Sunday and another scorcher.

It's warm here today, and no end on sight.  We broke put the baby swimming pool for granddaughter.

It seems like a day when I should make some salads and grill some kind of meat--or we have hot dogs still because they were BOGO.  Thats when altering your meal plans works.

When we got back from vacation, I shopped at IGA because they had some good buys. Mi went to buy ice cream because the price was the same as SAFEWAYS, buy the box was squishy.  The guy told me that their freezers defrost every night at that time.  I don't want ice cream that has been frozen and thawed, and frozen again.  .  I guess the lesson there is to buy ice cream where there isnanbig turn around so you don't get refrozen ice cream!    Anyway, they had good produce .  At safewaysm I got good deals and used coupons on pineapple, on sale with an additional coupon.  Then, I got a coupon for more off pineapple at checkout.  I also used my last pudding coupon, it was still a buck, less the 80 cent coupon.  I had a coupon for ribs, but they were still to expensive at BOGO to make it fit the budget.

In order to make a 300 dollar a month budget work for a family of four, you need meat to cost 2-3 dollars or less average.  That means if you have breakfast for dinner, you can have some 5 dollar meat meals.  The trick is to average some vegetarian or other cheap meals to compensate.  if you are Staetimg to stockpile and bulk cook meat, maybe several of your meals at the beginning will have to be cheap meals.  in a few weeks, you will be on tune.  If you get your money all at once for the month, you may still have to ease into the rotation of you can't find cheap meats.

The thing that makes a rotation wok is that
A) the price of your meat can be more than 30 percent cheaper in bulk.
B) it is easier to portion control so you have no waste.
C) it is faster and easier to cook a large quantity once a week, than to cook meat every night.It takes no longer to cook 4 chickens than it does to cook one.  Same oven, less power bill, once kitchen clean up!

Normally,  I would rotate  chickens, pork loin, sirloin roast, and hamburger.  I can still do most of them, but sirloin beef roast is hard to find on target price.  this gives you variety with low cost.
looking at my meal plans from the 1990 era, it reminded me that I used to buy ham cubes( about 1/4 inch cubes) cheap at grocery outlet and make quiche, split pea soup, and ham, pineapple and peppers pizza.  It works, and you get three meals from a 3.00 plus package of ham.  You are augmenting the ham with the peas and eggs, the ham makes for great flavor.

I purchased a bag of split peas from Costco and my husbands siblings and us shared the cost.  It made the split peas about 1/2 price.  We are still eating them!


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Jane