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We spent too much money on food and drink in March. We’re usually very thrifty but last month we got sloppy I guess. We went out to eat a lot, drank at bars, and spent a lot at the grocery stores.

To get back on track we’ve decided to try and bring that food and drink amount way way down, and back under budget for April.

Some ways that we cut costs:

1. Don’t eat out as much. Duh, that one is a given. If we’ve been invited out we can eat at home first so that we don’t end up hungry while out, even if it means eating at an awkward time of day.

2. Make a meal plan. Scott and I do this together on the weekend. We try to plan ahead for the next 5 or 6 days, so that we have lunches and dinners arranged and can do all the shopping at once. I’m pretty sure that you spend less when you do the shopping once than if you do the shopping every day. And we almost never end up having to buy lunch at work/school.

  • check the flyers for sales, and plan a menu around that. The stuff on sale is usually the stuff that is in season, so as well as saving money you are getting nicer quality.
  • take inventory of the food you already have in your fridge, and plan a menu around that, so less gets wasted.
  • plan out meals that have similar ingredients, reducing produce waste.

3. Eating cheaper stuff. This doesn’t mean we have to eat Mr. Noodles every day, just maybe not eating steak every day. This blog has tons and tons of very economical recipes: http://budgetbytes.blogspot.ca/ Nearly every single thing that Rosemarie or Scott or I have made from this website has been a success. I’ve mentioned her blog before and I continue to stand by it. She’s got an amazing website there.

Um well I can’t think of anything else at the moment. Some common sense tips that you probably would have come up with on your own. Saving money isn’t too hard!

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The other night we were having veggie burgers for dinner (the Costco ones are SOOO GOOD!!, even for non-vegetarians) but around 5:00 PM Scott realized we had no buns. Instead of going back out to buy some, he decided it would be easier to just make them from scratch! I’m not sure I quite follow his logic, but he likes making bread, and they turned out quite nice.

Yesterday was a big day.

1. I found out that I am going to be doing my summer placement at Vancouver General Hospital. VGH was my second choice, so this is pretty good news. It’s not too hard to get there from our house, it has the latest early start, and it’s a big busy hospital where I should get to see a lot of variety. I’m pleased.

2. Almost all of my classmates went out for a sushi lunch after school. We went to Sushi Garden, near Lougheed Mall. I had an Alaska roll, a yam roll, and a tuna roll. The Alaska roll was very delicious (it is apparently their speciality) and the other two were fine, but not great. It was cheap though and overall seemed like a good place. I’ve been told there is another one right near our house, so maybe I will try it out again sometime.

3. Scott and I went to the Aussie pub last night to go watch some footy. It’s the very first round of the season and Melbourne (my team) was playing Brisbane (Scott’s team) so of course we wanted to see the game. Unfortunately my Demons got beat pretty bad.

4. I bought my new camera!! I got the Canon SX260 HS. I haven’t used it too much yet but so far it seems very nice and fast and smart. I am looking forward to using it in the future. Now I need to go somewhere where I want to take a lot of pictures! This probably means leaving the apartment…

Well that’s pretty much all the fun stuff I have to say at the moment. I have A LOT of school work to do this weekend so I’ll just be here at my desk for the majority of today and tomorrow. Bummer.

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Last Friday Rosemarie, Rob, Scott and I went to the Eatery for dinner. It was our third time there and since we are all adventurous meat-eaters now we went all out and got all sorts of crazy sushi.

We had tempura vegetables and tempura tuna to start. There are no pictures of this because we were all extremely hungry and wolfed it all down really quickly. We all thought the tempura was really well done though, better than average tempura. I don’t like how large they leave the pieces of broccoli and cauliflower, but that’s me being picky. Rosemarie REALLY loved the tempura green pepper… she wanted me to write that.

