Friday, August 20, 2010

31 in 31 - Day 10

Today was grocery shopping day and I had a goal - to only spend $74.50.  Why that number?  Because my budget is $75.00 for everything - Toiletries, cleaning supplies, animal food/supplies, baby item etc.  Normally I am anywhere from $5.00-$30.00 over and I get very frustrated with myself!  So I took my coupons, bottles to return, and calculator and headed to the store.  In the end, I had to put a few items back by eliminating one "fun" item I had thrown into the mix for the week but otherwise, I got what was on my list.  This is where it landed:

In case you can't read it - it says $74.98 - I was $0.48 over . . had I double checked my "cheese" drawer before leaving home, I would have seen that I had one box of cream cheese so I wouldn't have had to buy 2 and I would have ended up being about $1.30 under!!  Oh well :-)  So very close!!

Rigatoni Bolognese

This is a new recipe I tried out on Monday and despite the fact that I had to substitute a few things it turned out well.  I did forget to take a picture at this point though!

Regatoni Bolognese
Serves 6

1 box (1 lb) rigatoni pasta
2 medium carrots, halved
1 medium onion, quartered
1 pkg (8 or 10 oz) whole mushrooms
2 cloves garlic, peeled
2 tsp olive oil
3 links Italian Turkey sausage, casing removed
1/2 teaspoon crushed rosemary
1/4 teaspoon each salt and pepper
1/2  chicken stock
1 can (28 oz) crushed tomatoes in thick puree

Cook pasta as box directs.  Meanwhile, put carrots, onion, mushrooms, and garlic in a food processor; pulse until finely chopped.  Heat oil in large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat.  Saute chopped vegetables 6 minutes.  Add turkey sausage and cook, breaking up clumps, 4 minutes or until no longer pink.  Stir in rosemary, salt, pepper and stock; boil 1 minute.  Stir in crushed tomatoes, reduce heat and simmer, covered, 5 minutes.  Spoon over drained pasta

My substitutions (sounds better than errors!):  I often read a recipe and don't comprehend it LOL  When I read "links Italian turkey sausage" I thought it meant breakfast sausage??  But realized as I was cooking up my maple flavored sausage links that they are not the same.  Oops!!  I don't care for mushrooms so planned to substitute yellow squash to use up some my Mother-in-law gave me but they were both bad . . .so my sauce had a little less veggies.  Finally, again, not comprehending, I bought pureed tomatoes not crushed tomatoes so I was missing the chunky tomatoes in mine.  Despite ALL of that - my husband and I both loved the recipe.  It's easy and pretty inexpensive as well!

40 goals by 40 - Update

Since it has been a few weeks since I posted my 40x40 list, I figured it was time for a little update.  There are a few that I'm working on currently.
1) Canning - I have canned Jam - Peach Jam to be specific; and some of it even turned out
2) Scrapbooking - I am working towards the goal of being current; in all honesty, my goal in January was to be current by year end.  I've made a lot of progress so we'll see!!
3) Owning a German Shepherd - We contacted a breeder back in May hoping to get one this month but were unable to save up the money yet; so we continue to be on each litter's wait list as I continue to save my change :-)
4) Finish my quilt - I just need to finish a small area of binding and I had hoped to get it done by month end but the project I'm forcing myself to finish before I start that - my library update - is taking slightly longer than planed.  I still have a week and half though! 

Instead of posting the full list on the sidebar; I"m going to post the updates - meaning I'll put the # and name and update it or mark it completed; hopefully you'll see that list grow!