Classic Chicken

Cost: $8

Prep: 30 minutes

Not much to say about this dinner either. It was Shake'n'bake chicken legs with leftover mashed potatoes, garlic toast, and green beans.

I ate a small simple meal, as I had yoga after, but Matt and Charlie filled their man and baby boots.

Charlie is working on learning how to eat off a plate. So far, it has been okay, but there have been many attempts for the entire meal to be eaten by the floor.

Pork/Mush/Mushrooms

Cost: $8

Prep: 30 minutes

I don't have much to say about this. I make this all the time it seems. I did use fresh mushrooms again, and I did make the mashed potatoes from scratch. To mix it up, we ate asparagus as the veg.

I wanted to draw your attention though to a little bit of dishonesty on my part. It has to do with creative staging of photos. Look at our dinner set up, not too bad right?

Wrong. That indeed is laundry piled on the back of all the chairs, and, in fact, there is laundry piled right up next to us on the table.

And look how fancy our gravy boat is! Although, for some reason there was about 10x the amount we needed.

Chicken Dinner

Cost: $15

Prep: 40 minutes

We had a guest come over for dinner, so I went all out. Well, as "all out" as we get over here.

I made a chicken covered in delicious herbs and spices. It was an excellent chicken, very juicy.

I also made from-scratch mashed potatoes. I used some of the Philadelphia Cooking Cream in Herb and Garlic as well as fat free sour cream in the mashed potatoes. It made them WAY too garlicy for my liking, but the boys all seemed to like them (unless our guest was just being polite).

I "made" a can of corn and steamed asparagus (which Charlie ate about 10 spears of). I also made Pillsbury Crescent Rolls--the low fat ones--because I made them the last time a friend was over and didn't want anyone to be jealous.

Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, Lame Dinner, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie

Cost: $4

Prep: 10 minutes

We played too long at the park, and therefore were very pressed for time again.

So, to distract you from the lame dinner, look at all the pictures of Charlie!

Mother's Day Whoomp Whoomp

Matt made a special effort to make dinner on Mother's Day so that I wouldn't have to. Unfortunately, it didn't go so well. To Matt's credit, I should add that Charlie didn't help at all. He was a total terror, then sat on the couch topless eating socks.

The main dish was a Shepard's Pie (or whatever the beef version is). I saw him making it and I knew it wasn't going to work out. He had onions and raw ground beef going at the same time in a pan, added a can of corn, and raw carrots. I knew the veggies would be under cooked, but the carrots were still hard. To Matt's credit, it really just needed to cook longer, since my mom ate it the next day and said it was great. i did also think the red-skinned mashed potatoes on top and the home-garden grown chives on the side were yummy.

I asked Matt to make a salad on the side, since there were no green veggies going into the pie. I had bought dressing, croutons, and lettuce already. I should have supervised though. It was pretty such a crouton soup with lettuce. He used almost 1/2 a bottle of dressing and an entire box of croutons. It also became one of the most expensive salads we have ever had ($8-9). Charlie like it though, since he sucks the dressing off the lettuce and mostly eat croutons.

For dessert, "Charlie" made me a free cake a Thrify's. The cake was okay, and the decorations were ADORABLE. Good for Thrify's for offering this, as you know I was kind of writing them off and this was good publicity and got me in the store shopping while the boys created, as I am sure it did for many moms. we paired this with strawberries and mango that needed to be eaten.

Dad Chef

Berries

Topless Sock Eater

Scratchy Pork Chops with Mushrooms

Cost: $8

"She did it..."

Prep: 40 minutes

This dinner took a long time to prepare. Granted, Matt and I made it together, so time was somewhat divided. It took so long because we made an effort to use fresh, rather than packaged or canned, ingredients.

We made REAL mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli, pork chops, and mushroom gravy.

I cheated a little with the mushroom gravy. I did still use Campbell's soup. If anyone can tell me how to make this without, I'd like to hear it. But, I did use a big bag of fresh mushrooms.

