one of these before, and they're really, really good, and these were $1 each. Discount cheese might be the discount item I get most excited about. And then finally was Aldi, where I spent about $18.50, and about half of that was this coffee that was $8.49. We're gonna run out of coffee in the next couple days, and the worst thing is waking up and being out of coffee, so I grabbed some today. This will last us a little bit, and we won't have to buy coffee again until June. I also got a thing of onion powder and garlic powder for $0.99 each. I'm always on the hunt for somewhere I can find these in bulk for because I go through a lot of onion powder and garlic powder, but even at like Sam's Club and Walmart, I haven't been able to find bulk versions of these that are cheaper per ounce than just getting these little individual containers. I got two avocados for $0.55 each, an English cucumber for $0.95, a three-pack of bell peppers for $2.25, I got about a pound and a half of aromas for $1.88, and then I got a pound and a half of zucchini, and that cost me $1.80. I didn't buy too much meat at this point because today is Tuesday and all of the sales reset tomorrow, so I got just what we needed for the next couple days. I've already seen the preview ad, I know that FoodLion is going to have chicken drumsticks on sale for $0.99 a pound, so I'll almost definitely get a family pack of those. In addition to this, I already have lots of rice and dried beans. I have lots of eggs in the fridge that I purchased last week. I have a bunch of odds and ends in my fridge that, you know, are from the last couple weeks grocery shopping trips that will need to get used up. So I'll definitely be doing another shopping trip this week, but it won't be as big as this one was. For dinner tonight, I'm going to be making a sausage and lentil stew. I haven't made one of those in a while, so it actually sounds really good. So to start out, I'm going to add a little bit of oil to my pressure cooker and turn my saute function on, and I'll get this sausage added in so it can start to cook. And then while it cooks, I will get start getting the rest of my ingredients ready. It can be a little bit tricky showing what I've got going on in the Instant Pot without blocking it with my arms, but I'm gonna try my best here. To start out with, I'm just browning up my meat. And while that's cooking, I got an onion that I'm gonna chop up. I'll give that sausage another minute or two to cook before I add the onion, just enough so that way it is like a little more broken up. Lots of steam coming up there, but sausage is three quarters of the way cooked. Adding that onion in there now to start cooking with the sausage. I don't have a whole lot of celery here, but I'm gonna work with what I got. And my celery here, I will add into the pot as soon as I cut it up. And it can cook alongside those onions and sausage. And the greens here are also edible. You can also eat them and cook with them. They tend to be a little bit stronger tasting than the stalks. I may not quite use all the leaves here, but I'll add in a nice little handful of that as well. I have this one sad lonely carrot that was in my fridge. I'll probably add carrots to my shopping list when I do go out again. I hadn't been going through as many, so I stopped buying as many. Just like with the onions and celery, adding this right in to start cooking. I also have some of these baby cut carrots, and I'll throw in a little handful of them as well. I'll cut those, just line a few of them up, and that's all there is to it. Here's what my meat and veggies are looking like in the front of the fridge. Now I bought a bag of potatoes since they're on sale this week, and it didn't look like they're going to be on sale next week, and they were a good price, and potatoes last a long time. But I do also have these potatoes that we bought like a couple weeks ago. They're starting to get eyes on them. I'm gonna throw a few of these into the pot too. These are still good. I'm just gonna scrape the eyes off of them. Here's what those potatoes look like cut up. I still have a few that need to get used. I'll try to use them tomorrow. All right, so back to my pot here. I'm adding in those potatoes, and I'm also adding a can of diced tomatoes. These happen to be the ones with the green chilies. I thought about using my romas for this, but I ended up just deciding to do a can, saving my romas for some other meals. I'm adding in some Italian seasoning, some black pepper, some garlic powder, and a little bit of red pepper flakes. Give that a quick stir, and then I'll get some water added. I'm adding four cups of water. I may decide to add in a cup or two more, but for now I'm just going to throw in four cups. And then I'm adding some tomato and chicken