I have been riding an incredible high, the result of making excellent grocery purchases and turning them into seriously good eats, since last Thursday. For the past year, I've been doing the majority of our menu planning based on A) what we've got in the house and B) what's on sale at Shoprite each week. I also try to use coupons whenever possible, and I'm lucky in that my mom will clip ones from the paper for us. Plus, I also discovered that even though the coupons for BJ's Warehouse have expiration dates on them, they're like Bed, Bath, & Beyond coupons in that they don't ever actually expire. By doing these things, and making sure Joe and I pack our lunches, we've been able to cut down quite extensively on our grocery bills. Even so, I'm always looking for more bargains, better bargains, and a way to buy the food I want to cook without sending us to the poor house.

One day while flipping through sale ads, I saw an insert for the Newark Farmer's Market, which sits right across the street from our gym. Joe and I had gone there once last winter and at the time I was excited by the variety of produce offered. Things I can't get readily anywhere else, like Japanese eggplant and every kind of chili pepper imaginable. They have a large selection of speciality items for Asian and Mexican cooking, too. But for some reason, after that first trip we never went back. Anyway, this sale insert I saw advertised a pint of fresh blueberries for 99 cents. At Shoprite, that will easily cost you $3. And they had bananas for 29 cents/lb. At Shoprite, it's at least 20 cents more. Etc.

So, last Thursday after class, I headed to the Newark Farmer's Market with my shopping list. An hour later, I walked out $35 poorer but loaded up with so much amazing stuff that I felt like a kid at Christmas. Pickling lime for $1? A pint of gorgeous grape tomatoes for 99 cents? A huge box of lavender green tea - 50 bags for $2.99? Ooh, baby. My biggest score was the fresh thyme. See, I know fresh herbs taste way better than dried ones, but it's not usually cost effective for me to purchase them. Even Trader Joe's charges $1.99 for a small package. But at the NFM, I found this enormous package of fresh thyme with very few bruised leaves. I needed the fresh for a recipe I was making over the weekend (more on that in a bit), but not nearly as much in the package. However, we recently ran out of dried thyme, too. And I thought, well, what about the dehydrator? I'd bought Joe one for his birthday two years ago, so we could play around with making our own beef jerky. But then I thought, what if we dried the leftover fresh thyme and ground it up in the old coffee bean grinder we use for spices? That's got to be fresher than the dried thyme you buy at any store, even Whole Foods (which, sadly, we don't have yet in DE anyway). Cost of the fresh thyme? $2.50. Cost of a tiny jar of dried thyme at Shoprite? $5.49.

Then, on Friday, I made my weekly pilgrimmage to Shoprite. I was especially excited because they had whole beef tenderloin on sale for $3.99/lb (marked down from $5.99). I dug through the bin and managed to find a little 4 lb. tenderloin - which means I got about four dinners' worth of potential filet mignon for $16 (and, if you read my list of 33 things I want to accomplish in my 33rd year, fabricating my own whole beef tenderloin was item #10). I picked up 5 lbs. of bone-in chicken thighs, 3 lbs. of sweet Italian sausage, 2.5 lbs. of hot Italian sausage - all of which were on sale as well - plus half and half, heavy cream, cream cheese, shredded cheese, a new 9x13 cake pan, and a cart full of other things for a whopping $70. Since the previous week I was able to pick up some top round London broil for $1.99/lb, and next week I can pick up boneless pork loin for $.99/lb and bottom round roast for $1.99/lb., I will have effectively stocked our freezer with enough meat to feed us roughly four to six months - and all for about $100.

Can I get a woot-woot?

On Saturday, I made Rachael Ray's recipe for portobello pizzas, which she intended as an appetizer but seeing as how one small mushroom cap was a Lara-sized dinner portion, we made a meal out of them. (Yay for the cheap but delicious grape tomatoes I scored at the Newark Farmer's Market, not to mention the reasonably priced portobellos!) Then, on Sunday, Joe and I made this recipe for eggplant lasagna that I saw on RESCUE CHEF - the sauce for which we also made from scratch. Okay, first of all? The sauce is amazing, and the recipe yields enough not only for the lasagna but extra for freezing. But also: how freaking ingenious is it to create a lasagna using roasted eggplant slices in place of noodles? I mean, I adore traditional meat-and-cheese lasagna, but oh. My. GOD. Between the homemade marinara and the sweetness of the roasted eggplant and the intense punch of the fresh herbs ... this was like a big ol' pan of love. And with the exception of calling for whole milk ricotta, instead of part-skim or fat-free, there is absolutey NOTHING unhealthy about this dish. Plus, it makes enough for eight normal-people servings, and since I get two full meals out of one normal-people portion, there are leftovers galore.

This is the thing that Joe and I realized over the weekend: as long as we stay excited about food and leave time for home cooking, we eat really healthfully. When we first moved in together, we were spending probably three times what we do now on food, and most of it was going to heart-attack friendly take out - a constant rotation of pizza, cheese steaks, jalapeno poppers and chicken fingers. Nowadays, creative and healthy eating is like this bonding ritual for us. We watch cooking shows together, go shopping for ingredients together, make delicious meals together, eat those delicious meals together, and even do the dishes together. It's nice. I like it. And I honestly don't miss BK bacon double cheeseburgers, not even for one second.

Other good things: our Wii arrived on Saturday, so we finally got our Wii Fit on! Ohmigod, it was so much fun. So. Much. FUN! It doesn't replace a gym workout - not by any stretch - but holy cow, were we laughing ourselves silly. Plus, by Sunday, the two of us were experiencing soreness in muscles that apparently don't get used much at the gym, so I think it will round out the weekly routine quite nicely. And because we're such dorks? Saturday night, we created an Alton Brown Mii, so now we get to work out along side our favorite Food Network chef.

Do you know how every now and then you feel so enormously happy that you think your skin might explode, because it can't possible contain all of that happiness? I've spent the better part of four days feeling like that, save for several hours on Saturday where every single thing that could've gone wrong did (including me losing my temper at a particularly snotty customer service rep from Citibank, and then bursting into tears because I really don't like losing my temper at anyone, no matter how snotty they are). Yes, money is tight, and yes, wedding planning still sucks (though we are making progress with a great caterer). Yes, I have 125 unanswered e-mails again, and yes, I'm behind on several deadlines at the moment. But so freaking what? Joe is amazing. Our dog is adorable. Life is really, really good. And I am really, really lucky.

Yeah.