Grocery Shopping Avoidance

Why is it that I'm avoiding the grocery stores? Maybe because there weren't any fabulous deals out there. I don't know why!

Today I plan to pick up 2 gallons of milk for drinking and another gallon of whole milk so I can make my own yogurt. I will see if there is any fresh fruit on sale as well.

I have been running around being the mom taxi all week long so I think I just need a break from running constantly! That'll happen, ummmm well, I don't know. I guess I better change my attitude!

Menu Plan through 1/27

We get paid on Thursday the 28th, so I'm only planning my menu for a few days. On Thursday I'll buy food for our two week menu plan. I really need to inventory the food we have and write it down again. I had this all written down before Christmas, but who knows where that list went with the hustle and bustle of the season!

We had a crazy busy weekend here. With the blizzard conditions it was a lot of fun traveling to my daughter's basketball tournament that was 25 miles away! We had commitments at home on Saturday and Sunday as well so we had to drive back and forth several times. Oh the fun of living in South Dakota! The kids have a late start at school today because of the wind and temperatures.

Onto the menu plan:

• Monday: My husband is cooking. He normally cooks on Sunday, but he cheated and picked up a pizza instead. You know Little Caesars really isn't too bad - not healthy at all, but I liked it.
• Tuesday: I still haven't made the broccoli quiche yet that's been on my menu plan for a while. I keep making scrambled eggs so it just hasn't sounded good. I haven't made mac and cheese with ham or pepperoni calzones either. So it's up in the air what we'll have!
• Wednesday: Super Simple Cranberry Roast a lady on Frugal-Family recommended this.

Grocery Shopping 1/21/09

Today I did a real quick shopping trip. I think it took about 30 minutes for two stores. It's so much easier to shop without my kids during the day! I would rather go in the morning, but I had to run kids around today so I thought I'd save a bit of gas and deal with the crowds.

That's funny because I live in a town of about 10,000 people so crowds here are NOTHING compared to what they were when I lived in Phoenix and Denver. Oh how I love small towns.

Lueders small local store:

• 10 bags of 8oz cheese for $1 ea (for my "pantry" - I still have 4 bags left from last time)
• Pork sausage links (I had to throw my sausage away because I couldn't remember how long it had been in the fridge for. Possibly since Christmas, possibly yesterday who knows. Better to waste the money than cause food poisoning!)
• Total $12.77

Safeway:

• 4 boxes of pasta $.99 ea
• 2 gallons of milk $4.98
• spinach $.99
• baby carrots $.99
• 2 green peppers $1.00
• rock hard pears $.96
• bananas $1.81
• 4 - blueberries 6oz $1.00 each. This is a HUGE treat for us! Yummy. We're going to use 2 of them tonight then I'm going to make a big salad tomorrow and throw those in. Oh I can't wait! Which reminds me I need ranch dressing mix. Oh wait a minute, I have a bottle around here somewhere from a basket I won over Christmas. Yee Haa. Oh it's the little things that excite me. I have tried making my own mix but it just doesn't taste good.  I have a recipe that will make one packet last for 4 ranch makings...I'll have to post that recipe some time over at Hummingbird Homemaking. Gravy, I just had a long conversation with myself. You don't mind do you?
• Back to my shopping trip...Total was $19.79.

Cashola left until pay day Jan. 28: $ 13.00

Menu Plan Monday 1/17-1/23

To see what's cooking head on over to Hummingbird Homemaking. Apparently my brain is fried because I meant to put that on this blog. Oh well!

Pantry Principle to the Rescue!

You know how I say plan, plan, plan?

You know what happens when you don't plan? Well, when you have cash to spend, you don't go over budget! I know for a fact if I would have used my credit card or debit card at the grocery stores today I would have spent too much money. I had a "kinda, sorta, plan". Years ago, back in the day, (insert a sigh as only a 10 year old can do) I would have walked up and down each isle to see what we "needed". Since I was out busy playing around yesterday I didn't have time to come up with a good plan. So I found the best deals on meat, fruits and veggies, grabbed milk and eggs and I'll wing it!

It is only because of the pantry principle that I can do this. I know I have butter, frozen veggies, flour, oats, a variety of meats and canned goods in my pantry. We might have some unique meals, but we will easily be able to eat at home.

