Sundays were meant for breakfast right?  I mean what a better day to enjoy the paper and sit and drink coffee and eat some form of breakfast.  This post is a bit different than others – because it is a two-fer.  2 meals in this post for the price of one.  Wait… not really on the price thing.  But still.  You know what we are saying.  You get 2 meals today on this post, instead of the one boring one.

So lets get on with it. 

Breakfast yesterday was a bit later than normal – almost brunch-like.  This is something we have started lately.  Eating a late breakfast and an early dinner and skipping lunch.  Cheaper.  We get more work done instead of sitting around eating.  We feel better and if we really get hungry – grab a snack or something.

So yesterday (Sunday), we put off breakfast until around 11 or so and decided we would do French toast & bacon.  We had picked up some bread from the Farmer’s Market on Saturday and so we figured we would use that for the French toast.  It is a Honey Wheat bread (with the proceeds going to the local women’s shelter), and it is awesome – so knew as French Toast it would rock the house. 

Add in some bacon, and do we really have to sell you on this meal?

Let’s run down the price & stuff real quick.  Bread was $5 a loaf (which is high, we know), but it went to the local women’s shelter – so for us that is ok.  12 slices total from the loaf – we used 4.  Quick math… it was roughly $.41 a slice (imagine using your store bought or homemade – super cheap).  $1.64 for bread.

Then the 2 eggs we used for the French toast – we will just guess-timate… $0.35.

We picked up the bacon 2 for $5 @ HEB.  So $2.50 for it.

Total for breakfast – $4.31 (w/ $1.64 of it going to charity)

Not bad for a quick & easy breakfast.  On our French toast, we put a lil vanilla in the eggs – then a lil brown sugar.. lil bit of milk to stretch it.  Then with it being a honey wheat bread – the honey explodes out of it.  Awesome. 

Neeeeeeeeext…

Shala has been wanting to do a roast for a while, we just hadn’t really thought about it.  Since we are trying to switch up our menu to keep it fresh, this weekend was a perfect time to try it.  This is a crock pot dish, so its a matter of putting everything in the crock pot and letting it sit for 6-8 hours.  So easy isn’t even the word for this one.  FREAKIN’ EASY is more like it.

Added a beef roast, half a bag of baby carrots, some sliced onion (big slices) & about 10 new potatoes (the small red ones) cut up into smaller pieces.  Add in 1/4 cup of shiraz or merlot & 3/4 cup of water.  Set it to low – and let it go.  6-8 hours.  We flipped it at one point (the roast).

So here is the entire menu last night…

Beef Pot Roast w/ potatoes, onions & carrots

Salad

Green Beans w/ cheese

Bread

Shala ate the green beans w/cheese, I did the salad.  And I ate the bread we bought from the Farmer’s Market with it as well.  It was awesome, we both tore it up and can’t wait to eat it again (yes, we have tons of leftovers from it).  Sandwiches anyone?!? haha

Breakdown on price.  The roast was the most expensive, obviously – I think we paid about 7 bucks total for the roast (will figure it closer when I get home).  We ate about half I would say.  So $3.50 total for the meat (since we are doing leftovers from it).

Potatoes were $2.50 for the bag – we used about a 1/4th of the bag.  So we will say – $0.75.

We had an onion from last time, and only used a lil of it.  Carrots were $1 a bag and we used half.  So $0.50 on that.

The bread once again was $0.40 a slice (two slices).  $0.80 for bread.

Green beans were $0.50 a can.  $0.50 for green beans we will add $0.20 for cheese added haha – $0.70 total for green beans & cheese.

Salad was from the AeroGarden – cha ching!

Grand total for meal – $6.25

You couldn’t pay 6.25 for a meal like this at any local place to eat.  Hell you can’t get a value meal at Whataburger for that!  Remember that these are all estimations – we try to fall on the high side, so it might even be cheaper.  And we are doing this based on 2 people.

