What's in your refrigerator?

Wednesday is usually clean the fridge day.   Life in the kitchen is a lot easier if you have zones in your refrigerator.   If  categories of food are placed in the same zone, it is easier to tell if you have enough if a particular product , or even where it is.  

Top shelf - condiments. That is where you will find the pickles. Jelly, mayonaise, etc.
next shelf. bread those products and eggs .    Tortillas. Baguettes. Eggs
Next : dairy.   Leftovers,  yogurt, sour cream cottage cheese
Bottom shelf.   Cheese in lock n locks, fruit in green boxes.

Drawers.  Meat, vegetables, cheese.
Door. Milk, small bottles of condiments, syrups etc.

On cleaning day, wash any spills.
I go threw the fridge top to bottom.   This week, I baked another dozen eggs.  I had a surplus because of Easter specials.  
Next stop, check expiration dates on dairy.  What needs to be used up soon.   Can you incorporate leftovers into lunch!
Fill the cheese boxes if,needed from cheese in the freezer.    Check the fruit and veggie for freshness.

Meat drawer.  Check dates.   Use up oldest first.  
Vegetable drawer, change the paper towel in the bottom of the drawer. Check freshness and not what needs to be used  soon.
Cheese drawer.  Check stock . Grate cheese if needed.  

Post what you have and star  anything that needs to be used up soon to meal plan work sheet.

This only takes a few minutes, but saves a lot of time and money,    You know what you need and what you have before you shop so you aren't duplicating anything.   You also use up what you have before it is food for the garbage disposal.  

No food can do you any good if you are feeding it to the garbage disposal.  

Groceries on the cheap is looking at the Put Dinner On The Table meal train from a different

 pro spective.  The emphasis is on purchasing good food( shelf- stable/ freezer staples )at the lowest possible cost and purchasing enough to last you until it goes on sale again -- Keeping a controlled non-perishable stock of the things you use on a regular basis. It means that when you shop, rather than purchasing just what you need for a day or a week, you  buy a loss leader protein, produce you will need on sale, a stock item if it's a RBP, and dairy instead.    This allows you to put well balanced meals on the table consistently  for a four dollar a day budget per person.   You spend more time on the planning and shopping end of the meal train and less on the cooking end by cooking efficiently.    

Four dollars a day is the target amount for people on snap.   My premise is that of you can do it on four dollars a day, spending more isn't hard.   You still get more bang for your buck.    

Easy Peasy artisan bread

I am on a mission to replace the things I buy ready made win easy , quick homemade equivalents.   To save money and have more control of what goes into our food.  But, I also am not all about spending all day in  the kitchen.   If you spend more time on the planning and the shopping and less in cooking, your budget will be better off and you will have more, healthier food as a bonus.

Artisan bread.   This is a far different concept than I have ever used to bake bread,   I can bake bread in the bread baker in a very short time......like maybe five minutes non passive cooking.   But, this bread is more artisan than what comes from the bread baker.   

This calls for bread flour.  One of thei-tubes  I watched said that all purpose flour works too.   

In a large bowl, mix.  

3.5 cups flour 

2 tsp table salt 

1/2 tsp bread baker yeast 

Add 14 ounces of cool water.   

Stor dry ingredients to incorporate the salt and yeast. Add water and stir until dough forms a ball.   Cover with plastic wrap and set out on a counter for 8-24 hours.   

(My dough looked untouched after 10 hours.  It  was a sponge at 23.  It might have been sooner, but I went to bed and looked at ot on the morning,    )

Flour your counter or a board and dump the batter out .  Flour the mass and using a dough scraper, form it onto a loaf.  Dough will be sticky  and soft.    Turn it into a greased loaf pan.   

Cover and let proof for 1-1/2 hours in a warm place.   Meanwhile place the oven rack in the middle of the oven.   15 minutes before your 1-1/2 hours so up. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  After the 1-1/2 hours loaf should be over the top of the pan,    Bake 45 minutes.    Total non- passive cooking about 15 minutes.    

Dry ingredients 

Sponge after 23 hours 

Proofing , taken before it was done.   

Done after 45 min.  

The ads

The ads came,  

Alberways,


Ground turkey 2.99
Grapes 1.99
Yoplait 10/5 - same price at fm
Milk 1.99
Nathan's 4.99


Five dollar Friday
Barilla 5/5
Chilli, nalleys  5/5

QFC
Berries 2/4
7 percent ground beef 4.99
Hebrew national 3.99***
Mission tortillas 2/4

Terrific Tuesday

It's Tuesday , the ads come out today.   I will post them , but I really don't have to go shopping.  Mthe fridge and pantry are full.  

