Today is April 30! I am celebrating the fact that we have maintained our grocery budget at $195 for the month. I will be honest this has been a challenge especially this last two weeks while the list of things we are out of continues to grow! But we did it! I should also include as part of this celebration that $50 of that budget went to purchase plants. These will eventually provide food for us but this month they were just an expense. Today is another busy day with dentist and doctor’s appointments so I was trying to figure out a dinner that would work with the items we still have on hand. We do have food but the problem is using the ingredients that we have together. I am proud to say that not only did I come up with a dinner plan but add a choice for lunch as well.

My parent served ham this past Sunday, we were given the left over ham on the ham bone to use.  I honestly learned how to live cheaply from my mother so of course she would not simply just throw out the left overs.  First I made ham salad, which is one of Matt’s favorite and decided to use the ham bone for soup. I decided to include both these recipes with a couple of changes I made.

Ham Salad:  diced ham(ended up around 3 cups), mayonnaise, red onion( about 1/2 cup), mustard( a generous spat)  and pepper.  Simple easy but very good.

The soup I used the basic recipe from here. But used frozen kidney beans, a can of corn, frozen baby carrots and sautéed the remaining red onion, and finally sprinkled heavily with Mrs Dash.  The soup actually smells really good and I will add a verdict later today!