bouillon. You could also do just regular chicken bouillon or chicken broth, and add a little bit of tomato paste, like a couple tablespoons of tomato paste. Then obviously you can't make a sausage and lentil stew without lentils. I'm gonna do a cup of lentils, and I'm gonna rinse these real quick before I add them to the pot. Adding those lentils right in, and now I'll just remove this little clip off the side, get my lid on, and then I'm going to cook this for 10 minutes. Once that timer goes off, I'll let it do a 15 minute natural release, and then I'll release any remaining pressure. This has been going for a little bit longer than 15 minutes because I jumped in the shower. Let's see, yeah, not much pressure left to release. You can just drop so I can get this open and have a look inside. Smells really good. Usually I would add a bit of spinach if I had any, but I did not think to grab spinach, so I did not grab any. So I won't have that little pop of green, but that is okay. I'm gonna grab a spoon so I can taste this. There is what my stew looks like. That tastes super great. I was ready to eat, and I like to add a little bit of parmesan to the soup. Usually I shred my own these days, but this container was marked down at Aldi for like a buck something, so I ended up grabbing it. Yeah, parmesan is just such a good topping for the soup, like perfect topping for the soup. Very, very good. I got one more thing I gotta do before I lose focus and start to get tired. I got my other instant pot here. Yes, I do have two. I got the little one here at a thrift store for just $15. We definitely have two or three servings of soup left that can go towards lunches. I was gonna prepare a bean salad as a lunch for me because I've been craving it. I had one a week and a half ago that I made, and I really enjoyed it for lunch, so I'm gonna make another one. I am making this with a combination of Great Northern beans and black beans. I think I did a cup of beans last time I did this, so I'm gonna do kind of a nice full cup. As always, I'm gonna rinse my beans real quick. Besides rinsing them, I also take a moment to sort around through them and just make sure there are no little stones or things that aren't supposed to be in there. I don't find rocks often, but I can't say that I have never found any, so I always check just real quick every time. I cook my beans in three cups of water to each cup of beans, so I got about three cups there, and I'll let these cook for 35 minutes. My beans are done cooking, so for my bean salad, I've got a red pepper, some romes, jalapeno that I bought last week when they were on sale, that cucumber I got from Aldi. I'm gonna chop all these up and add them to this bowl back here. There's what all those veggies look like. Hopefully this bowl is- this dish is big enough. It's what I made it in last time, but I think I got a little more veggies this time. And my beans here, because it was black beans, the liquid is very dark, but I'm going to drain these and rinse them with some cold water to cool them down. There's my dish getting even more full. Last time I did this, I added mozzarella. I had gotten a little mozzarella pearls mark down to a dollar. I have a mozzarella ball that I got for a dollar, so I could chop it up and add that in, but I got both of these last week for a dollar, of course, and it's just feta. I think that will do nicely in this. So since I just got new discount cheese in my fridge, probably good to get a little bit of the older discount cheese out, right? So I think this is- it's gonna be a little tricky to mix, but it's all gonna fit. The only kind of dilemma I have is that this is what I normally make it with. It's this zesty Italian fat-free dressing, so it's not a really heavy dressing. It actually like tastes really light, but I thought I had way more of it than I do. I could try making it, but I don't know if I want to do that. The other thought I have is I found this salsa verde in my cabinet. I don't know where this came from. I think the Dollar Tree was carrying these for a little bit, so I may have snatched it up for the Dollar Tree, since it was a really good deal, or it might have just been on sale for a good price, but I think that this could also be a really nice marinade for all this, because that's really just what we're doing here. We're just- we want- we want a dressing for all these ingredients. So I think I'm going with the executive decision to try the salsa verde. Smells really good. So just add a nice little bit of that in there and find something to start us with. Actually, before I get too far into stirring this, I'm going to add a little bit of black pepper and a little bit of garlic powder. When I did the other dressing, I did black pepper and added a bunch of extra Italian