Yesterday. I made cranberry chicken in the crockpot.   I de-boned four other chicken 1/2 breasts.   The weighed a little more than a pound each.   I put the bones into a stockpot and added some herbs.  
I now have some chicken left over from last nights dinner, soup stock and a tub of chicken pieces, and four more de-boned  chicken breasts.   Cost of last night's  meat was about .50.   Even if we use the entire breast, it  would be a dollar.    That goes a long way to balance  with a salmon dinner and still stay within a five  dollar dinner.   I will use the chicken from the bones for chicken enchiladas later in the week.   I will freeze the chicken stock after I defat it and I take the salmon out of our baby freezer.
That means I will get seven meals from  5.50 worth of chicken.    That's  .79 a meal.  


The dollar store has them stale brothers cookbook.  It has a variety of surprisingly sophisticated dishes in it.   Just saying..

I have been watching a lot of food hauls on u tube.   Most of them are for two hundred dollars and up.   Most of them either have copious snack food, or  are real heavy with alternative foods.   I try to hit the middle of the road. . . I don't buy expensive alternative food, nor do we buy four bags of chips every week.    I buy tortilla chips sometimes.    Sometimes we have nachos for dinner,  or we have them with chilli or taco soup.   They don't seem to be lady with salt.    Sometimes I buy hummus when I can get it on sale and we dip veggies in it.   Popcorn and an air popper make for a good snack.  You can control the salt and the butter, and there is no garbage in it like microwave popcorn has.  

Buying junk food will surely  derail your food train and besides, those foods are not good for you.  

The next step

now that I have nailed the under four dollars a day and built and maintained a stockpile of food, I am going to go one step further.   I always want to learn new things.   It's what keeps us young and our brains working.   I checked the February 2016 stats    from the USDA  and  we are sitting at less than 1/2 of the family stats and that is for food eaten at home, that does not include a pantry.

Now, I am on a mission to reduce the amount of hydrogenated oil we consume.  Hydrogenated oil is in everything.   By all accounts, it is bad for you.    Somethings   have different viewpoints, but not hydrogenated oils.   They are in everything.  - a lot of manufacturers are attempting to offer alternatives.   You can buy mayo with part olive oil.   There is peanut butter with a reduced amount in it.   Read the labels.   The ingredients are listed in order of volume.    It's a given that potato chips and other chip type snack foods are loaded with it.   But, on a thrifty budget, you can't afford them anyway.   Making something from  scratch lets you control what kind of oil you use.

Therefore, my next mission is to learn efficient ways to cook some of the few  thngs that we buy ready made.  My criteria is how much hydrogenated oil does it have in it and is it cheaper to buy it ready made, or can I control the oil better without slaving over a stove for hours.   The other option is to see if we can reduce our usage or eliminate it altogether from our diet.

I found a recipe for a simple bread dough and pizza dough that takes little non-passive cooking time.   Baguettes cost a dollar at best.   The thing that will hold me up is that it takes a pizza stone for the oven.   That's not on my budget yet.

I do have a bread baker.

I am trying rice on the pressure cooker.   It actually takes less time than instant.


Wish me luck !,, LOL.

Meal plans

Meal plans for this week.

I am trying to use up what we have.   This months foo was at 67.00 a week; first quarter food is at 70.99 a week.   USDA stats for our daily is 149.40.    We are at less than half.   That figure is the cost of food eaten,    We have a stock built and maintained.   

Meals - I dont necessarily assign a meal to a particular day of the week except if I want an exceptionally easy meal because of a busy day etc.   

1. Cranberry chicken breast, a gratin potatoes, broccoli.   ( chicken breast was a dollar a pound again  at fm.   Boneless chicken breast was 2.49 a pound.  It takes about ten minutes to debone half breasts of chicken.   I need to use cranberry sauce from the pantry.   A gratin potatoes were less than .70 and broccoli is left over from a veggie tray for Easter.   The recipe is BC ( bettymcrocker) 
2. Pizza ( DiGiorno was 2.44 super bowl weekend with sales and coupons. ) 
3. Chicken enchiladas.   ( I got tortillas for .25 with a coupon,  I use more expensive 6 carb ones for myself .  Chicken is from the dollar a pound chicken and I am going to try a new recipe for enchilada sauce from scratch, ) cheese is always aboutm200 a pound grated.   The best price on a block I have found is 2.50 a pound.   
4. Breakfast for dinner.   ( using eggs I got for 2.00 for 18.   - th best data I can find is that an egg a day is still in healthy eating guidelines.   We only eat eggs when we have breakfast for dinner except if I use them in baking.   
5. Speghetti with red sauce/ hambirger.   Bread, salad.   ( the bread was on sale at Costco nets a little less than a buck for 1/2 a loaf.    Hambirger was 318 a pound for 7 percent and I defatted it and froze the cooked meat.   Speghetti I got Barilla from the dollar store.    ) 
6. Salmon and gnocchi . Mixed veggies ( carrots, cauli, carrots.) this was touted as a dollar store dinner.    The gnocchi is at the dollar store  and is from Italy.    Our salmon is from Costco.   The veggies are from Easter veggie tray,   
7. Chicken club pie.   , broccoli.    ( chicken is a buck a pound, ham is some cubes I got at Winco for 2.38. Cents and we will use part of the bag.   Broccoli , you guessed it, is from the Easter veggie tray,   ) the recipe is Betty Crocker.    

