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.

Grocery Shopping 3/31/10

Today I spent $51.00 of my April food and supply money in March. Is that illegal?

It was convenient for me to shop today so I spent about 30 minutes at Walmart. I only go to Walmart once a month now and it works out really well for me. Prices seem to be on the rise again!

I stopped in at Safeway while my daughter was at her orthodontist appointment. How on Earth did this little bit of food cost $40.39? I usually write down all of my prices as I go so I was completely shocked. I keep looking at my receipt to see where the mistake is.

Ahhhh no mess up - cheese was $5, 2 pineapples $4, chocolate chips $6 (shhhh...I hid these from my husband so I can actually make him cookies), pineapple slicer $9 (doesn't come out of grocery $ thankfully! Hopefully it works!) Had I been writing the prices down as I went along through the store I would have been much better off! In this case I wouldn't have put anything back, but some times I have put items back if I felt like I was spending too much money. At Safeway I actually spent $30.00 from my food money.

The best deal of the day? Fish! On the clearance shelf - $2.00/lb!

I have $209 left from my April food money and $14 left from my "stock the freezer fund." Considering that it's March 31st, I better hope that my OAMC plan works out!

Check out the Grocery Cart Challenge for more shopping trips!

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!

Pantry Principle

My order from Alice came today!

It was almost like Christmas. Almost.

I didn't NEED NEED NEED any of these items. When you run out of items, you run to the store and waste time, money and energy. Plan ahead using the pantry principle to make your life much easier.

Does anyone else shop like this? I'd love to hear your input.

Pantry Principle: The planning begins

I stopped by the store on my way to drop my daughter off at basketball practice. I thought I'd share how I start planning my purchases using the pantry principle.

Whenever I notice that I'm running low on something I add it to a list. The list MUST be kept in the same spot...throwing stickie notes around the house doesn't work. Seriously. I've tried it and it doesn't work.

I look through the sales flyer and look at my list to see what I need to buy. This next piece of advice is very important. Only do this ONE time! If you are a geek like me, you'll do it a lot. It's a big waste of time. Look through one time carefully, make a list, then you need to be done with it. I think this takes me 5 minutes. Last year when I was fairly new to this idea it would take me an hour (because I'd go through the ad over and over and over and over).

Here are the items I will probably buy:

• Flour (white) $1.50 each (I'm trying to get away from using white flour, but when making brownies it just doesn't make sense to me to use whole wheat - any thoughts on this?)
• Ketchup $2 (I don't have any in the pantry...not a great price, but a need)
• California frozen veggies...I think this is cauliflower and broccoli mixed...I hope so! It's only $1.00/pound and I'm seriously low on veggies!
• Miller Genuine Draft - yep, even beer goes on sale some times! This doesn't come from my grocery money budget
• Total for groceries will be about $9.00 

I am hoping to make it to this store on Thursday when I pick up my kids from school.

Pantry Principle - Grocery Shopping and Menu Plan

So far for the month of March I have spent $231.43 on groceries. I normally take $260 for groceries, but this month I took an extra $100 so I could stock up on some meat. Remember, this number doesn't include all of the food consumed by my family. My kids get hot lunch once a week and lunch is usually provided for my husband.

I may or may not shop again this week for loss leaders - it's beginning to look like a busy week. I bought the following:

• milk - we actually have a gallon and half, but if we run out it's a bad thing in our home. We usually go through 2-3 gallons per week so I figured I buy one just in case I don't make it back to the store. Planning ahead like this is one way to save money and time
• Bananas - we have plenty of apples and canned fruit on hand, but it's nice to have a variety available
• 10 boxes of pasta $.88 each. Usually when they are $1.00 per box I'll buy 5 of them. Grocery store sales are cyclical so I can usually tell when they are going to have a pasta sale again because I'll only have a box in our pantry. If you get to know your families eating habits, it's much easier to know how many of each item you need to put in your pantry. This pasta is made from white flour. We don't care for the whole wheat pasta, but we like the multi grain pasta that wasn't on sale. If you look at the fiber content of the white versus multi grain, you get 4 more grams of fiber if you eat the multi grain. Better for you, but should we be eating much pasta in the first place? In a perfect, non-busy world, I'd make all of our pasta out of 100% white whole wheat flour. I make our own noodles for chicken noodle soup, maybe I'll venture out to make homemade noodles for turkey ala king. When I'm not busy. When I have time. Yeah right. Maybe I'll just eat more fruits and vegies.