seasoning. I think I'm going to add just a little bit more salsa, but this is almost good. I just these salads is they taste even better after they've been able to, like, marinate and have all the flavors just, like, meld together overnight. So I'm going to pop a lid on this, and this is what I'm going to eat for lunch tomorrow. Not this whole bowl, obviously. I'll eat this for at least the next two or three days, along with whoever else wants some. I know my mom will definitely want some. Andrew will probably have some. And like I said, we've also got, like, three servings of the soup left, plus probably a serving of seasoned rice left from last night's dinner. So in case you're wondering what we do for lunches, it's usually leftovers and a combination of eggs or something else that we have that's easy to prepare. Sandwiches. I'm mentioning this because I don't usually show y'all preparing lunches, except sometimes on the weekends. Even then, a lot of times we're just eating leftovers or easy eggs or something. But I know there's also been a little bit of confusion in the past about whether the groceries that I get for the week include lunches, and they do include lunches. It's just that we are usually eating leftovers or simple dishes for lunches, so I'm not usually showing them. But lately I've been on a bean salad kick, and so this is what I've been doing for lunch a lot lately. I'll be starting dinner soon, but I went to a yoga class and then a walk today, so I definitely need a snack before I think about eating. Or cooking, rather. This has been my kind of obsession lately. We got these blueberries. They were on sale for only two dollars last week, and then I get this big tub of cottage cheese that's just over six dollars. And I never used to eat cottage cheese, but my mom has been eating it lately, and I was like, all right, I'm gonna try it. And I've been enjoying it so much. Oil to my cast iron. We'll be having this pack of pork chops that I got for dinner tonight. I'm thinking like an Asian style pork in sauce with broccoli and rice. I have already started some rice. I'm gonna get this oil heating up in this pan. And while we're waiting for that pan to heat up, let me draw your attention to this cool green bottle of olive oil that you may have noticed I've been using to cook with. And that brings me to the sponsor of this video, Graza. I've been cooking now with Graza for a couple weeks, and I'm definitely a fan. Graza is a quality olive oil at an affordable price that's great for everyday cooking. This is 100% olive oil with no other oils blended in or other ingredients added. This one liter bottle is made up of 13 pounds of single varietal, single origin olives. And let's talk about the bottle real quick. Olive oil degrades when it is exposed to light, but Graza's bottles are fully opaque, preventing light from getting in and keeping the olive oil fresher longer. I also love the squeeze bottle design because it is so convenient and easy to pour. There's also lots of great information right on the bottle. Besides suggestions on many of the great ways to use the oil, they've included not just the bottle date, but also the date the olives themselves were harvested. So you know it really is fresh oil. You can purchase Graza online on their website or in grocery stores. Or if you're a Costco shopper, it's also available at Costco. And y'all know I love a good deal, and the sizzle two pack that Costco sells is a great deal on a great olive oil. So thank you to Graza for sponsoring today. I also have that head of broccoli I got, and I'll be cutting that up and putting the pieces in the bowl here. I think this bowl is going to be just barely big enough. I have the stalk here. I'm just going to leave that set to the side. A lot of times Andrew likes to slice up and eat the stalk. That oil should be nice and hot now. My pork should be ready to come off the pan and rest now. Look at that beautiful sear. I still got my pan on a low heat. I'm gonna get a quick sauce together real fast. My rice, I have eight minutes left. So a little bit of water, a little bit of beef bouillon, a little bit of soy sauce, a couple tablespoons or so of oyster sauce, garlic powder, black pepper. I'm gonna put a little bit of this buldak in there, but I'm not gonna put much because if I put too much it'll get too spicy and my mom won't eat it. And then to balance that, get some honey in here. I probably gotta, this honey's starting to crystallize a little bit on me, so I probably need to, that'll work. It'll re-liquify when it's warmed up. And before I add this to the pan, which I'm just about to do, I added a little bit of water to my broccoli. I'm gonna put a lid over it like this and I'm gonna put it in the microwave for three minutes. I got this on a real