Pantry Challenge

I've been spending WAY WAY WAY too much money on food so I'm doing a pantry challenge. Remember my pantry is any "stored food" that I have. Could be in the freezer, fridge or cupboards. We have plenty of fresh and frozen veggies to eat. Some dried fruit and frozen fruit as well.

Monday I made steaks...well technically my husband grilled them
Tuesday we had leftover steaks
Wednesday we had shredded beef taco salads and healthy ice cream
Tonight we are having beer butt chicken on the BBQ and sauteed green beans

The rest of the week will be interesting....we have 4 dozen eggs, canned tomatoes, garlic, onions, frozen cauliflower, broccoli, peas, green beans,  blueberries, strawberries, bananas as well as an assortment of meat.

Menu Plan Monday Focusing on Meat and Veggies

I’m menu planning a few days at a time. I plan to go to two different stores during the week (on our bikes) so this helps me from overspending since I’m buying only things I need.

Items I need are things that we need for dinner or that are on sale that I need to put in my pantry (fridge, freezer, cupboards.) For example canned tomatoes, frozen veggies, fresh veggies, cheese, milk, cream, etc.
This week I still have a lot of apples in my fridge and bananas in the freezer for smoothies. We still have a lot of frozen blueberries as well. Veggies on hand: Green beans, peas, carrots and lettuce.

Monday: Curry meatballs and salad (I opened a can of coconut milk yesterday and I have curry seasoning on hand. I'm hoping I can figure something out. I have a great recipe for this, but can't find red curry paste in our town so I can make the recipe.)

Tuesday: Taco Bake with “Rice” Taco bake = fried hamburger with taco seasonings, can of tomatoes, spinach (from the freezer), onion, garlic and cheese. The “rice” is a bag cauliflower that I put in my food processor so it looks like rice. More nutritious than rice! Salsa poured over it all. I’ll serve carrots and guacomole on the side

Wednesday: Broccoli Beef in the Crock Pot served with green beans on the side. New recipe to try!

Check out orgjunkie.com for more ideas!

OAMC - June details

Chopping all of the veggies helps with clean up time!   

Yogurt is cooking!

 BBQ Sauce and bacon are cooking!

Here is what I said I wanted to do (click on the link for more details and recipes):

2 quiche (with 6 eggs) with bacon, spinach, onions, tomatoes and cheese. Bake 1 today and freeze one raw.

•2 breakfasts of sausage - 1 pound of burger gives us 10 sausage patties. Fry all of them and re-heat.

•2 dinners of meatballs (30 meatballs that have ground beef, egg, salt, pepper, garlic and onions with a bit of LA hot sauce) Bake all of the meatballs, make BBQ sauce (recipe coming soon) for one meal and freeze the remaining meatballs for another night

•Yogurt


•Salsa (recipe coming soon)


•Simple Caribbean Jerk Chicken (this was a bit too sweet for us so I'll decrease the amount of brown sugar - probably 1T instead of 2T) Note: 1T brown sugar was perfect!

Now that I'm finished, I'm so grateful that I spent a couple of hours in the kitchen. Yesterday, I was able to feed my family even though I didn't cook at all. I spent the morning planting my garden and the afternoon pricing my garage sale items.

Find other OAMC success stories at Life as Mom.

Menu Plan Monday

Monday:
B - Quiche from OAMC and blueberries
L - Leftover Fried Rice from OAMC and apples (buy milk at school)
D - Some kind of Mexican something with leftover roast beef, cream cheese, cumin, chili powder, cheese and salsa over it. I'm making it up as I go! I'm going to BBQ the chicken for tomorrow night's salad. I'm busy on Tuesday and it's supposed to be rainy. Served with: carrots, guacamole and fresh fruit salad

Tuesday:
B - sausage and leftover quiche or yogurt with blueberries and granola
L - I'm taking my daughter out for lunch and my son will have chili from OAMC
D - BBQ'd chicken over salad. I think I'll make homemade croutons by melting butter and sprinkling salt, garlic powder and Italian seasonings over cubed bread. I bake them at 350 until golden brown.

Wednesday:
B - PB Baked Oatmeal with some kind of fruit
L - Lettuce Wraps (try homemade hoisin) and Hmmm??? veggie????
D - Spaghetti Pie from OAMC served with salad and sweet potato

Thursday:
B- leftovers (or French Toast that's in the freezer)

I'm only planning through Thursday morning and then I'll go to the store if needed....I'm only buying what I need to get through a few days. I'm throwing away way too much food!

