A Few of my Low-Budget Meals

I've been trying to cut back on our grocery bill.  Some weeks are easier than others.  Lately I've done pretty good.  The cooler weather has helped because it justifies making soup (trust me, you really don't want soup in the summer in Texas!) & soup stretches for a lot of meals.  I thought I'd share some of the recipes I've done in case anyone else wants to find ways to stretch our meals, too.

I'm gonna be lazy & post links for most of them.  I've got a toddler & growing another baby so give me a break!

Monterey Ranch Chicken - Ok, this isn't a soup but it was a good find from Pinterest.  What I liked was it called for just 5 ingredients (great for the budget) & they were things I typically already have on hand, other than the chicken.  I used chicken tenderloins & we ate it for dinner & had enough left for lunch the next day.

Blackeye Pea Soup - This is probably Jeremy favorite meal that I make.  Of course, I can't claim to be the creator of it.  I made it last week & added extra sausage.  I think it made it extra filling.  We had it for dinner & both at the leftovers twice.  Shaylin had only a small amount, just some carrots & some beans.  She's not real skilled with the spoon yet to handle soup.

Taco Soup - I haven't made this for us yet this season but I did for a couple in our church.  They said they were going to freeze half of it since it was such a huge amount.  I do plan to make it in the coming weeks so I can save a portion to freeze as a meal after the baby comes.

Broccoli Cheese Soup - I made this last week.  It gave us 3 meals for me & Jeremy (Shaylin finally decided to try it yesterday & ended up loving it).  Being a meatless meal helps make it cheaper.  We ate it with french bread, which helped fill us.  On a note about the recipe itself, I would cut back on the broccoli next time.  It was just a little too heavy on the broccoli.

Bowtie Lasagna - I'll end with another non-soup recipe.  This one is great for so many reasons.  It's cheap (I think I figured it costing about $5 the last time I made it; probably would be more if you don't have some ingredients already), it makes a lot, & it takes very little time to make.  Major winner!

The Beginning of Freezer Meals

One of my goals at some point with this pregnancy was to make freezer meals.  They would most likely be used sometime after Jillian is born.  Going from a family of 3 to a family of 4 may not always go smoothly so I want to be prepared & having some dinners already made that I only have to pop in the oven.

I came across this recipe for breakfast burritos on pinterest (side note:  Can I just say how much I am loving pinterest?!  I'm collecting so many recipes & make-yourself cleaning solutions & ways to decorate my house.)  We love breakfast burritos.  And apparently Jillian is telling me that I'm actually craving breakfast foods with eggs, cheese, & meat.  Also, I rarely get to make Jeremy a real breakfast before he goes to work.  I'm just to exhausted & stay in bed when he leaves.  This seemed perfect because he can just take one out of the freezer & microwave it at work.

I've already tried one burrito & I'm about to eat a 2nd (see, I told you I was craving breakfast food!).  The recipe itself isn't something brand new.  But I like that there are so many variations to do, like adding peppers & onions (if you like them; I don't) or going vegetarian (but why would you?!). 

I sort of halved this recipe.  I already had bacon & sausage on hand but not a whole pound each.  So I just cooked what I had.  And since I didn't have as much meat I didn't scramble a whole dozen eggs.  I did 7.  I didn't weigh the potatoes but I used 5 of them. 

I will likely make this again & try for the full amount.  With what I had I made 6 burritos with bacon & 5 with sausage.  Definitely will need more eggs.  And bacon.  Always need more bacon.  But still, this is a keeper.

A House Full of Girls

Yep, that's what my husband gets to live with!  And I'm including our 2 female dogs.

It's another girl for us!  We went in really kinda expecting to be told it was a girl so it wasn't a big shock.  And this little girl was much more cooperative than her big sister so the reveal was much less dramatic. 

Her name can finally be revealed, too.  Her name is Jillian Grace.  And, no, we're not trying to stick with S & J names.  We simply pick names that we like.  The name Jillian originally came on the radar for us back when we used to watch The Biggest Loser.  One of the trainers was named Jillian.  We don't necessarily love her but we loved her name.  And we've wanted to use Grace for a middle name but never felt that it fit with Shaylin's name. 

I'll confess that for a brief time I started second-guessing this name.  I just wasn't sure I loved it.  But then I heard a TV character with the name & I started to like it again.  And now that we've revealed it & gotten such positive feedback about it I'm even happier that we stuck with it. 

Boy or Girl?

Today's the day!  It was supposed to be on Wednesday but they're doing some work in the sono room that afternoon so they called to reschedule & OF COURSE I asked to have it moved up!  It's not till 4:30 so this day is gonna drag.

