Friday, I spent 30.00 grocery shopping. I used coupons and bought specials from ALBERTSONS. I added potatoes and sour cream that we needed. We start a new month. I am, yet again going to try to eat down the pantry. A lot of the things on their mega sale this time , I don't buy. There was still enough to come up with ten items that I had coupons for to make a deal. I made chicken tacos from the Old El Paso taco dinner kit. They were really good. I got the kit for 1.55. It included soft taco shells, hard taco shells, taco seasoning, and taco sauce. It was enough for all four of us to have two meals. I used the pulled chicken that I made from our .99 a pound grill packs. It seems that over the past couple of weeks, every one of the chain stores has had foster farms grill packs for .99. I have bought two and cooked them up. It is a real cheap way to get boneless, skinless chicken breast and you are still paying a buck for hind quarters-- a real winner in my book. It's a good way to have a gourmet meal and still average a couple of bucks for protein a meal. I got ten meals from ten dollars and change worth of meat!
Betty Crocker on line has a lot of good recipes of you are stuck for ideas on dinner. Sometimes you need to adjust for an expensive ingredient, but most are doable on a budget.
Thursday, we had two plus inches of rain in an hour. All the streets were flooded, half the stores in town were flooded. We came home from work to no power and a flooded garage. The drains could not carry the water off fast enough. Today, I spent the day cleaning the garage and loading the truck with wet soggy stuff! One way to get the garage floor clean! LOL. Friday was a teacher in service day,so I had my granddaughter. She had a ball driving the grocery cart/ car around the store with Mickey. LOL
I think the bottom line is that I spent more a couple of months ago because there were store closings and the rock bottom prices were in full force. Now the rock bottom prices have slowed down and I am only buying a few good buys and the perishables we need to fill out our meals. The grocery budget will averge out.
Getting started on stockpiling without spending more than a normal budget can happen. First, cut out the junk food and pop. Start with one thing at rock bottom prices. Buy a few ahead. Keep it up and pretty soon you will be stocked and be in a maintenance mode. It just takes time. When you are socked, there is less stress. I know if I get sick, or something happens, I don't have to go to the store if I don't want to. in this part of the country, snow cripples us. One year, there was a flood on the interstate and the trucks that bring our groceries to the stores couldn't pass over the road. We still had food.
Over the years, I have developed recipes that take little time to prepare that my family will eat. I am not lazy, just busy. I have had two jobs most of my career. I am retired and still work 2 days a week and run two side businesses. If it took top many hours to groceries on to cheap, I wouldn't be doing it.
There are previous posts on how to roast a chicken. It takes almost no ti,e to season a pork loin and rub it with olive oil and program the thermometer. The rest is passive cooking. You can go about and take care of mail,download recipes or coupons, or whatever is on your to do list.
Putting up ground beef is a bit more time consuming .
I do meatballs with a portion scoop and bake them on a wire rack in a quarter sheet pan in the oven. This drains off fat. Meat loaf is baked right before dinner in a meat loaf pan that drips off the fat. Crumbles and taco meat are done with a defating method. Taco seasoning recipes are om a previous post,as well as almost free pizza , pizza crust,baking mix, white sauce mix.
Precooking meat makes it fast to add ingredients for a casserole, or stir fry or other skillet meal.
Please feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you would like to see on the blog.
I throw out all the ideas that have worked for me. It is up to you to do the part of this that you feel will work for you.
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Jane
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