Shala owned this meal.  It is now on our future menu – it was so good and don’t be alarmed if you cook this yourself and at first the wine is very overpowering (the smell).  About hour 6, it will begin really smelling like roast and oh man.  You might as well just leave the house because you will be walking by every 5 minutes trying to sneak a whiff!

How’s your quest going?  Anything we should know?  Anything we should be eating?  New recipes?

Tags: Aerogarden, Cooking, Eating At Home, Food, Health, Living Green, Make A Difference, Money, Personal, Pictures, Recipes, Wine Drunk by James
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After months of wondering if we would even have a garden this year, we started kicking around the idea of creating a space out back to rival last year’s spot.  For those that dont’ know (n00bs), we moved this past year after only being at our house for a year (a loooooong story) – so we haven’t had much time to get a garden figured out here at our new house.

Over the last couple months we have built 2 raised beds, 1 onion row (raised) and also purchased some barrels to do some gardening in also.  We still plan a third raised bed, but for now we felt the urge to put it all together and see how it turned out.  We had everything close to the backdoor, because our frost date hadn’t passed… so we didn’t want to keep lugging them 25 ft. each time it was going to get cold.

Well… I think the freezing has past, so yesterday Shala said…

“You know, I wish we had all this stuff where it is going to go.  And we had a nice lil spot to sit and relax by our garden.”

In a matter of 10 minutes it felt like, we had whooped it into shape and we had that spot she said she wanted.  Here is a picture of our garden area at the moment, obviously still a work in progress.

With everything sorta in place (if you will), we were surprised at how it really is coming together and doesn’t look so hodge-podge after all.  Just to break it down for you, lets go into each section. Here is the first picture heading out the back gate.

This pic shows 3 of the 5 barrels (2 of them are still waiting to get something planted in), and one of the 2 raised beds we have built (and of course we want a third).  The barrels are as follows (front to back): potatoes, potatoes & a three sisters garden.  If your not familiar with the three sisters garden, click here and read more.  At the moment we have the corn in place and have planted the beans around it.  Squash is growing indoors to get a jump on things. To the right we have nothing planted just yet, but we plan to have veggies of course.  Expect lots of Tomatoes & such.

This next picture, you can see the second raised bed, which also has yet to see anything planted – but should have okra, tons of peppers.

You might be able to tell, but in between the two long raised beds, we recently planted a Spanish Broom (Spartium junceum) and we put a cage around it to protect it from our giant ghost-like dog that runs the fence like a lunatic sometimes.  When it gets a lil bigger, we will pull the cage.  Here is a better picture of it by itself…

The blooms are SUUUUUuuper fragrant, and we are hoping it will attract bees for the garden.  Who would have thought after all these years of being scared of bees, we would be basically calling them on the phone or texting them and seeing if they want to hang out.  BFFs.

Now to the next part, the relaxation section of the garden.  A spot that we feel is important for any garden to prosper.  Without a spot to sit back and relax in… and enjoy your work – a garden isn’t really a garden is it?  Nope.

You can see the onion row just on the left of the picture, we added that last weekend, just to the right of it on the cement we have our lime tree, it is in the process of getting all its new leaves, so it is naked.  Please excuse it, and you are probably thinking it isn’t there at all – but it is.  Just hard to see.  It’s tall and lanky.  Then of course our lil spot to sit and relax.  My (James’) Mom made that table, and we have had it forever it seems now.  The chairs, just some simple ones we picked up last year for the pool area – figured we would reuse them.  Just to the right of the sitting area, you have a new addition as of this weekend… a “Lemon Drop” tree/bush.

Now that Lemon Drop is kind of a mistake.  We wanted a lemon tree, because they are soOOoOo fragrant and we use lemon a lot in cooking and we drink lemon water – so it was a no-brainer to have a lemon tree.  Well, I kind of screwed that up.  We went to pick one up this weekend and we were looking at them all and found one and got out of there.  Got home and trimmed it up nice and pulled the tag off…

WHAT THE…

I had picked up a “Lemon Drop” tree.  Basically it is a hybrid (not the car kind) of a lemon & kumquat… so it isn’t really what we wanted.  I guess in all the picky-ness that ensued while getting our lemon tree… I wondered into the “Lemon Drop” section and grabbed the wrong one.  So here we are… with the wrong damn tree.  Idiot.