So I wanna know the general consensus - boy or girl?  I have a feeling the votes are pretty evenly split.  My feelings are still that it's another girl.  This pregnancy, although different, is still fairly similar to my last one with Shaylin.  Also, this baby's heartrate has been almost exactly what Shaylin's had been.  And I know the whole heartrate thing isn't really scientific but it proved right with Shaylin so I'm sticking with it.

So please vote!  I'll set up a poll on the side.  You can choose to vote there, in the comments on the blog, or on Facebook when I post the link on my wall.

Fall Baking

Once the first day of fall came I was ready to bake!  Granted, in Texas you wouldn't believe it was fall yet.  It usually takes till after Halloween for fall to really kick in here.

So far I've done muffins.  The first were these pecan pie muffins.  I've been eyeing them for a long time after discovering them on the Pioneer Woman's website.  They were wonderful!  They weren't as muffin-like as I expected but there were great just the same. 

The other muffins were made yesterday & they were these pumpkin cream cheese muffins.  The only downside for me was my only muffin pan holds 6 muffins so it took a really long time to finish all of them.  But the end result was worth it because they were really good!  The cream cheese mixture made a cheesecake-like texture & the pumpkin flavor wasn't over-powering.

I haven't decided what my next baking project will be but I think it should at least be something other than muffins!

Chugging Right Along

Oh yeah!  I've got a blog!

I so want to blog more often.  I constantly get ideas of things I want to post but just don't take the time to post them.  Maybe I'll just do some marathon posting at some point.

So I'm 17 weeks now.  I still get sick from time to time but it's not constant.  Mostly it's after I eat or when I'm really tired, like today.  I've been feeling the baby move & kick everyday for the past 2 weeks now.  Today I'm pretty sure I felt it on the outside.  This seems to be a really active baby.  Tomorrow I have a checkup & I'm sure we'll get to schedule the big ultrasound a week or 2 later.  So it won't be long before we know who's in there!

I've been trying to find ways to cut back on our grocery bill.  It's definitely not easy as a family of 3 (going on 4).  But last week I made one great meal choice:  ham.  I cooked it in the crockpot with brown sugar, pineapple juice, & maple syrup & served it with mashed potatoes & green bean casserole.  There were rolls & sweet tea, too.  It was a wonderful meal!  We took off most of the meat to save for sandwiches which we ate all week for lunches & Sunday night for dinner.  And we froze the ham hock which I'm using today for beans & rice.  That should be another dinner that will stretch pretty far.  I'm thinking I'll do that meal once a month.

Now that it's slowly cooling off it makes more sense to have soup.  And soup stretches pretty far, too.  Shaylin doesn't do too well with soup yet but grilled cheese is an easy backup for her.  So I'm on the seach for easy, low-cost soups.

There could be more to tell about us but since we don't know anything right now I'll have to just keep that quiet.  How's that for being vague?!  We know that God's will will be done so we are just praying that His will is also our will & whatever the outcome we accept it.

2nd Trimester, baby!

I've been so excited to have finally reached the end of my 1st trimester.  Unfortunately, it doesn't mean my energy comes back & the nausea disappears immediately.  If this pregnancy goes like the one with Shaylin, then I've still got a couple more weeks to go.

But still, just reaching the point of the pregnancy when the risk of miscarriages takes a nose dive makes me happy.  And a good doctor's appointment this past week where we again heard the baby's heartbeat brings me a big sigh of relief.

The nausea is still pretty random.  I have good days & bad days.  Eating & I have a love/hate relationship now.  All along I could eat & my nausea would go away.  And it's still like that.  But now eating makes me sick.  Sometimes I even go into a meal not sick but then about 10 minutes after I eat I'm sick.  I'm trying to watch my portions but that hasn't seemed to make a difference.  Hopefully this doesn't continue through the remainder of the pregnancy.  There's too much good food out there!

Last week I had some really bad headaches, the kind that wouldn't go away.  And of course Tylenol, the only thing I'm allowed to take, doesn't work as well as other options out there.  Someone brought up the possibility of not drinking enough water so I started chugging water & since then I haven't had anymore headaches.  It's possible it could just be hormone-related, especially since the headaches occurred at the end of the 1st trimester.  But I know I haven't been drinking near the amount of water I used to so increasing it certainly isn't a bad thing.

Ending my 1st trimester also meant that I was able to stop taking prometrium, the progesterone supplement I've been taking twice a day since I learned I was pregnant.  I'm so happy to have 2 less pills to swallow everyday!  They weren't big pills but when you're feeling sick any pill is a struggle to get down.

My next checkup is on the 26th.  I'll be 17 1/2 weeks at that point so I'm hoping I will get to schedule my BIG ultrasound while I'm there.  I think my doctor prefers his patients to be 18 or 19 weeks before having it done so probably somewhere around the 1st week of November we'll get to know who's in there!  I can't wait!