All of these meals with the exception of the salmon one is less than five  dollars a meal.   Because the pizza and the chicken enchiladas are less than five dollars, it should average out.   

I can't reprint Betty Crocker recipes, but if you google them, they should be there.   I dos veered that enchilada sauce is basically a two cup thin white sauce recipe with the fo,losing substitutions : start with a fat to flour ration of 1 to 1. - two tablespoons flour to 2 tablespoons olive oil or another fat of choice.  Cook for a minute or so to get rid of the flour taste.  Add taco seasonings and blend in two cups of veggie stock or chicken stock.   The color comes from paprika and chilli powder.    

I found the recipe on Pinterest.   It's a real money saver since enchilada sauce is about a buck a can.   

Fred Meyers ad

Got the ad for Fred Meyers today,    My hubby went to the dollar tree and bought the paper and another pair of dress sox for granddaughter.   Seems she has lost one of her dress sox.   It was either buy another pair or let her do the bunny  hop! !   !  

The ad

Foster farms split chicken breast. .99.  

This is a really good price and it is easier to debone them when they are split.   I debone them and save the bones  for soup stock.   Buying soup stock in a box or can is another good way to derail your meal train.   I get low sodium chicken granulas or  better than Boullion.   I prefer better than boullion, but the dry granulas work for mixes.  

Grapes 1.88
Tillamook cheese 5.49@@.  Cheaper at Safeways,  

Hillshire farms smoked sausage 2/5@@

Berries 2/5

Chick roast 3.99

Kroger pasta 100.    Nite the dollar store has Barilla for a buck .  






That's about it.  

Eggs --so what Else would we talk about the day before Easter?

LOL.   ...

Two weeks ago, eggs were 18 for 2.00 at Fred Meyers.    It's another reason why you strike when the iron is hot.   If you wait  until the day before a holiday, often the prices go up.   They are banking on the fact that some people will wait until the last minute and taking advantage of that.

It still goes back to know your prices.   You don't have to know the prices of everything in the store, just the things that you use on a regular basis.    Have a target price and stick to it I less it is something you just can't live without....milk?

I digress.     Eggs

I hard cooked eggs on the oven this time.    It was really easy and a great way to get a lot of eggs done at one time.   No eggs cracked and it is really easy.  

Preheat oven to 325.   Place eggs , one each in muffin cups.  Bake for 30 minutes.   Meanwhile, make a ice water bath.  I put a big plastic bowl in the sink.  When the eggs were done take them  out of the oven  and use a hot pad  to remove the eggs to the ice water.   Cool 10 minutes and remove from the bath.    I placed them on a folded kitchen towel to dry.   Refrigerate after .   They are really easy to peel.   If you overlook hard cooked eggs, they will have a gray tinge around the edge.  They are still good to eat, just overlooked.  

Adding a hard cooked egg to your breakfast helps you to stay full until lunch.

Breakfast for dinner is a way I get another vegetarian meal in the meal plan and it's inexpensive.  
There are a lot of good quiche, breakfast casseroles. Omlettes. Waffles, pancakes. Muffins.
A Cobb salad is always good in the summer for a cool dinner.

At .11 a piece, it's a good way to stretch your dinner dollar amd leaves you open to have a more expensive cut of meat to average your costs.  

Contrary to what the rumors were in the past, now the guidelines for protein are so ounces of protein a day and some of that should be from eggs.

We don't eat eggs every day.   Moderation is the key again.  

What do you do with the hard cooked eggs after Easter?  
You can comment below.

Friday.

