Week 2 of Menu Planning

The first week of my menu planning was what I would consider a success.  I managed to make meals and snacks for both Tuesday and Wednesday.  The baked oatmeal muffins I made sustained me the whole week, and I even had enough to share with my room mate too, for his breakfast.  I would heat up 2 or 3 (depending on the size, b/c I learned that they don't rise much) and a glass of milk, and I was good till well into the afternoon (when I would wake up, given my odd schedule).  I didn't need to make the lassi or banana sushi on Thursday, I had yummy breakfast muffins. 

This week I wasn't on top of things as much as I was last week (we spent the weekend out of town visiting J's family), but tonight I think I have managed to pull together a menu for the week.  I originally thought of making more breakfast muffins, but I might just do an English muffin with peanut butter.  I love them toasted with a glass of milk.  I don't know if I will have time tomorrow to go shopping, as well as make a weeks worth of breakfast, and make lunch for work. 

But the overall goal of saving cash is really being accomplished.  I have now realized that not only is it saving me money by not ordering out at work, but it is also saving me money at the grocery store.  I am really trying to incorporate items I already have in the pantry, freezer, or fridge.  You might notice that I have had a quinoa recipe both weeks, it is because I have a big bag of it in my pantry.  I am having to adapt some of the recipes so that I am not making a bunch and then they end up going to waste.  Luckily there aren't a lot of things my room mate won't eat, and he is happy to eat leftovers. 

I didn't want to get confused about what recipes to use, since I plan to keep this (hopefully) going more than just a few weeks.  The board with my past recipes can be found here.  While the board with the recipes for the current week are here.

Anycrap, no fancy pictures of food today.





<3 nik

Menu Planning! Go!

I went grocery shopping today with my handy dandy list for all my recipes I had pinned for my menu planning.  [shameless plug] Here is my Pinterest board for my Weekly Menu Planning.  I made a change to it today, because I had forgotten that J and I had made a trip to the Asian market and we had gotten a package of 4 eggplants to split.  So I changed up my edamame to eggplant for Wednesday. 

I suppose I should clarify for anyone that might actually be following this.  I am doing my menu planning roughly from Monday-Friday.  Monday I am off work, and we usually do meatless Mondays at Js' place.  I work Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday nights.  I didn't make a mean for Thursday night because J always makes me lunch and brings it to me.  I will probably bring snacks.


Anycrap, here is my amazingly small grocery bill, it really helped having a menu and shopping list to reflect it. 

I was amazed!  This is just for my food at home and for work during the week.  It doesn't include any eating out that I do with J.  That was still low this week though, about 25 bucks.

I made one of my recipes, the blueberry banana baked oatmeal tonight, so that I could put it up and munch on it the rest of the week.  at $.52 cents a serving, I am gonna be eating some really yummy breakfasts this week! 

Check them out!

I am not a fan of making something in a big pan and then eating off it the rest of the week (I am also not a leftovers loving person) so I made mine as individual little muffins, if you will.  A couple of these with a glass of milk, or tea, or BOTH! 

I am finally executing some menu planning, and am really excited about it!


<3 nik

My Millionth Attempt at Menu Planning [week 1]

So after visiting the website for my bank account and seeing the break down of how much I spend on food, broken down in a nifty pie graph (ironic much?) I decided it was truly time to really focus on menu planning, not only for health, but for saving some cash. 

So I decided to let Pinterest help me, since I never seem to find a menu planning app that I just love.  I tried to use pepper plate, but they don't support one of my favorite websites that I like to get recipes from (budget bytes).  So for now I have a board on Pinterest for A weekly menu.  The plan is to change it weekly.  I am trying to combine 1 new recipe, as well as using items that are already in my pantry. 

So, to be a spam whore, here is the link again  A weekly menu.  Follow my menu planning journey.

<3 Nik

Matcha Green Tea Bowl

A fun trip to the Asian market resulted in J getting a bigger bowl to mix his matcha green tea in (this is the green powder we used to make our green cupcakes).

