Wordless Wednesday

What a cutie! He wanted to help clean today...I didn't protest!

TW Gets a Cooking Lesson

My dear, sweet TW is a great husband. Great in so many aspects! Wonderful father, devout follower of Christ, kind, honest, compassionate, wise, funny, great dancer, amazing husband...but he does lack in the cooking department. Which I am completely fine with, I have picked up that ball and ran with it. My mama wasn't much of a cook because she didn't enjoy it. So, I have learned by teaching myself and I have learned quite a bit from Bema. However, I will admit it is nice to see TW in the kitchen. He has made a good friend through Seminary who is a great cook. I often ask him for tips myself. So, much to my surprise one night a couple months ago TW came home and said, "I am going to cook dinner tomorrow night." This is about like saying, "When pigs fly." :) But, I went with it. I totally figured that James, our friend, had encouraged him to do so. The next night he whipped up some yummy pasta. I had a bad headache that night so it worked out well that he was taking over the cooking for the evening. I must admit that the comments coming from the kitchen while he was cooking were pretty funny! So, fast forward to last week. I had been asking James about how to cook salmon, fish is something I am not too comfortable cooking. So, I decided to ask him over to show me hands on how to do it. As we were in the kitchen I then decided it would be great for TW to know how to cook 2 meals, one being his pasta and two being the salmon. He was all for it! So, he did the hands on learning and I watched over their shoulders. The meal was delicious and it was fun learning something new.

Menu Plan Monday

I have been working on taxes lately which has been taking me back to looking at our past spending. I realized that we are spending a bulk of our money on food (go figure...we LOVE to eat). So, the past few days I have been researching ways to save on our grocery bill. Coupon clipping and planning meals from the sales flyer is where I have chosen to start. If you google this topic you can get overwhelmed and spend hours researching. So, for now I am choosing to keep it simple and I may add other techniques as the weeks go along. Today I headed to the grocery store with my list and coupons in tow. I shop at Kroger where they have a discount card. By choosing to by products that were on sale through the card and plus my coupons I saved $32.56. I was pretty impressed. They sales clerk asked at the beginning of the transaction for my Kroger card and I told him I would prefer to give it to him at the end because I like to see the price click down. :) What a great feeling! Liberating, freeing, and exciting. So, here is what we will be eating this week...

Monday: Meatballs (Pioneer Woman)

Homemade Mac and Cheese (Pioneer Woman)

Green Beans

Tuesday: Salmon with Fire Roasted Tomatoes, Olives, and Capers

Rice

Asparagus

Wednesday: Roast (Pioneer Woman)

Veggies

Mashed Potatoes

Thursday: Leftovers or Out

Friday: Pizza

Saturday: Out

Sunday: Mexican Chicken

Rice