Here are the rolls that we chose:

  1. Papaya New Guinea: papaya, crab, cucumber, mayo
  2. Viva Las Vegas: crab, eel, avocado, cream cheese, spicy misonnaise (tempura style)
  3. Italian Stallion: prosciutto, papaya, eel, cream cheese, hot pesto sauce
  4. Figa Roll: figs, blue cheese sauce, tempura crunch, wrapped in prosciutto
  5. Spicy Salmon Crunch: spicy tuna, cucumbers, spicy salmon, tobiko
  6. Sweet Heart: spicy tuna, scallop, tobiko, black sesame sauce
  7. Electric Banana: eel, avocado, tempura banana
  8. Crazy Spice: salmon, tempura bits, hot chili sauce
  9. Tex-Mex: california roll covered with tomato, avocado, roe and salmon

I loved everything except maybe the spicy rolls (#5 and #8). Both of them were so spicy that I couldn’t taste anything else of that piece plus the next piece that I ate. I think the Crazy Spice roll actually just had chili and garlic Sriracha sauce on it. Would not order those again. But Rob liked them, so to each his own.

Top 3 rolls of the night:

  • Katrina & Scott both say: Figa Roll, Italian Stallion, Electric Banana
  • Rosemarie says: Figa Roll, Viva Las Vegas, Tex-Mex
  • Rob says: Electric Banana, Crazy Spice, Spicy Salmon Crunch

The fig roll was really really delicious. I have never really eaten figs before but now I want more because that roll was especially pleasing to my mouth. Mmmmm. We had tried the Italian Stallion roll the last time we went to the Eatery so we already knew we wanted it again. So delicious. And the banana roll was just cool, the banana was really sweet and tasty.

Rob and Scott ate all the ginger pretty quickly and asked for more and the waitress brought over a new plate with seriously more than a cup of ginger! We thought we were going to have to pay for that, but it wasn’t on the bill. Woot.

Anyway we all had drinks too like sake margaritas and the bill ended up being just over $30 each. Not cheap for us students but a nice treat once and a while for sure. The Eatery is definitely one of my all-time favourite restaurants.

The Eatery Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

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On Sunday we made homemade Montreal style bagels. I used this recipe, and they turned out pretty nice! I was surprised at how simple it actually was to make our own bagels. We just had to make the dough, knead for 10 minutes, cut up the dough and shape it into bagels, then boil for 90 seconds, dip in sesame seeds, and bake for 20 minutes.

Before baking:

I forgot to take an after baking picture. They puffed up a bit in the oven and got a nice brown colour.

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Things I did this weekend:

  • A WHOLE LOT OF STUDYING
  • a million assignments
  • several games of NHL12 on the PS3
  • two movies (Hugo and Young Adult)
  • breakfast pizza
  • Greek food
  • 30 Day Shred

Three midterms coming up this week. I need to study a lot!! Anatomy, applied physiology, and physics. Eugh.

The hockey video game is surprisingly fun. I actually beat Scott!!

Hugo was good, I liked it. That movie had a lot of dust, did anyone else notice that?? Young Adult was ok I guess, but frustrating. I guess that was kind of what they were going for though.

Scott made breakfast pizza tonight. We have homemade pizza every second Sunday but I was a bit bored of the usual pizza so I asked for something new. This pizza had ham, tomato, green onion, and eggs cracked on top. It was delicious!

Last night we went out for dinner. Scott won a gift certificate from the Polar Bear Swim for Stepho’s, a Greek restaurant on Davie Street. We got there around 7 pm and there was a big line, as expected. Luckily since we were just a group of 2 we got seated a lot quicker. I would not recommend going there in a big group! We ordered a lamb platter, saganaki (fried cheese), and dolmathes (rice and meat in grape leaves) to share. I enjoyed the saganaki (duh) and the flavour of the dolmathes a lot, but they were quite oily. The lamb was really big and incredibly tender. It fell off the bones. The sides (salad, vegetables, rice) were all good and it came with a lot! We didn’t finish everything.

Scott and I started the 30 Day Shred last week. It’s a quick intense workout program thingy that you can do at home. You need weights. It was a little harder today…. maybe because of last nights fried cheese. We’re done 4 of 30 days. I get soooo sweaty and I really hate the jumping parts – my calves cramp up. I hope we can complete the program but it will definitely be tough.