Easter crept up on me .   I got product out in the stores, but I never managed to get decorations up.   I did stop and make treat boxes for the children  at granddaughters school amd went shopping yesterday and found granddaughter an Easter dress 55 percent off plus another 25 percent, and another twenty dollars off on a rebate.   Shoes were on sale at Sears.    I am not to particular about the sturdiness of little children's dress shoes.   They don't wear them enough to spend a lot of money on them.  It's better that the money go on a pair that they wear everyday.   After shipping,mew were hungry and decided to stop and have lunch at Denny's,    I had soup and a delightful sandwich of avacado and turkey and Swiss cheese,    Yummy, and it's in the 2.4.6.8 menu.  Besides we get a twenty percent discount with aarp card.   But, we weren't hungry at dinner time.  I fixed pizza  Quesadeas. I had seen them in on a u tube vlog.   Picky granddaughter are the whole thing!    Guess that's a winner,   Low carb to boot and quick. If I was  making a real meal, I  would add tomato soup.  Mission makes a low carb tortilla that has six carb grams.  

Tonight, we will make fish packets and get back to the plan.   

There is a lot of hype out there about food.   You could go crazy either trying to afford food from Mars or go crazy trying to make sense of a climate that has two sides to every food . My take is to eat in moderation, and eat a wide variety of foods.    I don't believe that it is appropriate to leave a whole food group out of your diet unless your doctor says that it is not good for you because of a disease.    I wholly agree that we eat too much fat, sugar and salt in this country.   There was a good program on pbs about food.   Basically, they said the same thing.    The French people eat everything pretty much, they eat in moderation and usually don't eat on the fly according to the program.    

We eat on 70 percent of the snap budget at four dollar a day per person.  We are not on snap.  I have built and maintained a stock on that amount of money.  I spend 75.00 a week on food and have lot of years now.  We eat a variety of protein, we eat inexpensive cuts of protein,but I buy the best quality I can of those proteins.   We always have fresh fruits and veggies.   I wash fruits and veggies or peel them if it is appropriate to do so.   I don't buy junk food.  Of a food has no food value, I don't buy it, sans herbal teas.   

Just a note,  there is absolutely  no reason to buy organic bananas unless you are trying to impress your neighbour.   

Nutrition wise, there is no reason to buy organic milk either.   In fact, organic milk does not have some of the nutrients that regular milk has.  Organic milk is processed longer and kills some nutrients.   

Jenny can cook

I just found a u-tuber that is remarkable.    She has videos on cooking healthy that won't break the bank.   Scratch cooking that is fast , easy and low fat.  unfortunately, she's not low sugar too.    None the less, she bakes with extra light olive oil which is a much better alternative to hydrogenated oil.

Flat bread, 20 minute pizza crust, no butter, no egg chocolate cake, easy mac and cheese, buttermilk  Biscuits-- and she is funny!     Jenny can cook.

Easy cooking from scratch saves time and money, besides not buying things with ingredients you can't pronounce!  

Trying too many things at one time can be overwhelming.  am planning on introducing a new dish a week along with trying to do more scratch cooking,  I was already pretty much scratch, but I am trying to reduce the hydrogenated oils we consume.   They are worse than the butter.   We don't consume a lot of butter either.    I already use olive oil for a lot of things.   Not all oil is created equal.  Someone told me oil was oil.    Wrong...... Vegetable oil, from what I read on the Internet, isn't recognized by your body and your body doesn't break it down.     It's not natural.  It gets into your bloodstream and thickens the blood.    Butter at least is natural.  Now, I'm not saying put a whole pat  of butter in your toast.   Moderation is the key.

Last night we had pork chops and roasted veggies : potato, carrot, cauliflower and radishes. That  wasn't  the plan, but Winco had gorgeous pork chops for two dollars a pound.    I will adjust our meal plans.   I also want to try no knead rolls.   The granddaughter is home, and she lives to help gram cook  in. the kitchen.   I think it is important for children to see where food comes from.   Not out of a box or plastic bag.    I, however, don't intend on spending my whole day in the kitchen.   My hip won't stand for it, and I have other projects I need to do and a house to run.  Cc

If I can, I'll take you along for the ride in pictures.  

Groceries on the cheap is looking at the Put Dinner On The Table meal train from a different

 prospective. .  The emphasis is on purchasing good food( shelf- stable/ freezer staples )at the lowest possible cost and purchasing enough to last you until it goes on sale again -- Keeping a controlled non-perishable stock of they things you use on a regular basis. It means that when you shop, rather than purchasing just what you need for a day or a week, you  buy a loss leader protein, produce you will need on sale, a stock item if it's a RBP, and dairy instead.    This allows you to put well balanced meals on the table consistently  for a four dollar a day budget per person.   You spend more time on the planning and shopping end of the meal train and less on the cooking end by cooking efficiently.    

