Water, Water Everywhere...

One of the best things about living in the Caribbean is the (usually) great weather. This week however was gray and rainy and almost cold at times. Though bad for the island visitors, most residents love it when it rains! The island does not have a fresh water source other than the rain- most people have cisterns that are filled by the rain, and this supplies the household water. On the boat we do not have a cistern, and we’ve never perfected a water-catching system, so we buy our water. Of course it is expensive, so conserving water is a way of life here. It always strikes me as ironic when I am paying to fill the water tanks while it’s raining and we’re surrounded by water.

Of course, we like to eat comfort food in cool rainy weather, and we did all week long! In the coming week I am really going to try for a salad or two.

First week back tracking the budget after taking a year off, and I’m definitely out of practice! We try to spend $15 a day, $105 a week (yep, my math was wrong in last week’s post!). This week we spent $123, and this is what we ate:

Sunday: Tortilla Stack. This is a great recipe that is basically lasagna with corn tortillas; seasoned ground beef, cheese, tomatoes, onions, etc. I splurged on cilantro ($2.99 for a small bunch). I usually do this in the slow cooker, but this time baked as a casserole.

Monday: Lasagne. A few weeks ago we were housesitting and had some room to spread out in the kitchen. I made 6 lasagnes ( they are each about 4x8 inches in disposable foil pans), with different combinations of sauces, meats, and veggies. I left one for the house, and froze the other 5 on our boat. Mondays I work late, so it’s perfect to pop in the oven with no fuss and no clean up.

Tuesday: Husband makes an amazing curry sauce with coconut cream, which he tossed with stir-fried veggies and served over rice. We also had some mini eggrolls that I made last week and froze in batches of ten. I think I made 60 egg rolls that day! Time consuming but very simple: cabbage, carrots, and onion.

Wednesday: We just joined a softball league, and we had a team meeting that night so we ate out. We will be playing Thursdays after work, so we will probably not be cooking that day.

Thursday: Sausage stew with sweet potatoes and apples .Husband is always asking for stew for dinner, but I really despise the beef stew/carrots/potatoes dish, an try to come up with alternatives. The flavors in this dish were fantastic!

Friday: Chicken Parmesan. We really love the veggie fake chicken patties, so we used these instead of real chicken. When I made all that lasagna, I had some leftover pasta that I froze and used it here. Homemade sauce and lots of mozzarella cheese!

Saturday: Pizza. I recently discovered pizza yeast! I was very excited to try it as the package says no rising is needed, and it doesn’t give dough that “spring back” quality when you are trying to stretch it into the pizza pan. However, I have now tried it twice with different pizza dough recipes, and I really don’t like it. It gives the crust more of a biscuit taste and texture.

You may remember that when I was writing last year, we were eating vegetarian. We were both kind of tiring of meat, and we stayed veg for about a year. Gradually we started eating meat again, and we are back to a few times a week now. I don’t know if makes a difference to the budget, since meats and veggies are equally expensive.

The sun finally came out again on Sunday, and I spent a great day at one of my favorite beaches.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great week!