Conventional wisdom says that, in order to save money on groceries, you should plan your meal around your store’s ad based on what ingredients are on sale that week. Though I definitely seek to save money, I’ve found a different method that works for me. Instead of starting from the ad, I start with what I know I have on hand in my fridge, freezer, or pantry.

Here’s an example: when I sat down to make my meal plan for this week, I knew I had some ground turkey, fish, and pork chops in the freezer, a partial package of P.F. Change’s frozen dumplings, half a package of firm tofu, a few eggs, and the ingredients for a crockpot barbecue sauce (Italian dressing and barbecue sauce). SO, I planned to make turkey meatballs and spaghetti, pan-fried pork chops, fried rice with baked tofu and dumplings, fish tacos with chipotle lime slaw, and crockpot barbecue chicken. I rounded out the week’s meals with a crockpot butternut squash chili, which just sounded good to me. Since I already had the main ingredient for each meal, I only had to buy a few supplementary items, which still allows me to keep costs down.

My shopping list for those meals consisted of:

• split chicken breasts for the barbecue, on sale for $1.19/lb
• 1 can of black beans, 1 can of white beans, an onion, and a butternut squash for the chili
• 3 limes, chipotle pepper in adobo, and cabbage for the tacos (I have tortillas and yogurt for the sauce already)

I use coupons for any of these items as I can, or buy the store-brand or sale option to keep costs down. I definitely peruse the ad for good sale-to-coupon matchups as well, and I picked up a few staples for these recipes that will get used for other things, like a new jar of mayonnaise, a bag of white rice, and some tortilla chips to have with salsa, but that’s all pretty trivial once you have the main meat portion taken care of. In addition, I buy other things that are on sale or have a good coupon (like this week I bought All laundry detergent and Chi Chi’s products that were at a great price). But by “shopping” from my stockpile to plan my week’s meals, I’m able to save a lot of money and a lot of thinking!

What’s your meal planning and grocery shopping tactic?

On Saturday, Andy and I finally replanted our balcony planters. They had been filled with the dead remnants of last summer’s plants for far too long. But as I posted about recently, I was not really feeling the whole gardening thing! Part of my issue with it is the lack of space. We pretty much have to use the floor of our apartment to get it done, because our balcony is an open grate.

The mess was unappealing to think about.

But Andy really enjoyed having the plants last year, so he took the lead on getting some plant suggestions from my mom and making us go out to get them. To be honest, I was  slightly reticent up until the morning of our outing.

But once we started rolling through Home Depot and seeing all the plants, I started to get more excited. There’s just something invigorating about the thought of cultivating new life.

I remembered how nice it was to look out the window and see green things and flowers waving in the air between me and the other steel building across the street.

Andy did the actual physical planting, and I do have to admit that I didn’t mind that at all. I channeled Anne Taintor and said, “Boy, not gardening is so much fun!”

The herbs will be put to good use, though, and I hope the flowers will continue to bloom. And as I care for these beings, may I remember where they come from.

On that note, a poem that popped into my head as I walked that afternoon:

~”Pied Beauty” by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to planted things!

While we were in New York, Andy and I had lunch at a place called Fresh & Co. It was a split-second decision guided by hunger and proximity, so I’m not sure if it’s well-known or renowned or anything. It was definitely satisfactory, though it didn’t blow me away. But I did love the concept of the salad I ordered: you picked your ingredients off of a bar (like Subway), they put them in a bowl and mixed them up, dumped them out on a cutting board and chopped it, then put it back in the bowl and tossed it with the dressing for you. It was quite a substantial salad and a fun meal.

On Friday, I attempted to recreate it at home!

Here are the greens:

lettuce, spinach, and sprouts

The veggies:

sugar snap peas, carrots, cucumber, and red bell pepper

The proteins:

hard-boiled egg, tofu, pepperoni (The tofu was so damp that it started making the pepperoni bleed, which is why it looks kind of yucky.)

Here’s all the ingredients in a bowl (the medium-sized rubber-bottomed, lidded Pampered Chef stainless steel mixing bowl, to be exact…yes, I like my bowls!)

And here’s me attempting to chop it all up:

I went back and forth between the pizza cutter and the big knife you can see at the top of the picture. The pizza cutter wasn’t quite sharp enough to get through all of the crunchy veggies, and it tended to make things spew out from behind it, but it was good in theory. This step of the process could use some perfecting; I think a bigger cutting board would be a good help!

Here’s the salad all chopped, dressed, and ready for the toss:

I whipped up a batch of my mom’s homemade vinaigrette, but you could use any type of dressing you’d like. In fact, I think this could be a really fun party food! Have everyone bring a salad ingredient and a dressing and make it a true smorgasbord.

