Hauls to 2/28

Fred Meyers

Barilla pasta 1.00
Baking chocolate .50
Avocado .99
English muffins 1.67

 Chicken sausage 3.29
Kielbasa 2.00
Diced tomatoes  .50
Beans .50
Total 23.41

QFC

Bread 1.00
Cottage cheese 1.25
Sour cream 1.25
Pear .64
Albacore tuna .99
Sharp cheese 4.99
Tater tots 1.19
Pie 3.19
Yougert 8 pack 1.99
Milk 1.99 overcharge
Cucumbers .99
Cream cheese (2) 2.99
Oranges 1.89
Peppers .99
Apples 5.34 (.89 #)

Total 38.64


Bacon 14.95

Total 77.00

The best of the ads

Sprouts Feb 27- March 6th
Blueberries .98
Tomatoes .98
Dried cranberries 1.99 lb
TomAtoes .98
Graoes 1.48
Green beans .98
Pears .98
Grapefruit .88

QFC 2/27-3/5

Ground beef 3.99

Thurs to sun only
Ground turkey 2/5
Butter 2/5
Barilla pasta 1.00


B5S5 
La Croix 1.99
Lean cuisine 1.88
Cheese 4.99

Safeways 

Milk 1.99@@
Digital only best foods 2.49

Kellogg’s cereals 3/5 -$$?
Jiff 2.50

Buy 4
BREYERS
Red Barron pizza
2.99 each

Fred Meyers 

B5S5
Frosted Flakes 1.99
Almond milk
Cheese 4.99
Cooked perfect 4.99

Foster farm chicken BOGO

5 # halos
Blackberries .99
Grapes 1.48
Kroger bacon 2.99 in 3 lb pkgs
Cantaloupe 2/5

Thursday thru Sunday
Butter 2/5
80/20 1.99

What we ate February

1. chicken noodle soup 
2. Brats, rice, peppers 
3. Chili 
4. Nachos 
5. Pizza
6. Burrito bowls 
7. Mac and cheese with ham 
8. Chicken noodles die soup, cheezy crescent rolls
9. Pizza
10. Toasted cheese, tomato soup (sick day) 
11. Tacos, home made refried beans, no fat. 
12. Homemade chicken noodle soup
13. Leftovers 
14. Pizza
15. Potato soup, cheezy drop biscuits 
16. Leftover pizza  and green salad 
17. Pancakes, orange slices, bacon 
18. Chicken soup
19. Quesadillas, apples ( emergency room) 
20. Crusty buns, homemade, tomato basil soup. 
21. Pork roast , mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables, sliced tomatoes 
22. Fajitas 
23. Pork sliders . Salad 
24. Sheet pan : sausage, potatoes. Radishes, carrots. Bread 
25. Hamburgers, French fries , fruit 
26. Out
27. Birthday! 
28. 
    

Meals under 5 dollar inspiration

Seems like Monday Kitchen Management is the same thing over and over and over,,,,,,the blog literally writes itself.  Words appear across a bar to make up the sentence. Clean out the refrigerator and dump anything dead 💀.  Lol

So, instead this is a list of menu ideas that are less than five dollar a meal for four people.  Some  are way lower.  You can eat well on four dollars a day,  Seattle is one of the seven most high COL areas in the nation.  One might think it is because of the housing market, but, I watch a lot of grocery hauls  across the nation, and the grocery prices  are a lot higher on most things.  Even a lot of things that come from California and Washington.

• Loaded potato soup 
• Chicken noodle soup, scratch 
• Tomato basil soup with or without blue cheese 
• Taco soup 
• Chili 
• Vegetable bean soup 
• Tacos 
• Enchaladas 
• Tostadas 
• Burrito bowls 
• Breakfast burritos 
• Green Chile pork tacos 
• Pizza. Pepperoni. 
• Pizza chicken 
• Sausage sheet pan 
• Sausage quiche 
• Sausage and bean soup 
• Spaghetti and meatballs or meat 
• Chicken spaghetti 
• Meatball subs 
• Pork cube sandwich 
• Pork roast
• Pork sliders
• Pulled pork sliders
• Pork fajitas 
• Mexican green chili pork (taste of Home ) 
• Sausage, pancakes, fruit 
• Bacon , eggs, pancakes 
• Hash browns, eggs, fruit 
• Spinach, feta and tomato omelet 
• Waffles , bacon, sliced oranges 
• Mac and cheese, peas and carrots 
• Toasted cheese, tomato soup 
• Broccolli and cheese pizza pockets 
• Pork stir fry 
• Chicken stir fry 
• Baked potato bar 
• Vegetable omelet 
• 
  