low heat. Definitely should have probably used a pan, but this has got enough of a lift that as long as I'm careful this will work out. I thought about swapping that to a pan, but I really wanted the pan drippings from cooking the pork. And this pork appears to be cooked pretty nicely. When I'm cooking a big thick piece like that, you know, I never know for sure how, how good I'm gonna get it. Yeah, that's delicious. That's perfect. I'll add that pork back in in just a moment, but I want to thicken that sauce up a little bit. So I'm adding a little bit of cornstarch to some cold water and I'll stir that real quick and add it into the sauce. And then this was simmering, so it should still be hot enough to make that cornstarch thicken this up real nicely. And I'm going to toss these, the pork, back in the pan now too. Whoops. You can just stir all this together, let it cook together for a minute. Got a great consistency on the sauce. I tried it, it tastes delicious. I turned the heat off. I think I have just a few drops of sesame oil in here that I'll drizzle on top to finish. And I'm gonna pull the broccoli out of the microwave and make a bowl because this is ready to eat. And here's what my bowl looked like for my broccoli. I just seasoned it with a little bit of oil, salt, and pepper. There's rice down here under my meat, a little bit of sesame seeds on top. That is fantastic. I don't know if we'll have any of this leftover. We may go through it all, which is fine because I loved having my bean salad for lunch today. We've still got soup leftover and my mom didn't even eat her lunch today because a co-worker bought her lunch, so she still has that for tomorrow. So if we go through this because it's so good, that is okay. We do not need it for tomorrow. Thursday dinner is going to look a little bit different because we've been going to a weekly game night that our friends have been hosting. They're going to have a build your own sub bar set up and they always tell us we don't need to worry about bringing anything, but I would feel like a horrible guest if I didn't bring something. So we had to get gas anyway. So we ran out to Sam's and filled up on gas and I grabbed this five pound tub of potato salad. It was a bit over six bucks. Stuff like this though, I don't count as my grocery budget. I would count this towards like my like entertainment. We don't really go out to eat. We don't really go to bars. Our friend group mostly does get togethers at each other's houses. So I'm counting this towards like my social and entertainment budget. However, I did also buy another container of cottage cheese that also was like $6.25. We didn't eat any yet. I wasn't planning to get it until next week, but because we were at Sam's anyway, I picked it up now. So I am adding that to the cost of this week's groceries. Hey friends, it's Friday. I did a quick stop at Food Lion today. I got a pack of chicken drumsticks. They're on sale for 99 cents a pound and then I also got this big old head of cabbage. It was on sale for 49 cents a pound. I spent five dollars. I'm cooking this entire three and a half pound of chicken drumsticks tonight. There'll be dinner for tonight and tomorrow. Half the chicken legs I'm going to cover in barbecue sauce and the other half I'm going to bread. For the ones I'm going to coat in barbecue sauce, I like to add the barbecue sauce right at the end. Otherwise it tends to burn on my pan. So I'm just coating this chicken here in a little bit of oil and some seasonings and then I'll add the barbecue sauce in the last five minutes. And then for the one that I'm coating in breadcrumbs, I'm just adding some breadcrumbs to my bowl. A little bit of pepper, garlic powder, a little paprika and we'll call that good. I'm tossing my pieces of chicken in it real quick. Here's all my chicken ready to go in the oven. I have my oven set to 425. I'm going to put these in for 40 minutes. Then I'll take them out, brush these ones with barbecue sauce and put them back in for five more minutes. Chicken is cooking up absolutely beautifully. I'm going to get a little bit of barbecue sauce. I got my Sweet Baby Ray's Sweet and Spicy. That is my favorite one. I'm going to get a little bit of that on all these pieces of chicken. And then, like I said, I'll pop it back in the oven for five minutes and then my chicken will be ready to eat. For sides, we ended up coming home with a little bit of the potato salad from last night. I asked my friends if they wanted to keep it, but they said that we could go ahead and take it. It was really good though. And then I was going to fry up some of that zucchini, but I'm tired. I think I'm just going to heat up some frozen corn and call it a day. Here's what my plate looks like. I just put a little bit of butter, salt, and pepper on the corn. I went with the breadcrumb coated chicken for my piece right now, just because I love it when the skin is all nice and crispy like it is right now. I may decide to have a little tiny piece of the barbecue chicken tonight. If not, that's what I'll have tomorrow because there's plenty for us to have what we want tonight and then also tomorrow. And then I'll make fresh sides tomorrow. For dinner tonight, we'll be having the rest of those chicken legs. I'm going to make a rice side to go with it. So I have one cup of rinsed rice right here in my rice cooker. I have an onion, three Roman tomatoes, a jalapeno, and one of my bell peppers. I'm going to chop all these up to add in. Here's all that looks like chopped up and it goes right in on top of the rice. It's looking pretty full, but all those veggies will wilt down. I'm going to add a little bit of tomato and chicken bouillon. You could also use broth or a different flavored bouillon. A bit of pepper, garlic powder. We'll throw some paprika in there. And then if you want it to be on the spicier side, red pepper flakes would be a good option, but I think tonight I'm just going to keep this as it is. I'm adding in a cup of water. I did one cup of rice. I'm going to do one cup of water. I'm going to mix this just a little bit, but I'm not too worried about mixing it. When you add stuff like onions and tomatoes in to cook with the rice, they tend to want to float to the top. So when it's done, I'm going to need to fluff it all up and mix it together anyway. But that's all there is to making the rice. All I got to do is turn it on and when it's done, mix it. That's it. Actually, real quick, I forgot there's just this little tiny bit of corn left. I'm gonna throw that in there as well, because why not? My rice is about to be done, so I'll heat up my chicken in a minute. But first, I want to make some zucchini to go with this as well. So I've got some oil in a pan. I've got the pan heating up on a pretty solid medium heat. I want to cook these hot and fast so they don't go mushy. I'm cooking up two of the three zucchini that I got. I picked the two smaller ones. So there's one more left, and it's probably about the same amount of zucchini as this, and I'm just going to cut them into these little half moon shapes. I think I can probably get all of these zucchini into my pan. If I was doing more than this, I would do it in batches. And you notice I didn't season these yet. I am going to season them, but I'll do it at the end. I find it's usually pretty okay if the pan is crowded, as long as like they all have surface area in direct contact with the pan. So I'll get all these flipped over, so that way they can cook for a couple minutes on the other side. The zucchini is looking really good. I'm seasoning it real quick. Actually, I'm going to turn the heat off, but seasoning it real quick with a little salt and pepper. I forgot I got this bowl to put it in, but actually I'm going to still leave it in the pan. I'll just take the pan off the heat in a second here, so that way it doesn't overcook. But this is exactly how I like my zucchini. Nice color on it, but not mushy pieces at all. My rice is also done. That just needs to be stirred up. And then here is what that final dish looks like. The chicken legs we just reheated. Zucchini is absolutely perfect. I could eat that entire pan. Rice is also delicious. I already know that chicken is delicious. I'm gonna go enjoy this dinner. It is now Sunday. I stopped at Harris Teeter to get chicken that I'm gonna divide into tonight and tomorrow's dinners. Harris Teeter has been having a customer appreciation week, and every day they have some type of special sale that only lasts for the day. Today's was that boneless, skinless chicken breast. It was on sale for $1.79 a pound. So this is four and a third pounds, and I got it for $7.81. Like I said, I'll divide that into two dinners. Really, I could honestly divide it into three if I wanted. That would give us almost a pound and a half of chicken for three meals if I did that. And I also got this salad that was marked down to $1.50. I'm only going to cook the chicken that I need tonight. And so I'm going to set aside what I want to cook tonight, and then the rest I'm going to put in here to store in the fridge until I'm ready to use it tomorrow. And like I said, maybe Tuesday. I'm still deciding. I will say I am not impressed with this batch of Harris Teeter chicken. I don't normally buy my chicken breast at Harris Teeter. Harris Teeter is supposed to be a higher end store than Food Lion, but I don't have problems with this like real stringy, woody breast at Food Lion. It's fine to eat. It's just going to have like a weird texture, which will be okay because I'm putting it in a sauce. Like