Dinner Tonight: Steak & Baked Potatoes

Tonight's dinner was a bit of a splurge. We have been doing really well eating chicken, ground beef/turkey and sirloin all costing less than $3/lb but since KC strip steaks were on sale at Price Chopper for $4.99/lb I decided to get some!

The preparation was pretty simple - seasoned the steaks with garlic powder, seasoning salt and fresh-cracked black pepper then threw them on the good ole George Foreman grill. I somehow managed to cook the steaks perfectly - a rare feat in my house! I served them with baked (technically microwaved) russet potatoes loaded with all the fixings, green beans, salad and Texas toast. We also baked a frozen cherry cobbler for dessert!

This is kind of a boring meal to start posting about - there really isn't a recipe associated with anything. So, just for fun here is my green bean recipe. Very simple but very yummy and was a big hit at Thanksgiving last week (at least with my mom, who isn't biased at all):

1 can cut green beans (drain half of liquid)

2 tsp dried minced onion

1.5 Tbsp bacon bits

Kosher salt

Fresh-cracked black pepper

Combine all ingredients and microwave 5 minutes. (Hubby likes his mushy so we microwave ours a long time - if you like yours more firm stick with 3-4 minutes per the instructions on the can). Enjoy!

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Estimated cost of meal (for 3 servings that fed both me and hubby plus leftovers for my lunch tomorrow)

Steaks - $6.74 (on sale!)
Potatoes - $1.11 + about $.40 in toppings
Green beans - $.50 (on sale!) + about $.35 in bacon/onions
Texas toast - $.74 (on sale + doubled coupon!)
Salad - $1 (on clearance @ Target - unfortunately picked a bad bag and had to throw the rest out)
Cobbler - $.99 (on sale!)

Total: $11.83

Former Life: Cost of dinner @ Outback: About $30 (not including dessert)

Leaner Life Savings (vs. eating out): $18.17 or 61%!!!

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to my blog!

The title of this blog refers to the fact that I recently lost my job and am now doing everything I can to save money and live a "leaner" more economical life. This includes cooking at home almost every night of the week, clipping coupons and anything else I can think of to conserve cash. Though the focus is mostly on a leaner wallet, eating at home instead of at restaurants will most likely also result in a leaner waistline. That's not the purpose here but could be an added bonus!

My plan is to blog about my weekly meal planning, the dinners I cook every night and the deals I find in shopping and my new hobby of couponing (until a few weeks ago I was unaware this was a verb). I've discovered some other great blogs about how to save money, but I want to focus more on food (since I love it and have been told I am really good at talking about it) and also on the local KC aspect of couponing. I've only been able to find one other blog that tracks deals at KC area grocery chains, so I hope to add that to my blog too.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy!