Food Budget, Day 8

This morning marks the start of Week 2! Lamar went to the grocery store and spent $12. He mainly purchased stuff for him to take to work, although he did get some ice cream and soda to make floats for dessert.

As for dinner, it appears that I put some extra effort into the meal, but it was actually very simple. I made a Roasted Organic Chicken with Moroccan Spices and Tagine Root Vegetables. I served this with some kashi pilaf. It was a delicious meal and very simple to prepare. For the chicken, I did not have the exact ingredients that were called for, so I improvised. I did not have any lemons or lemon juice, so I used limes and some apple cider vinegar. I did have some dehydrated lemon peel, so I used that in the spice rub. The end result was delicious. The recipe did call for a spice blend called ras-el-hanout. I had never used this, but a quick search on-line revealed that I had all the spices necessary to make the blend.

I used a wonderful organic chicken that I got a while back from a local farmer. He raises these amazing chickens. They are so flavorful and they truly live a great life of eating bugs and foraging around in the garden. His eggs and veggies are also delicious. The chicken is definitely more expensive than a conventionally raised one, but there is a real taste difference. I paid $13 for the chicken, so I will deduct that from the budget for the week.

After I roasted the chicken and cut the meat from it for dinner, I rinsed the carcass and boiled it with some carrot, onion and celery to make stock. I always have this on hand in the freezer and I feel that it is ridiculous to actually buy stock in the store - the flavor just does not compare! When the stock was done, I picked the remaining amount of meat off the carcass and will use this for chicken salad sandwiches today. The leftovers from dinner will be used in Monday nights curry dinner. Considering how much I was able to get from this chicken, the cost does not seem to be so much now - no part of it went to waste.

Counting Lamar's grocery trip and my chicken, we have spent $25 on food with $55 left for the rest of the week.