Tuesday Night dinner on the new budget

It was misting a bit when I got off work yesterday which made traffic sketchy on the way to the sitter. I picked up the kids and went a couple of streets over from the sitter's house to complete a trade. The person did not have the item clearly placed and was not answering my calls so we headed home. The kids and I passed a turned over car on the way home which made me say a quick thank you to God that I had come through when I did. All of this put me home about 7 and so I needed to make fast work of getting dinner on the table. On my grocery run on Saturday I had purchased this ham with a coupon.

With the coupon this ham was $5.84 and I went ahead and separated it out for 3 meals. During the day I had scouted out a couple of recipes to try using the ham and settled on a soup since the weather was a bit dreary. This is the recipe I used with a couple of tweaks. Since I did not decide to make this the night before I did not have time to soak dry beans so I used a couple of cans of cannellini beans. The recipe was good but I think would be better if I had time to allow the flavors to soak in more. I used some homemade broth I had in the freezer as well as some carrots and celery I needed to use up from the last co-op basket. This recipe was a win win all the way around for both my budget and need for soup on a dreary evening. Here is a picture of my bowl right before I ate it!

This morning I packed the munchkin's lunch and thought I will need to stop and pick up some bread tonight or else pack him our homemade version of a Lunchable tomorrow which for him is pepperoni and a cheese stick. Not sure which option I am going to pick right now, will just depend on how things go as I am leaving work tonight. We have already had pasta this week so I am trying to think of what I am going to fix for dinner tonight with stuff I have on hand. I need to use up some potatoes I purchased through the co-op as well as some more carrots and celery. Soup is not really what I want to make again so I am going to mull it over and hopefully come up with something before I head home. For my lunches I brought a loaf of bread and some lunch meat from the freezer. That along with some mayo and mustard stashed at work will get me through this week. As I have a chance I will total up the groceries, non food and co-op purchases for this month and put those totals up.