• Roast chicken Sunday dinner 
• Chicken stew
• Bbq chicken thighs and legs, wings 
• Sweet and sour chicken with rice
• Split Pea soup with ham 
• White beans and ham 
• Frittata 
• Red beans and rice 
• Pasta e Fagioli 
• Sloppy joes 
• Meatballs w gravy over mashed potatoes 
• Meatballs with cream sauce over noodles 
• Beef stroganoff 
• Pork stew 
• Pantry spaghetti (taste of Home ) 
• Bow tie and tomato, cream with sausage rounds, 
• Pork with orange sauce and rice 
• Glazed pork with sweet potatoes 
• Brats with apples and cabbage 
• Chicken with vegetables and biscuits 
• Chicken Normandy 
• Chicken and dumpling 
• Pork chops with apple, Craisens , stuffing. 
• Smoked paprika chicken 🍗 
• Beef tortilla taco casserole (Pillsbury) 
• Baked chicken nuggets. (Scratch) oven fries 
• 
  
• Meat ball subs

Basic ideas 

Pork loin is from one to two dollars a pound,   You can easily cut roasts, chops, and stew and stir fry meat from it.   

Chicken can be purchased for around a dollar all the time here. Breasts are 1.28 at winco often.  They come from Idaho.  Buy local chicken . 

Buy ground beef when it is on sale.   Cook it, made fat it, amd portion control it in bags in the freezer.  It just makes life easier.  Meatballs can be purchased cheaper than scratch. Use coupons if you can find them.  Costco ones are good, but I haven’t compared prices. 

Easiest , fastest. Way to cook a whole chicken when crispy skin isn’t an issue is to cook it in the slow cooker.  Cut an onion, roughly, quarter a large one or half 2 small ones. Dump on the bottom of the skow cooker,   Open the chicken, drain off any liquid and pay it m dry with a paper towel.  Using a sheet pan contains the mess.  Shake a seasoning salt or rub of choice on top of the chicken. Place on top of the onion.   Set the slow cooker on high for an hour a pound. Check for doneness 3/4 of the way through. I like 180 degrees—well done!   

Chicken will be moist with a lot of stock.   Remember your stock will be flavored by the rub you use.  

Meal plans

Part of groceries on the cheap is to be somewhat organized.   Make a plan, or plan to fail is an old adage.   Meal plans save time and money.   Things are just less stressful if you have a plan.

We rarely have hamburgers and French fries. Anytime you have a big hunk of meat, you eat more meat and meat is the most  expensive part of the meal.   The GOTC God’s were with us this weekend.  We have a new Sprouts.  They had marvelous sales.  85/15 beef patties were 1.99 for two pounds.  I walked next door to the dollar tree and they had orowheat shelf out and they had thin sandwich buns.  Top it off, QFC this week has frozen potatoes 1.69 for 2 pounds and I had a .50 coupon,  which made the potatoes 1.19.   Hamburger and French fries for 2 is 1.12 plus a salad.

• Hamburgers, French fries, salad 
• Pizza - chicken
• Chicken noodle soup 
• Tortilla taco casserole 
• Red beans and rice 
• Chicken Normandy, green beans, pear salad 
• Breakfast for dinner, 

Notes 

• Pizza chicken and chicken noodle soup share the same batch of chicken,   
• Tortilla taco casserole is Pillsbury and on the Internet. 
• Pear salad is from a pear bought for .64.  
• Beans and rice is a recipe out of a 10.00 or less dinner cookbook. 
• Beans can be added to the tortilla taco casserole. Double duty. 

Last month, we averaged a bit more than 40.00 a week.  That included 66 pounds of stock foods.   We are well stocked again.   I had been waiting for a case lot sale on diced tomatoes.  It wasn’t advertised as a case lot sale.ot was hiding on a little space in the ad.   Diced tomatoes can be a dollar.   Fifty cents is a way to get your stock and not pay more.   

Saturday

Simple ways to cut your food budget no one will ever notice.


