Prepare Ahead: buying larger quantities of meat to pre-marinate, spice, dice, and sauce them yourself!

About once every week or two I buy several larger packages of meat and end up spending about 20 or 30 minutes with them.

How do you know what is a good price for meat? Start by looking at the price per pound or the price per kilogram. The price per kilo for regular ground beef will usually be the cheapest; the price per kilo for boneless skinless chicken breasts will be the most. 

With beef, watch the prices per kilo and compare them to other cuts - when I bought these “marinating” steaks, they were $1.20 per kilo cheaper than cubed stewing beef!!

Another important thing to watch is the “best before" date or the “packed on” date. I always want to take home the freshest meat, so next to the price per pound, that is the next most important.

This week, I bought one package of marinating steaks and one package of chicken thighs with the bone in.

In our family, lunch is leftovers from dinner the night before, so when I am packing up meat, I am actually packaging one dinner and one lunch for four. 

This is a wonderful opportunity to plan ahead if you are cooking for one or two or if there are several nights of the week when you need to throw something in the slow cooker or the oven on low before you run out the door for a few hours. This pre-planning has saved us from eating dinner out and spending nearly $40 when the dinner in the oven costs less than $10 and will also feed us lunch tomorrow. 

Cauliflower: Return of My Nemesis

Well, it happened again last night. 


Wednesday evening around 5:12 I looked into my fridge and discovered a cauliflower that had been there for a little while. It needed using right away and a few dicey bits cut off.

What to do with a cauliflower (or broccoli) that needs using... NOW?! Here is my go-to salad recipe for cauliflower and broccoli.

Simple Pleasures

I love rocks. 

When I was little, we went to the beach every day of the summer. It was quite hot outside and we did not have air conditioning. So, into the shade on a grassy patch beside the sand we would set up every morning around 10 and we would leave after fire-grilling dinner and eating it there on the beach, somewhere around 7pm. 

I clearly remember laying on my belly on my towel and scooping away the dry sand in front of my nose. I looked intently at all the beautiful rocks in front of me, moving each one carefully with a stem of grass. These tiny rocks were, in fact, sand. 

Bunwich Kind of Day...

There are times when all I want to eat for the weekend is food on buns: that was this weekend. 

Friday night, we had tuna buns and Saturday morning we had breakfast on a bun. Here is how it breaks down:

Adventure in the Produce Aisle

When we go to the grocery store, there is one rule about vegetables and fruit: if we have not yet tried it, we buy it and eat it. 

Never had it before? No idea what it’s called? No problem, just look it up online and then slice, dice, sauté, and eat it! 

We try to buy any fruit or vegetables the boys ask for, because it builds a sense of adventure and ownership into eating that fruit or vegetable. It's also somewhat exciting to try something new.

Next time you go to the grocery store, instead of just cruising through the produce section getting all of "the usual", add in one thing that you have not had before and tell me all about it!

This is Suey Choy (or Napa Cabbage) and is our FAVOURITE salad base; no more lettuce for us!