Roasted pepper sauce is my go-to!
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I used cooked rice, cooked beans, 2 over medium eggs, stir fry veggie mix (carrots, onions, broccoli, snap peas, etc), soy sauce, fish sauce, chili crisp, garlic powder, ginger powder, and pepper. It might not be that different from actual fried rice I just had it for breakfast lol
I have plans to make it more traditional breakfast version by doing a bacon/eggs/beans/rice version in the future. Maybe adding a splash of maple syrup.
Not that you care about my breakfast today but I did a Latin inspired savory oatmeal (oatmeal, 2 over medium eggs, black beans, chili powder, cumin, garlic powder, smoked paprika, salt and pepper. Sometimes I will add fajita veggies if they are pre cooked but that was not in the journey this morning).
I am trying to think about rice and oatmeal in similar ways, I think I can use them pretty interchangeably.
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Yum on the fried rice! And in theory yes in oatmeal, but in practice it is a no from me (all savoury oatmeal.
I bet using omelette flavours for inspiration will work for the fried rice too!
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Albondigas Soup: ground meat/rice in broth. The way I know it is a chicken broth flavored with cumin. Peppers would be good in it so would onion. Make up meatballs with some of the rice. Brown them, make the broth, combine and eat!
I was introduced to this soup at the Red Onion restaurants as a kid in SoCal. Took me a long, long time to figure out the elusive element in the broth was cumin. Now I buy cumin in large containers and use it in almost everything, as I’ve always loved it.
A much more elaborate version: I’ve never used mint in mine… or green beans or peas… but maybe next time?
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I impulse bought shortening for pastry last bulk barn trip and finally did a test run…. Way cheaper and way better results than margarine. It is no butter, but butter is not vegan anyway.
Probably my best gf/vegan pastry ever.
Next scale up for full christmas baking. And buy more.
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Went Christmas shopping today…blew my budget! 
. But we did need new cords for my cell phone and tablet. Plus a decent pair of pants that fit. And my planners I bought in Sept…one is majorly not working out. The one with spaces for each day of the week…I simply have too much to do.
We picked up a better frypan turner. It’s all one solid piece of metal. We’ll gift the other cheap metal one we bought to my sister or someone else.
After that it was gifts for DD#2 and her DH.
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I have never heard of this place, but it absolutely sounds like my kind of store!
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Nice! And the new shortening is supposed to not have trans fat. I should get some because it does make the best snickerdoodles.
I know you don’t personally eat much oil but I hear that oil baking is a thing. I had a friend in grad school who said that Jewish families who keep kosher used to do a lot of baking with oil before Crisco was introduced to the market and she was partial to an old family cookie recipe that used oil.
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Holidays and special occasions are for alll the oil and fat!
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I love shortening! I always use it to make pastry because it’s: way easier to handle/less fragile, and also, way easier to roll out and combine.
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I do almost all my baking with oil. It just takes a little trial and error if you’re adjusting a recipe that calls for lard/shortening or butter.
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Ok so I checked my records and I can see when Pumpkin started eating more food on our grocery and takeaway budgets 
there’s a clear jump!
This month we are on a downward trend. We’ve eaten less McDonald’s, which is our indicator of how well we’re doing. Last night I made tuna sandwiches instead of getting it because it was easier and quicker! So I’m feeling pretty good about that.
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Had a moment of shock. Found some printouts of an old 2008 blog of mine that included a chart of grocery expenses. Realized our budget hasn’t moved much since 2008. It was $400CAD per month back then, and it’s $500/mth now. But we often come in under $300. We buy and eat differently now. More buying sales and creating meals from those foods.
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For you meat eaters! I have recently been putting beef bouillon into my black beans when we cook them. Then using the beans to replace half of ground beef/turkey in recipes.
Putting the beef bouillon into the beans makes the flavor taste closer to beef so it is less noticeable as a filler in recipes.
We buy dried beans in bulk so this helps lower the overall cost of the meal.
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Also works great for brown rice and brown/green lentils (any meaty broth, or the juices from an instant pit carnitas). 
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I’m really happy with how little kitchen waste I’ve had lately! Right now I’m turning the ham bone from Christmas into stock 
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Not sure where I should put this, but if you’re in the US and have accounts at Fidelity, you might want to check your summary page before starting on taxes. I’m not sure which account is the trigger (and neither was the representative I spoke to), but at least for some account holders there’s an offer to file federal and one state return with Turbo Tax Premier for free.
*Yes, Turbo Tax/Intuit is approaching the devil reputation-wise, but unfortunately it’s also been consistently the least-bad for RSU and ESPP handling so I’m stuck until one of the other options stop being effectively worse than doing it by hand
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And other random info since I think some people here like ThreadUp…if you happen to have an Amex card, you might check your offers, it looks like there’s a $15 off $50 offer
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The Amex card offer I have is spend $50 or more, get $25 back. I haven’t tried Thread Up, but read so many good things it might be worth a try. Thanks for sharing.
ETA: Not sure how to use strikeout in editing a post, but the get $25 back offer is from StitchFix. I also have the $15 back offer from ThreadUp.
Drinking more coffee now…
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Never been a big spender, but always terrible at budgeting. And especially in the last few years, as my wife and I’s income keeps going up, inflation is right there and I feel like we’re saving even less.
Anyone have good budgeting tools they use that were helpful and they stuck with?
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