Bread crumbs can be really expensive, at least two dollars a pound.  When you figure that you can get chicken breasts  and pork loins  for two dollars a pound or less. it’s not  too big of a stretch to discover making your own from the bread ends is a good idea.   Switching from bread crumbs alone to bread meat or make chicken nuggets from scratch to a mixture of equal parts of nuts, parm, and breadcrumbs is a way to reduce carbs and make the dish more healthy.  Winco has real parm cheese and broken nuts cheaper.  Nuts are in the bulk isle so you can I just what you need.

• Cream soup base is another way to control what ingredients you  use and makes a casserole much cheaper.  There are a couple of recipes, you choose the ingredients you want to use. 
• Making your own seasoned rice instead of a box is another way to spend a few minutes and save a lot.   It takes a lot of preservatives out of your diet to make your own mixes.  Measuring things is good  math skills for children.  
• Making some if the things that are easy and not too time consuming frees up money  for the things that are more expensive.  We would much rather have a pound of chicken breast than someone else’s dry bread. 
• Baby carrots are someone’s ugly carrots put  through a machine.  They are more than a dollar a pound.  Five pounds of carrots are 2.28 .   And you get the peelings for stock. 
• Stock can be almost three dollars a quart.   It can cost almost zero.  Again, it is ten minutes of time.  Dump it on an insta pot or a slow cooker and walk away. Vegetable or,chicken stock. 
• There are crusty bread rolls and peasant bread recipes that take minutes and cost fractions of what a loaf of bread costs.  Crusty rolls .21.  No, the decimal is not off. And peasant bread is a quarter.   Salt, water, yeast and flour.   
• Buying dry bean instead of canned beans saves a ton,  I didn’t do that before I got an insta pot. Beans don’t freeze well.  They have a very short  refrigerator life along with rice.   If you have a small family, scratch beans on the stove isn’t practical.  In the insta pot, or takes no more time than opening the can.  We just got beans for .50.  That’s a great price that doesn’t always happen. They can cost upwards of a dollar.  Scratch costs a nickel for the equivalent of a can. 
• Pinto beans are .67 a pound at the dollar tree.  Non gmo, and grown in the USA. 
• Rice when purchased at Costco in a bag costs .02 a serving. A bag of premade seasoned rice can be well over two dollars. Again, less than five minutes in the insta pot.
• Meal plans and carving out an hour a week to clean out the refrigerator and dump anything dead saves a lot of time during the dinner hour. Prep ingredients once for the week and make note of things you need to use up.  Make a plan, or plan to fail.   It is just less stressful. 
• Beans are a good way to stretch meat for tacos or even spaghetti .   If you are short on money, adding beans to enchiladas or rice to chicken enchiladas stretches your meat.   
• Stair stepping saves time and money.  That is the term I coined years  ago.  It is making more of something to be used later on the week. Cook once, eat twice.  That chili you had Monday can become a baked potato bar topping on Wednesday. Or a burrito bowl with rice and peppers and lettuce and tomato.   Or, the rice you cooked on Tuesday can be under meat and veggies Tuesday and in a casserole another day.  
• Soup is always a good idea.  Warm, comforting with a piece of hard crusty bread 🥖 and cheap.  Potato soup cost less than a dollar for four servings.  Chicken noodle less than two.  Chili 2.32.   
• Revisit chili or taco meat and beans with cheese, tomato, black olives and peppers on top of tortilla chips.   Mild chilies are .69 a can at Winco.  Double that for the name brand.  So,e product, different label. 
• Best time saver is to cook a batch of ground beef when you get it home.  De fat it, and portion control in bags for the freezer.   It saves countless hours at dinner time. Tacos on ten minutes.   Take it out of the freezer, bang it on the counter or give it ten seconds o the microwave, and place room a small pan with taco seasoning and water.   While it is heating, chop the toppings,  and heat the shells in the microwave.   

Things like taco seasoning, gravy mix, ranch dressing mix can be full of preservatives and cost a dollar an OUNCE.  Make your own.  It is a good lesson in fractions and measurements  for a child,

27.89 a week...bump

So far this month, we have averaged 27.89 a week on groceries.   That’s what can happen when you are on a replentish based grocery shopping mantra instead of a panic grocery shopping mantra.  Instead of buying your groceries one week at a time or one day at a time and looking at a barren refrigerator and cupboards, you replentish  what you have used from a basic, calculated ingredient supply.

It is based on the same premise of a stockbroker.  You wouldn’t trust a stockbroker that bought stocks  when they were at their highest, and sold them when they were at their lowest .  Replenish grocery shopping buys your stable items when they are at their lowest, and eats them when they are at their highest,   You buy produce that is in season.  It just makes sense.

