She's Back....

What do you get when you combine skipping the week's grocery shopping and a mama who is creative in the kitchen and finally back on her feet (here and there anyway)? A thrifty, delicious, healthy dinner.

I made Mujaddara (there are a million variant spellings out there...choose one you like), sauted carrots, and cabbage salad. A dinner from the most simple foods - lentils, rice, onions, olive oil, carrots, and cabbage.

Tuesday was simple as well: freshly cooked pinto beans, corn tortillas, black olives.

Today we either go marketing, or come up with another pantry dinner. We do have the makings for a basic vegetable soup (potatoes, onion, carrots, celery, garlic). Papa's getting nervous though, as we've been without fresh greens for days now. So we'll see what I decide to do. We have leftover mujaddara that I can fry into patties for lunch, which would feed everyone but the J-Baby. Hmmm....I could put on a pot of quinoa for his lunch and serve it with raw carrots. The leftover quinoa could combine with leftover pinto beans into a yummy casserole, although I was planning to work on a gluten-free vegan pizza crust for Friday. They don't know that, so it'll keep a week.

Thinking it through, if I plan and do the work I'm pretty sure we could make it to Monday without marketing.

Thursday breakfast: choice of cornmeal mush or oatmeal
Friday breakfast: choice of fried mush or oatmeal
Saturday breakfast: homemade granola, frozen GF waffles
Sunday breakfast: GF applesauce muffins
Monday breakfast:

Thursday lunch: fried mujaddara patties, cabbage salad (quinoa for J-Baby)
Friday lunch: sandwiches and split pea soup
Saturday lunch: Legoland
Sunday lunch: Mexican restaurant to celebrate FIL's birthday

Thursday dinner: vegetable soup, fresh bread, GF bread
Friday dinner: pinto-quinoa loaf, shredded carrot salad
Saturday dinner: out in San Juan Capistrano
Sunday dinner: reheated split pea soup and GF corn muffins

I still have a couple of pumpkins to process, although J-Baby can't eat it. We have enough fruit in the house: kiwis, pomegranates, tangerines, a grapefruit, limes, apples, a couple bananas. We have popcorn for snacks. We'll do just fine, as long as I can get Papa to breathe....

(In case anyone is worrying, this is an exercise in discipline, not an act of poverty.)