We are going to make the best of it though, they are still very fragrant and it has fruit on it – I am just wondering if we are going to get anything out of it after reading a little about it.  I just hope this type has been “engineered” for our area or something… or else it won’t produce because it is too hot.  Dunno – anyone have one of these?!?!

So that is it I suppose.  For now at least.  We have bigger plans, but for the moment at least we have a spot to kick back and relax in and everything is semi close enough to be able to water everything at once.  Very important for us – and anyone for that matter.  If it is a pain in the ass to water, you probably won’t.  Then your garden will suck.  And then the internets will make fun of you.  Then one day you will be on Twitter and someone will be making fun of a garden and you will click the link they shared (because you want to make fun of them too – because your sick like that).  After clicking the link – you realize it is you people are making fun of.

It’s a slippery slope. 

How does your garden grow?

P.S. – If you aren’t friends with us on Flickr (photo sharing/storage site), then why not?  You don’t like us?  That sux.  Quit reading us if we are so uncool.  I mean… your basically stalking us.  Here is our photostream on Flickr if you want to stalk us even more.

P.S.S. – If your on Twitter, follow us.  We will follow you.  Then you can look through our friends and follow them and we will do the same.  Then none of us will get any work done because we are too busy tweeting about the work we should be doing… and then its 11PM and nothing has got done.  On second thought… maybe you should just check out our Twitter feed, the following us is up to you.

Tags: Crafty Crap, DIY, Design, Gardening, Growing Onions, James Is Wrong Too, Living Green, Make A Difference, Pictures, Springy, West Texas, raised beds by James
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Switching it up a bit this time.  Instead of showing our dinner like usual, we are going to show our breakfast this time.  We love breakfast, it is one of our favorite meals.  So on the weekends, since we have time – we always do something a little bit special for breakfast.  We used to go hit IHOP and spend 25 bucks on something the size of a small country – then walk around all day cursing IHOP about how fat we felt (and were)… or we would go and they would totally undercook our eggs or burn the toast.  Still we would pay the money… hate our life… and ruin our bank account.  Smart huh?  Yeah, we loved it.  One of our favorite past-times.

So instead of paying “the man” for a breakfast that we could top at home… we cut out “the man” and do it ourselves now.  The funny thing is, we use to do this all the time.  It really was one of favorite things, being in the kitchen together – spending some time with some good music, some good conversation and eventually some stellar food.  Why had we been outsourcing this the last year or so?  Crazy talk.

Just a quick rundown of what that is… to those that have never had breakfast I suppose (who wouldn’t know what this is right?).  Honestly I’m doing this for the search engines… it has nothing to do with you.  I know your smart.  Your already here.  I gotta grab those people searching for “bacon breakfast” or “what does a hashbrown look like?” Don’t judge.  We will build our empire, you build yours.   

Bacon

Sausage

Hashbrown

Eggs (your way)

Biscuits

Breakfast is one of those meals that you get to sorta choose how you want to eat things & the amount.  So it can obviously vary on what your tastes are, or your family’s taste rather.  Someone wants scrambled – so be it.  Sausage links, instead of patties… make it so.  The bottomline in this thing is price right?  So let’s keep an eye on that instead of what exactly is being eaten.

Anyhow – did somebody say bacon?  Yup, bacon in the house.  We have a flattop griddle (electric) that we use for breakfast.  Have had one for probably the better part of 4-5 years (at least).  Actually had 2 would be more like it.  We wore the first one out.  Imagine cooking a complete slab of bacon at once time.  Pluse some sausage.  Sign me up.  Cheap too, you usually can pick one up for 30 bucks @ Target or something.  Here’s one on Amazon, for 50-ish.  I swear we didn’t pay that much for ours – it was closer to 20 bucks when we bought it.  Damn inflation.  Still though… we have to admit – it cooks bacon like a pimp.  A good pimp.

