Book Review: Dollar Tree Cookbooks

Ok, so it's confession time... I may have gone to the Dollar Tree today and I may have bought three ridiculously thin cookbooks... but in my defense, they have pictures. 

Gorgeous pictures. 

On every page. 

Honestly, I did look at the recipes themselves before purchasing the books, but to be equally honest, the pictures were a deciding factor. I'm a very visual person, and to be able to see a picture of what a recipe makes really does help.

Well played, Dollar Tree... well played.

Anyway, these three little cookbooks really did have a number of delicious- sounding recipes I am excited to try. The books on salads and smoothies are probably going to be the most helpful; Any way I can motivate myself to actually eat leafy greens is a good thing, and if I can disguise them in a smoothie, then so much the better!

The smoothie book has a good variety of smoothie recipes, ranging from dessert smoothies to breakfast smoothies, to protein smoothies and green smoothies. There are only 11 recipes, but they are diverse enough to make quite a useful little collection.

The appetizer book is probably the least useful to me, but I bought it because, like the other two, it has a good variety of recipes... and it had recipes for Baked Crab Dip and Spinach Artichoke Dip, both of which I greatly enjoy eating, but haven't tried making yet. Later in the summer if we have a good pea harvest, I want to try the Green Pea Hummus recipe. It sounds quite interesting.

Each book also has one of these helpful measurement equivalents pages

As I have mentioned, the third book I purchased contains salad recipes. Like the others, it also has only 11 recipes, but very diverse ones. For example, the book starts out with a Chili Lime Southwest Chicken Salad (reminiscent of the one I love to get at Panera), but also contains a recipe for Fruit Salad, several pasta salad recipes, and a yummy-looking Lentil Salad recipe.

Lots of bang for your buck... and maybe not such a bad impulse purchase after all!

To find these books, you can go to the Dollar Tree website here to find location near you, or you could order online... they only let you buy a case of 36, though...

Oh, and I was reminded as I looked these up on the website --there's also one about grilling.

Cooking for One: Tacos

The schoolyear has officially begun, and I found myself once again cooking for one as I made tacos for my school lunches this week. I have given myself a budget of $40 a month for my lunches and snacks. I had hoped to make it $20, but since I'm trying to eat more protien than carbs, (this week I'm splurging with the tacos) the price of meat and cheese made me re-think.

Since much of what I needed to make the tacos and the meat roll-ups (balogna slathered with cream cheese, rolled up and held together with a prezel stick) were staples that could be used again later in the month, I had a hard time keeping track of what I was spending for the week. I found a very helpful budget tracker app that enabled me to keep track of what I had spent for the month, and what I still had left.

When I was done making the tacos this morning, I realized that there was enough of everything to make another whole week's worth of food, so I put all the extra ingredients into a large plastic bag, which I labeled and froze.

Now, instead of eating tacos for two weeks straight, I can save money and time next month!