Days 9 and 10: Cookouts and Tuna Melts :)

I hope everyone had a happy 4th yesterday! I didn't post yesterday because we weren't home all day. We had a fabulous time with friends at their cookout! :) No meals yesterday other than cereal for breakfast (which we are now out of milk...).
Day 10 we had cereal for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch (mine was a quesadilla style sandwich on corn tortillas), and dinner was Tuna melts. Our family LOVES tuna melts and they are soooo easy! :)

Easy Tuna Melts

Ingredients:
1 can of tuna
2 tbs of mayo
1/2 cup of mozzarella

Bread
Butter

Drain your can of tuna and mix meat with mayo and cheese. Butter one side of each piece of bread and make sure the butter sides are on the outside. Place tuna mixture between the two slices of bread and toast in a skillet over medium heat. ENJOY! :)

So there is the post for Days 9 and 10... Sorry it's short and boring, I promise there will be some of more interest soon :) Have a great night!

Day 8: Reflection...

"Give us this day our daily bread..." Matt. 6:11

We are now 8 days in to the $100 food challenge. So far, as you have seen, my whole purpose for this is to focus meals mainly on what I already have. This challenge has come as a direct result of my convictions. What convictions? The conviction that I am not thankful for the blessing of food that God has given me. Tonight I want you to reflect on yourselves... How many times is the food "just not good enough" to satisfy your taste pallet? Just not good enough to fill your stomach to the point that it hurts because you ate too much? Just not good enough because it's not what you were really craving or wanting for dinner tonight?
I'm sure we are all guilty of these thoughts or actions, I know I am. However, I am seeing that food, which I feel is one of the things we take advantage of the most in life, is something that is very easy to take for granted. A blessing that God has given us that we likely complain about most. It's also one of those things that you probably completely overlook as being ungrateful for. How many times do you bless your food before you eat and really mean it? I'm talking REALLY mean it? ... Now do you see why I was convicted about it?
My in-laws are missionaries in the third world country of Nicaragua. They have a feeding center set up in one of the poorest communities. The community is actually a dump, literally! Families are in the dump digging through it, and trying to find food to eat or things to sell to get food. Their children walk around barefoot and unclothed in trash. They know poverty like NO ONE here knows. Then, I think about how they would probably love to go through some of the "trash" I throw out here and it makes me sick to my stomach. This is why I feel convicted. I don't deserve what I have. Yes, I work. Yes, I pay my taxes. Yes to a lot of things... But here I am, ungrateful and so unworthy of one of the biggest blessings God has given us... Food.

"You (God) satisfy me more than the richest of foods." Psalm 63:5 (NLT)

Please know that I am not posting this to preach to anyone. I myself am merely reflecting on my own convictions and sharing them with you. If you identify with them, than I pray that you can work through your convictions as well. If you don't, than that is fine too. I just hope and pray that this post brings light to a situation that many of us take or have taken for granted at one time or another.

Have a great night and God bless!!!

Day 7: "These are a few of my favorite" FOODS!!!

In today's post I am going to introduce you to a meal that includes some of my favorite foods! We had it for dinner tonight and it is AMAZING!!! I found the following recipe on Pinterest from a blog called Sweet Tooth, Sweet Life. Most of the ingredients I had already but some of them were bought during my shopping trip today which we will get to later! :)

Chicken, Sweet Potato, & Spinach Quesadillas 

Ingredients:
 1 large sweet potato (YUMMY)
1/2 cup of red wine vinegar (LOVE this stuff!)
1/4 cup of sugar
A few dashes fresh ground peppercorns
1 medium onion sliced
4 large tortillas (wheat, flour, or corn)
Chicken breast cooked, cubed or shredded about 1 1/2 cups
Baby spinach
1/2 cup Mozzarella

Begin by microwaving your potato until done. Make sure that it is wet and has holes poked in it before putting it in the microwave (it cooks better). While your potato is cooking combine the red wine vinegar, sugar, and peppercorns to a boil in a small sauce pan until the sugar has dissolved. Have your onion slices ready in a bowl and pour the hot vinegar mixture of them, let it sit for at least 10mins (I usually toss them around halfway through). Drain and set them aside. Next, your potato should be done. Cut it in half and set is aside to cool.

