Month 2 - Day 1

Today I took our cash out of the bank,  $250.  I left $50 in the bank to cover our Bountiful Baskets for the next month.  I went to Costco and raided the dairy shelves.  I like to call that place the Hundred Dollar Store, as in the antithesis to the Dollar Store, because it's tough to get out of there without giving up at least a hundred dollars.  Thankfully, today, I did it for $67.

So, now I have $183 in cash, and a lot of food in my house.  Saturday's $15 Basket o' Bounty provided us with about 15 lbs of fresh produce.  Add to that a well stocked pantry and a freezer full of food and you won't be worried about us this Holiday Season. 

Tonight's dinner was simple and delicious.  We ate red meat two days in a row, which rarely happens for two reasons:

1. We don't generally have red meat in the house because it is more expensive and less healthy than other meats, and
2. When we do have it, we tend to eat it ALL gone in one meal.

However, when I went to donate blood last week I was DENIED because my hemoglobin was low.  Because I want to try again tomorrow, the phlebotomist recommended red meat, spinach and a few other key foods to beef up my red blood cell count.  Thankfully, I happened to have a large roast in the freezer.  And, yesterday I was smart about stretching the meal.

I'm sure lots of you have already stumbled upon the concept of portioning out certain foods before you bring it to the table, but I hadn't.  Plus, we have company almost every Sunday and we generally eat most of what is prepared.  But, as I was looking at this big piece of meat, and knowing it was just the six of us, it occurred to me that if I filled one serving plate, and put the rest aside, no one would really notice.  When I brought the plate to the table, no one did notice and everyone ate their fill.  I even had a little left over on the plate to add to the other I had set aside.

So, tonight's meal was shredded beef tacos with fresh spinach salsa.  Take that Mr. Blood Draw Man.  I better pass that darn hemoglobin test tomorrow or it's going to really make me mad.

Here's the recipe on the salsa.  I figure everyone who wants to know already knows how to make a roast in a crock pot, and if not, there are entire websites devoted to that sort of advice so I'll spare all my vegetarian friends the gory details about that.  Here's a feel-good veggie recipe instead.  Also, in the winter when tomatoes from the store taste disgusting, I omit them and use spinach as the main bulk in this salsa.

Fresh Spinach Salsa

1/2 medium onion, finely diced
3 roma tomatoes, diced
1/2 bunch cilantro, chopped
1 jalepeno, finely diced
2 large handfuls spinach, finely chopped
2 Tbs. lime juice
1 tsp salt