Frugal In Florida

*This is a re-post ... only because I've been busy as heck between house-hunting, fielding buyer calls, my new side hustle (news on that soon) AND packing and decluttering stuff ... and since I'm making these this weekend, I figured I'd put it out there for all of you who are looking for a little healthier foods! I never really  knew  if I liked sweet potatoes or not ... I mean, heck, who doesn't like something covered in brown sugar (or maple syrup) and then marshmallows over the top? What I didn't like was the stringy-mushy texture of that stuff ... but I would take a little orange stuff and LOTS of toasted marshmallows during the holidays. Now. Not so much. It does kind of suck when you grow up and learn to read the labels and whats good for you and what's really not. Being an adult does stink sometimes! So ... with the  Whole30  thing underway (which by the way, I jumped ship on Day 6 at lunch time and hurried up and caught up to the boat and jumped ba...

All three times I've tried to do the Whole30 (and have NEVER EVER EVER made it past Day 14!), I always come across some really great and tasty recipes that are definitely keepers!  This would be one of them! These are perfect since you don't use regular bread, but instead, yummy butter lettuce or baby romaine lettuce leaves come in to play here ... This recipe was made for ONE (ME!) but could easily be doubled, tripled, quadrupled and so on if you wanted to serve these as an appetizer for a party or a dinner (or lunch, breakfast, etc.!) Lets get cooking, shall we? 4 lettuce leaves ... I used butter lettuce as that was what I had on hand that needed to be used up 3 slices of cooked bacon, crumbled 6 grape tomatoes, sliced in half and then cut in half again 1/2 avocado, diced (I need to perfect my dicing and separating skills) 1 stalk of green onion dab of  mayo  (isn't it time you learned how easy it is to make?) dash of olive oil dash of dried italian se...

Hey hey! It's that time of the week again!! Time to menu plan and meal prep! We finally hit the send button and are officially on For Sale By Owner website and we set up a new blog just for the house ... Hubby's pretty excited as I am ... and well, now it's time to get serious around here! I've been wrapping barware up all week, tossing stuff in boxes for Goodwill and pawning stuff off on to my friends ... poor things!  I'm going back and forth: keep the meat slicer or donate? I haven't used it in a while, several years, it's older and well, that just might make someone's day walking down the kitchen aisle at Goodwill, so off it goes. Meat Grinder? Waiting on Hubby's thoughts (he'll say keep, I say, we got a Vitamix AND food processor! Sewing machine? Keeping for now. I knew the living room was huge, but this picture makes it look ginormous! The Pantry/Freezer Challenge is coming along, STILL.  I've got ROOM, so much ROOM in the 3 fr...

Have you had the pure joy of seeing one of these bags at Trader Joe's yet?? That there bag is pure heaven for a mere $1.99 each ... and when you see them, you better be snatching up more than just one or two as they go F A S T when they have them in stock! Luckily, I just nabbed another 5 bags this past week ... I could have been "that person" and took all 12 that were in the box but I know how frustrated I've been when I keep missing the re-stocking so I figured I'd play nice and leave some for the next person! Now, I'll admit, I had 1 bag left in the freezer and I was holding out ... I broke down and bought a whole head of cauliflower and "riced" it myself by running the florets in the food processor for a few minutes til the texture is right ... it just was not the same, not to mention, tiny pieces of cauliflower were found all over the kitchen and it was just plain annoying! So ... I grabbed a bag the other morning for breakfast and ...

Hey hey ... it's that time of the week again! Time to Menu Plan and Meal Prep! Hup Hup ... let's get moving! Actually ... I've got a 3 day weekend thanks to President's Day so I've got time to do a little extra de-cluttering, packing, snapping pics and meal prep ... which makes me very very happy! Of course, I "could" go in to the office and do a little work but I've got more pressing matters here at home to take care of! The Pantry / Freezer Challenge is still going fairly strong ... Hubby has been doing an awesome job of clearing things out in anticipation of the upcoming move. There were 3 stops this past week: Aldi ($35 worth of veggies), Trader Joe's ($25 coffee and riced cauliflower) and Winn Dixie ($30 steaks, cat food and bread). We celebrated Valentine's Day on Saturday night with another couple, grilled up some ribeyes that we picked up for $9 a pound, sauteed mushrooms and green beans and Hubby made a really yummy ciabata bread...

*This is a repost from last Valentine's Day and I'm so excited to be making this AGAIN this week!*  Any way. I had this recipe tagged in my cookbook since Christmas morning ... and then I got the weekly email update from  Michelle  and said, heck, I should try this ... so I rooted around in my chocolate stash and had exactly 6 1.2 ounce bars of bittersweet 72% cocoa bars ... score! That made everything I needed available in house which made me decide that I needed to make it right then and there!! The original recipe is in the  cookbook  ... and also on the website. And of course, as always, I modified to suit my needs and what we had on hand! It was a little time consuming in the beginning ... I stirred and stirred and stirred for 45 minutes til my sauce was thick ... uggg. I was worried about heating the mixture TOO quickly and had the heat set a tad too low and the mixture was not heating up at all ;-) .... so medium low heat is NOT low heat ... ...

Hey, hey ... it's that time of the week again!  Time to pull out the ole' white board and write out what we are looking to eat for the week ahead! First, a little update on the Pantry / Freezer Challenge ... it's still going strong! The freezers are really starting to show great improvement and the pantry as well ... being that we are aiming to put the house on the market in the next week or so, it's rather important that I get the three freezers eaten down since I most likely will NOT have three when we move! There was a little shopping done this week ... I spent about $40 at Whole Foods on Friday (wings @ $3.99/pound, apples (ahem, $4.29/pound!), beer-which is NOT part of the food budget) and peppers. Hubby stopped at Aldis (spent $10) and Winn Dixie on Saturday ($30) so around $80 was spent this week ... BUT sadly, $25 or so was beer related since we've discovered the new Samuel Adams Cherry Wheat ... O M G! $9.99 a 6 pack so it's in the pricey range for...

Hubby is doing an excellent job of clearing out the pantry and freezers ... I mean, geesh, look at the garage freezer!  I can actually see what we have in here! *the 2 red bags are gone now too!* The main kitchen and guest kitchen freezers are showing some improvement as well, but not as much as the garage! So ... in sticking with the Pantry / Freezer Challenge (due to our recent decrease in income and hopeful potential upcoming move!) we decided to make the two smaller london broils that were in the freezer ... Now, keep in mind, Hubby does NOT like rare, medium rare, or even medium cooked beef. He likes his stuff WELL DONE and no pink inside. Obviously, these hunks of beef had to be cooked low and slow then as they would be tough as hell if we were to cook them on the grill to his liking.  Oh, and not to mention, while a lot of you have ice and blizzard like conditions, we have a simple wind advisory with current gust hitting 31 to 34 fairly consistently, so no gri...

Hey, hey! How is it possibly February 1st ALREADY!! One month already down and I've still got so much I wanted to accomplish in January! I just hate rolling things over in to a nice clean, new month!  Did you all notice that I didn't share the menu last week? I had it all ready to go but just got wrapped up in a bunch of other stuff and it was Wednesday before I could get around to sharing ... at that point, it was too late (in my mind!) to do so ;-) But look ... this week I'm all about sharing again! Last week kept me out of the stores ... Sunday through Saturday, not once did I step foot in any store! Score for me! Can I just tell you how much money you save if you do that? Of course, you need to make sure you have food to eat as it's not fun to save money if you are starving in the process BUT Hubby has been really dedicated and committed to using what we have in house to eat to clear out some of the excess stuff we have.  We've had a few not so great things ...