Find other menu plans at Orgjunkie.com.

Buying a 1/4 of a Beef

After watching Food, Inc., I became very interested in where our meat comes from and how it is processed. Prior to watching this movie ALL I cared about was getting the cheapest beef. In fact, I did a taste test and found that the $1.50/lb hamburger tasted the same as the $3.50 burger I bought at a butcher shop. In fact, I may have liked the $1.50/lb better.

However, recently a local rancher sold me a few pounds of burger and that was AMAZING!

My reasons for wanting to buy a part of a beef:

• I want to have my burger come from one cow.
• Ease of menu planning.
• Support the local economy.

I only buy steaks once a year, so I can't say that the price averages out for our family because we wouldn't have bought the extra steaks anyway.  My husband wants to know if the reasons I listed,  justify paying an extra $1.00/lb.

Hmmmmmm.....good question. I think I'll know the answer in a few more months!

I spent $383 and got the following:

• 38 pounds of beef
• 8 packs cube steaks
• 6 packs sirloins
• 4 packs t-bones
• 3 packs rib steak
• 3 packs stew meat
• 1 tenderloin
• 1 rib steak
• 6 - 3lb roasts
• 4 packs ribs

I haven't bought a side of a beef for years so I am not sure how long this meat will last. I am going to try to have a simplified summer menu including meals of chicken, beans, veggies and beef so we don't use up all of the beef in a few months!

This post is linked to:
Money Saving Mom
Grocery Cart Challenge

Menu Plan 4/12 - 4/18

Eeny Meeny Minie Moe

What food should I pick from the freezer? This is going to be a great week to be able to pull out items from my OAMC session. We have a school roller skating party for my daughter, a track meet to go to, I have a meeting, my son has church play practice and worship team practice every night until 6:00. The mom taxi hat will be on a LOT!!!

1. Turkey soup with homemade noodles - need to figure out what day this fits in - we don't want soup when it's 70!
2. Black beans and rice with guacamole and homemade salsa
3. Spaghetti pie
4. Turkey egg rolls and fried rice (I can't wait to try these! See my OAMC day for the recipe)
5. Pretzel Chicken
6. Beef - not sure what yet, but since my husband likes beef I need to figure something out! Maybe burgers with homemade buns. I tried April's recipe with some success. I changed it and probably shouldn't have so now I need to figure out what to do differently. They were okay. Ummmm maybe I should just follow her recipe instead of changing it. DOH! ** see note below
7. Husband cooks! Yeah!

We have strawberries, apples, bananas, fresh pineapple, carrots, avocado, sweet potatoes, peas, green beans, spinach, hmmmm I think that might be it. I think I'm doing okay with this whole  "focus on the veggies, not on breads" challenge!

Find out what others are having at orgjunkie.com.

**April has another recipe on her website - check it out!

OAMC - planning

I think I mentioned a million times or two that I loved OAMC last month. It saved me so much time. I prefer the term dedicated cooking to OAMC though. I have visions of what OAMC looks like and that is not what I did. Basically I did a lot of meal prep but had very few completed meals in the freezer.

This month I wanted to buy a bunch of salad stuff at Sam's Club to start off the month. It always seems to go bad before I use it though so I knew I needed to have a plan in place. I'm also trying to focus more on meats and veggies rather than breads and pasta. We still have a few dinners left in the freezer that we didn't eat in March and I'm a little tired of beans and rice. After ten years of discovering them I'm finally tired of them; we won't be eating that meal more than one time this month (if that).

When I make my OAMC schedule I try to wash all the veggies and chop them at the same time. That is the biggest time saver for me!

Following are my updated OAMC master sheets (please let me know if they don't work for you):

OAMC Dinners

OAMC Schedule

I'm also going to add in the following recipes. I haven't tried freezing these items before so I'm excited to see how they turn out:

1. egg rolls (no cabbage in the recipe) when I chop up all of my other vegies I'll do this as well. A food processor is your friend! I haven't made egg rolls in over 20 years. Gravy, am I really that old? Anyway, I'm going to try to brush them with an egg wash, bake and then freeze them.
2. refried beans
3. biscuit cups (I think I'll add ham and a bit of bacon)
4. quiche (I add more eggs because we don't like it runny - probably make it with broccoli and ham)
5. spaghetti pie (instead of lasagna - this isn't my recipe, but the concept is the same. I have some lasagna innards leftover from last month that I need to use up)

With the items I've added I'll be cracking a lot of eggs! That's the beauty of OAMC cooking though - do it once, make a mess, clean it up, you are done!