Our grocery bill has been less than thirty dollars a week, until this week.  I was waiting for months now for a case lot sale.   It never happened.  But, this week beans and tomatoes were .50 a can at Fred Meyers.  It was a little blurb on the ad.  Certainly not front and center.  I knew we needed to look for diced tomatoes because the designated shelf space for tomatoes was showing white.  LOL

I stocked diced tomatoes and some canned beans,  I make dried beans, but it is a good thing to have some canned in case the power goes out.  That happened this week, but it was back on by morning,
I bought black and garbanzo beans because those dry beans are expensive and hard to find,

Tomorrow, bacon and Yoplait is in sale cheap at the Kroger stores.  I will take advantage of that too.
That’s how we eat on less than four dollars a day and eat well.

It is not necessarily what you buy as much as it is when and where you buy it.  Prices can be as much as a two dollar spread on the same exact item.  It has nothing to do with labor costs, both stores employees belong  to the same labor union.  It pays to know your prices on the things you buy on a regular basis.   I am not worried about that can of cranberry sauce I buy once a year, but I am worried about that can of diced tomatoes that I probably use four of per week.

Stocking basic food enough for a month to six weeks just makes sense. Your life expectancy is impacted by whether or not you have food in the house.  Food anxiety is a real thing and it isn’t good.

Unless you are in an area like NY city where space is at a premium, you should be able on a regular food budget to stock a pantry.  If we can do it on four dollars a day, anyone with a regular paycheck or snap money can too.   Rice. Beans, flour, tomatoes, pasta, pasta sauce, canned or frozen vegetables, some canned fish or chicken.  It is enough to get you by if you need to.   Don't depend on someone else to bail you out in an emergency.  They might not be able to bail themselves out.

Hauls to 2/20. 27.89 week.

QFC

Eggs .99
Yoplait .50
Blueberries 3.99
Tomatoes 2.50
Milk .99
Total 10.96


Costco
Mozzarella cheese 5 lbs 10.79
Bacon 13.99

35.74 total

Winco
Roma tomatoes .88
Naval oranges. .78
Bell peppers .98
Grapes  1.98
Cucumbers .48
Apples .98
Ice cream 2.98
Tortilla chips .98
Hormel ham cubes 2.48
Diced tomatoes .58
Tortillas. (20) 1.48
Total 28.67

Grand total 64.41

The best of the ads

The mailman, brought me the ads yesterday....I almost wet my pants until I realized they were LAST Week’s ads that expired in 8 hours.   Lol
These are from the Internet.  Safeways ads are like nailing jello to a tree.  

Safeways
Eggs .99@@



QFC
Friday, Saturday, digi 
Bacon 2.99

Yoplait refrigerator box 1.99

******
Peppers
English cucumbers
Apples
Oranges
Pears
.99

Draper valley whole or parts chickens 1.29


B5S5 

Meatballs 4.99-2#
 Mayo 1.99
Crest 1.99
Lunchmeat 2.49

Fred Meyers

Friday/Saturday digi 
Bacon 2.99

*****
Blue berries organic 3.99
Avacodos .99
3# oranges 2.99


Diced tomatoes 
Beans 
2/1.00

Note that this price on beans and tomatoes are the cheapest you are going to find.   It is stock time. 

Tuesday concepts.

Doing research and making a few lists will go a long ways towards cutting your food bill and making good food that your family will enjoy eating.   The bottom line is that making tahini crusted eggplant might sound really good to the clean eating crowd, it will do your family not a bot of good of they don’t eat it.    No food will do your family good if you are feeding it to the garbage disposal.   

First, make a list of meals that your family will eat and use sources of protein that are economical.   For us, we want to try for under two dollars a pound.  I can still get pork loin, boneless,  skinless , chicken breast , whole chicken, eggs, cheese, and beans and some good quality hamburger.   Finding recipes that are efficient scratch cooking is a great help.   Cheap, efficient scratch cooking your family will eat.  

Now, list the ingredients that you need to cook those meals.   Simplify,   The less number of items that you need to stock and purchase, the easier your experience will be.

Separate that list, between perishables and non perishables.   Now, you have a list of non perishables and protein that you need to stock,    It will probably take a while, but I’m time you can develop a four to six week supply of non perishables.

List your protein and buy one protein a week in bulk to make however many meals you will eat on a months time.   If we eat beef one day a week, we will need four meals worth of hamburger.  Buy it in bulk and break it down onto meal sized portions.  We fry and de fat the whole batch and then portion control it.  This saves time and money.  There is little waste.  Make best use of sales and buy your protein at the RBP.

When it comes to non perishables, buy them on sale  and buy as many as you can up to your self regulated stock limit.   List your stock goal with your list of ingredients,   Soon, you will be going to the store to replenish your stoCk if something is on sale, buy your protein, and fresh produce and dairy. Most dairy goes on sale once or so a month and has a four week pull date.   Use sales.  Keeping a four week supply of eggs gives you the luxury of buying eggs 🥚 when they are the cheapest and filing on when are low.   Rotate.  

Big low, eat high.   The basic stockbroker mentality is to buy the stock low and sell when it is high.  It’s a winning theory.

Having a four to six week supply of food is an insurance policy against disaster.  Snow, government shutdown, illness any number of things can happen and having food is a good thing.

Kitchen Management aka meal prep

Yet another kitchen management Monday.  Kitchen Management aka meal prep saves a lot of time and money.  It makes dinner hour  a lot less hectic.  

1. Potato soup 
2. Pizza 
3. Chicken and rice Enchiladas 
4. Baked potato bar 
5. Chicken and rice soup 
6. Chili and cornbread 
7. Pancakes, bacon, oranges. 

1. This meal plan is based on super cheap because I surmise that the people on snap have gone six  weeks  with their money and it’s getting in short supply,   
2. It also leap frogs ingredients to make best use of ingredients and avoid waste and uses the basics bought in the beginning . 

• Wash and disinfect countertops and sinks and drains.
• Clean out refrigerator and dump anything dead 💀. 
• Wash kitchen floor.  Wash kitchen towels 
• Wash outside of refrigerator. 
• Cook chicken for enchiladas and soup. 
• Save stock. 
• Put a pot of bone broth on in slow cooker, 

Meal Plans

Meal plans are a necessary part of groceries on the cheap.  They save time and money.  This week, I am going to do a different set of meal plans with the emphasis on the cheap.   People that got their snap money in January for  January and February and don’t know for sure yet when they are going to get March, may need some inspiration.

• Pizza.  Crust cost .19 and cheese is a bit over two dollars a pound at Costco.   Cost for a cheese pizza is a dollar. 
• Potato soup.  Cost for four servings is less than a dollar. A package of turkey bacon is at the dollar tree and a good topping.   Or make croutons from bread ends,
• Chicken and rice enchiladas.  Use homemade green enchilada sauce. 
• Pancakes, turkey bacon, sliced oranges,   Oranges were .78 a pound, bacon is at the DT,  
• Chicken noodle soup , cheezy biscuits - or use leftover rice and make it chicken rice, soup. 
• Baked potato bar 
• Chili, cornbread 

Notes : 

1. Make chili before the baked potato bar.  Chilli makes a good topping . 
2. Chicken enchaladas and chicken soup can share one batch of chicken,   
3. Potato soup is loaded  with veggies,  cheezy biscuits are fast and add cheese to the protein. 

Saturday Dollar Dinners

Last night we had potato soup and a cheezy drop biscuit.  It was easy and took almost no time,   Potato soup is full of veggies and satisfying and adding a drop cheese biscuit was fast and added some protein.  

Quick dinners keep us on track and eating scratch on a budget.  The hardest part of the soup is peeling carrots and potatoes and citing them up.  Three minutes in the insta pot with three cups of a broth and you are almost done.  I added a three ingredient drop biscuits made with bisquick and dinner was done .   Cost on the soup is about a  dollar and the biscuits were probably less.

Having some dinners that are super inexpensive means that you can afford some more expensive dinners and  still keep an average.

Pizza is another meal that everyone likes and can cost as little as a dollar. It’s not what you buy as much as it is when and where you buy it.  Pizza crust ( food processor pizza crust from the food channel ) costs .19.  Add 1/5 of a jar of pizza sauce from the dollar tree (name brand ) and cheese that you purchase for 2-2.50 a pound and you have a cheese pizza.  Add some pepperoni, sausage, ham, vegetables, and you have a pizza.
When I cut up peppers for fajitas, I cut the bottom and top off the pepper, chop them and put them in the freezer for pizza.  Having a freezer door shelf for pizza is a fin thing,  anything that can go on a pizza that you can save from another meal is a good thing.  Freeze the Pizza sauce in an ice cube tray and pop the cubes out into a zip lock.
The last pizza we had I used ham cubes from the freezer, she leftover sausage that we got for free and I used  for breakfast burritos, and some peppers.  