Four dollars a day is the target amount for people on snap.   My premise is that of you can do it on four dollars a day, spending more isn't hard.   You still get more bang for your buck.    

Winco prices

Went to Winco, next to the doctors.    
Since Wimco has no ad, here are prices I saw.  

Nissin terriaki bowl are basically free with a coupon.   They are .58 and there is a dollar coupon with three.    The bottom line for three is .25 each.  

Yoplait is .50 with coupons .40

Ten pounds of potatoes are 1.00

Sliced olives are .58

Grapes are like 200 a pound.

Pork loin chops are 1.98 a pound

Cutting the food bill....one baby step at a time,

I have started micro managing our food bill......well, maybe micro managing is a strong word.   I have been broadening my horizons and finding recipes that are easy to replace the few things that imbue ready made or from a box or can.

Enchilada sauce is a dollar  a can.    It is sooo easy.   I always,thought that oatmeal tomato sauce in it. In a pinch. I used the leftover tomato paste from pizza sauce and added water and taco seasoning.   I wasn't far off the mark.   All enchilada sauce is is a white sauce recipe basically.  You start with the roux that you would make 2 cups of white sauce with.  Add taco type  seasonings and substitute the milk with either vegetable or chicken stock.  Easy and I probably can make a mix ahead of to,emto make it even easier.    The sauce keeps 2 weeks on the fridge, so the recipe on Pinterest says.

Next, I am tackling rice  from scratch.    I got brown rice don, rice is proving to be a little harder.

I found a recipe for thin pizza crust.   I have made thick crust in the food processor lots before. But hubby prefers a thin crust.   I found that recipe on the Pinterest too.

It's cheaper to buy pasta sauce than it  is to make it when you buy Hunts   on sale.  We buy instant mashed on sake and the price comparison is close to scratch.   Potatoes are hard for me to keep from going bad.   Many are already bad before I get them home.   It's just easier for us.   I do make oven fries .  I also buy fries frozen for 3.00 amd a few cents for five pounds at Winco.

That's about all buy that isn't scratch.
There are all kinds of seasoning packets in the store.   It is a good way to jack up the price of a  meal that would have been  an economy meal.  Spices are a dollar all over.  If you are in a pinch or you only need a little bit, Winco has bulk spices.   It is far cheaper  to make your own seasoning amd you can control the salt and heat.    Recipes are on an earlier post.  

The ads

Last  night we got the ads in the mail. Dare  I say two ads.   One for Alberways and one for QFC.  
I did part of our shopping on Sunday.    Basically dairy and perishable produce.  

This weeks ads are not surprisingly all about Easter.    It's. It usually a good time to stock.

QFC

Ham 1.49
Broccoli , cauli, .99
Tillamook cheese bricks 5.99

Nothing on the ten for  10 sale is a bargain,   The same frozen veggies are .79 at Freddie's.  
Ditto buy 3. Save 3.    Jenne o turkey bacon is a buck at the dollar store.  

Alberways

Ham 1.57
Strawberries 3.99 a 2 lbs
Tillamook cheese -2 lb loaf 4.99@@
Kraft mayo 3.88@@

Five dollar Friday
Pork tenderloin
Shrimp
General Mills cereal 3/5
Stove top stuffing, potatoes Bc 5/5@@$$

 Coupons in ad ....note a fm after them means that Fred Meyers has the same or lower price.  
Butter 1.99 fm@@
Cake or brownie mix .99 @@- always that price ot lower at Winco
Cream of mushroom soup .79@@$$

That's about it.  

Terrific Tuesday

Its pizza Tuesday.    I had a quick and easy pizza crust recipe years ago, but it is for a thick crust, more like DiGiorno.    My husband would prefer a thin crust.  O tried the dollar store crust, but it was too thin and reminiscent of cardboard,    

I saw a recipe on Pinterest.   I'm going to try it .  It looks like I can make it in the food processor.    I'm was looking for come that didn't have to many stand times.   This still takes an hour and a half.  

Winco has ready made Pizza dough,    It is 1.50 last I saw it.   Scratch will be fractions of that.    

