Week 4! That’s almost a month! (Ok, not QUITE, since I started counting at the beginning of the first week. But it’s getting there!)
This week I picked up some extra stuff at Trader Joe’s, as well as the Market. I needed some half-and-half (and raw cream is about $10 for a pint – and it only keeps about a week!!!), and some mushrooms, which are $10/lb at the Market, or $4 for 1 1/2 lbs at TJ’s. I was a little broke this week, so I went with Trader’s.
So the breakdown is 2-part this week – some stuff at the Market, some stuff at Trader Joe’s:
Market
Onions (yellow) – 2 lbs/$2
Pastured Eggs (I almost always need eggs – I go through a lot of them) – 1 doz @ $2.25
Sourdough Bread – 1 loaf/$4
Fermented Sauerkraut – 1 jar/$10
Broccoli and Fennel – approx. 4 lbs/$6.50 (they were both $1.50/lb, and they were weighed together, so I’m not actually sure how much each was individually.)
Trader Joe’s:
White mushrooms (sliced) – 10 oz./$2
Cemini mushrooms (sliced) – 10 oz./$2.29
Half and half (Ummmm . . . $2? Or so?)
Unpasteurized orange juice – half gallon/$5.50 (I know, I KNOW – it’s crazy-expensive, but I don’t buy it that often.)
Raw cheese (Gruyere) – 8 oz./$7
Salami – 1 lb/$4 (this wasn’t part of the plan, and I almost didn’t buy it: “Sad Pig,” and all that. But I buckled under the allure of encased meats. Yeah, go ahead and snicker about that phrase. I’ll wait. 
)
Ok. So here’s the plan: eggs and bread are, as always, to make egg salad on toast for breakfast. (I’ve been playing around with making my own mayonnaise, too. I’ll post a recipe as soon as I have one I like.)
I’m going to sautee the onions with the fennel – I’ll probably carmelize the onions, so I have NO IDEA what will happen to the fennel when it’s cooked like that – guess I’ll find out!
The sauerkraut I’ll intend to include in a dish, but will inevitably end up eating straight from the jar in great, greedy spoonfuls as an after-work/before-dinner snack. (What? I might as well be honest.)
The broccoli and salami will become a salad! Mostly broccoli, with a little salami for flavoring and some sort of creamy Italian dressing that I have yet to devise. (I’ll probably eat some of the salami with cheese as a snack, too. At least until I decide that eating that much salami is not good for me, and stash the remainder of the package in the freezer.)
That half-and-half was mainly for coffee, frankly. (Which is why I need it to last longer than a week!)
The mushrooms and cheese are for a SECRET DISH that I’m really excited about!!! With garlic and butter and more carmelized onions and some of the (pastured) ground beef that I bought a week or two ago. (Yes, I can tell you all that and STILL call it a secret.) And possibly other ingredients yet to be determined. I haven’t . . . er . . . determined them, yet.
Geez. I just looked at all that. I wonder if I bought too much food this week? I’ve noticed that sometimes I do that, especially now that I’m trying to cook by the seat of my pants. (Um, so to speak. That’s kind of a gross metaphor, actually. 
) But without knowing ahead of time that “I need 1/2 cup of half-and-half and 4 oz cheese and 2 cans of tomatoes . . . ” I do find that I tend to overbuy. I’m working on it, but it’s an interesting thing to be aware of. If I figure out where it comes from, I’ll let you know.
