Chili was on the paper plan for Tuesday. It had been on the plan for Tuesday the week before, too. On Tuesday morning the thermometer on the garage wall read 84 at 7:15, the forecast high was 95, and for the second week in a row I erased "chili" and wrote "carnitas" over the smudge.
Tuesday was also the first day of fall. In Dallas that's a calendar event, not a weather event. Our first real cold front usually shows up sometime in October, and until it does, chili just tastes wrong. So this was a summer week with fall's name on it. Here's what we ate from Sunday, September 20 through Thursday, September 24, and the $262 it cost.
The plan, and what actually happened
- Sunday: hamburger steaks with onion gravy, mashed potatoes and green beans, using two of the last flat bags from May's bulk ground beef. $13.90.
- Monday: sheet pan chicken fajitas, with Eli's plain chicken pulled before the peppers touched it. The oven ran for 25 minutes, and the AC spent the rest of the evening catching up. $14.60.
- Tuesday (office day, flag football practice): Crock-Pot pork carnitas instead of chili, on low at 7:50 a.m. and crisped in the cast iron once Matt and Eli got home from practice. Dinner at 6:30. $15.10.
- Wednesday: gazpacho and grilled cheese. More on that in a minute. $12.40.
- Thursday (office day): the green chile chicken enchiladas I froze at the end of August, thawed in the fridge overnight and baked when I got home, with rice. $1.10 in new ingredients, since the pan was already counted the week I made it.
Five dinners for $57.10, about $2.28 a serving, which is low mostly because Thursday was already paid for.
The meal nobody would eat
I had a theory. If it's going to be 95 degrees during the first week of fall, why not lean into it? Cold soup. Gazpacho: ripe tomatoes, a cucumber, a bell pepper, a little onion and garlic, olive oil, red wine vinegar and a slice of bread, all blended smooth and chilled for four hours. I made it right after lunch, and it was beautiful, deep brick red, cold enough to fog the sides of the glass container.
The reviews at 6:15:
- Matt: "Is this salsa?" Then, after a spoonful: "Is it supposed to be cold?"
- Wyatt, who eats everything, managed three spoonfuls and then started dipping his grilled cheese in it like tomato soup. I'm giving that half credit.
- Eli wouldn't let the bowl near his plate.
- Rosie said "no thank you" in the politest voice she owns, then said it again, louder.
The grilled cheese, which I'd made on the griddle as a side, disappeared in about four minutes, so I fired a second round. The gazpacho went back in the fridge, and I've eaten it for lunch yesterday and today and liked it fine. The lesson isn't that gazpacho is bad. It's that I tried a brand-new dish on a school night with no backup except bread and cheese, and the bread and cheese did all the work. New recipes go on Sundays from now on, when there's time and everyone has room to be brave.
What I'd change: nothing about the soup, honestly. Everything about the timing.
The receipts, and the chili that's still waiting
Receipt check: Aldi on Monday, $158.36. A Kroger pickup on Wednesday, $41.17, for milk, coffee on a digital coupon and the gazpacho vegetables, which I now look at with mixed feelings. A Walmart+ delivery on Thursday, $62.80, for paper towels, trash bags, cereal and lunch snacks. That's $262.33 for the week, $2.67 under our $265 budget, which in September counts as a win.
Tonight is Cody's game, so it's nachos in the bleachers out of the same cooler as every Friday. Tomorrow morning Eli's flag football team plays at nine, Matt coaching from the sideline with a whistle he is far too fond of, and tomorrow evening Matt's smoking chicken thighs on the pellet grill.
The chili ingredients are still in the pantry: two cans of beans, two cans of tomatoes and a jar of chili powder, waiting on a cold front that keeps sliding off the end of the forecast. I'm done waiting for the weather to cooperate. Chili is going into the freezer-meal session I have planned for the first Sunday in October, so whenever the cold finally shows up, dinner will already be ready for it.
