Sunday: Green and Red Bell Peppers with Sausage and Celery

This week's grocery haul, for $99.33:
-3 green bell peppers
-3 red bell peppers
-1 bag celery
-1 bag organic carrots
-1 bunch parsley
-1 head broccoli
-5 tomatoes on the vine
-1 box prewashed baby spinach
-1 bunch bananas
-1 carton blueberries
-1 jar pitted Kalamata olives
-Small bottle of low-sodium soy sauce
-1/2 lb roast chicken and 1/3 lb pepperjack cheese from the deli
-3 Fage yogurts
-4 cans Sixpoint Sweet Action Ale
-2 bags tortilla chips
-1 whole organic chicken
-1 package (5 links) pork sausage
-1 box instant oatmeal, variety pack
-1 can unsalted roasted peanuts
-6 organic eggs

I carried it all home on my back, like a sherpa. I'll probably need to get more salad greens later in the week, along with ginger, lemons, and anything else I forgot.

Yesterday's dinner was pretty slapdash, as in, I made it up on the fly, but I'm happy enough with how it turned out.

Green and Red Bell Peppers with Sausage and Celery

Here are the ingredients:

Ingredients:

1 pack sausage
2 red bell peppers
2 green bell peppers
2 stalks celery
1 16 oz can diced tomatoes, unsalted
Rice (5-6 cups cooked)
Not pictured: canola oil, pinch cumin, pinch oregano, pinch cayenne, salt and pepper, hot sauce, chicken stock

Instructions:

1. Cut sausage links into small pieces. I like slicing quarters. Brown in large saucepan in a neutral-tasting oil, like canola.
2. Chop celery into small pieces. Add to sausage, stir, and let soften.
3. Chop green and red bell peppers into small pieces. Add to the pot, stir. Wait 2 minutes.
4. Add can of diced tomatoes and 1/4 cup water. Add spices as you like.
5. Make large amount of rice using leftover chicken stock.
6. Serve with hot sauce.

I served this after a hefty Super Salad (spinach, celery, olives, tomatoes, carrots, parsley, olive oil and vinegar) and it made for a quite satisfying, almost-too-heavy meal.

FACTS AND FIGURES 

Prep time: 20-30 min. Chopping, chopping, watching football, chopping.

Servings: 4
Agony rating: 3/10. 
Taste and stuff: 7/10. 

*COSTS OF STUFF I HAD TO BUY SPECIAL*

I, um, threw away the receipt by accident, but the sausage was $5.99, the can o'tomatoes $2.99, so it's safe to estimate the total cost was no higher than $14 including the vegetables (and that's aggressive) or $3.50/serving.

This afternoon I'm making bone broth in the slow cooker, with a freezer's worth of leftover chicken and turkey bones. At the recommendation of a Ukrainian friend, I removed the bones after 24 hours and pounded them with a meat hammer (er, really an ice cream scoop) to let some of the marrow out. Then I put them back in. Eventually I'm going to add some bay leaves, peppercorns, etc but I don't want things to get bitter.

At some point I'm going to slow roast a whole chicken in there, to give us meat for the week... and more bones!

Meal plan for the week:

Breakfast: Bananas and oatmeal (him) broth, berries, and yogurt (her)
Lunch: Sandwiches (him) ??? (her)
Dinners: Peppers and Sausage with rice; Superveggie salad with roast chicken and hardboiled eggs; Use leftover rice and chicken to make chicken and rice soup (with lemon and ginger?) or egg drop soup