Monday, March 22, 2010

Meal Plan Monday: The One Where I Discover Fresh and Easy

I haven't done Meal Plan Monday in a couple of weeks because we've been busy, and frankly I got out of the habit of planning briefly. But we're back at it this week, with a new place to shop (more on that in a minute). Here's our plan this week:

Monday: Leftover wheat pasta with veggies

Tuesday: Beef fajitas

Wednesday: Chicken of some sort, probably lemon pepper with veggies

Thursday: Chicken of another sort, maybe crock pot BBQ chicken or a white chili recipe

Friday: Who are we kidding, we usually eat out on Friday

So I'm only halfway back into it. That's because I only did half my shopping. I had to go to Michael's to get dowels to do my coworker's baby shower cake last night, and Dan suggested I stop and check out Fresh and Easy. It just opened a month ago and we haven't been to it yet. Holy cow, have I been missing out!! This is my new go-to place for meat, that's for sure. We use a lot of ground turkey and a lot of chicken. When it comes to turkey, their regular price almost matches the lowest sale price at nearby competitors. Since it doesn't hit that price too often, Fresh and Easy beats the average I spend on turkey. And chicken? Not even a fair fight. I spent $7 last week on some pretty pathetic chicken breasts. The same $7 at Fresh and Easy got me huge breasts that will easily get us 4 meals because we'll cut them all in half. And tomorrow's fajitas came from their selection of pre-packaged, ready-to-prepare meals. All we have to do is toss them in a pan. Voila! I'm not sure I came on the best day for produce because there wasn't much to choose from, and they don't have a big selection of brands to choose from, but I will definitely be splitting my shopping and spending time at Fresh and Easy each week.

Moving on, we had a great weekend. We slept in Saturday and went to see She's Out of My League. We came home, walked the pups and settled in and watched two other movies. We were pretty lazy, but it was a perfect Saturday. Yesterday, we finally got the spare room in order and did some massive cleaning before I destroyed the kitchen again. I baked my coworker's cakes and iced the bottom cake and inserted dowels. I'll finish the decorating tonight and stack and box it for tomorrow. As I was mixing buttercream icing, I said to Dan, "isn't it funny that I found what I love to do 5 weeks before I get my master's degree in a completely different field?" Such is life. For now, it's a very satisfying hobby, but maybe one day I'll make some money with it. Until then, I'm perfectly happy to practice, practice, practice. And Dan doesn't mind much either. He's a great lovely assistant: cutting dowels, trimming cake boards. We're quite the little baking team.

2 comments:

Salt said...

Don't even get me started on Fresh and Easy. There was one right downstairs from my gym when I lived in LA. AWESOME produce. AWESOME seafood and meats. SO affordable. I used to eat ahi tuna like 3 times a week because it was so easy to buy it and just take it home to sear it. God I miss Fresh and Easy. It was one of my favorite things about LA!

donatelli98 said...

Post some pics!