Wednesday Quick Tip (5)

Make a cookbook for your kids and teach them to cook from it. First, assemble recipes you know your children like. Type or write them out and put them into an inexpensive binder - one for each child. Once a week or a few times a month, have your children in the kitchen with you actively participating in the cooking of one of these recipes. You may cook the same recipe with them on more than one occasion, until you reach the point where your children can make each dish completely on their own without your assistance. (This might literally take years, depending on how young your children are when you start.) You can keep adding to the cookbook as you and your kids find new favorites or make changes/adjustments to recipes you already have.

Try to cover a wide spectrum here - main dishes, vegetables and sides, soups, baking, and so on. By the time your children are ready to leave the nest, they should not only be comfortable in the kitchen, but also have a "custom" cookbook of all their favorite dishes to take along with them so that as young people just starting out, they don't fall into a trap of eating too much fast-food or canned soup only because they don't know how to prepare the good meals you've always been cooking for them.

PS - Along these same lines: This past Spring we decided to make the "Hope Chest" concept part of our garage sale and thrift store shopping. My husband put some shelves up in one of our closets as storage and we've been every so often buying things we know our kids will need/use when they're on their own for the first time. So far we have one set of pots/pans, a set of plain white dishes, two sets of casserole dishes, plus some odds and ends like a cutting board and toaster. Our goal is to have as many kitchen items as possible for them so that they don't face that initial expense.

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Super (Expensive) Suppers.

Have places like SUPER SUPPERS made it to your area yet? I was utterly dumbfounded when a fellow homeschool mom raved to me about it then said she got 12 meals for just under $220. She invited me to try it with her sometime and as I was still trying desperately to wrap my mind around the concept, I only managed to stammer a reply along the lines of, "We usually don't spend that much on food." (And I'm hoping my mouth wasn't hanging open in stupefied shock for too long before I answered.)

In a nutshell, these places take the concept behind ONCE A MONTH COOKING and have "work stations" set up for you where all the food is prepped and you just need to assemble it. You make up your various dishes based on their menu and bring it home for freezing.

I have to give credit to whomever came up with this idea and sold people on it, because - wow. I never would've guessed anyone would go for it, yet it seems to be doing well. I should say seems to be doing well in certain areas. Someone tried to open one very near my neighborhood and it was only there for a few months before closing. I think the owners didn't do enough demographic research first. Upper-class suburbia may be embracing the idea, but working class neighborhoods? Not so much.

All that said... you can do the same thing at home, for a fraction of the cost. As I listened to my friend talk about it, I realized, in many ways, I already do, since we do all our baking at once and frequently cook our meat all on the same day. In other words, just because it's often called "once-a-month-cooking" doesn't mean you have to cook for a full month. You can cook for an entire week or just a few nights. Set up your kitchen in the same way Super Suppers does, by assembling all the ingredients first,(If your kids are past the toddler stage, they can help.) and then start your cooking.

Here are some links you might like, if the cooking-several-meals-at-once idea appeals to you:

SHEKNOWS.COM

ORGANIZED HOME -FREEZER COOKING - (Also, this site has tons of printable forms for building a "home organizer" notebook. Honestly, for a lot of the things - like the price book page - I just use plain notebook paper because it's cheaper than printing, but you still might find some forms here you like.)

MOMSBUDGET.COM

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Wednesday Quick Tip (3)

So, do you have a bacon lover in the family? I do! While my entire family likes it, one member - my son - LOVES the stuff. Since it's not exactly the healthiest thing out there, I do limit the intake. Still, occasionally I'll pick some up and here's something I've found very helpful.

Have you seen those packages of microwavable "pre-cooked" bacon that cost way too much for 15 or 16 slices? You can make your own pre-cooked slices easily enough, buying the inexpensive store brands of regular bacon. Fry or microwave the entire package at the same time. Er... I mean, fry a few pieces at once, but cook the whole pack while you're at it. :) Cook it until just slightly underdone for your preferences.

Blot off the excess grease, then refrigerate it. (I keep it in a plastic container, with layers separated by some parchment paper.) When you want to serve some bacon, just take out the number of slices you want and crisp them up in the microwave. We have a small 700 watt microwave and it usually takes 20 seconds to warm up 4 slices.

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How I shop, Part 5.

The lowdown.

I said I wanted to give a complete breakdown of one entire shopping day, and so here it is. Please note - if you were to only buy what I've bought this week alone, you wouldn't be able to make many meals. This is because I buy things over time and keep them as staples, so each week I'm only picking up some particular needs and items I find on sale. (More in full post.)

We did not go to any garage sales this week. The weather was hot and we aren't currently looking for anything in particular. We did stop by a used book store, where I found a Spanish 1 for Christian Schools textbook and teacher manual for $1 each and I picked those up. We have been listening to Spanish language CDs from the library and I figured this could give us some reinforcement.

Total: $2.13

Our first store stop was Dollar General. I bought a 6 pack of toilet paper (which we won't actually need until next week) for $1, a bag of cat food for $3, also not needed for another week or so, and a $1 stick of Suave deodorant.

Total $5.33

Next we went to Save-Rite, where I bought:
1) 1 bag of potatoes: $2.50
2) 2 lbs yellow onions: $1.25 - didn't need them right away, but this was a good price.
3) orange gelatin mix: .32 cents
4) raspberry gelatin mix: .32 cents - My daughter handed her cold on to my son and jello is one of his "comfort foods".
5) one can of no-salt added corn: .40 cents
6) one can of diced tomatoes: .50 cents
7) two cans of tomato paste: .68 cents
8) 1 bottle of BBQ sauce: $1.00 - because we'd used up the last of it in our BBQ chicken sandwiches last week; don't need it right away, but I consider it a staple to keep on hand.
9) 1 carton of oatmeal: $1.35 - my son also loves oatmeal for breakfast when he's feeling ill - this will last us a long time.
10) vegetable oil: $1.65 - don't need it currently, but was on sale

Total: $9.97

At Winn Dixie we only bought 2 bell peppers for .98 cents and a 4 lb. bag of kidney beans for $3.49 - another item that will last us a long time.

