Saturday, December 25, 2010

Christmas Day!

(NOTE: If you are seeing this on Facebook, please go to my blog - cheapeasylowcarb.blogspot.com - to see my whole post. I don't make my points in the first paragraph, which is all that shows up on my Facebook page :).)

Lovely day! Soup turned out beautifully. The grilled cheese sandwiches looked and smelled amazing! I used English muffin bread, real butter on the outsides, and did them on my electric griddle. I used a slice each of American, swiss, and havarti cheese. My mom ate half of her sandwich and took the other half, plus a Christmas cookie, home with her. Pete had two sandwiches and two bowls of soup. (He usually eats double portions of things, that's why I try hard to keep him low carb but sometimes it is an uphill battle.) I didn't bake cookies this year but bought a package of 10 (?) cookies yesterday that would look pretty on the table - and they did. They are full of sugar and carbs and I ate 2. Won't have any more.

Since I can't eat bread, I had to forgo those lovely sandwiches. What a horrible thing that was, but the threat of great pain kept me from giving into temptation. Still, my pita cheese crisps were pretty good. I used a low carb pita, sliced it in half to make two very thin pieces, then I cut those into a few large pieces. Buttered them, sprinkled colby-jack on them, topped with havarti, and into the oven on a rack until the cheese bubbled and the pitas crisped up. They were better than nothing but I was still drooling over the grilled cheese sandwiches!

I nibbled a lot today. Started out with a dish of cottage cheese, then nibbled on cheeses while I made dinner, tasted a spoonful of my soup several times, then a half-cup of soup and some of the pita cheese crisps for dinner, a cookie about an hour later, the rest of the crisps a couple of hours after that, and another cookie just now.

Both the pita and the tomato soup were new re-additions to my post-fundoplication diet, as was the cookie. I am happy to report that I did fine with them all! Tiny bites, well-chewed, warm tea, and walking around - it was all good!

Friday, December 24, 2010

Some GOOD Shopping! #lowcarb

(NOTE: If you are seeing this on Facebook, please go to my blog - cheapeasylowcarb.blogspot.com - to see my whole post. I don't make my points in the first paragraph, which is all that shows up on my Facebook page :).)

I guess because tomorrow is Christmas and the grocery stores will be closed, and because they are closing early this evening, the merchants didn't want certain items to just sit around for 2 days, so there were a lot of markdowns today that we were able to take advantage of! Here are some samples:

1# smoked turkey ends and pieces: $1.19 (Many of the packages had a single chunk, which I can use in so many ways!)

33 oz. Maxwell House decaf - $6.99 (WOW!)

These aren't something I would normally buy but I do have a use for them: 6 oz. thin-sliced honey ham from the deli that is usually $4.99 but were on sale for $2.00

5# Budgie seed mix (a CLEAN mix of millet and oat groats that I will mix with the usual mix I feed my cockatiel and lovebirds to "stretch" it) for $2.99

Walden Farms bacon dressing for $1.99 (half price); I can't eat salads now but it will be great as a dip or spread!

Chicken legs for 65c/lb

10# Idaho Russets $2.99 (I'm eating small amounts of potato - not a low carb food but have incorporated them once or twice a week into my eating plan; plus the fam loves them!)

Havarti cheese - just about my favorite! - sliced, 25% off, or $2.79/pkg

So I did buy some things that I still consider expensive. Take for example the Havarti cheese. I don't pay $5.58/lb for anything, typically. But as little as I'm eating right now, and as much as I love Havarti* I consider it a worthy splurge.

[*I told my husband, "If we ever get into an argument and you want to apologize because you know you were wrong, a package of Havarti cheese will work well." He said, "So what will you get me when you're wrong?" and I told him, "I never am!"]

For Christmas I made a couple of other splurges: They had a pound of lovely saucy BBQ ribs, already cooked, for $5.49, marked down from $6.99; I got those for Pete's Christmas Eve dinner. (I can't eat them but I'm happy with smoked turkey and havarti!) And we splurged on some English muffin bread for tomorrow's Christmas dinner. Since my mother developed Lewy Body Disease we have had a new Christmas dinner tradition: grilled cheese sandwiches and homemade creamy tomato soup. I can't eat the sandwiches anyway, but the english muffin bread will be marvelous for them I think! And I got the ingredients for my soup also, but it is inexpensive to make anyway. (I will post the recipe tomorrow, if I remember.) Instead of a sandwich I will make my cheesy pita points for myself, even though I'll just eat one triangle at least it will be in the spirit of a grilled cheese sandwich!

Overall we spent about $130 today. Considering this is my first grocery shopping of the month, and that we (well, I wasn't here the first 2 weeks of December) have been eating almost 100% from our stocked foods - and eating well! - I'm pretty proud of this month's food budget.

Merry Christmas! Free Cookbooks and Cookbook Samplers | Cookbooks in Pdf format to download