Eggplant & Spinach

Took out a little red wine and started to prepare meals for the week. Since I live alone, cooking economically with a variety could be hard. I bought an eggplant today. I used the one eggplant and made three dishes, to help with eggplant boredom. Baked eggplant and spinach parmesan, eggplant and spinach gluten free penne, and grilled eggplant and cheese panini. In addition to the eggplant, Ill be making chicken and roasted peppers and mozzarella, but the chicken has defrosted yet. All three dishes (3 servings each of the parmesan and pasta dishes, 1 of the panini) totalled about $9.71 - with extra spinach and mozzarella to be used later.

Hmm, better planning, and i could have saved $80 at the grocery store today buying items I'm not eating this week....I really need to get better at things like this to stop wasting food.

I love grocery shopping

I love going grocery shopping. Something about it is so relaxing. I must admit however, that I was a much better grocery shopper years ago, cutting coupons, planning ahead...now I have a general idea what I might want to eat this week and end up spending more money. Today, I took my time going up and down almost every isle, and was very impressed with the diversity of foods that is now stocked on the shelves. A while back I tried a gluten-free diet, and it was very difficult to find snack foods, desserts, etc, but today I saw gluten free cake mix! Additionally the amount of organic foods and ethnic foods has increased so much in the last year. I know I get tired of eating the same thing over and over, and it is so great to look down the isles and say, hmm - that sounds good! Today I picked up organic peanut butter, organic black bean & corn salsa, and a box of 'fancy' wheat thins. I hope the grocery store's awareness for healthy good for you foods becomes the norm and helps all of us Americans eat better by weening off of the high sugar and processed foods. I am not a health food nut by any means, and have had a constant struggle with weight in the last 10 years, but I hope that having healthier foods that doesn't require a separate visit to another store will help!

Stop Whining

I am tired of hearing the backlash of the NYC MTA service cuts. New York Citiers have been accustomed to the subways running every few minutes and having multiple subways and buses on similar routes. For those of us that live in the suburbs, we memorize our trains timetable, because our service runs on a schedule every 30 minutes. I don't think most New York Citiers will even realize if a few subways are cut, sure some trains will be more crowded, but if the MTA does it right, perhaps the off peak times will be where the cuts will come from. The transportation costs of traveling within the city limits are so small, that I don't think there is a basis for people to complain.