I love food.

Last Sunday, we had a great combined RS/Priesthood lesson on budgeting given by our friend, Sherman. Jake and I got really excited about it and have tried hard this week to improve our spending habits. One of our biggest issues is groceries... $50 here, $40 there.... it all adds up SO fast and we're buying things we don't really need. It is so hard to go to the store just for milk and not pick up the box of brownies that's on sale! So, in an effort to save money, I've decided to get a little more creative and resourceful with my dinners. One great website is allrecipes.com because you can search by the ingredients you have/want to use and the ones you don't. So, for example, my mom gave me a ton of lemons and I had some shrimp so I searched for recipes using those two things. I found a YUMMY garlic lemon shrimp pasta recipe that Jake said was restaraunt quality! Wow!

The bread is random.... sourdough would have been better, but when it's all you've got....

Proof!

The next night I did a twist on my mom's classic chili mac. Instead of using ground beef, I combined chicken breast strips, black beans, corn, tomato sauce, stewed tomatoes, taco seasoning, dried onions, basically just a concoction of whatever sounded "Mexican." We put it in tortillas and YUM! Tonight I did the allrecipes.com search with chicken and corn flakes. I found a baked chicken recipe that I altered a little bit with a packet of dried ranch seasoning. It turned out okay... but Jenna liked it!

Jenna and Jake also made some great lemon cookies using the lemons from my mom.

We've had a lot of fun trying (and eating) new recipes and cooking with what we already have, instead of making several grocery runs. And it's fun to see all the money we're saving! P.S. Be sure to read all three new posts!