If you want to start trying the pantry principle, the easiest thing to do is make a list of five things that you always run to the store for because you run out.  Next time you are at the store buy one extra of those items. If it is on sale buy a few! The idea is that you always shop from your pantry. If you run out of flour you don't run to the store, you go to your pantry and add that item to your grocery list.

I love my stockpile of food!

To date I've spent $197. I get money again on Jan. 31st which is when I usually do a bigger shopping trip so my numbers might look funky this month!

Planning the menu

Tomorrow is supposed to be my grocery shopping day no matter what. Well, ya, that's funny because tomorrow is going to be a fun shopping day for me! I'm going to hit a few after Christmas sales as well as return some items and go to a few thrift stores.

Grocery shopping will wait until Friday when I can make a plan. Well, honestly I have been planning all week long. Whenever I find something I want to make I write it down. I still need to look in my pantry and see what's available for other meals. I see chicken on sale this week and london broil so I see those in our future as well.

On the front of my fridge I have a chalkboard that lists the meals that we're going to have. For some reason I panic when I forget I have a plan. Every day I would try to remember what we were having for dinner that night. I have it in my binder, but I'd have to walk CLEAR across the kitchen to get it (yes, it's only 10 steps!). When it's right in front of my face I feel much better. It helps me to remember what items must be taken out of the freezer as well.

Tomorrow I'll have my plan in place and Friday I'll do the grocery shopping. So far this month, I've spent $145.00. I get $120 tomorrow so I'll see how far I can stretch it!

Frugal Menu Plan Monday 1/11 - 1/16

Last night I made fancy quesadillas and they were amazing! Here's the plan for the rest of the week:

1. Husband cooks
2. Cajun red beans and rice with smoked sausages
3. Split pea and ham soup
4. Broccoli and ham quiche here's the crust recipe and here is the quiche recipe (I add 5 eggs because we don't usually like the texture of quiche). My husband likes this a lot and he's not usually a quiche lover.
5. Cheesy Rice and Beef
6. Shrimp (leftover from Christmas) in a cream sauce
7. ??? Depends on if I go to the store or not. We'll either have pepperoni pizza or veggie Spaghetti if chicken isn't on sale.

Find other menu plans at Orgjunkie.

Grocery Shopping every other week

Yeah, this is working well so far! I've spent money on food on Jan 4, 5, 6, 7. Crazy!

• Jan 4 Lueders $10.90
• Jan 5 Robb's $10.75
• Jan 6 Walmart $5.26
• Jan 7 Lueders $19.07
• Jan 7 Safeway $25.52
• Total spent in January $71.50

Now, in my defense, I haven't been real grocery shopping (meaning spent a lot of money on food) since Dec 22nd. I had my husband buy milk at Walmart because I was worried about the weather...we really didn't need it at the time.

Yesterday I posted my big grand plan for two weeks. It took me hours to finish it (my kids and husband were home yesterday so I get interrupted a lot). About 5 minutes after I finished it my husband told me that he was going to a meeting in Rapid City. I need to go to Sam's Club there so I figured instead of making two trips to Rapid I'd ride along and save the gas money.

So my beloved plan went out the window. This morning I picked up a few of the great loss leaders at Lueders and Safeway. We're heading out to Sam's Club pretty soon.

I'm not sure what my new plan is!

2 Week Menu Plan

Earlier this week I looked in my pantry for 12 dinners I could serve for the next 2 week. My husband cooks on Sundays so I don't have to worry about those. That man is magical and can make something from nothing and it tastes awesome!

Today when the ads came out I added one more thing since hamburger was finally on sale. Here's the two week menu plan:

1. Husband
2. Husband
3. Cajun red beans and rice with smoked sausages
4. Black beans and rice over tortilla chips
5. Split pea and ham soup
6. Black Bean soup
7. Spaghetti with Italian sausage
8. Manicotti (made at the same time as the spaghetti and frozen for the following week
9. Monterrey Chicken Quesadillas (these sound awesome!)
10. Shrimp in a cream sauce (can't remember what it's called - shrimp is leftover from Christmas)
11. Broccoli and ham quiche
12. Buffalo chicken spaghetti
13. Cheesy Beef & Rice (new recipe to try)
14. Greek Cinnamon Stewed Chicken (my sister said this was good)

I'm still working on what veggies we're going to have with dinner. I plan a trip to Sam's Club next Wednesday so I'll have a lot of green beans and peas.

