Thrifty in the Cincy: All You Challenge: Day 1

Today is Sunday, so for our family that means that we eat lunch out after church. Every week we take turns picking where it is we'll go to eat. This week it was our daughter Abby's turn to pick and she picked Noodles and Company, one of her favorites!! So we each had a bowl of noodles, the kids had lemonade and Daddy and I had water. Our total was 21.78. I figured about $20 for that meal, so that's pretty close. I'm glad that that meal comes first thing in the week, so I don't have to try and save for it!

So that leaves us 78.22 for the rest of the week. We didn't do any shopping today, but I am planning to do some tomorrow.

Our dinner tonight was one of Daddy's favorites to celebrate Father's Day. We had cheddar cheeseburgers and homemade fries. I'll show you how much I paid for the ingredients to give you an idea of how much our meals cost, but these totals don't count towards the challenge because most of it was already purchased. Our ingredients were:

1.03lb of ground beef 4.11 (this is the natural, hormone free meat from Dorothy Lane Market)
4 whole grain buns 0.00 (bought with coupon)
3 slices of cheddar cheese .41
1 slice of tomato .10
lettuce .07
6 small to medium potatoes .33
canola oil 0.00 (my parents paid for it for a party and I use what's left!)
ketchup .30
A-1 sauce .05 (my son only eats hamburgers with A-1 sauce!)

Total for the dinner was 5.37 and it was restaurant quality!

I thought I'd share how I make the fries because they are really as good if not better than anything you'll get a restaurant. So here's the directions:

Scrub the potatoes
Slice the potatoes lengthwise
Cut the slices to form the fry shape
Heat oil to 300 degrees (I bought a cheap candy thermometer at Wal-Mart a while back and that makes this so much easier).
Put a batch of the fries in and fry for about 6-8 minutes, until they start to get golden. They will still be sort of flimsy and mushy at this point.
Pull the golden fries out and place on a wire rack with newspaper or paper towels underneath.
Continue this until all fries have been fried.
Now crank the heat up to 350 degrees.
Start with your first batch and put them back into the oil for just a couple of minutes (2-3). Until they are browned, crispy and yummy looking!
Place these fries back onto the wire rack and immediately sprinkle salt on them.
Continue until finished with all fries.
Eat and be happy!!

Here's a pic of the oil with the thermometer in it and one of the wire rack with fries cooling on it.