The basics- cooking

Yesterday we went to Fred Meyer and Walgreens.   I picked up veggies and fruit and some dairy.  Milk was in effect 2.50 per gallon.   I stopped by QFC and picked up toothpaste and pasta because I found the march 23 coypon inserts finally. I had misfiled them.   There is a .55 cent coupon for bke box barilla pasta, coupled woth the dollar price tag, that makes pasta ,725 a package and it included veggie pasta and wheat pasta.   Toothpaste was an extra large tube and it was .50.  I'm well on my way for another batch of toothpaste.   LOL.

Cooking.
Somehow, the term scratch cooking conjures up thoughts of slaving over a hot stove all day and having floor in your hair.   Maybe from the old I Love Lucy shows.  

It's really necessary NOT  to rely on ready made foods and boxes and kits.   They jack your food bill up considerably.  We discussed before that with a three hundred dollar a month budget, you need to have five dollar dinners.   The breakfast and lunch will take care of themselves.   Buying smart helps to make that happen, cooking from scratch closes the gap.  

Last night I made pasta primavera and cooked sausage on the side.   I added French bread that I put butter , parsley and parm on and toasted off under the broiler.   I usually pay anywhere from .50 to a dollar for pasta.  One time I got it for .38.   I prefer the .50 range and since pasta has a very long shelf life ( don't believe the package) it's so,etching you can stock and wait for coupons and sales.  

I do grass, dinner took less than ten minutes non passive time.  I cooked the pasta in the microwave and went about my business working in my studio.   Went back when it was done and cooked the veggies and the meat and bread.   I think what I am saying is that a good dinner does not have to take all day, or be really labor intensive.   If dinner takes all day it's because it is on the slow cooker. LOL.  

Using the slow cooker, prepping meat ahead of time, and finding recipes that are quick and easy that take raw ingredients is the key.  

If you use a matrix to plan your meals, you already know what you are going to eat six months  from now.

Grocers put meat on sale on a regular rotating basis.  Take advantage of their sales, and buy what you need to feed your family that particular meat for its designated days for a month.   In other words, of you have decided chicken is you go to for two nights a week, you need to buy enough chicken to feed your family eight times.  Bring whole chicken home. Cook it. Divide it into meal sized portions and freeze it.  Most regulR fridges have enough freeze space to hold 1 months worth of meat for a family of four.  I break down chicken into breast portions, dark meat, and bones for soup.   I get four meals out of a five  pound chicken.

Having your meat cooked makes dinner almost done.  The meat is the most time consuming part of the dinner.  Batch cooking takes less time and less clean up and you can do it when the kitchen is less hectic.

Frying meat for crumbles and taco meat at your leisure gives you the opportunity to defat the meat.  
Portion control is another advantage of the process.

Roasting off a chicken or pork loin is mostly passive cooking.  It takes a littl set up and the rest of the time you can be doing other household chores or helping kids with homework or just sot and watch the television.  

I can still find pork loin, chicken, ground beef (9 percent) sausage ( Costco).  We also have cheese and eggs that aren't  precooked and fish or tuna and clams.  All of these are an average of two dollars or so a meal.  

You can eat a variety of meals.  You can eat fresh and frozen fruits and veggies, and you can eat plenty of food on a thrifty budget.  It just takes some careful planning.  I'm not going to tell you that you can go mindlessly through the most expensive store in the city and out everything that looks good in your cart.   I, also not going to tell you that some little fairy is going to magically make food appear in your pantry and make it fly onto your dinner table every night.  You have to work at it.
After you get organized, you will find that ot takes you less time than it does now to buy and cook your food.  ( for most people) the up side is  you are never out of food and after you have been doing it for a while , you can just about skip shopping for a week altogether if you need to.  

Thanks for stopping by

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Jane