There are still coupons lit there for Hormel pepperoni.    They are form.50 off off one and they're at the dollar store.    One of the last coupons I can still find that work at the dollar store.   I am nit rinsing the same name brands that I have in the past.   I see hauls in the Internet, but not  here.   They have  uncle bens rice, hunts pasta sauce. Dole pineapple, sometimes  Betty Cricker  potatoes, Marie Calanders, jenne o ,pic sweet frozen veggies.    Some things you can find cheaper at the regular grocery store.   I'm 

I digress.   Back to pizza.  Motts cheese is two dollars a pound at Costco.    It is mix information that it is cheaper to grate your own.    I tried that because I have a stick of brick cheese.    We went through four pounds in a week.    If you can get a finely grated cheese, it stretches it further,    I did grate my own parmesean.  Actually, Romano was cheaper so we used that this time,   I used a micro plane, it makes it last a lot longer.    The cost of grated cheese has gone down,    Yellow is 2.08 a pound at Costco  and the motts was 2.00 in five pound bags,   I freeze and take out enough to fill a large  lock and lock.   I'm 

I got peppers at grocery outlet six for 3.00 a while back.  I took them hi,e and sliced them and stuck them in the freezer.  I have been working on them for months,   Sometimes just a few will put some color in a dish,   We eat first with our eyes.  

I got a jar of pizza sauce at the dollar store.   I never do that, but saw it on a haul and thought we could try to.  After I open it, I'll use what we need and freeze the rest in an ice cube tray so we can pull out what we need.    

Sausage is cheapest in a roll at Costco.   Take it home, defat it ,and freeze.    

Black sliced olives are .58 at Winco.    I haven't done a comparison yet, but it certain,y looks like if you take the air and liquid out of a can of while olives, you would have the same volume left.  
Sometimes, it is miss-information that something cut up is more expensive than the whole.  

It's still a lot of money to buy a hamburger meal box at any price along with boxed Mac and cheese.  

Buffalo chicken pizza.   

1. Crust 
2. Blue cheese, or ranch dressing 
3. Chicken cut up into small cubes, season with hot sauce ( Tabasco or hitter, your choice) 
4. Blue cheese
5. White cheese
6. Red pepper cut up.   ( color) 

Another concept is almost free pizza.   My co- workers retort to that was, who's giving
Away pizza?  
Operative word....almost,    
Whenever you are chopping anything that goes in a pizza for another meal during the week, chop a little more and shove it in a bag that you place in the freezer door.    Ditto meat.   Chicken?  Ham for ham and pineapple pizza.    When you have enough make pizza.  

Guess that's all .   

Grocery trips

I did some research on grocery shopping,  The average family grocery shops twice a week.    There are four types of grocery shopping hauls according to the food marketing institute.  

1. The once a week stocker that buys just what they need for the weeks meals.   
2. The shopping trip to prepare for a party. 
3. The fill in trips to get odds and ends that you need to complete your meals. 
4. The quick trip to buy one or two meals.   

The fourth one is the most disturbing to me,   It is a good way to overspend,    You don't have a list and you are looking for what looks good to you for the next two meals.    Sales aren't on your vocabulary and you can bet your bottom line is going to be high.    

The average family of four spends 786.00 a month on food.    We spend 300.00 and I have a stock built and maintained,    I used to shop on Friday, hit two stores. And be done.    After the shake up of the food industry here, I find that Fred Meyers and Winco are the best price leaders of the moment,    Fred Meyers has ads that come out on Sunday.   Winco has no ads.  It has changed the way I shop 

It also has made my grocery bill go down.    

I heard a checker one day say that she  wasn't going to go to two stores to save 25 cents.   Good point.   But, I save about five hundred dollars a month.   What can you do with five hundred dollars a month?    That goes a long ways to pay our lower bills.  

Groceries on the cheap is looking at the Put Dinner On The Table meal train from a different

 prospective. .  The emphasis is on purchasing good food( shelf- stable/ freezer staples )at the lowest possible cost and purchasing enough to last you until it goes on sale again -- Keeping a controlled non-perishable stock of they things you use on a regular basis. It means that when you shop, rather than purchasing just what you need for a day or a week, you  buy a loss leader protein, produce you will need on sale, a stock item if it's a RBP, and dairy instead.    This allows you to put well balanced meals on the table consistently  for a four dollar a day budget per person.   You spend more time on the planning and shopping end of the meal train and less on the cooking end by cooking efficiently.    

Four dollars a day is the target amount for people on snap.   My premise is that of you can do it on four dollars a day, spending more isn't hard.   You still get more bang for your buck.    

Five dollar meals

In order to keep to a four dollar  a day budget and still cover the things that you need to complete meals;  you need to stick to averaging five dollars a day based in a budget for four people.

4+1 =5.    Four people, one meal, five bucks,
 By averaging , you can afford a more expensive meal by balancing it with an inexpensive one.

I cleaned the pantry, took inventory, rotated stock and tidied it up.  If the pantry is cleaned up, there is a place  for everything and you can tell at a glance what you may be running short of.   If the basket is getting empty, it's time to watch for a sale.  

