Cooking on a budget!

I'll stop posting pictures of her when she stops being cute

I'm finally all unpacked and LOVING it here. New roommate is pretty awesome. The friends I'm making at work are pretty awesome. Being less than 15 min from school and less than 20 from work is the most awesome. Life is good.

What I am finding though is eating well on a budget is super tough. In April, I paid the security deposit for this place, rent to nasty people that I didn't live with, then moved home and paid for gas to commute from waldorf to baltimore every day. Needless to say, finances are a little tight but now that May is here and my commuting costs have cut drastically, I'm hoping it'll all balance out soon. In the meantime, I'm finding ways to eat cheaply

but not have it be packaged $1 soups (although don't get me wrong, I still eat those often).

I work for a grocery store, so I get a discount, but paying attention to our sale prices mean extra savings for me. And using coupons. And using/stretching everything in your fridge/pantry. I did that today with this awesome and filling lunch: roasted sweet potatoes and broccoli.

Bbq sauce goes with everything. EVERYTHING.

We had a sale on Japanese sweet potatoes which became my new favorite thing. I had a small one left that I cut up, sprinkled with salt and cumin and roasted with left over frozen broccoli cuts. Seriously, if you haven't tried Japanese sweet potatoes, go get them before they go out of season. They are amazing. Total cost of lunch: $1.25 for the sweet potato and $.75 for the broccoli. More than the prepackaged soups but definitely more nutritious and will hold me over longer.

Big Pot O' Soup

So as I said yesterday, I had a day off which was a wonderful surprise. I was feeling a little under the weather, so I decided to put everything I had left over into a crockpot for a soup. The above pot has a japanese sweet potato, half a bunch of kale, carrots, some white beans, tomatoes, an onion, garlic, vegetable broth, cumin, salt, pepper, cayenne, and because I love it and saw a can while getting oil for my car at target, pumpkin. It was awesome. Savory, warm, comfortable and hearty. Plus the cumin added this Indian spin I wasn't expecting.

The other thing I want to mention is this: Japanese sweet potatoes. HOLYCRAP. They look like a giant red potato but are sweet and need nothing when you make them. I am not a sweet potato fan typically but these are outstanding. Bake and add a little salt and you are good to go. I am thinking about making a root vegetable mash with vegan butter next week and will probably use them with parsnips and turnips if I can find good parsnips.