Food splurge

I don't think we've ever spent so much on food in one day. Rick and Emilee were making a Costco run today and invited us to come along. Since we don't have a membership to the wholesale mega-store and we're having a party for Jude's birthday next week, we thought it would be a good idea to go and see what we can buy in bulk for the BBQ. After an hour or so of walking along aisles of giant boxes of cereal and gallon-sized cans of olive oil, we emerged with:
- 2-lbs of shrimp (for grilled rosemary-skewered shrimp)
- 3-lbs of beef short ribs (for kalbi)
- 3-lbs of sundried tomato and mozzarella sausages
- 1 large pack of baby portobellas (for grilled veggie kabobs)
- 5-lbs of boneless, skinless chicken thighs. We'll probably keep this for ourselves- they're a really versatile cut of meat so we have no worries going through them at all.
- 2 kegs of yummy Virgil root beer. Yes, you read that right: kegs. Of root beer. It was so hilarious we just couldn't resist :)
- 2 bottles of Naked mango juice
- 2-lbs of cheese-spinach raviolis (this will probably feed us for several meals...)
- a large box of stuffed grape leaves
- an entree-tray of Chicken Alfredo pasta for dinner tonight so I can carbo-load before the run in the morning

And then, when I went to get my race packet for tomorrow, I found in it a coupon for $5 off any $35 purchase from Whole Foods. Since we had to return some cans from there anyway, we allowed ourselves the indulgence of shopping at Whole Foods again for the second time this month. With much restraint, we still ended up with:
- 1-lb of white peaches
- a package of Brun-Uusto cheese, a baked cheese that we'll throw on the grill next week and serve with warm honey and rosemary or maybe a fruit preserve. There was a tasting of the cheese and it was served with warm orange blossom honey- soooooo gooooood...
- a jar of eggplant and tomato pasta sauce
- carton of orange juice
- half-lb of bacon (because everything just tastes better with bacon)
- carton of Odwalla Blueberry B Monster juice (extravagant I know, but we told ourselves that the coupon's paying for this one)
- 2 grapefruits
- a rosemary plant. The smell was too intoxicating to resist (there's still a lovely scent lingering on my fingers...) and I figured since I was going to use the stems of the rosemary to skewer the shrimp for the party, it's probably more worth our while to get an entire plant. We're not sure if we're going to transplant it into our little garden patch, but it might not survive the winter and I do want to have the plant last as long as possible. So now, I can have fresh rosemary whenever I want :) Sweet!