I said, I don't usually have this problem at Food Lion. This is probably the most intense like stringing of the chicken breast that I've ever seen. Like come on Harris Teeter, what is this? So I did just end up setting aside like one and a half pounds of chicken for dinner tonight. I am leaning towards probably making three meals with it just because it is a good bit. So this is going in the fridge to be used later. So to start, I'm getting some oil in my pan. While my pan is heating up, I'm going to get these pieces of chicken seasoned. I just pick whatever sounds good on a particular night. Right now I'm doing salt, pepper, paprika, garlic. My pan's nice and hot, so I'm going to get my chicken added in. I'm going to start some pasta in a few and I was debating about what pasta to make. I haven't had to buy pasta in a while because there was a little bit there where I got a couple of really good deals on pasta and I kind of stocked up. I realize now I'm almost out, so I figure why not bring a little holiday cheer into the house and we're going to use this Christmas pasta that I've had for a while. I had it as part of my like emergency food storage and was rotating it out. It tastes just like any other pasta, so no reason not to use it up. I got it for a quarter by the way. I just flipped my chicken. It's cooking really beautifully and I washed and dried my cutting board and took out some vegetables that I'm going to cut up to add to the pan just a little bit here. My chicken is cooked through, so I'm going to take it out of the pan to rest and I'm going to start cooking these veggies up and I'm going to get started with the onion. I'm tossing just a little bit of water in with the onion to deglaze the pan because there's all of these really good flavors from the chicken on the bottom of the pan and I want to not let them burn on the bottom. So just enough water to lift all that up. I gave the onions a couple minutes to start. Now I'm going to get my zucchini added and I'll let that cook for a few minutes and then I'll add the tomatoes. Since this is going to be a soft dish, I'm not quite as worried about getting that same type of saute that I got on the zucchini last night. All right, zucchini and onion have been cooking for a few minutes together. I'm going to get these can of tomatoes in. I just decided not to chop up those two random aromas. If I eat that salad tomorrow, I might want some aromas for that. So we'll just stick with this. I was just going to throw them in because I got just a few left. You know, a little bit of fresh tomato in here but it'd be all right. I added my pasta to my water by the way. As you can see, that is almost done cooking. I'm gonna let this simmer together for a couple minutes to kind of get the tinniness out of that can of tomatoes but I'm gonna start seasoning it with some salt, pepper, and garlic. My pasta is done. I haven't drained it yet because I want to add a little bit of this pasta water to my pan here to help me make a sauce. So for my sauce, I have this borscht that I got for two dollars. This little corner is gone because I had to, you know, make sure it was still good since it's just a little bit past its best by date. If there is any food that you use your senses to tell if it is still good, cheese is definitely the one because the best by dates they put on cheeses feel like the most arbitrary thing ever and I'm not gonna lie, I feel pretty bougie using a whole thing of borscht to make a chicken and pasta dinner but for two dollars, why not? All mixed together, this looks incredibly delicious and decadent. I'm gonna give it a taste real quick. Wow, that is crazy, crazy good. I just lowered the heat so that way this can calm down to like the barest little simmer and I'm gonna get that chicken cut up. Also, always got to make sure that the juices that drip out of the chicken while it's resting end up back in the pan because that is some superb flavor. This is the second time this week that I thought if I had some spinach it would go really good in the meal that I was making. It used to be something that I automatically bought every week but then I kind of like stopped using it so that was my sign to take a break from it but maybe I'll pick some up this next week. I've got the chicken cut up and added back in. All that's left to do now is add my very festive pasta back in or to add it in. I did not cook the bag by the way. It was 500 grams or a little bit over a pound and I did maybe two-thirds of it. I didn't want it to be too heavy on the pasta. I didn't want the pasta to take over and drown everything else out but this looks like it's going to be the the perfect ratio of pasta and veggies and chicken and sauce. That looks so good. Here's Santa probably wondering how the heck he ended up