As another year draws to a close, I got a large reminder this past month and a half or so. We (well more like I) spent entirely too much on food. Between a couple trips out (far more then normal) and Thankgiving, between that, it almost broke the budget. Anyways, back to being conservative as far as the money spent on food. There are a few things I have left in my mind as to what to do, and things I already have (like a full size ham). But I'm going to try to, at least until some things get back in line, spend about $75 a week on food. Now this may sound like a lot for two people, and it really is. But considering this is a reduction, I think that it should go well. This may lead to some specifically inexpensive meals that I may, or may not talk about as we go into 2011 (pancakes, etc).

Beyond that we had a nice weekend in Cedar Rapids. For me, at least, it has been very good for me to get away from the whole Christmas weekend. I got probably the best sleep I had gotten in a month. Even beyond the kittens deciding that playing with my CPAP machine is a new fun night time experience, I just haven't been sleeping well. So I had 4 nights of good sleep in a row, 3 of them without an alarm. On Thursday, I made 4 loaves of pumpkin bread for the groups that we were sharing Christmas with (Mattas, My family, Shannon's parents and Sister's family) and then to beat a blizzard that was going to start late Thursday or early Friday so we headed to the Matta's early. It was nice to not have to worry about a lot of things for a while. I kept my phone on, had my computer with me, but if nobody paged, I wasn't planning on doing anything. While I kept track of various things on my iPod touch and Blackberry, I basically didn't type for several days. It was kind of nice. Christmas eve with Shannon's family, Morning with the Matta's, and Day with my family, or at least the family that was in Iowa. Sunday we met up with Cam, Mai, Dave and Mark and had a nice long BS session catching up and discussing current events. Cam gave me a spicy sauce made from Yuzu (I think) and what tasted like a whole lot of pepper. It was quite spicy and now I have to figure out how to use it. The whole sitting around and shooting the breeze with old friends made for a nice end to the weekend. We headed back home and as Shannon cleaned up the travel stuff, I went to remove the snow. Someone was nice enough to snowblow the the front sidewalk, but I still did the driveway and the other walks and was tired by the end.

Yet another week of cooking... If you may notice, I'm trying to use up some potatoes...

Chicken Breasts covered in the Yuzu sauce combined with soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, maybe some honey and sautéd
Hamburgers (last of my farmer's market bought beef)
Potato Burrito
Tuna Melt
Eggs and Hashbrowns