What will we be eating this week?

1. Money Wise Mom's Pineapple Chicken
2. Black Beans and Rice w/ guac from my OAMC session. Let me just say that OAMC rocks! It's so nice to know that I have food in my freezer! I haven't used that much of the food yet, but the night I had to make rice and beans I think it took only 5 minutes to put it in a pan and stir it! I'm starting to plan my next OAMC session now. Last night my husband BBQ'd pork chops that I poured a marinade over and then froze. Absolutely DELICIOUS! So easy for him too!
3. Olive Garden's mock Toscana soup - recipe from years ago
4. Sandwiches made for our trip to Rapid. My daughter and I are having a special time and my son and husband get to go to a hockey game together with the free ticket my son earned for his grades.
5. Friday-Sunday we'll be on the road traveling. Normally I would make sandwiches to eat on the way... a little healthier and cheaper, but since I'll be gone all day on Friday at a science fair we're just going to eat fast food on our drive.

This post has been linked to orgjunkie.com and Grocery Cart Challenge.

Pantry Principle Shopping

This is all of the shopping I'm going to do this week. Well, I guess I am going to Walmart tomorrow and will pick up some ice cream for the apple pie I'm going to make my husband for his birthday. Wish me luck - the last time I made a pie it was....well....weird. It was soup. My sister thinks it's because I didn't use the top crust because I was trying to save calories. She made one with me when she was here and it turned out so I'm hoping for the best!

I went to Sam's last week for my OAMC trial so I have quite a bit of food in my house. Here's the break down of the items I bought:

1. Toilet Paper - wanted to test it out the store brand to compare it to Scott's brand. 
2. onions - need
3. 1 bag green apples for the pie
4. apples and an avocado were okay prices, not amazing, but low enough to buy
5. The mushrooms were 2/$1.00. This is a stock up price for me. They often go down to $.50 so I buy enough to last us until the next sale. I'm sure that for a lot of people this wouldn't be a pantry staple. I swear my husband could eat mushrooms in his cold cereal. Okay not really, but he LOVES mushrooms so they go in most of our meals.
6. The mac & cheese. Disgusting food! My kids love it so I usually buy a few boxes when they go to $.50 per box. I only like this store brand - not crazy about Kraft. They were down to $.33 so I bought a LOT. Now I have to hide them somewhere so the kids can't find them.
7. The sausage was a great price (well, for sausage) $2.25/lb. My husband likes to make brats on Sundays sometimes and I love Kielbasa in our red beans and rice. I was planning on stocking up on these at this price. However, considering my husband and I have both gained a few pounds over the winter I think I need to cut back on sausage. In my red beans I'm going to cut back on the amount of sausage I use and add chicken as well. The other issue is the nitrates and other gunk in them. Not the healthiest food around. I think I'd be better off in the long run serving more fish. But goodness fish sure does stink up the house! Next time I make it I need to use the BBQ!

Total for the month of March $215. My goal usually is $260. This month I gave myself an extra $100 so I could stock up on some meat when I find it at a low price.

Notice how weird pantry principle shopping is....what on Earth will I make? With few exceptions, I buy everything that is on sale. By the way, I just remembered I bought 1 pack of oriental ramen because I had a recipe that called for it and I haven't seen them on sale for a year.

There is another recipe that I'm dying to make, but cream cheese is not on sale. I know it will go on sale soon so why waste the $.50. Big deal you say...it's only $.50. If I can save $.50 on 10 items every week that saves me $5.00 for that week. Over the year, that will save me $260.00. For doing NOTHING other than being patient. It doesn't take me more time to be patient and it doesn't make me feel deprived! It makes me grateful that I can save money at the store because I took the time to read the grocery ad and write down a few prices.

The pantry principle works for me!!!

This post is linked to the Grocery Cart Challenge and WFMW.