I am on a mission to eat down the pantry and then replenish.  We ate a lot from the fridge freezer, and I replenished it from the downstairs freezer with the foods we will need to complete this weeks meals.

None of this takes a lot of time.   Ok, I'm not going to lie, the pantry clean up took several hours.   The meal planning and shopping trip planning does not take a lot of time.    It probably takes less time that if you shop weekly for a weeks worth of food.   You aren't writing detailed lists.    You are buying - a protein that is RBP and on your rotation, replenishing dairy and perishables.  If you are low on a stock item, and it's at a RBP, you will replenish.   I work left to right on the shelf, so the new stock will be placed on the right so it is rotated through.

Ok, next weeks meal plans.   We have a LOT of eggs.    They were 18 for two dollars last week at Fred Meyers.     My granddaughter and I love hard cooked eggs.   We have been eating them all week.   I ate a hard cooked egg and my regular bowl of oatmeal the other day.  I stayed fuller longer.
We still have two packages of sausage to use up.  One of them is chicken.    They have April and May pull dates.

1. Breakfast for dinner.   Eggs, confetti pan  cakes ( mix bought for .50 at GO) fruit.   
2. Pizza, salad ( pizzas bought for 2.44 super bowl week) 
3. Speghetti and meatballs.   Bread.  ( bread on sale  at Costco, vegetable speghetti gets an additional veggie into our diets. Meatballs from the freezer.   Salad 
4. Chicken pot pie.    Chicken , peas, carrots. Cream soup base, Bisquick crust 
5. Fish packets  : salmon, rice, beans, broccoli 
6. Sausage and peppers 
7. Easter 

1. Mac and cheese, broccoli 
2. Lemon chicken stirfry ( Betty Crocker) 
3. Buffalo chicken pizza ( scratch crust ) 
4. Beef and bean taco casserole ( Bc) 
5. Bacon and bean quesadilla and tomato soup.  ( tomato soup from Costco in a box is 2.00.  ) (Bc) 
6. Tuna casserole with peas 
7. Beef and broccoli stir fry.

1. Tacos , refried beans, rice. ( kit from GO) 
2. Pizza , salad 
3. Tomato soup, cheezy biscuits 
4. Chicken pot pie
5. Pork chops with bread dressing with Apple and craisens , peas 
6. Chicken carbonara (Bc) salad 
7. Salmon, a gratin potatoes. Green beans 

I decided to mix things up and try a bunch if new recipes from the Betty Crocker on line  cookbook.  It is free to download and is a good resource.   If you have something you need to use up, you can plug it in and ideas will magically appear.   

Protein rotation

Face  it, the most expensive categories of your food bill is protein.   One of the easiest ways to cut protein costs is to buy your protein on bulk when it is a loss leader.   You wait until a particular meat is on sale at a RBP and then buy enough to last you for a month of those meals.   Bring it home, batch cook it, if appropriate , and portion control it into packets for the freezer.  

Based on the proverbial family of four  .... Working in two - one month rotations,    The weeks probably won't be in order , you will be picking your meat based on sales  ads.  Be prepared to change your rotation mid stream of you get to the store and they are out of the meat, or it doesn't look good.   

Month one 

1. Chicken 2-about 5.5 pounds each.    ( RBP 1.00 or less a pound ) (8 meals) 
2. Ground beef - 7-9 percent fat. ( RBP 3.00 and change a pound ) 6-10 pounds ( 4x2 meals) 
3. Cheese - white and yellow and eggs - RBP 2.00 a pound and a dozen.   
4. Fish, or shrimp, or canned tuna or salmon.    - enough for four meals.   

Month two 

1. 2 chickens - 8 meals 
2. Pork- either sausage ( Costco has three pound logs) or a pork loin ( RBP 2.00 a pound.) ( 4x2) 
3. Cheese- eggs (8) 
4. Fish, shrimp, or canned tuna, salmon (4) 

28 meals each month -

Weekly 

2 chicken 

1 beef

1 pork

2 vegetarian 

1 fish 

Beef and pork are so lot between two months , the other "meat" is purchased  monthly.    

By being flexible, you can fill in the blanks with the most cost friendly items of the month.   

Fred meyer ad for tomorrow

Fred Meyers ads..  It's all about Easter.   Traditionally. It is not a good stock ad when it is a holiday with few exceptions.    Picnic supplies are best stocked around Memorial Day to Fourth of July,  

Spiral ham 1.49
Butter 1.99@@
Milk .99@@
Foster farms .99 whole chicken
Strawberries 2/4
Cantaloupe 2/4


About it.     A good day to stock the dairy.  