Total: $4.47

At Wal-Mart we bought:

1) 1 lb. bag of carrots: .79 cents
2) bananas (at .48 cents a pound): $1.15
3) raw spinach: $1.98
4) mayo: $1.00 (to use in a salad dressing)
5) Cajun seasoning: .50 cents (didn't need right away, but is often hard to come by at this price)
6) oregano: .50 cents
7) 12 oz bag of egg noodles: .60 cents
8) one whole chicken: $3.62
9) ham: $2.50 (marked down)
10) 1 5 lb. bag of "tortilla mix" on the clearance aisle - .50 cents. I've never tried making tortillas before, but I figure if I blow it, I only wasted 50 cents, but if I succeed, each tortilla will cost less than 2 cents.
11) large bottle of white vinegar: $1.85 (didn't need immediately, but my supply was getting a little low)
12) one bag frozen mixed veggies: .78 cents

Total: $15.77

Grand Total: $37.67

In the interest of full disclosure, my husband bought yogurt and fruit on Friday on his way home, for a total of $5.85, so he could make my son some smoothies as snacks, so to be fair, our real total for this week is: $43.52

When you combine the things we bought this week plus things we already had on hand, these are our 14 lunches and dinners for the week -

1) chef salad and cheese bread
2) roasted chicken and vegetables (onions, carrots, potatoes), steamed green beans (from a frozen pack), rolls
3) baked potatoes "stuffed" with broccoli and covered in a cheese sauce, spinach salad
4) "fake" red beans and rice w/ ham chunks (I say "fake" because I used kidney beans instead of genuine red beans), biscuits, jello
5) chicken noodle soup and garlic cheese biscuits (both at son's request.)
6) garden chili - a chili made with beans, ground beef, and veggies: some carrots, corn, bell pepper, and tomatoes - Texans you are free to groan at my calling it "chili" ;), corn bread
7) chicken enchiladas, refried beans, Spanish rice
8) ham and mashed potatoes, broccoli, rolls
9) vegetable-beef soup, garlic bread
10) chicken creole served on rice, biscuits, chocolate pudding*
11) hamburger-macaroni casserole, jello
12) Sloppy Joes, oven fries, carrot sticks with ranch dressing as a dip
13) veggie-topped pizza and garlic bread, leftover jello or pudding
14) Potatoes O'Brien and scrambled eggs. (Yes, we eat eggs for dinner sometimes, typically on Fridays if we do.)

Breakfasts are a choice of waffles, pancakes, muffins or oatmeal - with bananas, apple slices, or oranges on the side.

If you look over what I bought and compare it with what I have/will be cooked/cooking, you'll see that several ingredients I already had. For instance, I still had several containers of ground beef from last week, as well as already prepared refried beans. I also had eggs already and some iceberg lettuce. I almost never buy iceberg lettuce, but we had it from last week because of the tacos we had, so I used it up in a chef salad with ham, cheese, cucumber and carrots. We had BBQ chicken on hamburger buns last week, so I'm using the remaining 4 buns from the pack to make Sloppy Joes this week. I also didn't need any baking supplies this week. My muffins were made with leftover zucchini from last week and I had plenty of my master baking mix on hand to make waffles, pancakes, rolls and biscuits.

One other note - because of the price of milk lately, we've cut back to only one gallon every two weeks. I "stretch" it by mixing it with reconstituted powdered milk.

I don't know how helpful this information truly is, but I wanted to show specifically what one week's shopping produced.

*I make chocolate pudding using this recipe:

1 1/2 cups instant nonfat powdered milk
5 cups sugar
3 cups cornstarch
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups unsweetened cocoa

Mix all ingredients until they are well blended. Store in an airtight container.

To use, stir the mix in the container before measuring out 2/3 cup of the mix into a saucepan. Add 2 cups milk and cook over low heat, stirring, until mixture thickens and comes to a boil. Continue stirring for 1 minute. Remove from heat and pour into individual serving dishes. Pudding will thicken further as it cools.

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Free printable recipe cards.

GRAPHIC GARDEN offers some very cute, free printable recipes cards you can use with the "Gifts in a Jar" recipes I mentioned in my last post. The site owner specifically says you can give these cards as gifts, so you are not bound by any "home, personal use only" restrictions.

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Wednesday Quick Tip

Save your scraps in the kitchen!

You already know that you can make a great broth from chicken or turkey bones, even if you've never actually done it, but did you realize you don't *have* to use the whole vegetables as so many recipes tell you, too? You can use the scraps and have the same good results.

THIS SITE gives stock making instructions, including explaining how to use your scraps instead of whole veggies.

And save your citrus peels, too - lemons, oranges, limes, grapefruit. First, you can make CANDIED CITRUS PEELS out of them. (Hint: if you cut the peels in very narrow strips, they make an extra fancy touch as homemade cake decorations.)

If candied peels aren't your thing, save them anyway if you have a garbage disposal. At night once your kitchen is closed for the evening and the dishes are done, wipe down your sink and toss some peels in the disposal and give it a whirl. It'll fill your kitchen with a nice citrus-y scent.

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How I shop, Part 4.

It's entirely likely this post should be titled "What I do when I get home from shopping." but as it follows along with the other posts, I figured I should stay in the same title-category. Now that you know where I go and what I buy, I thought I'd explain what I do with it. But first, I want to finally address the shopping only in one store issue. (More in full post.)

