The rest of the shopping

I finished the rest of the shopping  today.  ALBERTSONS has a good .25,.50.75.1.00 sale.  We had a good laugh when I asked where the enchilada sauce was ( it was .50) and the  guy  pointed it out right under the oriental foods sign.

Black sliced olives were .50.  8 ounce tomato sauce was a quarter.  Those are really old prices.  I am not familiar with the brand,  So  I bought a minimal of items. The red peppers were HUGE for a buck.  Ditto english cucumbers and baby carrots were a buck.  Most of the time I just buy bulk carrots, but sometimes a baby carrot is desirable.  Pork steaks were very cheap.  I didn't purchase them because I am we'll stocked and am using ground beef for my stock meat this week.
Sour cream was cheap, and I used coupons for the .50 Yoplait.

We went to business Costco.  I got ten pounds of 7 percent hamburger for less than 3.00 a pound.  Upon studying the marathon cooking recipes,I have found that many have few ingredients added to cooked hamburger crumbles.  It is just as fast and a lot more flexible to just cook and portion control freeze the crumbles.  Ir. one recipe calls for a layered casserole of a hamburger layer with cr mushroom soup and milk, hash browns, and cheese.   I would leave the  hash browns in their bag, the cheese in the fridge, and just bag the portion of hamburger.  It's so fast and easy to pull the there bags, open the soup and mix the meat and layer the casserole.  There are only two of us that eat meat, so I will be making more packages than the book calls for.  I purchased ten pounds rather than twenty.

We eat a lot of tacos through the winter.  It is easy to pull together if dinner needs to happen in a hurry.  Meatballs are a good mainstay because there is so much you can do with them and it is easy to pull as many as you need out of the freezer and be about cooking dinner.

• Meatballs and spaghetti
• Meatball subs
• Meatballs with gravy on noodles
• Meatballs with cream sauce on rice 
• Meatballs with gravy on mashed potatoes
• Meatballs in a vegetable based soup

I usually make up the meatball batch and portion control the balls with a portion scoop.  Bake them on a 1/4 sheet pan with a rack on top to drain the grease.  

Hamburger crumbles can go into any hamburger dish or sauce or on a pizza.  

I have started filling out a meal plan calendar that was on the book I just downloaded.  It doesn't have dates on the calendar , just boxes.  I am trying to use the meal plans based on what needs to be eaten in the fridge and pantry this paring down the pantry.  

I am still sitting close to budget, and we have stock.  The USDA stats are based on actual food eaten. In order to grocery shop on the cheap, you need to keep a stock.  Besides, of you are scratch cooking there are things that you don't use for one meal, catsup, mayo, baking staples, vinegar, oil etc.  

ten pounds of good hamburger cost me almost 30.00.  I would estimate that I can get 12 meals (for 4) out of it.  7 percent hamburger has little shrinkage and meatballs and meatloaf have extra ingredients and protein.  Off the top of my head 2.50 a meal.  That makes a five dollar meal very doable to add a starch and some veggies and or fruit.  

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Jane