I saw another opportunity to use the Sharpie and make a hilarious bowl. This time I used Gary Coleman as my muse. I hope you like it.

Sharpies + Dollar Store Mugs= Fun

I'm sure you've seen these if you spend anytime on Pinterest. Designing your own mug for yourself or as a gift is fun and cheap. I'm thinking of doing some as Christmas gifts. Finally got around to trying this out for myself.

If you google "Sharpie mugs" you can find numerous tutorials on how to do it. Supplies/Directions are easy:

Sharpie
White ceramic mug

Draw what you want, bake at 350 for 30 min. Let cool, hand wash only.

Could it be more easy? I think if you wash it in the dishwasher though, the design will fade faster or come off completely.

I copied a design I saw on etsy. It always makes me lulz.

Nik <3

Nyan Cat Cake Extravaganza!

This weekend we attended Geekfest in Killeen.  Its a con sort of event where people dress up, they have Magic tournaments, a cake/cookie/cupcake contest, vendors, robot builders, and the best part is the location is part of a planetarium.  They have cool videos, star talks, and laser shows. 

This is only the 2nd year of the event, and I like that about it. Its fun to go and participate, but its not to big and annoying with lots of people.  I keep finding the older I get, the more my dislike of people outweighs my like of attending events.  This year we decided to enter "The Cake is a Lie" contest.  There are 3 categories, cookies, cakes, and cupcakes.  Our entry was 1/2 cake and 1/2 cupcake, but we were put in the cake category.  There was only 1 entry for cookies, so we decided if we do it next year, we are doing cookies.  We didn't win anything, but we had fun making our entry, and the "celebrity judge" was Peter Mayhew.  He is the man who wore the Chewbacca costume in the original Star Wars movies.  This made me happy in a nerdy way, he ate one of my cupcakes!


We were judged on taste as well as appearance.  We decided on doing matcha green tea cupcakes, with butter cream frosting.  Our design?  Nyan cat, of course.  First we had to make the base for Nyan Cat, and the cupcakes, which were to be the rainbow that follows behind him. 

We made these the weekend before, and froze them so that way all we had to do was frost everything.  The frosting part took about 4  or maybe even 5 hours, because we had so many different colors (11 colors, if you count white as a color!)

I made a HUGE batch of butter cream frosting (4 sticks of butter, 7 cups of powdered sugar!) and then colored smaller batches as needed to do the rainbow and Nyan Cat.

 

 Finally, after maybe 6 or 7 hours of total work, our creation is complete!

Clearly we are not professionals, but I still LOVE what we accomplished, and so did a lot of other people!  We had some pretty stiff competition though,  it was a small contest, but there were a few participants who seem like they are professional cake decorators.  

Above are the winners, and below are the other participants, that like us, did not go home a winner.  

I don't think this is going to make me jump feet first into the competitive world of cake decorating.  But we would like to do it again next year.  We have already been brainstorming on what we could do next year.  I like that ours was so colorful and creative. 

Nik <3

Bam! Minecraft shoes!

I know I shouldn't have delayed this post so long, but I was so busy that it took me longer to get them done that I had planned. 

My inspiration came from these shoes here, Kyozokicks.  About 6 months ago they made their way across my Pinterest and across Geekcrafts.com.  It wasn't long after that I decided to do a Minecraft party and had the idea to do my own pair.  I followed this tutorial here, except I used a more puffy type paint.  Little Bro helped me by doing all the gridding, I did the painting. 

They didn't come out nearly as perfect, but I still think they are radical.  J loves them.  He wore them today. 

Supplies:
-Shoes
-Fabric paints in 3 shades of green, and 1 shade of gray/silver, and black
-Popsicle stick
-Pencil
-Can of shoe waterproofer

This was my first time doing anything with shoes, and I am happy with the results.  It wasn't until later that we had a cool surprise when going to bed.  I was glad I could capture a good picture of them later.

Everyone in the house agreed this made the shoes a million times cooler.  If we were ravers we would be so hip happinen'. Or something.  that made me think of this.

Hope you enjoyed!
<3 nik