We lived for awhile in an area with only one store nearby and it wasn't at all feasible for us to drive the additional 19 miles each way once a week to visit other stores. This meant we had to rely on one grocery store for most of our needs. Once a month we did make the longer drive, and we included trips to a bread thrift store and a Goodwill store with it. For regular weekly shopping, though, we actually went to our local store 2 or 3 times in the same week. (Usually 2 of those trips would be my husband stopping there on his way home from work, to avoid using gas unnecessarily.) We did this because while advertised sale prices typically last for a full week, mark-down prices could happen any time. My husband would run in and check the meat aisle for anything marked down and look for any other items he could find, in the produce section and also in the back of the store where the clearance mark-downs are left. These mark-downs might include anything from bakery goods - like hamburger buns; canned goods - dented is fine! Really. You just need to worry about cans that have puffed out; dried herbs and spices; and sometimes non-food items like cough medicine. Because we were there so often, we actually became well acquainted with several of the employees and they were often kind enough to tell us as soon as they saw us about any unadvertised specials. Other than that, we followed the same patterns we do now. We shopped for loss-leaders and built our menus around any good deals we could find.

When we go shopping on Saturdays, between the garage sale/thrift store stops and multiple grocery store visits, we don't get home until lunch and we are definitely hungry! (I should note - we ALWAYS leave the house with bottles of water - not the one-time use only kind; washable bottles refilled from our refrigerator - and some type of snack, such as cookies or muffins. This is to give us a boost at around 10:30 when we might start feeling some hunger pangs and prevent us from wasting money on packaged snacks or junk food.) When we get home, we put the groceries away quickly and have lunch. Lunch might be something that's been simmering in the Crockpot or something quick and easy to fix, such as a salad and microwave baked potatoes.

After lunch, my work begins. First, I have to decide our menu for the week. Yes, I really do this - after we've been shopping. Hee. Obviously, I already have the meals in mind, but now I have to figure out which meal we'll be eating when. I use a simple chart: FOUND HERE to work out our meals. As I mentioned in my MAKING MIXES post, I do a lot of baking on Sundays to cover breakfasts for the week. So typically, my breakfast boxes on the chart simply say "choice" unless I'm preparing something different, like eggs. In the "Snacks" category, I write down things that I know need to be eaten up that week. For instance, if I've got homemade jam I want to make sure is used up, I write that down so I can remember to tell the kids to have toast and jam at least once that week. Lunches and dinners are determined mostly by order in which perishables should be consumed and anything that will have an impact on eating time - like knowing we'll be getting home just before dinner on a certain day because of a field trip.

The next thing I need to determine is what meats need to be cooked immediately. The best way to explain that is by example. This Saturday I purchased 5 lbs of ground beef. It had a sell-by date of the 17th, and so was marked down from over $9 to just over $6. This means, though, that I didn't want to leave it sitting uncooked in my refrigerator all week. Saturday afternoon I made a ground-beef "starter" mix. I put it in a bowl and added one large chopped onion (or about two cups), 1 chopped bell pepper, 3 grated carrots, 4 pressed gloves of garlic, 2 stalks of finely chopped celery and 1 cup of bread crumbs (made by giving a slice of bread a whirl in the blender.) I browned this entire mix in batches and then divided it among 7 different containers. Three of these containers went into the freezer to be used another week and the other 4 went into the refrigerator. One container was used to make the tacos for my daughter's birthday. I mixed it with a can of petite diced tomatoes and some HOMEMADE TACO SEASONING MIX (This recipe is very similar to mine except I don't use the salt or cayenne pepper.) This afternoon, I used some more of the meat mix, as well as some of my pinto bean mix* - a mix that can be used in several recipes, including refried beans - to make chili for lunch. I will also be using the mix in a vegetable beef soup, and the other container will become shepherd's pie.

I also bought a family pack of chicken thighs that was marked down for quick sale, so while I was working on my beef mix, I cooked them in my Crockpot. (Just threw them in with some chopped onion, some dried herbs and a little bit of water.) The chicken was divided into 4 containers and this week will be: Chicken and rice soup, made with a broth from boiling down the bones I kept after picking off most of the chicken; BBQ chicken on a bun - I heat the chicken with some BBQ sauce and serve it on hamburger buns; creamed chicken and peas on potato pancakes, and chicken stir fry. (Because the chicken is already cooked, I stir fry the veggies and throw the chicken in at the last minute just to heat it.)

Normally, I would've also made my pinto-bean mix on Saturday, but as I was busy with also preparing some things for Father's Day, I put that off until Monday afternoon.

I had to buy onions this week, as we were running low, so I also took the time to chop all of them and put them in a couple of freezer containers. This works great. On busy nights, I just have to scoop out whatever I need and add them to my recipes. I don't even thaw them. They cook just fine as is.

I guess you can see what I mean about using lots of mixes! In addition to the ones I've already mentioned here, I also used a Spanish Rice mix last night to serve with our tacos. Sometimes, I think the mixes are just a psychological advantage. For instance, I could probably assemble the ingredients for the taco seasoning mix right as I'm making tacos without really adding much prep-time, but somehow knowing even that one little step is taken care of makes the cooking just seem easier. On the other hand, they really can be advantageous - having my ground beef already browned and ready to go knocks several minutes off prep time and really speeds things up in the evening when I'm getting dinner together. It also allows me to take advantage of bulk item prices when they're a good deal. I bought a 4 lb. bag of pinto beans this week, because I knew I could use them up in my mix and the per pound price was significantly less than the cost of a single pound bag.


*Pinto Bean Mix

This is very simple. I take 2 lbs of dried beans (washed and picked over) and put them in a pot of water. I bring them to boil for two minutes, remove from heat and cover and let stand for an hour. I drain them and wash them in a colander then put them back in the pot. I add 1 large or 2 medium chopped onions (2 cups from my freezer container), two pressed gloves of garlic, and 3 tablespoons of cajun seasoning. I cover this with water and bring back to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for a few hours. That's it. Once they're cooked and soft, I divide the mix among 5 containers and freeze whatever I won't be using that week.

To make refried beans, I mash 1 container of the beans with a potato masher, adding a little water to get the consistency I like and mix in 1/2 cup salsa. Probably that's some kind of terrible blow to real Mexican cooking, but that's how my family likes them. :)

Next week I'll give you a complete breakdown of every item I purchase this coming Saturday and where it will be used.

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How I shop, Part 3.