Thinking on your feet!

Yesterday we went to th grocery outlet.    For those not living in the PNW, grocery outlet is an overstock store.   You certainly have to know your prices, some things are best suited to a very large family.  They carry a whole wall of organic.    They sometimes carry test market things this don't  fly well.      They can be really a good thing if you can quickly think on your feet.   Obviously, if you don't eat what you buy, you haven't saved any anything.

Example : a few months ago, they had Kraft jalapeño white cheese.   We all like spicy, it was a buck a pound. I was all over it.   After analyzing it, I see why it didn't sell.   Some people would not touch a jalapeño for anything. They just don't  like hot.   The people that like hot, probably weren't all over it because it wasn't that hot.    Like goldilocks, it was just right for us,   The price was right.

Often times, like yesterday, we hit the jackpot.   Dole fruit snacks were .50 and they had no sugar added, very low in carbs considering the volume.  
I had already planned to put  bacon on part of them and cheese. I had a recipe for Mac and cheese with chicken and bacon,    Bacon was .50.     There were two left and I took both of them.   They have to be eaten today..or shortly thereafter.  We already have breakfast for dinner planned.    It worked out fine.  If it hadn't, I would be rearranging the meal plan to fit.

Sara Lee pound cake was frozen and it was gingerbread.    It was fifty cents.   I thawed it and we ate it for desert after dinner with some whip cream.   I put the rest in the fridge and it no doubt will be eaten today.  

I also picked up another taco kit.    It was a buck and had a May pull date.    I make my own taco seasoning to save money.  But, of they are going to give me taco seasoning and taco sauce for more than free, I'm not stupid, I'll take it.  Thank you very much.  The kit is cheaper than buying the taco shells plain from another store.  

I purchased chicken, artichoke and cheese sausage for three dollars.    I figure when the sausage is cit with veggies and cheese, it will have less of the sausage on it along with its excess baggage.  

I saved 75 percent,   Total spent was less than eight dollars.

Buying some things that cheap and incorporating them onto your meals goes a long ways to stretching your food dollar.  

Yesterday we had a Mac and Cheese  with chicken and bacon casserole that was made from sauce that had non fat fry milk in it instead of a high salt and fat alternative.    And broccoli.     Gingerbread pound cake with whip cream for desert.

I have breakfast for dinner and sausage and peppers left on the meal plan.    It just happened that all the processed meat landed at the end of the week.    I might switch one of next weeks meals to spread it out.  

I am trying at is point in time to eat down the pantry and freezer so we start fresh again.    It gives me a better perspective of what we really are so doing on food.    I spend seventy five dollars a week, consistently for several years now.   Ot bumped a little before Winco graced us with their presence.    Haggens did  a number on Albertsons and Safeways price structure.

But, that seventy five dollars a week built and maintained and grew a decent pantry and freezer stockpile.   We could probably eat for four to six  weeks on it.   It's that time to fmthemuear tomdoma pantry and freezer reduction and refill.   The can goods get rotated consistently.  The freezer does not.  
I want to get it back to a fair to eight week rotation on protein.  
Only then will I tell just how low , low is.   Right now, we are at 2/3 of snap and we have grown the stock and maintained it.   Thats not a bad thing, it will get us through the donut hole and if I invested that money, I sire would not have got fifty percent interest on my money.  
Fred Meyers ads are in.   Next post.






Groceries on the cheap is looking at the Put Dinner On The Table meal train from a different
 pro spective.  The emphasis is on purchasing good food( shelf- stable/ freezer staples )at the lowest possible cost and purchasing enough to last you until it goes on sale again -- Keeping a controlled non-perishable stock of the things you use on a regular basis. It means that when you shop, rather than purchasing just what you need for a day or a week, you  buy a loss leader protein, produce you will need on sale, a stock item if it's a RBP, and dairy instead.    This allows you to put well balanced meals on the table consistently  for a four dollar a day budget per person.   You spend more time on the planning and shopping end of the meal train and less on the cooking end by cooking efficiently.  

Four dollars a day is the target amount for people on snap.   My premise is that of you can do it on four dollars a day, spending more isn't hard.   You still get more bang for your buck.  

as all over it.   

Grocery outlet and dollar tree

We went to Kenmore today.    It was a gorgeous day and the drive is beautiful.
It was very fruitful.     The dollar store netted  three pair of sox for granddaughter and some odds and ends of household maintenance.    The only food was pizza sauce.

The grocery outlet had a lot of fifty cent clearance.  Bacon, fruit snacks, low carb, Sara Lee pound cake,
Chicken artichoke sausage was 2.99.

I saved 75 percent.