Pantry Raid.

It's close to pay day, which is exciting but it also requires me to get creative in the kitchen.

  

Here's the scoop:  we get paid twice a month and when we do get paid, it's not a lot.  We don't have any debt though, just car payments (yes that's plural .. we bought a 2nd car  ..  more on that later), insurance, cell phones and our internet bill oh and netflix.  Being debt free makes living on a bi-monthly pay calendar a bit easier but Jared and I are trying to be as frugal as possible so we only shop for groceries once a month now.  Not to throw out numbers but our monthly grocery bill now is around $300 where as before we were spending at least $200 twice a month, $300 to feed a family of 5 for an entire month, sounds great to me!  As it gets closer and closer to the pay period where we purchase groceries our kitchen gets more and more bare.  Aside from buying things like produce, milk and bread everything else is bought in one great big haul at the grocery store.  Our carts are so full it looks like we are hosting the Duggar family for the weekend.  :)  It's honestly a bit exciting because we like to eat down what we have before we buy more groceries to make sure we don't end up with too much or too little of one certain thing, like right now, I have boo-koo amounts of spaghetti sauce.  So, it's fun to eat it all down and see how creative we can get with what we have.  :)

We are currently 2 days away from grocery shopping day so here's a look at what I found in the fridge, freezer and pantry and what I cooked for dinner last night.  :)

one package of quinoa

pronounced ki:nwa

one thawed chicken breast and one jar of sweet corn/black bean salsa

combined the two and cooked in the crock pot for 3 hours 

one package of corn muffin mix

made and placed in to the muffin tins by Leonidas .. all I did was cut open the package, he cracked the eggs, measured and poured the milk and poured the mix into the muffin pan.  :)

since there was only 1 chicken breast Jared and I split that and the kids had leftover pasta surprise from the night before which was another pantry raid dinner 

(spiral pasta noodles, an opened jar of sauce from the fridge, 1 lb of ground turkey, mozzarella cheese and parmesan cheese baked in the oven)

they also had the last of our oranges and some of the corn muffins that Leonidas made.  :)

Here's what Jared and I each had.  1/2 of a chicken breast with left over black beans atop and some feta cheese, quinoa, left over corn from the night before and some corn muffins.  this is one pantry raid meal that we will be intentionally making again within the next month .. it was so delicious.  :)

I don't always fix dessert but on nights when we have leftovers or when it's not a kid appealing dinner I like to add a dessert so the kids feel like dinner was superb, even if they really didn't care for the main dish at all.  :)  On this night I found some cinnamon rolls just waiting to be baked so I threw them in the oven while we were eating dinner and when everyone finished we enjoyed some fresh out of the oven cinnamon rolls.  I kept the icing off of 3 of the rolls for the kids, they've never had icing on their cinnamon rolls so they don't know the difference.  :)

When I say that we eat what we have and then go grocery shopping here's what I mean .. really, there's not much left to get creative with but I'm sure I can figure something out for dinner tonight.  :)

Hope you enjoyed looking at our dinner and seeing how bare our kitchen gets just before grocery day.  :) 

Perhaps I will bring our camera along when we take all of the kids grocery shopping tomorrow evening.  :)