I mentioned in THE PART 2 SHOPPING POST that I do some of my meal planning while standing in the store. I know this is contradictory to what most "budget advisers" usually recommend. I do this, though, because I don't know until I get there just what meat I'll be buying. (More in full post.)

It's not until after I've decided on my meat purchases that I can figure out exactly what we'll be eating. Generally, this is actually a simple process, despite how it might sound. I cook using a combination of basic staples and HOMEMADE MIXES. So after I know what meat I'm buying, usually there are only some "special" ingredients I need to pick up, as well as restocking any staples that are low. I keep a piece of paper stuck to the fridge and another on the inside of the pantry door. All week I write down things I realize are running low so that I know to purchase them while shopping. This usually isn't that much, since I also stock up on things when on sale, but occasionally I'll go a stretch of time where I don't find something on sale, like perhaps olive oil or rice, and I'll need to pick some up because we're running out of it.

"Special" ingredients just means something like zucchini or dried kidney beans; something I don't keep on hand but would need to complete the meals, not anything very expensive or "gourmet".

I will start checking for the special ingredients and the staples in the first store we visit and if the prices are good there, I go ahead and buy them; otherwise I wait to see the other stores.

A few weeks ago, I purchased a frozen turkey breast for $2.50. I cooked it in the gravy it came with and that night I served hot open-faced sandwiches (turkey slices on bread slices with caramelized onions and the gravy), oven fries, steamed carrots, and peaches. A couple of days later, at lunch, we had a spinach salad with diced turkey, a bit of bacon, some homemade croutons, and sliced carrots, served with some garlic biscuits. We also had a night where dinner was turkey pot pie and apple slices. By deciding in the store that these were the meals I would make with my turkey, I knew I needed to pick up fresh spinach, peaches, bacon, and some frozen peas (for the pot pie.) I already had other ingredients/foods, like the apples. I always buy potatoes, onions and carrots if I'm low - I consider these staples. And because I was buying the bacon and spinach, I knew I'd need to come up with something else to make with it, so we had a mock-quiche* that week, too. Because I decided to make the quiche, I had to pick up some swiss cheese. This was too expensive at store number one, but at a good price at store 2. Because I was buying swiss cheese, I also decided to make a two-cheese (also used cheddar, which I keep on hand) scalloped potatoes dish and I served that with some sausage, which also happened to be on sale that week. I'd already figured I'd serve some sort of potato dish with the sausage, so once I decided upon the quiche, I knew just what potato dish I'd want to make.

Note - the turkey pot pie required a sauce and crust, and the scalloped potatoes had a sauce, all of which were made from some of the mixes I keep on hand, so I didn't need to buy anything extra for that.

I have a feeling this sounds utterly insane! But I hope this is making at least some sense. The point is, I first determine the meat. Then I figure out what we'll be eating with that meat, then I make sure whatever I buy for the meat can be used up - that I'm not buying something I'll never use again. Sometimes it may be that I freeze something for use later, but I will definitely use it.

I think you can see that my meals are pretty simple. We don't eat the exact same thing every week - there's no Meatloaf Monday or Spaghetti Thursday - and I do make a variety of casseroles and soups to use up ingredients, but what I don't do is cook anything hugely fancy or costly or full of one-time-use only ingredients.

I'm assuming this will be more understandable if I really break down an entire shopping trip and all the ingredients, so that will be my next shopping post.

(Also - I mentioned shopping in only one store before, and I haven't forgotten that. I will get to it soon.)

*mock-quiche: I brought this up once before, but mock-quiche for us is some variation of what Bisquick calls IMPOSSIBLY EASY PIES. I vary the ingredients by what I have on hand and use my own "master biscuit mix" to make these.

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Friday Five for Free (2)

This is a little unusual. It's a 5 volume set of cooking textbooks, published in 1921 (and so now public domain.) Some of the information and recipes contained within will probably make you want to never set foot in your kitchen again! :) Still there is a surprising amount of stuff you can learn from these books, and a lot of it involves cooking from scratch, the budget-minded way to go. Okay, so I can promise you I'm never going to cook up a batch of hominy and then take that and use it in a hominy and cheese souffle, but still, the simple, basic recipes are worth knowing. And, as these are actual textbooks, there are even exam questions included. (More in full post.)

BOOK 1
BOOK 2
BOOK 3
BOOK 4
BOOK 5


Just to note - keeping in mind how long ago these books were written, if you decide to try out any of the recipes, make sure that you're not doing something we've come to learn is not as safe as once believed. (For instance, we now know not to make eggnog with raw eggs unless they have been specially pasteurized.)

If you're the kind of person who finds something like this interesting the way I do, you might also be interested in: SCHOOL AND HOME COOKING - This is another cooking school text. Something in particular that strikes me, as I have noticed it in some of the older cookbooks I've inherited, is the inclusion of a section on feeding someone who is sick. I never seem to come across that in modern cookbooks, and I wonder why we seem to think that doesn't merit special attention any more.

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How I shop, Side Bar.

I wanted to talk more about purchases other than meat at the grocery store, when I remembered that I only casually mentioned bread thrift stores somewhere and I thought I'd better go into a little detail about that before I continue with the rest of the shopping posts, or I'm likely to forget about it altogether. (More in full post.)

We live within about 20 minutes drive from two bread thrift stores. One of them, on Wednesdays, has .65 cents for everything in the store, including the "nice" bread - meaning the whole grains and multi-grains and breads that are *not* Wonderbread. Well, they have that, too, but we don't buy it. Once every two months, we go to the thrift store and buy 8 loaves of bread. This costs a little under five and a half dollars. Because we buy at least $5 worth, we are also allowed to select something off the "free" rack. From there we will get something like hoagie rolls (for meatball sandwiches - yum!) or tortillas or occasionally we'll choose the dinner rolls. As I've mentioned before, I bake everything else. Muffins, cakes, sweet breads, biscuits, and so on. It may very well be that I could purchase all the ingredients to bake multi-grain bread at home cheaper than the thrift store, but I'm not entirely sure where I'd work that into my schedule if I did! I decided awhile ago that spending .65 cents a week on bread would fit into our budget. We actually don't eat that many sandwiches, but bread slices are eaten frequently at snack time - toasted and served with apple butter or homemade jam and a glass of milk, or served with peanut butter, fresh fruit, and some lemonade. I will also sometimes, at the request of my children, make a batch of French toast.