If you cook bacon in the microwave, so be it.  With this latest “ready made” bacon crazy going on at the moment – I can’t say we blame you for doing it that way.  It’s sorta cheap (for not having to actually fry it), healthier… so thats cool if you want to do that.  Turkey bacon is good, a healthy substitute in some cases.  So whatever you please on bacon, that is fine with us.  We went old school, old school on sale – $2.49 for one package of bacon @ HEB.  One thing I would like to mention is the fact that we always cook the whole package and then save whatever is left for dog treats & for sandwiches or something.  Stretch it a lil further.

We had some sausage already in the freezer that we thawed – so we are calling it free.  But you know you can pick up sausage on the cheap sometimes, and we just ate 3 total sausage patties out of it.  So even if we counted it – it is probably some cents worth per patty.  And let us explain something.  We are doing this to get our costs on things.  We bought things at the store this time that we counted against our total but know that they are long-term items (like ketchup or seasonings).  Things that will cost up front but be used for a long time… so if we count them – we think that things we already have in our pantry or freezer is fair game at a discount.  So when figuring yours, you should try the same thing.  It’s only fair.

Next we put together a quick hashbrown with 1 small potato.  Now we had these leftover from a while back and it was the last in the bag.  We always get really happy when we finish a product down to nothing.  Hate to be wasteful, so this was a great item to use for this meal.  Even if you figured cost on this… probably looking at 20 cents or something to that effect.  Just grated it straight onto the griddle.  Salt & pepper or whatever you like to season.  Maybe add some onion if your into that sort of thing.  Done.  Simple eh?

We did some over medium eggs, of course you can do them however you like.  Scrambled (we did this last weekend), omelette maybe?  Whatever you like, just make some damn eggs already.  We use free-range, organic eggs.  Hoping we can get to the Farmer’s Market earlier this next week and get some local eggs. We put them in our composter (the shells) and also the carton goes in when we are done with the whole thing.  Cost of eggs – 40 cents total.

Biscuits are a staple around our place too.  We do the smaller (5 biscuit) cans of biscuits.  We know we could make our own, but it is so easy this way right?  We will just say a buck for this can – we did the “layer” biscuits this morning, once again your preference – could do fluffy.  Hell you could do toast or pancakes or no bread at all.  Maybe a bagel?  You choose your bread & cost.

Then your done.  Maybe some milk or coffee to wash it all down.

So what is the grand total of this breakfast?

Total for this meal: $3.89

You can’t even walk in the door at IHOP (by the time you buy a paper & coffee) for that price.  And, we tend to eat breakfast a lil later on the weekends and it is more like a brunch.  Then eat a late dinner/lunch thing and it is only 2 meals instead of 3.  Cheap cheap!

What have you been eating?  Anyone used any of our recipes or ideas yet?  Give us some of yours.  This was Saturday’s breakfast, we had chicken nuggets & french fries for dinner (yup frozen… hence no pics).  Nothing fancy… just livin’.  Today (Day 13), Shala is doing a roast w/ carrots, potatoes & onions.  Slow cooking it in the crock pot all day – then we will have the leftovers until they are gone.  MmmmMmmm.  Roast beef sandwiches.  So you can likely gear up for a picture of that today or tomorrow.  Then we have a pseudo plan for the week including: Chicken & Rice, P.F. Changs Chicken Lettuce Wraps (yup, we so stole their recipe), Pepper Steak w/ rice & eggrolls and probably Pork Chops.  We are going to hit the store today for some fill-in items, but no worries – we are keeping track of the money we spend.

Almost at the 2 week mark! Half way there! Kinda.

Tags: Cooking, Eating At Home, Food, Health, Living Green, Make A Difference, Money, Personal, Pictures, Recipes, Self Help by James
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