Real life, y’all

So. Things happen. I’m human. Lots of stuff is going on right now… I haven’t really been able to exactly sit down and cook dishes to create recipes that you all can re-create. As many of you know, I am engaged and we are paying for our own wedding. That means that we have had to severely change our spending habits to be able to save money to have the wedding of our dreams. Last month we cut our grocery budget down by 20%, plus I had a neighbor wine and cheese party. Sounds fun, right? IT TOTALLY WAS! But – getting the food for that took up a good chunk of our grocery budget for the month. I’m as strict as I’ve ever been with budgeting because I can’t WAIT to marry Nick, but that just comes with some sacrifices. In this case, it means that I challenged myself to not go grocery shopping the last two weeks of the month of February, so I had to be creative and come up with foods that I could cook with what I had out of my pantry staples, for two full weeks.

This is not a typical food post – there will not be any recipe cards for you. However, I can explain what I cooked and how in the captions of the photos. And these photos are just taken from my phone, more just documenting what I was able to create with what I had in my pantry, fridge, and freezer. I just hope that this post serves as a reminder that even insta-worthy blogs still have someone behind the camera and behind the computer that live a real life and gotta make do sometimes! And even when you have to make do, you can still make great things!

The weekend after Valentines Day, Nick’s dad was here visiting. I had made a quick run to Costco to stock up on a few produce items I always like to have in the house. My must haves include a large bag of yellow onions, tons of campari tomatoes, a big bag of lemons, and a bag of avocados. Luckily, he treated us to the grocery haul we did because he wanted to pick out specific things for meals he wanted to have at the house. That was a HUGE help. Plus, we went out to eat for dinner each night, which I normally eat half of whatever I order at a restaurant, so I had leftovers. While the guys would have meat and cheese sandwiches for lunches, I would eat whatever leftovers I had the night before. Breakfasts for them were cereal and/or toast with scrambled eggs and turkey bacon. For me, I made myself avocado toast.

I honestly can’t recall when I made this next dish for myself, but traditionally on Sundays I like to meal prep and have breakfasts and lunches ready for me to grab and go for the work week ahead of me. I typically make me and Nick the same breakfast, and he will have a sandwich each day for lunch, so I just make a dish I can split up into containers for the week for me. Recently, either right before Nick’s dad was with us, or right after, I made black bean soup. I cooked black beans from dry beans for the first time, and HOLY COW they were so delicious! It makes me want to make them that way more often! I will have to go back and share this method for you sometime in the future because those beans were just AWESOME. Then I turned those cooked beans into black bean soup for the week, take a look! I really wanted to make this a blog post but honestly the colors were so mucky and I didn’t have the budget to go back to the store for toppings like green onions, cheese, etc, so that’s why I didn’t. But seriously, it was good enough that I’ll want to share the whole recipe with you soon 🙂

One of the last nights Nick’s dad was here, we had a grill out with our neighbors. We grilled up beef burgers, beyond meat burgers (for me), some homemade boar and honeycomb sausages one of our neighbors makes from his hunting trip each year, and a bunch of sides. One day for lunch I had the one remaining beyond meat burger with the leftover grilled broccolini (leftover from our Valentines Day dinner!). Another day I had the leftover grilled corn salad – this is something I could definitely recreate for the blog as well. My neighbor asked for the recipe and I just texted her the general idea of what I put in because I was making it up as I went.

Lunches for me this week I was trying to use up the remaining avocado I had from Costco. Gosh darn… TOTAL sarcasm there. I LOVE avocado and love throwing it in everything. So I make this super simple dish that was my version of tuna salad. I don’t like mayo, so I replaced the mayo with avocado, and the recipe has just evolved over time. In all honesty, yes I did eat a can of tuna, but only used one can, and put in a can of chickpeas as well to cut the amount of tuna. Yes I’m vegetarian – but I’ve also told myself that if I completely eliminate meat from my diet, my body won’t be able to process meat like it can currently. So I want to have tiny bits of meat or animal products so I don’t get sick to my stomach when I eat something that I didn’t know wasn’t vegetarian. I have a vegetarian co worker that one time ate a soup someone made for her that was a veggie soup, but they used chicken broth since they didn’t really think about it, and it made her sick as a dog for days… I just don’t want to experience that myself.

For dinners this week, we were eating spaghetti with pesto, as well as a veggie chili. I forgot to snap a photo of the pasta, but it wasn’t anything special outside of it being my homemade pesto I make from the basil I grow each summer in my garden. I can’t eat the same thing for dinner night after night, so I’d switch it up and have the pasta one night, chili the next, back to pasta, etc. I’ll for sure include a recipe of my pesto when I make new batches this summer, get excited for that! The chili was good but nothing I could really have you re-create… we went to Central Market’s chocolate fest, where you walk the store and taste everything chocolate they’ve created for valentines day. They often have what they call “foodie freebies”. When we were there, they had this huge jar of ready-made chili, “just add meat” style. If you bought that, you got a jar of pickled jalapenos, a can of beans, a tub of sour cream, and a bag of corn chips for free. That definitely seemed worth it, so we got two sets of that promo item. This hopefully explains why I couldn’t suggest how to re-create it, as this one brand of ready-made chili was small batch and I don’t expect anyone else to find that item readily available at your grocery stores. We made a huge batch of this, and added three cans of beans to give it some bulk. The jars of chili were vegan, so it was actually vegan chili until I added cheddar cheese and Nick added sour cream. And the green onions I put on top I literally re-grew out of the roots I saved from earlier that month and stuck in a jar of water. Let me know if you don’t know this trick and I can explain a little more in detail about it, but I basically get two sets of green onions every time I buy some!

I finally ran out of blueberry muffins for breakfasts (recipe coming soon), so the last couple of days to stretch until the end of the month were tough. I had half a container left of yogurt that I didn’t use when I made the tzatziki, so I combined that with some frozen berries I had in my freezer, plus some roasted and salted almonds that we keep at work. Hey, it wasn’t anything special, but it turned out to be pretty stinkin’ healthy and I was proud of myself for being able to come up with that on what little we had left!

FINALLY – we got to hang out with our best friend last night, Adam. Adam used to be our roommate when we lived in our rental home. He’s so busy these days with his band plus his full time job that it is hard to see him, but when we do, we make it epic. We decided to check out a new pizza joint by our house called Mod Pizza. Apparently it’s the fastest growing restaurant chain in America right now. It is a build your own, custom pizza place where there is only one size, and no matter how many toppings you want on the pizza, it is the same price. It felt to me like a Chipotle – similar style as far as casual, family friendly, customize-able, clean, and fast. Nick treated us to dinner last night where we each got what we wanted, plus some garlic strips. Check out this spread!

Well, I know this is a super long post, but I wanted to get something out there to explain why I haven’t posted in a little bit. But alas, it is now March, we got paychecks, and we are back in the green! I don’t want to go super crazy this month with stuff so I can have a bit more freedom and breathing room, but if I stay with creative dishes that only require a few things from the store, I will be much happier, and I will be able to come up with more for all of you guys! Thanks for sticking with me on this one, and let me know if you like these kinds of posts. I can do “What I eat in a day” style posts if you’re curious about what a daily food menu looks like for me.

As always, feel free to comment, like, etc! Use the hashtag #nommingwithnicola and tag me @nommingwithnicola on social media platforms (I’m on Facebook and Instagram). I would love to hear from you! Much love!