when the moon hits your eye ...

So, I know you guys are all dying to hear another random story about food, right?! Right. Well, you know how I said that I was disappointed that nobody came and knocked on my door selling me random food on Saturday?

Well, nobody came and brought me food -- I went and found the randomness. You might think a couple slices of pizza aren't that random and how random can it be if I went out and found it--well, just you listen up!

So on Saturday, I'm out shopping with my mom (more on that later, possibly) and my mom gets a phone call from my sister who's stressing out. My sis works at this awesome pizza place which will remain nameless but they have oh so many different toppings and they have the best names for the pizzas, like "Peace in the Middle East" and "Pandora's Box")

Anyways, my sis was at work and found an online order for three large pizzas and some hot wings -- so she quickly makes the order like a good pizza girl. Only problem is, after she bakes the pies she figures out that the order is for the following Monday. Oops. She's two days early.

The next problem is, the new management at the place isn't too warm & friendly so my sis doesn't want to spill the beans about her accidental mistake-- so she stashes the pizza in a coworker's car and calls us to come get some pizza to get rid of it.

So, since we want to help my sis out and we love pizza, my mom and I finish our shopping and head over to the pizza place. While we're driving there, we look at each other like "what are we doing?! This is crazy." And my mom says, "I should have just told her to tell the truth." I agree cuz I'm all about being a goody two-shoes (very true) but I tell my mom that we can't not go now cuz we already said we would. So we keep driving -- we can't give up on the pizza quest now!

When we get there my sis hands me a box of pizza and says she transferred over some pieces out of the hidden stash. I get an extra container and we take the box over to my mom's car to divide it up. But what's funny is that for some reason my sister only put eight slices of pizza in the box. So that means four for my mom and four for me, or rather, two for Johnny and two for me. We wondered why she only gave us eight slices if she had three larges pizzas to get rid of.

But it's free pizza that is delicious and so we don't care, and besides, the slices are extra big. What's funny though is that when I get home Johnny is a little peeved cuz while I was on the pizza mission, I called him up and made him run to the mini-mart for some Pepsi. (Can't have pizza without soda, oh no!). Johnny's like, "You made me go to the mini-mart and you drove all the way over there for two slices each?!" Silly hungry grumpypants! My hungry man wants more than two slices! After he got the pizza in his belly he was a happy boy again. Thanks sis for the random pizza! It was delish!!!

Later that day Johnny and I decided to start a challenge for ourselves. Ever since I started my job at the magazine a little less than a year ago, we've been eating out WAY too much. Trust me, I'm not making bank, just a bit more than when I was working 30 hrs a week and going to school. I dunno why we decided we got to eat out all the time, maybe both of us working full time made us more worn out or maybe we got a taste (literally! ha! cheesy) of eating out all the time, we liked it and then we couldn't stop.

When we first moved in together about three years ago, we were pretty poor and we'd eat Top Ramen all the top, in addition to boxes of pasta mixes and making lots of egg salad sandwiches and stuff of the sort. We'd also try out some real cooking every now and then. Now we've gotten way too spoiled and usually eat out about five times a week. The other two nights we probably make tuna or something. (we're addicted) So the lazy. And what's super bad is I eat out for lunch every day of the week because I work too far away from home to go home at lunch and I'm not a fan of eating in the lunchroom. It's just nice to get away from the office for an hour and escape a bit. Johnny usually meets me for lunch 2 times a week but the rest of the week he'll eat at home.

All this eating out has been very bad for our pocketbooks (who says pocketbooks, anyways?) and for our favorite clothes. (ah! must go to the gym!) And so on Saturday the 19th we went for our first big shopping trip in about a year. We stocked on on $130 worth of groceries from Trader Joe's and Food Max (take it to the max!) and challenged ourselves not to eat out for dinner for the rest of the month. 12 nights, baby. (Well, actually 11 nights because we have to take the night off to celebrate my buddy Dana's bday.)

Now, you might think it's not that much of a challenge since we're still eating out for lunch during the week, but we gotta take baby steps, people! Actually though, we didn't eat out on Thursday or Friday before the challenge, so last night was the 9th night of not eating out for dinner in a row. And it's still a good challenge because even though we're eating out for lunch during the week, it's not the same as the fun dinner places we usually go; we're limited to the cheap places close to our jobs.

I'm really digging this challenge-- it's gonna save us money, hopefully we'll be eating smaller portions and it will make eating out for dinner more of a treat. Besides, it will be nice to prove to ourselves that we can do it. And who knows-- after we do this, maybe I'll work on not eating out for lunch.

Wanna know what we've had to eat so far?

Saturday-- veggie/chicken chow mein stir fry mix & shu mai chicken dippers from Trader Joe's
Sunday-- quesadillas & Trader Joe's taquitos w/ guacamole
Monday-- Frito boats (we're 5 years old apparently)
Tuesday-- Trader Joe's tortellinis w/ marinara sauce
Wednesday-- Trader Joe's Caesar salads & a French torte w/ parma ham & onions
Thursday-- turkey sandwich for John, popcorn & taquitos for me (I'm a weirdo)
Friday- tacos

I love that Trader Joe's is keeping us alive! Woo! So the good. And everything there is surprisingly pretty cheap. Now if you're disappointed that we're just heating up frozen TJ stir fry on the stove and throwing in the packet of sauce that comes with it-- what did I tell you- baby steps! If we weren't doing this, we'd be at Chipotle or Olive Garden. And I'd like to think that Trader Joe's food is a step above making egg salad sandwich and Top Ramen-- it's like the stepping stone to "real" cooking. Oooh! See we're getting close -- the tacos we made on Friday didn't include any TJ or frozen foods. We fried the taco shells, cooked the meat & added our own seasonings, I made the guacamole... we're making progress, people! One day we might even work on making some low-fat meals! Look out world!