And the final product:

It filled a big shallow pasta bowl, so it was definitely a lot of salad! We ate it with warm rolls and some cheese.

This is an easily customizable, healthy meal that was great for a warm night and a fun departure from our usual.

Have you had any fun experiential meals lately? What types of things do you tend to cook when it’s hot outside?

I’m linked up to the Tasty Tuesday Parade of Foods at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam!

This lot has been for sale in our neighborhood for quite some time.

Andy and I just bought a tent recently

(which, yes, is set up in our living room here), so we figured the neighbors wouldn't mind if we bought the lot and just set up camp for awhile. With the money we'd be saving on utilities and rent, I'm sure we'd be able to build a house in, oh, you know, a few years. And we could acquire a set of these to make life a little more comfortable:

(camp shower)

(obvious, right?)

The lot has all the perks that real estate lingo talks up: desirable neighborhood, walk to MARTA, shops, and restaurants, access to walking path, good school district. All it's lacking is a house, and we've clearly got that pesky part taken care of! So the next time you come visit me, if all I can offer you for dinner is some Ramen noodles made with hot water from our Jet Boil, please bear with me. We're being frugal.

Newsweek recently released its annual Top 1000 High Schools list, and my alma mater (The Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science) made it on for the first time at #542! It was the only school in Mississippi to be selected. Sure, it was beaten out by some generic public high schools in wealthy suburbs of big cities in other states, but given its size and the methodology Newsweek uses to rank, I’m impressed that it placed at all. I also realized that I have friends who attended at least six of the other top 1000, including numbers 6 and 10. What can I say, I keep some pretty good company.

Well, went, anyway…

I’m pleased as punch that MSMS ranked, because I think being able to check that box will do great things for its credibility and funding opportunities, but I can’t say I agree fully with Newsweek’s ranking tactic. MSMS is a two-year public residential high school, meaning that it’s (mostly) free to anyone from Mississippi who is accepted. It provides an opportunity for people from small towns and bigger cities to get a better education than they might get at their local high school, and it is a veritable melting pot of socioeconomic backgrounds, cultural experiences, and academic interests. Though it is a math and science school, its instruction in the humanities is top-notch. It’s located on a college campus, so many classes count as dual credit, and for those pursuing the sciences, there are numerous collaborative research opportunities.

My brain tended more toward the humanities, but because of the curriculum requirements I was exposed to advanced-level science and math classes that I undoubtedly would have shied away from at any other school. I had FABULOUS teachers who truly went above and beyond what was required of them. Our classes were on a college schedule, and we lived in dorms, meaning that we got a taste of the freedom and independence of college in a more controlled environment before we were thrown into it on our own. I can’t say enough about the relationships I built in those 2 years, and I was definitely more than prepared for the challenges of my first semester of college. I don’t think the experience I had at MSMS can be encapsulated in a percentage or a score or a number.

Here’s what Newsweek measured and what percentage of the overall score it represents:

• Four-year graduation rate (25%)

(Side-note: since MSMS is not a 4-year school, so I’m not exactly sure how they calculated this measurement for it.)

• Percent of 2011 graduates accepted into college (25%)
• AP/IB/AICE tests per student (25%)
• Average SAT and/or ACT score (10%)
• Average AP/IB/AICE exam score (10%)
• AP/IB/AICE courses offered per student (5%)

I graduated with a little over 100 students, and I think every single one of them was accepted into at least one college. I agree that that’s a good measure of a school’s success (though maybe it should also somehow include some element of how well they do once they go to college?). But when it comes to testing, MSMS didn’t offer all that many AP exams, and it didn’t offer ANY IB. However, most of our teachers had PhDs, or masters degrees at the very least, and we were treated as college students and taught at that level. I think this measure of Newsweek’s is what has harmed MSMS in past years. With such a small student body, it’s not possible to offer as many AP classes as it might be possible to offer at a bigger school, where more people would sign up for them. Just because I only took 2 AP exams doesn’t mean I learned any less, and in fact, to me it might imply that I learned MORE, because my teachers weren’t tempted to teach to a test. I took the AP English literature exam without taking an actual AP English class–instead, I took a college level Survey of British Literature that only mostly prepared me for the exam. (I made a 4.)  And as far as test scores, I know you can’t get around including those in any report that judges schools, but I have such mixed feelings about the efficacy of standardized testing to tell any kind of true story about a group of students.

All that to say, I feel ambivalent about this Newsweek report. I had a wonderful, amazing highschool experience at MSMS, socially and academically, and I’m glad they’re finally getting some national kudos, but I think there’s more to high school than the numbers.

What was your high school experience like? Is your school included on the list? What elements would you include in a ranking of schools?