House and Home

*Whew!* Summer has my family eating us out of house and home. Not only that, but we've been BUSY having fun. I barely have time to keep up here, and I didn't get a picture taken last week OR this week. I figured this week I'd update with our shopping trip anyway, since I only made one trip (to Hy-Vee.) This is what we got:

1 Milky Way bar
1 16 oz generic cottage cheese
1 Digiornio Flatbread
1 Red Baron double pizza slice box
1 box of Fiber One bars
1 bag of salsa Sunchips
1 box of Trix
1 box of Corn Pops
1 can of black beans
1 bottle of generic apple juice
2 boxes of Keebler Multigrain crackers
2 jars of Skippy Natural Creamy
2 bottles of V8 Fusion
1 squeeze bottle of Welch's reduced sugar jelly
2 boxes of Popsicles
1 package of Hillshire Honey Ham
1 1/2 gallon of generic chocolate milk
1 package of Cascade action pacs
2 1 lb bricks of generic cheese
4 lbs of strawberries
2 6 oz packages of raspberries
1 package of Ball Park hot dogs

My pre-tax total was $55. I got SEVERAL rain checks for items they were out of, which was great. That will help me stretch my budget next week, and it allowed me to stock up on the things that they did have in stock. I'm a little worried because even though I got some good deals, we are low or our of a lot of staples. In addition to what I bought, I've got a good stock of bread, noodles, marinara, canned corn, Jell-O, cake mix, fish sticks, frozen french fries and hashbrowns. Umm, that's not going to help me much!

I haven't had a lot of time lately to try new recipes (or just to cook and bake in general,) but I did try to make chocolate covered raspberries a la Karl Bissingers today, but they just did not turn out as I had planned. They taste great, but they look AWFUL. I know HOW I need to make them, but I had some trouble with the execution. (Mainly the chocolate dipping.) I think I need to buy one of those little tubs of chocolate for fruit dipping and try that. I just couldn't get the chocolate hot enough for fear of burning it. I also wasted a whole bag of chocolate chips and changed my microwave language setting to Spanish somehow in the process. Ha! I'll try again soon.