Breakfast will be:

• Mondays: pancakes or waffles
• Tuesdays: steel cut oats
• Wednesdays: new recipe
• Thursdays: leftovers
• Fridays: scrambled eggs
• weekends are FFYS (fend for yourself)

Pantry

1/4/2010
Lueders trip - 1 bag oranges, 2 boxes saltines, 8 cans mushrooms and 12 medium eggs $10.90
Using the pantry principle:
My definition of our pantry is "anything that contains stockpiled items." I don't stockpile things for the fun of it or because I believe I need to have a years supply of anything. I stockpile things simply to save time and money.
For example, today when I bought saltines I put one in my cupboard and one in my "pantry." When we eat all of the saltines that are in my cupboard then I'll grab this box of saltines from the pantry instead of paying full price.
Saltines are one of a few things that I stockpile. I know that we don't use that many, but they are really convenient for me to have on hand. I know that about every 6 weeks they go on sale for $1.00. This saves me $.35.
Who cares about $.35? Why sweat the small stuff, it's not a big deal. Let's say that I "only" save $.35 on 10 items that I buy every week. That's $3.50 per week, over the course of a year $182. I've earned TAX-FREE $182 in my job as a homemaker. In order to save that $182 I have spent a bit of time. I couldn't even guess how much time, maybe 5 minutes to look at the ad?
The pantry principle can work for anyone!

Find more frugal ideas over at Frugal Fridays at Life as a Mom!

I lied...

Gee - first a confession and now I lied, aren't I a good influence?!?

I thought I would just wing it until Thursday, but I haven't done a big grocery shop for almost two weeks and I'm getting low on eggs and I'm out of fresh fruit. We have enough canned fruit, but we only have a few veggies. I didn't make it to Sam's Club last month to pick up a big bag of veggies and we ran out.

Tomorrow I plan to head to the store to get a few things: eggs, oranges, bananas, saltine crackers (for the pantry) and canned mushrooms (for the pantry because they are at my stock up price).

I will still need to go to the stores on Thursday after I check to see what is in my pantry (fridge, freezer, cupboards). Wednesday night it's supposed to snow and get down to -17 then on Thursday the high temp is supposed to be a whopping 2 so it should be fun! I honestly don't know that I'll make it out on Thursday, Friday is going to be much warmer at 9!!! Maybe I'll wait until then.

For dinner we'll be having:

1. split pea soup
2. broccoli quiche w/ fruit
3. homemade (well, husband made) mac & cheese with ???
4. red beans and rice w/ sausage
5. leftover surprise - this is my bucket of "stuff" from the freezer and I'll make a white sauce to mix with what's in the bucket. My plan is to put baked potatoes on the bottom, the "stuff" next and then a cornflake topping. Sounds absolutely disgusting, but it's one of my favorite meals.

** just to gross people out further the "stuff" is just random leftovers from dinners, ie. a spoon full of corn, beans, rice, etc. A lot of people will make soup from this, but I've had better luck making casseroles.

I plan to have my two week plan posted on Thursday.

Check out more meal planning ideas at Orgjunkie.com!

Confession!

I've been on vacation the past few week, which means that I haven't been doing any of the planning and cooking that I normally do. I didn't realize how busy I had been until I stopped doing everything. Obviously I needed a little break, but I'm totally refreshed and ready to go!

I knew when I sent my husband to Walmart last night to pick up some fried chicken that I needed to get back into my routines.

This morning I pulled out some homemade turkey soup from the freezer that we'll have for dinner. It's going to be full of vegies and we'll have a spinach salad as well. Your freezer is your friend!

Next week I will get back to my normal menu and grocery planning. Tomorrow I'll post what I plan fix until Thursday when I will do a major grocery shopping trip for two weeks. Later this week I'll post my two week plan. I have several recipes that I've been wanting to try as well as my usual beans and rice and soups that I plan to cook.

I have been working behind the scenes on my blog so if it doesn't work, please be patient with this novice!