We freeze all but one loaf of the bread when we bring it home. I keep stackable baking racks on my counter all the time. On any given day you will find (in baggies) some muffins, cookies and possibly dinner rolls on the lower rack, and on the upper rack sits the loaf of bread. When one runs out, I pull another from the freezer. They seem to thaw just fine in this way, sitting on the rack; we never have "mushy" bread.

I wanted to mention all this so that later when I've finished my actual shopping posts and then break down a shopping trip by posting everything I've bought and how much it cost, you won't be confused by the lack of bread/grains.

Oh, and because I mentioned lemonade, here's my recipe:

LEMONADE
1 1/2 cups sugar (Increase by 1/4 cup if you like more sweet, less tart.)
8 cups water
1 1/2 cups lemon juice - fresh squeezed.

In a saucepan, combine sugar and 1 cup water. Bring to boil and stir to dissolve sugar. Allow to cool to room temperature, then cover and refrigerate until chilled (about 4 hours). Remove seeds from lemon juice, but leave pulp. In pitcher, stir together chilled syrup, lemon juice, and remaining 7 cups water.

Generally, it takes me about 6 lemons to get the 1 1/2 cups juice. Every so often I'll find lemons on sale for 10 for a $1.00.

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How I shop, Part 2.

That meat thing:

Quick sidebar before I get started on my meat shopping - I wanted to point you in this direction: FEEDING A FAMILY OF FOUR FOR UNDER $200 A MONTH The lady who authored this book gives a brief history of her own situation and goes on to describe how she keeps her costs low. She doesn't do all the same things I do (or vice versa) so I perhaps you will find things both on my blog and in her ebook that can help you reduce your own bills. In particular, we differ greatly on our meat purchases, so - pardon the horrible pun - I think her book is great "food for thought."

Before we go shopping in the morning, we get out our cooler and fill it with ice. (I make ice during the week and put it in plastic grocery bags in the freezer to save specifically for this purpose.) We first do our "other" shopping - such as thrift stores or garage sales. Then we get to the actual grocery shopping. We start at the farthest store we go to. I go straight to the meat section to see if anything is marked down. I do sometimes find great unadvertised sales, but mostly what I'm looking for is the things that are reduced for "quick sales." And - and this is important because I suppose it involves being a bit, *ahem*, brazen, something I know few people like being! - I will also pick out meat a day or two from it's sell-buy date and take it to the front/service counter and ask for a discount. You'd be surprised how often the manager is willing to do a quick mark-down. I guess some people might think this is akin to begging or something, but I consider it shrewd bargaining. After all, if no one else comes along to buy it within the next 48 hours, the store will have to throw it away. It's a good situation for us; we get the discount, and for them; they get the sale, even if it is at a reduction. Once I have one or two different meats - perhaps some ground beef and a whole chicken or some smoked sausage and a pack of chicken thighs, I'll start planning meals beyond my loss-leader meals.

I know this is tricky. You might be thinking - how can I plan the meals, standing in the grocery store? How will I know the other ingredients that I need? The answer to that requires its own post, the explanation is so long, but in a nutshell, this is where cooking everything from scratch using basic homemade mixes and staple ingredients come in. Once I finish all my shopping posts - I'll go into much more detail there.

After I've decided on some meals, I'll quickly cruise the rest of the store, to pick up any of their loss-leader items and to purchase anything else I stumble across that's a very good deal, also checking prices on any necessary items I might need to complete the meals I'm planning. If the prices are good, I'll purchase them there. If not, I'll wait for the next store.

We leave store number one, put our meat in the cooler, and head over to store number 2, where I repeat the process, though sometimes I won't find anything we want at this one.

Then we continue on to store number 3. Here I will finish out our shopping. If, on occasion, it turns out I passed something up at a previous store that I should have purchased because it was a better price, I come up with a substitution or different meal plan. This really doesn't happen much at all to me anymore, just because I'm so familiar with these stores' prices in general, but, if this isn't something you're used to doing, keeping a price book like I MENTIONED IN MY FIRST SHOPPING POST can help you here.

Meat is our single biggest price item, but we still don't spend more than around $15 a week on it. If you read my $3.50 CHICKEN POST, you'll already have a good idea of how I use meat in our meals. One whole chicken is four meals for us, not one. Have you ever read a diet/nutritionist's description of how much meat is one serving? I've seen it described as anything from "the size of a small fist" to "the size of a deck of cards". We Americans and our huge portions! We've become so accustomed to eating much more than that. And that can contribute to both budget woes and weight problems!

For us, one $2 pound of sausage is two meals. Ground beef is stretched with bread crumbs, milk, onions, and seasoning, then browned in batches or made into meatballs. I get 5 meals from 2 pounds of ground beef.

We rarely eat pork chops because I can't typically get enough meals out of them. We do eat fish when it is on sale. I will every-so-often buy a beef roast, if I can get it drastically reduced, and the same for ham.

Turkey deserves a special mention. When turkeys drop in price to under twenty cents a pound, right before Thanksgiving, I buy three of the largest turkeys I can find. I freeze two for spring & summer time and cook the other that week, and I get a dozen or more meals out of each. (FYI - Turkeys can be frozen for a LONG time; however, most people say after a year the quality suffers. I've never had a turkey frozen for more than about 8 months, so I can't give any personal testimony to that.)

So, when I get home with my "almost expired" meat, I do one of two things. I will either freeze it for use later or I will cook it on the spot, as in the case of the ground beef. I brown it and/or make the meatballs and keep it in either the freezer or refrigerator, to be added to whatever recipes I've planned.