in a may pasta dish. Here's my bowl. This turned into such a good meal. So lately I've been working on not going back for seconds when I'm not hungry just because the food tastes really good and this is one of those meals where it's going to be really hard not to go back for more because I could definitely just keep eating this. Hey friends for Monday dinner here I am going to roast up some potatoes and cook some of that chicken and we're going to have salad with chicken and potatoes on the side. These are both bagged potatoes that I bought in the last couple weeks. Still haven't started using the bag that I just bought. I got a couple more potatoes in that bag but I'm going to chop all this up and see if I need it first. This is a sweet potato that my mom bought last weekend and didn't eat. Andrew and I were out of town so I'm going to get all this chopped up real quick. I needed to take a break from what I was doing and come work on dinner. I swapped video editing programs from one that requires a subscription to one that is free and I think that's ultimately going to be a really good move but right now I've just got the frustration of learning a new program but I'm sure that by the time I get this video published I will practically be a pro. I'm realizing this is probably kind of a lot of potatoes. I might save the sweet potato for another day. I'll go ahead and get these oiled and seasoned and if I change my mind about the amount when I put them on the pan I'll just cut that sweet potato up. Turns out I am making the sweet potato as well. Here's all my potatoes nice and oiled and seasoned. I have my oven at 425. I'm gonna cook these for 30-35 minutes. I'll take them out see if I want to put them in for another 10. Basically just cooking them until they're the level of crispness that I want. I'm heating up my cast iron to cook some of this chicken. I did ultimately decide that I'm going to use some of it for tonight and then some of it for dinner tomorrow. Any longer than that I would worry about the chicken staying fresh and I would want to freeze it but this should all be good for tomorrow. It was very fresh when I bought it. Tomorrow is Tuesday and it will have been a full week since I started this video. Usually I would go shopping tomorrow but because I already have chicken to eat and may or may not do my shopping tomorrow I may put it off to Wednesday. Tomorrow the preview ad for Food Lion comes out so I can see what's going to be on sale the following week and so I may just wait and look at the preview ad and decide whether I want to go and try to get two or three days worth of food or whether next week's ad is going to be better and if I'd rather just wait a day and do a full shopping trip on Wednesday because I do definitely have enough food in the house that I could wait another day. I'm cooking the chicken pretty much just like I did yesterday. Oil in a hot pan searing it for a few minutes on each side until it is cooked through in the middle. My chicken is out of the pan and resting. It looks absolutely wonderful. I'm going to chop up a few veggies. This is a cucumber that my mom had bought last weekend. It was still in the fridge. Like I said, Andrew and I were out of for like four days and so she did a full shopping trip and there's a few extra things. Look at my tomatoes trying to sprout there. The seeds. But the potatoes are almost done. I'll get these last couple aromas I have cut up. Get that cucumber cut up. Slice that avocado and then make a nice little salad to eat. I was just thinking I think tomorrow I'm gonna make like chicken tacos or chicken fajitas and refried beans for dinner because I still have one of those bell peppers left and I've got that chicken and and I have an avocado left still and I'm craving some refried beans so I think that that's probably what I'm gonna make tomorrow instead of going grocery shopping. Here's my potatoes right out the oven and I'm gonna make me a salad and a little side of potatoes and there's what my plate looks like. Absolutely delicious salad with chicken. The potatoes are really delicious as well. I have a fork in my other hand. It just happens to be the hand holding the camera. Yeah delicious meal. And that is what our week of meals looked like. I did look at that preview ad and decided not to do Tuesday grocery shopping because starting Wednesday pork shoulder is going to be on sale for 99 cents a pound. Broccoli was on sale. Corn on the cob is four for a dollar. Potatoes are on sale. Ground beef is on sale. I got a lot of options and that's only the one sales ad so definitely strategically timing my shopping to get the most bang for my buck. Thanks for hanging out with me while I did some shopping, did some cooking, ate some delicious food. I will see y'all again soon.