A Tortellini Compromise

Last night it was just the girls, me and Gigi.  Being that it was just us, I did not see myself making a creative dinner worthy of blogging about. But when it was all finished I thought I should because it was good, and it was a good example of eating healthy while putting together a kid friendly meal. 

Our plan was to have a simple dinner and watch a movie.  So I started to think about the limited menu of things Gigi likes to eat.  To complicate matters, she came home talking about a loose tooth and that she only wanted to eat soft foods. In comes my old standby, cheese tortellini.  It's easy and Gigi is guaranteed to eat it.  But of course I know this is one of things ruining my waistline.

Well, as it turns out, her desire for tortellini and my weekly shopping ritual would collide to make a perfect salad.  What shopping ritual am I talking about?  Most weeks I log onto Couponmom.com to check out the perfect storm deals.  On this site they will match up sale items from your local grocery store with coupons to point out big savings.  Plus, they put all the Sunday coupons in a searchable database.  This makes life easier because you don't have to clip coupons until you are actually going to use them.  Using this site before a shopping trip usually saves me 25 - 35% off my grocery bill.  The thing is you buy when stuff is on sale (and with a coupon), not when you need it.  So it works best for items that can be stored for a while until you need them.  This week there were a few fresh items on sale that I wanted to take advantage of,  shrimp for $7.99/lb, grapes for $.99/lb and red leaf leaf lettuce 2 for the price of 1.  Also while I was cutting out the coupons needed for other items on my list, I saw one for $1 off Wholly Guacamole.  So these are items I decided to buy out of opportunity, there was no master plan.  Btw, my grocery bill was $119, but by using coupon mom I saved $33, so I only paid $86.

I knew it was only going to be the two of us, so I got about 3/4 of shrimp, this is something Gigi usually likes.  I peeled and then marinated the shrimp in the juice of one lime, some olive oil, fresh cilantro and ground pepper.  When I was ready, I sauteed it quickly in a pan.

For Gigi's plate she had a good portion of cheese tortellini with a bit of olivio, milk and Parmesan cheese to make a light alfredo sauce and 5 shrimp.  This was good kids meal.  For me, I put together a salad with the red leaf lettuce, purple cabbage, cucumber, and tomato.  I tossed this with a red wine vinaigrette and used a 100 calorie snack pack of Wholly Guacamole to add a few dollops of guacamole on top, then the warm shrimp and a few warm tortellini.  It was delicious.

Gigi and I enjoyed our meals while watching Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix.