Food Challenge Day 1

I've been getting all nostalgic about the early days of this space being a 'food blog'.  Pshaw, I'm no foodie.  Ask my husband.  But it was fun to try new recipes and challenges, I have to admit!

These days I cook what's easy and fast; just time-tested recipes that everyone likes.  But I wanted to set myself a challenge again just to get the juices flowing.  After I got back from the weekly grocery trip today I spread out my purchases and took a little video of them.  This week, you can come with me, peek into the kitchen and see what I'm making each meal.  I'm always up for frugal options, and we try and eat fairly healthy (fairly I said, not always!) but I also have come to peace with the fact that I need to use some convenience foods to make my life a bit easier.

For this week, the challenge is just to make food and record it; not to specifically make any one recipe.  I'm also (with the exception of milk) not going to purchase any other food for meals this week.  However I am going to use whatever I may have in my fridge/freezer/pantry in addition to my groceries, just because a) I would do this normally and b) this isn't a budget challenge like I've done before, I'm just curious.

Aren't you curious about what you really eat all week?  Don't you find yourself on Friday thinking 'have the children really eaten pasta every lunch this week?'  Do you also find 'forgotten' purchases in your fridge all. the. time.?  Is it just me?  Anyway, I'm expecting lots and lots of recipe sharing in the comments so don't let me down!

Tonight is a work night for David, and so we would usually eat our large meal early, and then Sam would have a snack before bed.  I had already prepared supper earlier in the week and frozen it, so we had chili and I made breakfast muffins.

I don't use a recipe for my chili, but this one had black beans, diced tomato, green pepper, ground beef, mushrooms, tomato sauce and seasonings.  The muffin recipe I used was this one.  I cut the sugar to 1/2 cup and added ground black pepper, 1/3 of a package of diced bacon, cooked, and an inch of cheese, shredded.

Samuel had a bowl of local strawberries, a fruit cup and a leftover muffin for his snack before bed and David took a few muffins and the last of the chili with him to work to eat on his break.