Hello ——-To do list, CVS deals, no meat recipes

Good Monday everyone

My husband was out of town for a few days, helping his family in Arkansas.  

He brought me these pretty yellow roses ❤️

And if you look in the background, I did order more fabric and sewed a curtain for the dining room window to match the bench cover. 

Here’s my to do list for the week.  I didn’t decorate it this time.  

Even though it’s plain, it will help me stay on track.  

I’ve gotten back into weekly couponing at CVS.  

It does take planning, as many things do, and I think it’s very worth my time and fun too. 


Above is what I bought this week.  It was $109 before all deductions and just $22 after deductions and I got a pile of CVS extracarebucks to spend next week.  

Below is how I planned out my purchase plan.  I clipped the items I wanted to buy  from the sale paper and glued them onto a sheet of paper. 

This makes it easy to spot the correct item in the store. 

I try to always buy items that are on sale, offer extracarebucks, have coupons and if possible, also that I have CVS personalized coupons for.  Personalized coupons, called CRTs in couponing lingo, are coupons that print from the CVS red box or at the bottom of a CVS receipt.  

I also only buy items I know we will use, but I made a slight exception to that this week as I got some new vitamins that were free after coupons from Sunday’s paper.  

 Below I did some rough figuring to determine the actual amount I should spend.

It was pretty close,  I guessed $25 and it was a little less.  

The deductions circled in green are paper coupons either printed from coupons.com or from the newspaper. 

The deductions in Red are CVS CRT coupons, app coupons and extracarebucks from last week.  See how quickly they add up? 

Next week, I’ll start with $31 in CVS money.  


Meal prep

3 grands spent the night here this weekend, so before they came, I did some meal prep. 

In the crockpot Lentil Taco filling is cooking.  I mixed up pancake batter for breakfast.  It’s always nice to have a salad in the fridge. 

For fruit, I cut up a watermelon and put it in 2 containers and the rest is on the divided tray with plums and strawberries.  



I am still eating no meat and I like it just fine. 

I hesitate to call it vegetarian as I have used a few animal products we already had on hand when I started leaving off the meat.  And we definitely are not eating Vegan. 

Lentil Tacos are one of my favorites 

Slow cooker lentil tacos

1 cup chopped onion

1 cup brown lentils, rinsed 

1/2 t garlic salt

1 T chili powder

1/2 t oregano 

2 t cumin

Black pepper as desired

1 can of green chili and tomatoes- Rotel, 10 ounce or so (I used Aldi ones) OR 1 cup salsa 

2 cups water

2 bouillon cubes- vegetable bouillon would be vegetarian but I used chicken as that’s what I had 

Put all the ingredients in a slow cooker, stir, cover and cook on high 4 hours, until the lentils are tender. 

I had to add about a cup of water halfway through.  

So plan to check on the lentils a couple of times during cooking.  

You want the lentils to cook and not dry up but the finished dish should not be juicy.  

My crock pot cooks fast and yours may not cook as hot as mine.  

I served these on lightly fried corn tortillas with traditional toppings like onion, tomatoes, lettuce, salsa and sour cream.  It would be good in crunchy shells or flour tortillas too.  

While the flavor is almost identical to beef taco filling,  the texture is different.  

I don’t think you can fool anyone with this but they really are so good.  

We like them a lot and they are very easy and thrifty.  

One batch of these made enough filling for 3 meals of tacos for the 2 of us, making 6-7 tacos each time.  

Black Eyed peas are another favorite.  

Black eyed peas 

2 cups dry BE peas, washed and drained

1 diced onion

3 celery stalks, diced

1 1/2 t paprika

1 t thyme

1 t parsley 

1 t oregano

1 1/2 t Cajun seasoning like Tony Chacheres 

1 T dry chicken boullion- I would use vegetable to be vegetarian but I already have this in my pantry 

If desired 1 t Tobasco

Put all in a slow cooker and cover with water and another 2 inches or so

Cover

Cook on high- in my crockpot it takes 4 hours 

Serve with hot rice 

I made it simple batch of lentil soup but it was very blah.  I plan to try a more spiced up version next time. 

We also really like red beans and rice with no meat.  I’ll share that recipe soon.  

Today, I’m cooking a batch of refried beans in the crockpot and will serve them with quesadillas and green salad.  

We’re not eating meat but we aren’t eating anything people would call too weird either.  

Have a good week everyone ❤️