For other recipes you'll have to look at my other OAMC post. Some day I should put all this stuff in one spot!

I'm planning to shop and cook for this OAMC session the week of April 5th. I don't know that it has saved me money, but it has saved a ton of time and energy!

Check out other OAMC plans over at Money Saving Mom!

OAMC - the cooking!

I must admit I really enjoyed this. I didn't plan to do anything other than cook and it was great to be able to focus on just one thing. I can't imagine doing this with little kids around though. I had to concentrate way too much! I admire those that can do this with little ones!

I am so grateful that I took the time to plan this out. I don't know that I'll do this plan every month, but I learned so much this month I hope I can incorporate some of this knowledge into my cooking strategies which will save time and money!

My new favorite part of my house - the island!

 Thursday:

What on Earth is in the bowl? It looks like oatmeal. Actually it's 8 cups of rice, but it looks nasty! In the crock pot I have my spaghetti sauce cooking (the sauteed vegies and seasonings are on top).

I can't imagine doing this without a food processor! You can find them at a thrift store for a few bucks.

It's very important to take breaks. I had to force myself to stop and sit for a few minutes:

On Wednesday I put two whole chickens in a pan so I would be ready to cook them early Thursday morning. Good thing I started early, they were huge and took forever. I'll have to post my sticky chicken recipe - it's YUMMY (I added the recipe link 3/12/10)

On Thursday at 6:30AM I put the chicken in the oven and made taco meat. The burger was already cooked so I had to add a little water and the taco seasoning. Some went with my son in his lunch box, some went into the freezer for a meal and some went into individual servings for more lunches.

I made 8 cups of rice (well, the rice cooker actually made it)

From this can of crushed tomatoes I made chili, saved some to mix in with my enchilada sauce, and kept some out so I could try making BBQ sauce.

I cut up all of my vegies (celery, carrots, onion, garlic) for chicken stock, spaghetti sauce, chili, chicken ala king, chicken salad and my marinade. That was a spectacular sight (and smell as well). 

Made marinade for pork chops, soaked beans, par boiled Italian sausage, froze some, chopped some, cut chicken off the bones, threw the bones and veggies in a pot to make soup. PHEW!

Friday (see pic above) I divided up my ginormous bag of cheese from Sam's club into 2 cup portions, made lasagna (recipe on the box), cooked enchilada sauce, made two batches of chicken ala king. I made 4 different meals of beans and rice. Two black beans and rice w/ taco seasoning and two red beans and rice with burger and cajun seasoning.

Then for some reason I decided I needed to make peanut butter cookies.

I had a breakfast coffee cake that I finished as well. Then I decided since I had all of my baking stuff on my island that I would make two pancake mixes and one waffle mix (dry ingredients only).

I'm really happy with what I got accomplished. I found out that I can go go go until about 12:00 and then I'm just done!!! I forced myself to keep going so I'll have to see this month if it was worth the effort. Definitely a learning experience.

Following is the result of my cooking days:

•  2 meals red beans and rice
• 1 pan lasagna
• 1 pan burritos
• taco meat
• 2 meals black beans and rice
• 2 meals chicken ala king
• 2 pizza sauces
• 1 meal spaghetti (plus some lunches)
• 2 meals pork chops (marinated)
• 1 meal chili (plus some lunches)
• 4 cups chicken broth & 4 cups chicken
• par boiled Italian sausage
• BBQ sauce
• 2 pancake mixes
• 1 waffle mix

Ironically, I took my son to get a free kids meal at Culver's last night and tonight we're having friends over for Nick and Willy's take out pizza. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are already made for Saturday. Then, my husband cooks on Sunday so I get a few days off from the kitchen. Yee Haa!!!! I think I might like this.

Maybe next month I'll do more Once a Month Cooking. Or not.

Check out Money Saving Mom for more OAMC ideas.

P.S. I'm not re-reading this extremely long post so forgive me if there are ton of errors!

OAMC - planning

I'm always trying to make things easier on myself by complicating every thing I do. Makes a lot of sense doesn't it?

However, this time I do believe I'm onto something! All around bloggy land people are having Once A Month Cooking (OAMC) sessions. Back in November I decided to try this. I took all of "THEIR" recipes and tried to figure out if we'd like them, everything I'd need to buy, where I'd need to buy the stuff, etc. I ended up wasting a ton of time because it just seemed so complicated and expensive (the items weren't in my pantry). I was completely overwhelmed and I knew I'd never be able to do it. So all of the time I spent was wasted.

