My pantry challenge

Since I spent over $470 this weekend on food (ok, maybe $430 was food, rest was other stuff), and my freezers are packed and the pantry is stuffed, I figured that maybe I should put myself on a challenge to a) save money; b) prevent waste and c) clean up & organize. So, I'm going to see if I can't survive on $20 a week for the next 4 weeks for groceries. This will include milk, produce and bread. Hmmm. Think I can do it? I think so. Of course, this would NOT include the kids school lunches, that cost $2.50 each, per day, 4 days a week, there went my budget! Figure this: milk is $4.49 a gallon. BUT if I go the extra 2 miles to BJ's, I can get it for $3.79. Don't quite know if it's worth the extra gas (given the price of gas nowdays) to go a little further just to save 70 cents or so. If cvs or walgreens was to put it on sale, then it wouldn't be such a big deal. Bread, $1.19 for the cheapest store brand I can find. Even the bread store hasn't really been able to beat that lately. So, I can either omit sandwiches or use up the hamburger, hot dog and tortilla wraps I have instead of bread. Possible. OR, I can make it which I know how to do, with or without the breadmaker. Produce. Ok, this may be difficult. We eat a lot of salads during the week. Dd 'thinks' she's vegetarian (face it, she just doesn't eat). Head of lettuce is roughly $1.69 for ICEBERG, apples are around $2.09 a lb, bananas are around 59 cents lb. Oranges, not even going there, however there have been some decent sales that come out to about 50 cents lb. Just hate buying package bags of fruit. I honestly think that the the majority of my $20 would go towards produce :( The next step would be to menu plan, all 3 meals plus snacks each day. Sounds easy enough :) But really, need to do inventory first, as nothing is worse than finding out that you have all the ingredients except for ONE major thing :) So far this week, I've done pretty well with what I've had on hand (of course, just spent a buttload of money on food!) ... dh is out Tuesday to Thursday ... me & kids had soup & grilled cheese last night. Granted, it was tomatoe soup from can. Wanted to do the asian chix soup, but dd was at work & didn't want to make it just for me (ds would drop dead if he ate it). Breakfast today is a croissant with sausage patty & fried egg & slice of cheese. Lunch will be leftover pizza with a small salad. Snack of carrot & celery sticks. Dinner is to be loaded baked potatoes, already scrubbed and in oven with oven on timer to come on at 4:45 so they should be ready by around 6ish when I get home. Tomorrow will be same for breakfast, lunch will be salad & leftover tater, dinner will be bbq pork sandwiches ... will toss pork & sauce in crockpot in morning at 5am when I get up ... that way dinner will be ready when dh gets home. Friday, don't know yet. I'm off, kids are off, dh has dentist appt in morning, and we have an appraiser coming out at 4ish for Citi refi of 2nd mtg. Prime MINUS 3/4 ... pretty darn good since the feds dropped the rates this week. Will post when I get that far :)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Non Toxic Mosquito Spray

Image
Let's face it, living in Paradise does have a few drawbacks with the #1 complaint being ... BUGS. Yeah, bugs.  Mostly mosquitoes that can just ruin an evening of relaxation on the patio ... those pesky little guys can really do a number on you quickly!  Heaven forbid if you are one of those who are very sensitive to the bites (the Boy), you will have welts in no time. So Hubby always decides to spray AFTER everyone starts swatting the air and scratching. We have to gather up our drinks and appetizers, go indoors and wait for 20 minutes or so for the toxic fog to flat away ... only to be swatting and scratching AGAIN in 30 minutes. After seeing THIS tip a few too many times, I figured, what the heck, $5 at Walmart is worth it to try, right? Guess what?  It seems to work!!!  I need to do a few more nights to say for certain but I say it's WAY better than that can of toxic stuff ... and cheaper to boot! You must use the ORIGINAL flavor, and yes, it nee
Read more

Smelly Shoe Fix!

Image
Honestly, we have real good hygiene habits in my house, I can assure you of that! But, lets face it, living in paradise with 125% humidity can be a little trying sometimes ... my running shoes (which have NOT seen much running action for quite a while) get a little ripe smelling ... and oh man, you should smell the shoes that Hubby wears outside in the yard, patio, garage and boat that constantly get wet ... enough to suck the oxygen right out of your body ... whew! Then you have the Boy ... who works out pretty darn hard and doesn't always wear socks, nor does the Princess ... I mean, seriously, I've had to throw shoes away because you could smell them just sitting there. No one wants to be the person that people are wrinkling their nose at when they are walking by you! So when I saw the featured post for the Smelly Shoe Solution (and dang, I'm still trying to find the original post because I had no need to bookmark it, such a simple fix!) Yes. That's IT!
Read more

Rice Cooker - Hard Boiled Eggs

Image
One of the things I picked up at Costco was a new Rice Cooker. The one I have, well, I gave that to the Boy when he went away to college (so he could make his macaroni and cheese), not to mention, it was small as heck, like mini size! So, I figured, you know, Hubby likes to make rice occasionally. The Boy makes brown rice in the microwave every other day and leaves the bubbly residue behind for ME to find when I go to heat something up (I hate a dirty microwave, totally wigs me out and sends me running for the windex!) ... so I grabbed the rice cooker ($29.95), a 10 pound bag of organic brown rice and a 20 pound bag of Basmati rice. I'm asking myself now, a whole week later, what the hell am I going to do with 20 pounds of Basmati rice? Anyways. Then I was reading the recipe booklet that came along with the cooker. They had one recipe that said to add the eggs, unshelled, to the steamer basket.  Ok. That made me re-read it a few times. Unshelled? Did they mean out of the shell?
Read more