Day 15: Eggnoodles With Butter and Cajun Seasoning, Cornbread, More Broccoli and Cheddar Soup.

So on Tuesday, I booked a flight for next week through Spirit to visit my best friend down in Phoenix. It was a pretty cheap flight, but when I looked at my bank account, I realized I had less money than I thought I did. Whoops! So, I'll have to be fairly careful with how I spend my money, so the next month could be pretty boring food-wise (except for next week's trip, because I made sure to allocate money for that).

That said, my boyfriend did buy me lunch (he wanted either subway or McAllister's again, so I picked McAllister's so I could get some more broccoli cheddar soup in a bread bowl), and I did cook up some egg noodles last night with butter that ended up being pretty tasty. I also finally ate the last piece of cornbread. Yay!

Day 12: Buffalo Wild Wings, Cornbread, Snacks.

Even though the above picture is horribly blurry, at least it shows pretty much exactly what I ate yesterday.

The boyfriend and I ended up going down to Denver to pick up a friend from the airport. The night before, I had asked if he would be okay with suggesting we go to a restaurant down there, The Jerusalem Restaurant in Denver. It's a little out of our way, but restaurants like that up here are basically nonexistent, and we've both eaten there before.

So then his friend got in the car and suggested Buffalo Wild Wings, and boyfriend immediately said okay. And apparently didn't hear me when I asked, "What about that other place we wanted to go to?" Okay. So we went to Buffalo Wild Wings. Which, don't get me wrong, I do like, but we can get that almost anywhere (except where we actually live). At least the friend bought us lunch. I got a grilled chicken wrap with Asian Zing sauce and onion rings.

I didn't really feel much like eating again that day, so I mostly just ate some more leftover cornbread and some chips and kiwiw.

Day 10 Continued, Day 11 - Leftover Chili and Cornbread.

It's pretty boring, but this was both last night's dinner and today's lunch.

Day 10: Spinach Stuffed Mushrooms

Today I made stuffed mushrooms for the second time ever, using spinach that was leftover from last week's Chicken and Gnocchi Soup. I knew my boyfriend probably wasn't going to touch anything with spinach in it, so I knew I was on my own. I decided to experiment with using it in stuffed mushrooms, and I ended up with something that would probably be perfect for a St. Patrick's Day-Themed Potluck.

They look sort of weird, but they were actually quite tasty! Here is the recipe I used:

• 1 package of baby portobello mushrooms.
• 1 cup fresh spinach
• 1 8-oz block of chive and onion flavored cream cheese
• 2 Tablespoons of butter
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 tsp. Creole seasoning
• 1-1.5 tablespoons of white wine

Remove stems from the mushrooms and chop them up fine. Set aside mushroom caps. Chop spinach (I used my food processor). Heat a skillet to medium heat and add chopped mushroom stems, spinach, cream cheese, butter, seasoning, garlic, and white wine until well mixed. Generously spoon mixture into mushroom caps. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes.

The chive and onion cream cheese was more or less a fluke - when shopping the other day, there were no small blocks of unflavored cream cheese, and I figured chive and onion would taste better in a mushroom than, say, honey nut cream cheese.

Here are photos from the process:

Finally, I ate these with a side of leftover cornbread.

Day 8: Egg and Cheese Sandwich on Wheat, Carmelized Onions, Chili and Cornbread

I'm a day late posting this, but I did actually take pictures of everything.

I made myself another egg sandwich for lunch yesterday, but it wasn't until I had already started making the egg when I realized that my boyfriend had eaten the last bagel in the house. Whoops. So I used the only thing we had: Walmart Brand Wheat Bread. The bread itself is pretty bland, and it was sort of stale to begin with, so the sandwich as a whole wasn't that great.

For dinner, my boyfriend and I decided on chili. Chili is an interesting dish, because I think everybody has their own way of making chili. I particularly remember offering to make chili for a group of friends in Boston, and at least two of them replied hesitantly with, "Well...I have my own way of making chili and I'm very picky about it." One of them was from Texas, and I've heard they tend not to use beans. I tend to make a more savory chili, though I've tried plenty of sweeter chilis.

My chili yesterday was pretty simple - I used the ingredients below, plus spices. One thing that differs from a lot of other people's recipes is that I usually use stew meat, as opposed to ground beef.

I start by cutting the stew meat into even smaller chunks and cooking it.

At the same time, cook the onions in butter until they start appearing translucent. (I use a whole onion and cut it into large strips, but you can use less onion if you prefer.)

Add the green pepper, cook that for a few minutes, then add the cooked meat.

Then add the diced tomatoes, beans, beer, and spices. To season the chili, I used chili powder, cumin, paprika, cayenne pepper, red pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and salt and pepper.

Normally, I would use a beer with a stronger flavor, but some friends left some Bud Light here a few months ago, and this is probably the only way either of us are going to use the Bud Light.

Anyways, let the chili simmer for a few hours at a low temperature, and serve with some cheese and a side of cornbread.

This is my go-to cornbread recipe. I find it to be not as dry as most cornbread recipes, though yesterday's batch was a bit drier than normal. I also cut into it almost as soon as it came out of the oven, because I was hungry.

Also, yesterday afternoon's snack was caramelized onions, made from half an onion I had leftover from another time. These were made with butter, white wine, and brown sugar.