Waste not, want not, just takes a few minutes and can save a lot.

Friday recipe

Last week during Kitchen Management day, we made breakfast burritos for the  freezer. It is a good thing to have when time is short.

• Flour tortillas - 1.00 at the dollar  tree .  I have got them as cheap as .50 at qfc during  Cinco  de Mayo sale. 
• Refried beans  - homemade leftover 

• Sausage, cooked and de fatted,   Ours was free, but two dollars is my buy price.  It can be as much as six,  right now, it is two at qfc with a digi coupon.  I have also got it at Winco with a paper coupon for two dollars.   
• Eggs 1/2 dozen @ 1.00 a dozen is .50,  scrambled 
• Cheese -1/2 cup .50

Total cost 2.00 for 10 or .20 each. With the sausage, it would be about 2.50.  We did,not use all the sausage I still had enough for two pizzas and still have enough left for another probably five burritos.  

1. Layer small amount of refried beans in lower third of the tortilla .
2. Top with s spoonful of sausage, egg, and cheese each. 
3. Roll the tortilla , tucking in the sides as you go. 
4. Wrap the tortillas, amd place in a gallon bag, 

To cook, unwrap and microwave intil thawed, or unwrap, brush with olive oil and brown in the oven or a hot air fryer. 

Hauls to 2/13

It’s snowy here, and we don’t drive in the snow.  It’s not as much what you do, but rather, what an inexperienced driver may do.  Lol   In a break in between storms...

QFC

Cottage cheese 1.39

Cake mix -FREE -dumped in the food bank barrel

Jimmy dean sausage FREE

Cream cheese 1.29

Ore Ida fries 2 lbs 1.79

Total 7.55

2 loaves bread coupon 2.08

Total 9.63 

The best of the ads 2/13

Yet again, the mailperson didn’t deliver.  

QFC

Blues 3.99

Roast sale BOGO ????

Digital coupons 

Cheerios 1.79$$

Hillshire farm sausage rope  1.49

Sour cream /cottage cheese 1.49

Milk .99

Eggs .99

Yoplait 10/5

*******

Safeways 

Milk 1.99@@

Bread .99@@

Chicken of seamtuma .99@@

Oranges, apples, .99

Green peppers, cucumbers .99

 

*******

Fred Meyers 

FF chicken breast, thighs BOGO 

Cantaloupe 2/5

Eggs.99

Yoplait 10/5

Digital coupons 

Cheerios 1.79

Ore Ida  potatoes 1.79

Best foods 2.99

Sour cream, cottage cheese 1.29

Cream cheese 1.49

Pasta,4/2

Smoked sausage 1.99

Tuesday in the snow,

Seems like the entire United States is under a blanket of snow.  Even Hawaii had snow.   Our car is almost twenty years old. It is in good working condition because we had a lot of repairs done last year.  We aren’t driving it because if here were to be an accident, the insurance company would total it and I’m not ready to buy a new car.  The stick market crash of Kate has done a number on our assets.   So, we haven’t t gone to the grocery store.  Fortunately, when you have a stock and go to replenish the stock, there is no need.  And the asset in all that is that our budget will balance in spite of the fact the utility bills have been 50 percent higher.

I’m keeping a long term and short term list.  So far, nothing we can’t live without.  

The stores have a three DAY supply of food,   When people don’t carry their own four to six week supply of food, they depend on the grocery store to prep for a snow storm.   It’s crazy.   Shelves are bare.   The stores are cutting their hours to twelve hours.   All because of a mindset.   I get that people on one bedroom walk ups on NYC can’t very well stock food.  Rent is sky high and storage is at a premium.  But, the majority of people can at least have a week ahead.  

If you don’t lay top dollar for your food, and you aren’t t in the habit of buying one days worth of food at a time, you can find sales  and pay no  more and have more food.  

I have been sick and watching a lot of grocery Hauls,   It’s what I do.   I try to keep abreast of what stores seem to have the best prices on food and where they are.  What are people spending habits and how they can do better for better nutrition and less money,    The food snap assistance debacle because of the shutdown has been a real eye opener.  

