Beans and Rice and Dinner Out

It took almost two days, but I cooked a whole bunch of pinto, black, garbanzo and kidney beans up, all in my crockpot. Everything turned out very well, except that I tried cooking black beans and garbanzos together, which wound up turning the garbanzos an interesting shade of black. Still tasted fine, though! Most of this beany bonanza went into bags in the freezer for later, but I kept out enough to make a big pot of beans and rice for the week ahead. I won't have to worry about lunches for days, yay!

Tomorrow is my husband's birthday, which means food traditions around here. Cake, breakfast in bed, and birthday dinner out. Since today was Sunday, we had birthday dinner a day early and went out to Red Lobster. I did my best to strike a balance between eating well and eating healthy, and I think I did all right for myself. I ate one cheese biscuit and two coconut shrimp from our six-shrimp appetizer before the meal started. I also got a salad, which I got with ceasar dressing on the side. I like Red Lobster's Ceasar dressing a lot, but only in near-homeopathic quantities. Where they will soak the leaves in dressing, I like to just dip the very edge of the leaf in and get the flavor. For my meal, I had the snow crab legs with just a tiny bit, maybe a third of the little dish, of drawn butter, rice pilaf, and mini-potatoes. It was very tasty! I also had one bite of the birthday boy's key lime pie, and felt very satisfied.

After supper, I had to go out to the grocery store for birthday meal supplies and food for the week ahead. Remember how last week I adhered to a strict budget? That did not happen so much this week. It was pretty much scuttled right off the bat by having to buy the cake and bacon and orange juice, but then I also found a present for my sister for Christmas that was a good price, but still not within the whole strict budgeting thing. In the end, I bought more stuff than I probably needed, but tried to keep my head about the whole business. I should have enough now that we will not need to shop except for odds and ends, bread and milk type stuff until we leave for our Thanksgiving trip. Spent 130 dollars, including holiday purchases, so it could be worse.