Monday, April 13, 2015

Shopping trip

The biggest thing about shopping and saving money is not to buy junk food and not to fall into the impulse buy trap.  Stores work hard to tempt you into impulse buys.    It's not by accident that they put kids treats right as you walk in the door.  


I did go to Fred Meyers yesterday after we volunteered to fill food bags for kids.   I bought fruits and dairy products  because that's all we needed.     The easter candy was 75 percent off,so I did buy a .30 Easter egg.    Total 28.00.  

Meal plans are another way to beat the high cost of food.   Having a plan, even I'd you deviate from the plan is always good.    I like to do prep work early in the day .  We don't get the family together until seven o'clock.  By that time my get up and go has got up and went, so ot is harder to stay on the plan.  

Yesterday we had chicken pot pot  using my homemade soup base mix and bisquick recipe.    I finished off the meal with a fruit cup of fresh fruit.  

We had fish and chips Saturday and meatloaf on Friday.  

My meal plan matrix is a good way to make meal planning easy.  Your matrix may be different, but having one simplifies the process.

2 chicken or pork
2 beef
2 vegetarian
1 fish or shellfish.  

Before my daughter switched back to being a full vegetarian. That meant that I could cook one meal five out of the seven days.   Now, she cooks her own, but that means I have double dishes to wash.  
Tex mex helps. It stretches the beef and can be adjusted to accommodate vegetarian without extra work.  I can also make split pea  soup and  just add fried ham to ours.  Everybody eats fish.

The cost of food is slowly rising, despite the claim that some stores are lowering prices.   Our insurance bills are rising as well.   The COL raise for social security was a joke.   Insurance costs have taken more than all of it.   LOL.   I am still maintaining a 75.00 a week food budget and have a full pantry and freezer.  Basicly that means that we are eating less than seventy five dollars a week in food.   The USDA stats are 84.90 for just my husband and me.

We eat well.  We do not eat organic all the time, nor do we eat food made my Martians on an obscure planet.    LOL.  We just eat real food, the less processed mixes the better.   When it is practical, I make my own bisquick and soup bases.   I was getting soup bases for free.   It made more sense in the scheme of things for us to use them while we could.  

Life changes.   Stores change.  Groceries on the cheap means you have to be flexible and contine the quest to find good food cheap-- not cheap food.  

Thanks for stopping by

Please share

Jane





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