Also, and this is an important note, too, we do not eat meat with every lunch and dinner. We have some "vegetarian" dishes we eat as well.

My next shopping post, I'll talk more about the other ingredients I purchase and then talk about shopping in one store, as we had to do for about a year when we were living in an outlying area with only one grocery store nearby.

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How I shop, Part 1.

About Loss-Leaders:

Since I don't really use coupons, I thought I'd better explain how I do save money on groceries.

First, I (happily!) receive the local grocery store flyers in the mail. If you don't, you can try a few things. Visit the website of your local stores. For instance, if you go to WINN-DIXIE'S PAGE, you'll see they have the flyer posted right on the main page. If that doesn't work, you might give PENNY PINCHER GAZETTE a try. Once upon a time there was a great site, cairo.com, that uploaded all the grocery store flyers in one place, but they, sadly, folded last August. You might also simply ask next time you're in the store if there's a mailing list you can sign-up for. I live by the philosophy that it never hurts to ask!

Another option is to visit the store directly to pick one up each week, but only do this if you're already passing it by on another necessary errand or trip! Don't waste your gas driving around collecting flyers!

There are generally 3 stores I shop at for food groceries. Winn Dixie, Save-Rite, and the Neighborhood Wal-Mart. There is a "real" Wal-Mart not too far from here, and I will sometimes stop in there, as well. And for non-food items, I go to the Dollar Tree for a few things and Dollar General for the rest. (Dollar General is the only place I've found toilet tissue 6 for $1.00 and that usually lasts us for 2 weeks.) I will occasionally go to Publix or Albertson's, if they have a really great deal, but not often because generally they are more expensive and they are out of the way for me.

Save-Rite and Dollar General are next to one another. We pass Winn-Dixie to get there, and the Wal-Mart is right outside my neighborhood so we pass it every time we leave the house. This is important because I don't want to blow the savings I get from hitting several stores in the cost of driving to them!

If you're already shaking your head and thinking, "Well, that's out. I'm not close enough to that many stores.", or if you perhaps don't have a vehicle and must rely on a bus, please keep reading anyway. This is a lot of info, and I think it will take several posts to cover everything, but I will eventually explain what I do at each store, and hopefully that can help you, and I'll also address shopping in only one location when limitations force you to.

When I get my flyers in the mail, I sit down and start listing out all the loss-leader items. These are the things that are substantially discounted in order to get you in the door. They are called loss-leaders because the store is actually taking a hit on the sale. You have to be careful here, though. Not only do the flyers list loss-leaders, and then items that have a small discount, but they also sometimes list items that are just regular price.

Sidebar: If up until now you haven't paid very close attention to the price of individual items, or you're just new to shopping, you should probably give serious consideration to making a Price Book, as recommended by Amy Dacyczyn in her TIGHTWAD GAZETTE. (Not an affiliate link - just put it there for you to see the book. If you haven't read it, get your library to get you a copy. There's this one - a compilation, or you might find books 1, 2, and 3 individually.) To make a Price Book, you simply take a notebook with you to your local store and start writing down the prices of the things you buy - making a note of the date, too. Keep this book up for 1/2 a year or more, and you will not only get an idea of which things are cheapest where, but also what things tend to go on sale when. Once you start getting a real handle on prices, you'll be able to instantly recognize a loss-leader when you see it. For instance, the 10 lbs. of apples I bought - they were a loss-leader. I knew this as soon as I saw them because I know apples are regularly over $1 a pound and sometimes marked down on sale as low as .88 cents a pound. Being able to by them at .55 cents a pound was a good deal for me. I kept a price book for several years. I haven't for awhile, but only because I've been shopping on a budget for 18 years now and I actually keep all my receipts, so I can check on prices if I need.

Once I've listed out all the loss-leaders for my local stores, I then start thinking in terms of recipes. How many of these ingredients can I use to make how many meals? What other ingredients would I need? I happen to have a bookshelf FULL of cookbooks. I've never actually counted, but I must have over two hundred of them. I inherited them from a grandmother, great-aunt, and stepmother. If I can't think of any recipes to make with the loss-leader items, I head to the shelf first. I like these cookbooks because many of them are so old, they don't rely on convenience foods to make.

Thanks to the internet, though, you don't need a floor-to-ceiling shelf of cookbooks like mine. There are free recipes to be found all over the place. If you go here to ALL RECIPES' INGREDIENT SEARCH PAGE, you can type in the ingredients, and see what comes up. You can also simply google it, like "free ham recipes".

I don't plan my entire week this way, though. Usually, my loss-leader recipes only account for 5 or 6 of the 14 meals I'm planning, depending on what's available. Sometimes, it's not even that much; sometimes, it's even more. (This is not counting breakfasts, which I mentioned in my Making Mixes post.)

I don't buy all the loss-leaders at every store, only the ones I can really use. Ten cans of black olives are not going to help my family because we don't like them, even if they are marked down to 10 cents a can. On the other hand, if it's 10 cents a can for tomato sauce, I will buy 10 cans to keep for use beyond just the week I'm shopping for.

Using loss-leaders is a great way to keep your pantry & freezer stocked with ingredients. Part of keeping my grocery bills so low involves having a steady supply of staples, bought or replenished when on loss-leader sale, whenever possible. Yes, I really will buy 10 cans of tomato sauce at once. Or I might buy three bags of rice, or 5 pounds of cheddar cheese. (I grate it and freeze it.)

If you are just starting at trying to seriously lower your grocery bills, this is where I recommend you begin. This week, determine one or two loss-leader items and purchase more than you need for the week. Purchase enough for several weeks or months. I think sometimes we avoid doing this, because of the fear of either having to eat the same thing several nights in a row, or worries that it will go bad. As long as it is something that can either sit on a shelf or be frozen, go ahead and buy it. Eventually, you will reach a point where you are dedicating maybe as much as a 1/4 of your expenses each week just to loss-leader items you won't be using up right away, but because of things bought in previous weeks, you won't have as many individual items to purchase for that week's meals. This is essentially the concept behind bulk-buying, but a way to build up to it, for those of us who can't simply drop $200 in one trip to get everything in the huge, economy packages.

