Well, I am re-learning a lesson that I haven’t had to face since before I signed up for e-mealz.com. See, e-mealz promises to keep their meal plans within a certain budget. It just happened to fit our budget so it was perfect! Since it had been a while since I had done Meal planning on my own, last week I went WAY over budget! I mean, W.A.Y., as in I only had $30-40 left for this week! Well, depending on your personality, you either freak out or accept it as a challenge.
I was excited to face the challenge. Over the past few years, especially, I had been looking at my home management in a different light. I have previously made a crock pot of beans and packaged them in “can” portions for meals that call for canned beans. My husband has hunted and filled our freezer with game. I have stocked up on basics when I could and now that I’m working from home, I have more opportunity to make meals or elements of meals from scratch. So here’s how it worked out:
(First, I have to say it’s amazing how God provides because unbeknownst to me, at least 2 of our meals last week made enough for two full meals and one was easily doubled to create a different meal using the same main ingredient so you will be seeing a lot of the same meals as last week on this menu)
- Tacos/Burritos – had a lb of ground beef in the freezer, I buy taco seasoning in bulk so already had that, already had tortillas (though could have made them if things were really serious! haha) & leftover tomatoes, lettuce, etc. from last week
- BBQ Chicken Pizza – home made pizza dough, bbq sauce already on hand, leftover BBQ chicken made in the crockpot for sandwiches Sunday, cheese leftover from lasagna making, onion on hand.
- Fresh Salmon Burgers - last week’s made enough buns and burgers for another meal
- Lasagna – I split it into two pans last week so there is one for this week
- Deer Chili – thanks to my husband’s hunting
- Frozen Pizza – always have one on hand
So as you can see, we are far from starving! And after a trip to the store this morning to get a few things, I was able to keep in the budget!! **Happy Dance!** Mission Accomplished!
There are two more recipes I wanted to share with you – one I used last week out of necessity and one, well, due to a chocolate emergency!!!
I had forgotten to buy hamburger buns for the bbq chicken sandwiches so I found this quick 40 Minute Hamburger Buns recipe. I made them with all whole wheat flour at my husband’s request – they were YUMMY and we got a dozen buns! What we didn’t use that night, I froze for future use.

Picture from Taste of Home
Friday night was the chocolate emergency. We had purchased a giant tub of vanilla ice cream for my son’s 4th birthday and accidentally left it at home. As you know, vanilla ice cream is just a vehicle for chocolate syrup. Before getting the ice cream out, I grabbed the chocolate syrup, knowing it was kind of low, to see if there was enough. Sadly, there wasn’t. So I googled and found this recipe and made my own!!! Now I was too impatient to wait for it to cool completely so that night it was slightly runny (but still yummy!), but last night when I tried it again, it was sufficiently cooled and the consistency of store bought! Yay! The recipe made enough to re-fill the container so I’ll be set for quite a while!!






