To Grandmother's House We Went

Another night I didn't have to cook! Hooray! (Btw- I also didn't cook Friday because I went to my mom and dad's.)

We were invited to my grandma's for two reasons: (1) they didn't get a good chance to visit with us on Easter because there were so many people and (2) so Matt could fix their wireless.

Dinner at my grandma's can kind of be hit and miss. Pork chops with mushroom gravy (hit); a package of bologna (miss); roast beef (hit); A&W chicken (hit or miss depending who you ask).

Tonight was a definite hit. My grandma made a little roast pork with all the sidedishes. She made mashed potatoes, roast carrots and onions, gravy, canned green beans, fantastic homemade apple sauce, and a garlic asparagus dish.

For dessert, my grandma got a giant pie from Superstore. For a store bought pie, it was really good. She served it with vanilla ice cream and cheddar cheese.

I love my grandma so much, and this meal was total family comfort food.

Carrots and onions

Roast po

Asparagus, apple sauce, mashed potaotes

Gravy

Matt's super size dessert

Charlie and his dessert; he was horribly messy at the end though

My dessert

Improved Pork Chops with Mushroom Gravy

Cost: $11

Prep: 45 minutes

Today's dinner took a while to prep because I made(almost) everything from scratch, which is not what I usually do.

We had our usual pork chops with mushroom gravy, and I did still use Campbell's soup, but I used fresh mushrooms instead of canned. This turned out better, especially as Charlie loves the mushrooms and will eat a ton. I'd rather he eats mushrooms that were recently still resembling mushrooms than ones that have been floating in a salty brine for months.

I also made mashed potatoes, which was the majority of the prep time. I mixed in sour cream and herb and garlic cream cheese with the milk so that the flavor was a little unusual and fresh.

We had very tasty steamed green beans. I melted a but of margarine and added a touch of salt and pepper, and these simple acts made the meal exceptionally better.

Matt eating

Charlie eating

Tina eating

Salt-fest 2012

Cost: $8 + dessert (about $3.70)

Prep: 15 minutes

Tonight's dinner was not our high point. In fact, it was a lot like the dinners that Matt and I would eat pre-Charlie. We ate many sausages, mainly because they are quick, easy, and cheap. We also ate a lot of instant potatoes.

And tonight, that is exactly what we had.

We had sausages from Walmart, $4 a package, turkey variety. Honestly, the sausages were very tasty, but very salty. I also had an instant of almost losing a tooth from biting into a piece of bone and many times when I had to pull gristle from my mouth. Otherwise, the sausages were good, but now that I am reading what I wrote, maybe we wont buy these again.

As the side dish, I made a Sidekick, instant mashed potatoes with instant gravy, Rich Beef flavour. Both of these are high in salt, but man oh man, are these delicious. This is one of our comfort foods, and interestingly enough, one of the things I could not stand when I was pregnant with Charlie. I know it is unhealthy because of the salt, but I did drink 1.4L of water with dinner to try to deal with this. I also had fully intended to lie on here and claim I had made mashed potatoes, but the only person I would really be lying to is myself.

We also tried to go healthy on side dish two: steamed veggies, broccoli and green beans, but our third side dish was also not the greatest: one of those 1/2 baked loafs of bread that you finish baking. Our baby loves carbs, and I thought this would be a bit better for him than the mashed potatoes.

After Charlie went to bed, Matt and I also indulged in dessert. On Friday, we stopped at the Marble Slab to use a Groupon we had purchased. The Groupon was $10 for a $20 credit. When we walked in, we realized how difficult it was going to be to try to spend $20 on ice cream for two, especially when I really didn't want to eat it then. So, instead, we spent the entire credit on a box of ice cream cupcakes (6). We ate 2 that day, but there were still 4 in our enormously packed freezer. So, Matt and I each had one. Mine was Turtles, and Matt's was Double Chocolate. The ice cream was nice, but whatever weird frozen icing was on the top is gross. The waffle bowl is very tasty though.

Double Chocolate

Turtles, minus 1 bite

Anyway, we are full now. We will see if Matt can control his grazing tonight.