Get all other ingredients ready to start assembling the quesadillas. Once the sweet potatoes are cool enough, remove the skins and mash the "meat." After it is good and mashed half the mixture and smear it really good onto 2 tortillas. Next top with spinach, pickled onions, chicken, and cheese. Lay a plain tortilla on top. Heat a large skillet and use either cooking spray or olive oil to ready the pan. Lay the quesadilla into the pan and cook on either side until almost crisp (not burned) it should only take a few minutes.  A good little trick I do for flipping a large quesadilla like this hold a plate over the pan and flip the quesadilla onto it than slide it back into the pan to cook the other side.

Once your quesadilla is ready, slice and enjoy!!!! This is truly one of my FAVORITE meals! There is no need to add other sides but you can if you wish. This meal is SUPER filling and has all your food groups :) Below you will find some pictures. I made a few changes due to the fact that I am trying to save money. You will see the changes I made.

During my grocery shopping today I bought a whole chicken again. Since this recipe called for cubed chicken I decided to use a few pieces from the chicken, 2 wings and a leg. Chicken breast works better but on a $100 budget it doesn't quite work that way :)

I LOVE onions but pickled onions... WOW!!!

All the ingredients laid out.

It was SOOOOOO good! :) I love these things! The cheese didn't get melted enough in this picture.

 So there you have it, a few of my favorite foods combined into the same meal... It equals AMAZING!!!

Now, onto our shopping trip for the day... My meal plan is short this week. We are having the same old things for lunches, sandwiches unless there are leftovers. Dinners: Spinach, Sweet Potato, and Chicken Quesadillas, BBQ Chicken, and Tuna Melts. The BBQ chicken will likely be repeated as leftovers and will use a whole chicken.

Here was what I came out with:
Baking Potatoes
6 Bananas
3 Navel Oranges
a can of tuna
1 cucumber
a bag of onions
a whole 5 lb chicken
Turkey lunch meat
sour cream
coleslaw
Mayonaise
Blue Bell Ice cream... (I know, it's a splurge but we love it, it was on sale, and well, it's summer)
Chips
and Cereal

Total: $26.30
Total spent so far: $66.33 (Yikes!)

Thanks for stopping by!!! :) 

Day 6: Answer to the question: "What do you do for snacks?"

Here we are on Day 6... Tonight will be a short post and will answer a question I was asked about snacks. Before we get to the snack question, we'll look at how today went. I did spend money today. This Sunday our Bible Fellowship class was in charge of providing breakfast so I bought grape juice for $2.56. Lunch was provided by our after church picnic. For dinner hubby bought a pizza and took it over to have dinner with our Bible Fellowship leader who just had knee surgery, and since I had to work tonight, I ate some of the leftover spaghetti. The pizza was a great deal... Right now Papa John's is running a special that I learned about on one of my favorite savings sites, Southern Savers. Right now through July 4th if you order pizza online you can get 1/2 off your order! There is a promo code, PARTY50 that you enter as you are checking out. You can only use it on regular priced menu items.
So total today we spent: $9.10
This month's total so far: $40.03 (Yikes... Looking a little scary but I think we can make it)

Now, on to tonight's post... SNACKS! :)

I have been asked what we do for snacks. Since I have a 2 year old, you know snacking is bound to happen ;) There are a variety of things we do. Usually it's something like cheese crackers, a banana, pretzels, grapes, yogurt, carrots/celery dipped in ranch dressing, or my personal favorite celery sticks and peanut butter!!! There are tons of other things we do sometimes for snacks as well, there are just the ones we have been eating lately.
So there you have it, plain and simple!

Tomorrow we go grocery shopping for this week's meal plan!!!