Are you still with me? LOL! I think I've droned on enough here. In my next shopping post, I'll cover the big ticket item - meat purchases.

If you have any questions, or I'm not going into enough detail/explaining things well enough here or in any of my posts, please don't hesitate to post a comment or e-mail me directly. Having been married for 18 years, a mom for almost 13 years, a homeschooler for 6 years, and been on a budget my entire life, sometimes I think things are "common knowledge" when in fact, they may not be at all and I don't want to gloss over something that's brand new for someone else.

Also - please feel free to share any tips and tricks you have! I'm still learning every day and I'm always looking for new ways to save.

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Coupons? No, not so much.

Several weeks ago there was an article in the Orlando Sentinel detailing how a woman saved "lots" of money just by using coupons when she shopped. (I don't actually subscribe to the paper; I just read this article at a friend's house after she called my attention to it. It is possible it was part of a series. I'm not sure.)

This woman was a member of some group with a paid subscription service that somehow helped her find all her coupons and she swore it was well worth the price.

Before couponing, she'd been spending $120 a week for her family of four. (Yikes!) After she began her clipping adventure, she was able to reduce that to $80. Now, yes, a $40 deduction is great and $80 is certainly far better than $120, but really, it's not that impressive for a final amount and I don't think it warranted a feature news story!

When I tell people that we only spend $40 - $50 dollars a week for groceries, they usually make the same few assumptions; that we're eating junk, that I live on a farm and grow my own produce, and/or that I'm some sort of "Coupon Queen."

So, for the record:

No, we don't eat a lot of junk. Yes, we had grilled hamburgers for lunch today because we had a cook-out with friends, but you aren't going to find canned soup and boxed "Meal Helpers" on my shelf.

I live behind a farm, but not on one. The only things growing in my yard are some rather sorry looking sunflowers we planted before we were hit by a drought. Not even the grass is growing at this point. I do have some fresh herbs in the kitchen window, but that's it. Could I save more if I gardened? Probably so. But we have very poor soil - in fact, it isn't soil at all, but red clay - so I'd need to spend a good deal of money up front to either combat that fact or build up a container-style garden. And then I'd be paying a significantly higher water bill to keep my veggies growing. I may in the future decide to try growing some of my own produce, but for now, we don't.

And I don't use coupons except on very rare occasions.

I am aware that people can clip coupons and use them to purchase name-brand products for less than the store-brand. But that's immaterial to me. It doesn't matter if the Kraft Macaroni & Cheese is .15 cents less with a coupon than the Wal-Mart version. I don't buy boxed macaroni and cheese at all. Often coupons are for just that - convenience foods. Yes, sometimes they actually are for staple items and they sometimes even work to make a national brand the cheapest buy, but more often than not, coupons aren't of much help for me.

I don't subscribe to the newspaper, either. There's no point. Thanks to the internet, I have my news before the paper would even be delivered every morning. I do sometimes scope out sites online to see if any coupons I can use are available, since I'm not getting the pages of them that come with the Sunday paper, but overall, I just don't bother.

If you're a couponer and it's working out for you, great. If it's working out so well for you, you can even beat me at my own game and you spend less than I do for your weekly purchases, even better! I'd love to hear from you.

In any case, the real issue is to wean yourself/family off the convenience foods, which can be, well, inconvenient, I know. But you'll find your most significant reduction in food expenses right here and, most importantly, no coupons are required!

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Kids in the kitchen.

Although I do not include any "home-ec" classes per se in my curriculum, I have been teaching my kids many of the things I wish I'd learned as I was growing up. Because seriously, I've used trigonometry how many times since college? Uh....

But I cook every day. And I want to make sure my kids know how to cook as well. For the most part, I just have them help me with the recipes we already use, but if you're interested in teaching cooking more like a class, I have a few sources you might be find useful.

EATING WELL MADE EASY - these are pdf publications from the University of Utah's county extension office.

COOKING WITH KIDS - scroll past the google ads.

KIDS COOKING LESSONS - probably the best of the 3 I've listed, as far as organization, details, and explanations. This also includes some dinner etiquette lessons and kitchen safety rules. Broken down by age groups. As these are presented as "lessons", you could implement this into a full home-economics program/elective.

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Making Mixes.

Convenience foods are... convenient. They can save you time. But not money. And often, if you stop and read the ingredient list carefully, you'll find that box of scalloped potatoes is pretty much a heart attack waiting to happen.

Make no mistake, homeschooling is a full time job and time-savers in the kitchen are a real blessing. But rather than over-spend on some packaged convenience food, you can buy the less expensive raw ingredients and make your own.

There are several sources of recipes for making your own mixes. While I normally advocate finding everything possible for free, I will say that this book: MAKE A MIX has many recipes I use on a regular basis. Perhaps you can find a copy at your local library. It's apparently just been reprinted, so if you're fortunate enough to live in an area with a good library system, even if they don't currently have a copy, you might be able to request they obtain one.

In any case, if you happen to stumble across it at a garage sale or used store, consider picking it up.

** Note - one thing I've found with this book is that the recipes for the sweet quick breads all seem to need about 1/2 cup water added. Doing this has produced much better results for me.

Meanwhile, here are some free resources for make-a-mix recipes.
RECIPE GOLDMINE
BUDGET 101 CONVENIENCE MIXES

When I first started using mixes, I only kept a biscuit mix, a white sauce mix, and a "Shake and Bake" type mix on hand. Now I have everything from cookie mixes to flavored rice. I found some "vintage" Tupperware containers (read - several in dark orange and the rest in mustard yellow - gotta love those 70s colors!) on auction and paid $7 for the lot. Now they crowd my pantry shelves and freezer. I have found the genuine item here - Tupperware - does seem to keep my ingredients fresher, longer, but you might be able to find another brand/maker that works equally well.

