Happy 4th to all who celebrate!

This week, it felt right to reintroduce what feels like a very summer-forward menu, Focaccia, Tomatoes, and Basil, OH MY!. You’ll find that it’s a week inclusive of fresh, bright salsas, hearty focaccia, and, my personal summer favorite, chicken skewers.

And if you’re still looking for some 4th of July inspiration, you can find last year’s 4th of July Holiday Special menu, featuring one of my favorite desserts, Strawberry Earl Grey Cream Pie (pictured below).

You can find those recipes here.

Now, let’s cook.

This week was all over the place with grocery shopping. I had various cooking projects going on simultaneously, so I ended up shopping three different times - once at Costco, once at Safeway, and once at our local specialty grocery store (whose prices are on par with Whole Foods).

I ended up getting the majority of this week’s ingredients from the more expensive grocery store, but…

The total was less than $50 (receipt below).

Note: If you look closely, you’ll find ingredients that happen to be more expensive (like Meyer lemons and organic asparagus) - I bought the lemons because I wanted to test our caramelized lemon vinaigrette with Meyer lemons too (turns out I loved it). As for the asparagus, it was the only choice I had (there were no cheaper alternatives). I am fairly certain that since asparagus is still in season, it should be MUCH cheaper at the farmer’s market or Safeway (I ran out of time, so I paid the price…literally).

I purchased all herbs from Safeway because I knew I’d get more for my money, the tomatoes were purchased from Costco out of desperation (in case you were wondering, they have fabulous Campari tomatoes), and my farro was purchased in bulk from Trader Joe’s (a few weeks ago).

And as always, my grand totals don’t take into account proteins, since those will vary from person to person (depending on protein preferences)...