Car Expenses

Today Todd and I worked from home so that we can drop his car off at a couple of different places to get work done on it.  Our big car is a 2001 Ford Explorer with 127,000 miles on it.  It was paid off long ago, but now it's getting to be at an age where more money needs to be spent to fix things.  Argh!

We dropped the car off at Costco to get new tires first.  The tires were wearing thin and with "winter" coming and possibly some rain, we just wanted to be safe.  It's sad how much new tires cost for SUV's though.  Very sad.  Of course, we had to go inside Costco to buy some essentials, like our bulk soy milk.  But you know how dangerous it is to go into Costco.  You walk out with way more than you had on your shopping list.  I saw a big tub of Peppermint Bark for $9.99 and couldn't resist getting it.  I've always loved the Williams-Sonoma Peppermint Bark, but it is really expensive, so I've only gotten it once.  Last year I got peppermint bark in a tin box from Target.  But none of them were as much as this tub from Costco, for way cheaper!

I plan to make some peppermint bark holiday treat bags with the blank kraft bags that I got from Michaels. I'll show you when they're done!  And yes, I had planned to give most of it away.  As much as I love peppermint bark, I don't want to derail my healthful eating by eating the whole tub.  Even though I want to.  :-|

After we got the car back from Costco, we dropped it off at our local mechanics so they could take a look at why our anti-freeze is leaking. Turns out it's leaking from the intake manifold. Well, they just worked on that a couple of months ago, so thank goodness this is going to be warranty work and won't cost additional for us. However, they did not have enough time this weekend to work on it, so we'll have to take it back next week. :(

In the same plaza as the car shop is Tea Station. It's Todd's favorite source in San Diego for tapioca (boba) milk tea. So we had to stop by.


In the evening, Todd made Greek Lamb Pilaf for dinner, except we just used regular ground beef instead of lamb.

We like this dish a lot. It isn't as low in calories as our other Cooking Light meals though. This one is 446 calories per serving.