Thursday, May 19, 2016

Going Strong and Cheap!

So, today is day three of my five dollar a day challenge, and I'm feeling pretty great! I don't feel deprived, or bored or hungry. I'm sure once my meals start consisting of leftovers the boredom will kick in! I know people who don't like leftovers at all. I like leftovers, but I like when it's like one serving of leftovers. Enough for a quick meal. Not when you're one person, and you cook a recipe that serves eight.
I did the oven fries with FYH ranch and Carolina gold BBQ sauce for breakfast again. I spiced my fries with curry, turmeric, garlic powder and smoked paprika. So good.
Later on I made a smoothie with raspberries, pineapple and beet greens.
Not the prettiest color, and a little less creamy with no mango or banana, but still totally edible.
While I was making dinner I made a juice with beets, and pineapple. Very basic, but very good. Pineapple is the best at muting the dirty, I'm sorry "earthy" taste of the dreaded beet.
For dinner I made Tabbouleh salad and served it with lemony garlic potatoes, and salad with hummus dressing. Full disclosure, the Romaine was in my crisper drawer on it's last breath, so I chose to use it. This is a saving money challenge so wasting food because of rules is just not going to happen.
This was a really satisfying dinner, and I certainly didn't feel like I was eating on any kind of budget.
The lemony garlic potatoes are from Veganomicon, and I have made them so many times I have the recipe memorized. I haven't even made them in almost a year, and the recipe still came right back to me. They're that good. I will say that I cut the amount of oil  a lot when I make them. The recipe calls for 1/3 of a cup, and I use like one tablespoon, last night I used only one teaspoon.
Love that color!
So tasty and satisfying!

I have a couple of leftover carrot hot dogs, so I think I'm going to mash them up and use them as a binder for the lentil burgers I'm making today. They'll do double duty, bind and add a great salty, smoky flavor!I think what I like most about this challenge is that it's forcing me to get creative, and I feel like  my brain is buzzing lately!
Happy Thursday!



7 comments:

  1. CONGRATS on the success of the challenge! That red color is AWESOME! Loving your 'eats', too! YUM!

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    1. So far, so good. It's funny how familiar this feels so it's been pretty easy. And it's been pretty tasty too!

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  2. That all looks and sounds great and I must check out that Veganomicon recipe. I'm really impressed with your budget food and that you've managed to have lots of fruit too. Great work.

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    1. They are my favorite potatoes ever! They're garlic-y and lemony and just perfect!
      I really lucked out with the sales on raspberries and pineapple!

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  3. Maybe you should always live on $5 day...

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    1. So far it's going much better than I expected! I was actually thinking the same thing!

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  4. That's a good idea to reuse the carrots that way! I think that is the trick to leftovers, try to put them in another dish, that way it doesn't feel like you are eating leftovers.

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