$21 A Week Grocery Challenge #2 | $1 Meals | Building up a pantry!
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This is WEEK #2 of my $21 A WEEK GROCERY CHALLENGE (2023) where I buy $21 worth of groceries a week, make 21 …
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I wonder if your leftover perogie pasta could be used in a chicken and dumplings dish? Some people use a dough that is cut in strips and simmered with chicken and broth. Looking forward to seeing what you do!
I would bake/airfry the pieroges till they're like a chip or cracker and use them for dips or could dry them and grind them for crumbs. I've never had a peirogie but I feel like they have a type of breasing-ish outside or is it like ravioli??
you need cinnamon again. Get that cinnamon! haha. But I do love the new idea of measuring out what you already have and taking out that dollar amount. then you are not ending up with more open like things that you have to just use up. And really you are still saving your budget and helping work through your pantry goods. maybe you could even figure in one pantry item you need to use like a knorr paste item kraft dinner or something else and watch for sales on more things to use that you already have at home.
I feel like you've learned a lot from your previous challenges. This feels like super filling food, with lots of flavor =)
Maybe you should have done this perogie filling on the bread topped with bbq sauce then your toppings??? Lol you are very daring. I love it
You could put those in chicken noodle soup (the noodles)
Jessica! It must suck making more of those spinach perogies and then making Mr. Wanders something yummy. You should of forced him to do this with you 😂😂😂
I love perogies!
Oh I hope so! A week without cheese would suck
Hi Jessica, that was a good amount of food for $21 and i love sweet potatoes but this week would have cured me. You must be dreaming of them. Does your hubby join you in the challenge or do you double cook? As for the pirogi-pasta and all the bacon grease, i was thinking of eastern european fried cabbage and pasta with fried onions and bacon (usually fried in butter, but i would use bacon grease).
That almost hour went by quickly!
I like that some meals are repeats and some are made in no time at all, Tuesday for instance, then one has the rest of the day to do want they want.
On the 'pizzas ' maybe put the spinach/feta mix on top of the sauce then the onions then the bacon and eliminate the sweet potato?
You could make sweet potato chips. Season with your curry spice blend.
I have made my own piroshki (as we call pierogi) for 25 years. I fill them with cabbage, onion and bacon. I oven bake them instead of boiling because we use them as picnic and road trip food. Baking piroshki means it's easier to eat, no fork required.
Do you know what is missing from this challenge? Kale powder.
With your pierogi noodles you could bake them in the oven and use them as you would tortilla strips, on soup, stews and casseroles, or as a snack.
Love this series, so pleased you’re doing it again! Also great to see you price out things already in your pantry, waste not want not 😊 have an amazing Easter 🐰🐣🍫
Great idea on measuring out what you already have!
Score check…..
Jessica – 1
Perogies – 0
😂😂😂😂
Fun and informative, as usual. The apple pancakes brought me back to when my kids were small. We would frequently make them on a weekend and we all loved them. Haven’t done that in a long time. Love these!
Yams have a rough brown skin like bark where sweet potato skins are mostly smooth. You have sweet potatoes. Recently binge watched your previous $21 a week grocery challenge. This second season will be a challenge for me, having to wait for them to be released each week.
Do you all have discount bread area in Walmart? Could you have bought a Five pound bag of flour at WM for same price as you measured out? If so would have given you more to work with. To use your pierogi dough, try dropping them into small amount of seasoned chicken broth so they thicken up broth and add little bit of chicken to make chicken and noodles. Look up how Pioneer woman does it. I think you will like it.
You could have made a Panzanella Salad out of tomatoes with the bread and any type of protein ( if you had it from last time), like cooked white beans, tuna, etc. if not tomato, caramelized onion, garlic and homemade vinaigrette works great. A good old fashioned BLT if you had lettuce from any other meals to go with your soups, or crumbled up bacon and caramelized onions on top of your soups might have added more flavor. I would have used my points for cheese, and maybe a can of chicken or more flour, instead of barbecue sauce, mustard and hot sauce. I would have bought seasonings with my points if cheese was too expensive, and bought cheese instead of pierogis. Some kind of way to have combined my points with my money to have gotten what you needed to make your pizzas or just leave the idea of pizzas off for a later date. I can not remember if you had any lentils leftover from last time or not, but you could have made a Lentil salad( lentils sprinkled over a fresh lettuce and tomato salad with a vinaigrette made from lemon juice). Always to look at what is on sale and make your meals around one main ingredient! It might have kept you from having to use up your points. Hope this helps. You could have made egg salad sandwiches to go along with a soup… or sliced little bit of your sweet potato into very thin slices and baked or fried them to make chips to have, or bought a little Kale and made chips out of some of it to go with the egg salad sandwiches. The potato pie with bacon and cheese, is very good, rich and filling…could have gone for eight servings.
If you would have made some baked oatmeal, would have stretched it I think for more breakfasts. Could have made some banana muffins too…topped with little oatmeal topping. A soft fried egg on sweet potato hash, Latkes made from sweet potatoes and onion, topped with apple compote, sweet potato pancakes or sweet potato biscuits with your grape syrup. Just ways to stretch your ingredients.
Wonder if you had fried the bacon first, to have released more fat from the bacon…then sautéed the onions in that. Then melted the butter and brushed the butter over each pizza crust sprinkled some garlic seasoning over that. Then spread the potato filling over the butter, then added some of the onions and then the bacon. Left the sweet potato and the barbecue sauce off completely. Might have tasted better. That barbecue sauce is very sweet to me…it would be better on a barbecue pizza with chicken or pork. A sweet potato hash for breakfast might have been better. Also, with your oatmeal…if you had bought a little bit of peanut butter, you could have made peanut butter and jelly ( with your grape syrup) oatmeal. It is very good. I would have saved some of the caramelized onions and bacon to have made the sweet potato hash, or cooked the sweet potato and mashed up to make sweet potato pancakes. They are very good too. Also could have made sweet potato Larkes out of some of the onion, sweet potato . Topped with an apple compote made with you sugar. Would have been very tasty.
Jessica, I think you are so much fun and really a very creative cook!
A lot of great recipes as usual. Not sure if you know this or not but if you do a light coating of oil on your pasta before adding the sauce it won’t absorb the sauce and it will not be as dry.
Perogies chicken noodle soup? Or chili with noodles. Or…noodles with sausage slices and cooked carrots