Kind of.

I was inspired again after reading more OAMC success stories. About 6 months ago I wrote up this list:

These are all of the meals I want to make in a month. Either because they are easy, cheap or a family favorite. One of the drawbacks I see to OAMC is that I wouldn't be able to try new recipes. Although I have changed some of the meals on this list, I figured out if I did OAMC for these things, then my life would be a LOT easier! Especially with baseball & softball coming up where we aren't home in the evening. Ever.

So, I've been planning and planning...oh how I love to plan! I don't always like to carry out my plan, but I'm okay with that.

I wrote down the meals I plan to make, everything needed to buy to make the meals and what stores I'd need to shop at to get these things. Wednesday is the big shopping at Sam's day, Thursday I'll cook 1/2 and Friday I'll cook the other half.

Stay tuned for the results!

Using the Pantry Principle

While the picture quality isn't great, I am hoping to give you a look at what I do when I get ready to head to the store.

• The first thing I do is look at the list of items on my clipboard that I need to buy. These are items that I need to replace in my pantry (ie. brown sugar and sugar). If those items are on sale I'll stock my pantry. If they are regular price I'll buy one.
• Then I look at the flyers (I can look online or if I happen to be in the area and need to kill some time while dropping off a kid/picking a kid up I'll grab a flyer from the store).
• I look at the loss leaders, check my pantry and determine how much/many I need to buy. For example, whole chicken is on sale at Safeway this week for $.69/lb. I know from looking at my price book that is a good price for chicken.
• Now, I look at our week to see what is going on. I know that this weekend we're going to be away from home for two lunches. We're planning on using a gift certificate that we got at Christmas for dinner on Saturday night. I know that I need to have food on hand for these two lunches or we'll end up wasting money on junk food and feeling miserable from eating the junk food.
• I write down what I need on my list and how much that item will cost. I always have to guess for fresh fruits and veggies. After a while you get a feel for the amount of money you'll spend. Then I add up how much I plan to spend at the grocery store versus how much cash I have.
• This time I had to cross some things off of my list. When you take cash it's very embarrassing if you don't have enough money! With the debit card/credit card it doesn't matter! Again, that's why cash is so important.
• I crossed round steak off of my list. I found some ground turkey in the freezer so we'll have that in our chili instead. I also decided not to buy the Italian Sausage. It's not on sale and we'll have spaghetti another time.
• I don't have to worry about buying fresh veggies because I have a ton in the freezer.

I think I spent about 30 - 40 minutes working on this (last year I probably spent 1-2 hours). Since I started using the pantry principle in our home, my grocery budget has gone from $400 to $260 per month. The time it takes me to do this is obviously worth the savings!

Grocery Planning...a new plan AGAIN

Menu planning, grocery store planning, feeding my family, annoying me to no end, constantly needing to cook....what do these things have in common??? I don't know either. I'm babbling. I think everyone should babble once a day just to get it out of their system. Don't babble to your husband, it's annoying to listen to.

So my grocery store plan last year at this time was to go to the grocery store on the same day each week and spend $75. Once a month I'd go to the neighboring town and pick up some dented canned goods and spend about $20. In August I decided to join Sam's Club and I've been changing the way I grocery shop since then.

Over the past year I was able to whittle my grocery bill down to about $60 per week. This number does not include any supplies, school lunches, meals out (about once a month if that) and it doesn't include what we spend for Christmas meals (that is in our Christmas budget). I decided in December that I'd save even more money if I went to the store every other week. Having tried that now for the past few months, I've decided it probably saves me money, but causes too much stress. I'm going back to once a week shopping. The trick for me is figuring out how Sam's is going to fit into this plan. My husband is changing jobs so starting in March I'm taking $260 per month. I'll divide out the money and try to keep some separate for my Sam's trip. Who knows, maybe I'll decide that Sam's isn't worth the hassle.

This week I'm shopping at the dented can food store on Thursday and then on Friday I'll hit Safeway and Leuders. I've been spending about $20 for items that we need for that week and the other $40 is either saved or spent on "pantry" food. This is food that I don't need for the week, but is at my stock up sale price and something we will want in the future (ie. chicken, sausages, BBQ sauce, ketchup, mayo, etc).

In summary, I'm glad I tried something new and learned from it. If I continued doing the same thing over and over again I never would have found out how little I can spend to feed my family!

Back to weekly shopping, until I try something new again!