Today we journeyed to our Ikea to take advantage of their Kids Eat Free promo. Jim and I ate before we went so we wouldn't be hungry, but he fell captive to the smells and bought himself a pasta dish. Our grand total for 4 kids' meals and an adult meal with drink was $5.38. Not too shabby, I guess, though $0 would have been better!
We loved Ikea. It was the first time we had every been and I was amazed at the thought they had put into making it so kid friendly.
In the restaurant they have these cool multi-tray carts so that parents like me don't have to try to juggle multiple trays while trying to carry a baby, corral a 3 year old and try to keep your special needs child and your oldest from tipping their trays. Alone, because the other parent is holding down your table. These multi-tray carts hold 3 trays and are easy to push with one hand. I fell in love.
This is not a sponsored post, by the way. I just loved their concepts. Very kid-friendly restrooms, too.
I wasn't all that impressed with their products (too modern for my taste, mostly) but I loved all of their space-saving ideas. I told Hubby that if we ever have to down-size again, we would definitely go back to Ikea for ideas.
Ikea has a playland where you can check in your potty-trained children and let them play for an hour. For free! My two oldest sons wanted to do that. They enjoyed the ball pit and didn't want to come out when their time was up.
So, that was our 4th of July lunch. For breakfast I made Cinnamon Biscuit Rolls. They were very easy to make, took about an hour from start to finish and were delicious.
Now I have a cherry pie in the oven, purchased for 99 cents (can't make it from scratch for that cheap unless you have a cherry tree!) and bread in the bread machine. I'm going to make a salad to use up the lettuce and various veggies in my crisper. And we are going to broil some steak! Edited to add: we also had these potato croquettes, using leftover mashed potatoes as I'm trying to be better about using them up. They were delicious!
This steak is a perfect example of how you can afford to splurge occasionally while on a tight budget.
Around Father's Day, Safeway had a coupon in their ad for $4 off of a $20 Rancher's Reserve Beef Purchase. I went to Safeway and hunted around their clearance section. I found these steaks (I think they are New York Strip, I don't have the package anymore) marked down 50%. I also found a large roast marked down 30%. I paid $16 for approximately 8 pounds of meat, hitting my target price of $2 per pound or less.
There were 8 steaks in the package, so I divided them up into 2 meals worth. One we ate for Father's Day, the other I put into a freezer bag, poured the other half of the marinade bottle in and put it in the freezer for a special occasion.
Here is a breakdown of our meals so far this month:
July 1
Breakfast-Eggs, Potatoes
Lunch-Ramen Noodles
Dinner: Chicken and Rice. I was going to make Bourbon Chicken, but no one seemed to want it for various reasons. This alternate was well received, though not very exciting.
July 2
Breakfast-zucchini bread and strawberries
Lunch-tacos
Dinner-Oven-fried Pork Chops, Mashed Potatoes, Corn
July 3
Breakfast-eggs, potatoes, sausage
Lunch-FFY (I think the kids had ramen again, I had hot dogs, not sure what Jim had)
Dinner-Roast (mentioned above), the last five potatoes, some soft carrots, cooked in the crockpot, bread and butter
How's your challenge going?
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