One lady, who shall be incognito and I’m not judging her because I don’t  know her story or what she has been through. Judging  people is not fair when we all have our hardships one time or another.   I wiI will judge her cart for the betterment of someone making better decisions.

Two kinds of character chicken reconstituted nuggets, 8.00 worth of individual potato chips , and boxed individual cookies.  I see almost no food value, paying for a icon so chicken can be ground up and reshaped, and a potential of saving good money and st r e t c h i n g to the next money, whenever that might be.

I also could see that with four small children, she maybe is tired and has her hands full at dinner time.
A solution  might have been to get with her mom or a couple of neighbors and get one adult to
entertain the children, and another one or two to make some easy freezer meals.  Dumping a meal on a slow cooker on the. Or not before the kids get up, having a cup of tea or coffee is a easy way to start a day and provide better meals for your family.  

There are a lot of recipes out there that take ten minutes and make dinner happen.  Choices, we all have choices.   It’s making good ones that sometimes are not the easiest thing to do.

Monday Kitchen Management aka food prep

Kitchen management is a tool that saves time and money.  In addition, tackling a little of the deep cleaning each week, saves a big job down the road.

• Wash kitchen floor. 
• Clean and disinfect countertops and sinks and drains . 
• Wash inside of refrigerator and dump anything dead 💀. 
• Note what needs to be used up soon. 
• Wash vegetables with vinegar water and dry, 
• Make refried beans in insta pot, 
• Make chocolate cupcakes 
• Make a grocery  list ? 

Meal plans 2/11/19

Meal plans are a necessary part of saving time and money.   It makes the dinner hour a lot less hectic. 

•  Chicken noodle soup, rolls 
• Pizza
• Breakfast for dinner 
• Sausage and bean stew
• Pulled pork sandwich, salad, fries 
• Chicken and rice Caribbean 
• Tacos, refried beans, Spanish rice 

Notes

1. Chicken noodle soup in the insta pot.  Use noodles left from a bag. 
2. Breakfast for dinner and pizza are family favorites and easy. 
3. Sausage and bean soho from the taste of home soup cookbook. Sausage was free .
4. Pulled pork from weeks past.  Homemade rolls from kneads homesteader 
5. chicken and rice from soups and stews 
6. Tacos from hamburger already cooked.  

1. 
   

Almost free food

I am still advocating that everyone of at all possible should have a stock of basic food to last you four  to six weeks.  It doesn’t have to happen overnight, but it should happen.   This can be done oult of
of your regular food budget, if you just buy things on sale and buy multiples instead of one thing at full price.  There’s that nasty f word again, lol.

In this day and age, one doesn’t know what can happen with climate change, the government, and any number of things that can happen including loosing your job.  Besides the fact that, not having to run to the store right after payday because your cupboards are bare and there is a jar of pickles on your refrigerator is a good thing,  anything that reduces stress is a good thing,

Not to long ago, one Christmas, The interstate was flooded .  Trucks couldn’t get to the grocery stores to restock.  Grocery stores carry a three DAY supply of food.   That’s food for thought.

I digress.    Almost free food.

I priced 32 ounces ( 4 cups ) of chicken stock.  It was 2.88.  You can virtually make chicken stock from your garbage and it takes a matter of minutes.  Our chicken soup recipe for the insta pot  takes cooking chicken thighs and carrots and celery.  When chopping the vegetables. Save the peelings and the scraps.  Put them in a zip lock or container for the freezer.  When you have deboned the thighs for the chicken soup, add the bones to the vegetable scraps. Add scraps as you make them .
When you have enough, place the bones, scraps. And some herbs on a slow cooker and fill it within an inch of the top with water.  Let cook all night or all day, whichever works for you, after 12 hours, strain it and freeze in a bag or a jar that has about an inch of headroom.  You just spent about 10
minutes of your time and saved at least 2.88.   And, your stock has no preservatives in it.


Bread crumbs are similar, a ten minute job recycling your garbage before it hits the landfill can make breadcrumbs.  I cost them at .27 an ounce,  even at the dollar tree they are 2.00 a pound. At ,27 they are 4.32 a pound.  Hmm 4.32 or FREE.

A quart of homemade stock and a pound of homemade bread crumbs saves 7.20.  7.20 buys 12 cans of diced tomatoes in a non BPA can at Winco.   Food for thought.   A good start on a pantry.