For an example of how I use my mixes, on Sunday afternoons, I get out my biscuit mix, sweet bread mix, and whole wheat mix, and get to work. I make a batch of waffles and some pancakes. These I freeze. I will make 2 dozen muffins of some sort - depending on what I find on sale at the store, like zucchini, apples, bananas, or carrots. Finally, I'll make some dinner rolls. I do not make sandwich bread - I buy that at the local thrift store, once a month on the "everything is .65 cents" day. This may sound like a lot of work, and certainly it takes time, but now that my routine is established and my kids are able to help - they actually *like* cooking pancakes - we get it done within a few hours and I have all the baked goods we need for the week.

Except cookies, that is. There's just something about fresh-baked cookies! Whenever we want a treat, I get out my freezer cookie dough and make a dozen. They're so great right out of the oven (with just a bit of cooling time) with a glass of milk. And they make the house smell yummy. :)

During the week, my kids can choose muffins, waffles, or pancakes for breakfast. They take them directly from the freezer and either microwave toast them. They eat these with some kind of fruit - either fresh, or something prepared like our homemade applesauce - milk, and sometimes we'll scramble some eggs. In colder weather, which, here in Central Florida is only about 2 months out of the year, we'll also make oatmeal on some mornings.

Our breakfasts, even with fruit and milk, typically cost only around .40 cents per serving. Keep in mind, one serving of milk is only eight ounces. If you have kids who tend to pour enough liquid to fill the glass, no matter how big the glass actually is, make sure they're only using smaller "juice" glasses, or take over the drink serving yourself.

Another advantage? Our breakfasts are no more difficult to prepare each morning than a bowl of sugar-coated, expensive cereal. We have breakfast on the table in 5 minutes or less, and clean-up is a snap, so we can dive right in to school work, leave for our weekly shopping on Saturday mornings, or church on Sundays.

If you've never been a mix person, and you're wondering where to start, I recommend the same place I did. The biscuit mix is very versatile and can be used for more than just breads/rolls. (Check out the Bisquick website for other ideas.) Having a white sauce means you'll have a quick base for a cheese sauce you can serve over veggies or pasta, Alfredo sauce, and it can be used, mixed with some milk, in place of canned Cream of Whatever when it's called for in a recipe. A "fake" Shake-n-Bake recipe is nice to keep on hand to quickly season chicken, pork or fish pieces for an easy entree. Once you start using one kind of mix, you'll quickly start exploring the many others out there.

One final note - some mixes call for bouillon granules. I recommend you purchase the no-sodium version, even if it costs a little more, if you can find it. Regular bouillon granules have an incredibly high salt content - something like 35% of the RDA for a teaspoon amount! Eek!

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Cheap Beans & Rice.

Cajun Beans and Rice
This recipe works well for kidney, red, or black beans.

1 lb. dried beans
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, pressed
1 bay leaf
1/2 lb. sausage, (kielbasa or other flavor of choice) cut into bite-size pieces
Cajun seasoning, such as Chachere's, or hot sauce to taste
Hot cooked rice

Wash the beans and put in a bowl. Cover with water and cover bowl. Leave to soak over night. In the morning, drain the beans and wash again.

Put the beans in a sturdy dutch-oven pot, add remaining ingredients, and add enough water to cover all. Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer. The beans will need to cook for several hours. Stir occasionally, and add more water, a cup at a time, as needed.

When the beans have cooked down to a very thick gravy-like consistency, they're ready to eat. Serve over the rice.

This is not a "pretty" meal. My kids call it Bean Glop, but they *love* it. We serve it with homemade cornbread for a very filling meal.

Just to note: The original recipe, which was for New Orleans style Red Beans and Rice, also called for "salt and pepper to taste". If you use the Cajun seasoning, as we do, you do not need salt, or pepper. In fact, you want to be careful how much seasoning you add because it has a high salt content. If, however, you use hot sauce, you can add salt and pepper too, if desired.

This recipe feeds my family of four, with enough left over to be lunch for 2 people. At 6 servings, this meal, including the cornbread, costs about .60 cents a serving.

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My $3.50 chicken.

Yesterday I bought a whole chicken for $3.50. I also bought a bag of potatoes for $2.88. I had some carrots on hand, as well as two onions, and about 6 oz. left from a chunk of cheddar cheese. And, in the freezer, a little less than half a bag of frozen broccoli.

So... today's lunch was roasted chicken with potatoes, carrots and onion, served with rolls and "sunshine salad" - a jello salad made from lemon jello, crushed pineapple, and grated carrot, and dinner was a mock-quiche (following the general concept behind BISQUICK'S IMPOSSIBLY EASY CHICKEN-N-BROCCOLI PIE, though I use my own, homemade "biscuit mix"), served with home-made applesauce. And then tomorrow morning I will cook down the chicken bones to make a nice broth to make chicken noodle soup for lunch, which I will serve with my son's favorite: cheddar-garlic drop biscuits. The soup always makes enough for two meals, so I'll freeze the rest.

My point? You can get a lot of mileage out of a $3.50 chicken.

Apparently, some of our congressmen have recently TAKEN A FOOD STAMP CHALLENGE wherein they attempted to live on a food budget of $3 per person, per day for One Whole Week (*gasp!*), to highlight the difficulties faced by those surviving on food stamps.

Our family of four lives on about $1.75 per person, per day, and as you can see by my above menu, it's not like we're dining on Hamburger Helper every night. And it's not like we live in a particularly cheap area. According to the CoL Index, our food costs are at about 100% of the national average.

Frankly, it comes down to smart shopping, using up every bit of each item you buy, and learning to make everything from scratch. Is it as easy as calling for a pizza to be delivered? Of course not. But it can be done, and with practice and trial and error, eventually, it can be done without much difficulty.

I do not want to sound as if I'm condemning people on food stamps. Far, far from it. What disturbs me, though, is the general belief that $360 a month for a food budget for a family of four is the equivalent of starving. It is not, by any means.

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