And on to other things! PLANNING the food you eat.

The pantry & freezer have been cleared out a bit and now it's on to other things.  Honestly, I got tired of Turkey Burgers so it was time to have some RED MEAT!  I'm still keeping food shopping to a minimum, because my big plan is to carefully re-stock the freezer. 

The challenge of eating what we already have on hand really inspired me to be creative and save money.  It also made me realize I need to change the way I shop for and store food a bit.

One thing I think I can take away from this experience is to actually calculate how much food we will need for, say, a 6 month period of time, and kind of pre-plan what we will make.   For example, we can designate one night a week as "ground meat" night to make hamburgers, meatballs, spaghetti, etc.  and order 26 packages of ground meat.   

Up to now, I've just been going around all willy-nilly buying what's on sale - which is great! I'll continue to look for sales to stock up, but with an actual plan in mind.   

Now, I am not sitting down and making a meal plan for an entire 6 months, that would exhaust me and make me crazy, but I feel I can handle something like this:

Sunday: Chicken
Monday: Fish
Tuesday: Ground Meat
Wednesday: eat out or leftovers
Thursday: Chicken
Friday: Fish
Saturday: Beef or Pork

This is just an example I pulled out of the air.  But it will help determine how many servings of meat we need for the year.  Perhaps one night can even be a Vegetarian or Bean night - it doesn't have to be all about the meat.

Here's a link to some forms that may help if you're interested in trying this as well.


http://www.scribd.com/cookncents

Pantry Challenge Update

Hello!  Life has got the best of me and I haven't updated in a few days, but rest assured, we are still eating (mostly) from the freezer & pantry.   Our family had to do another grocery run (produce, milk, bread) for about $35 but we're still at it.

Right now, we have a lovely chicken roasting in the oven for dinner.




February 1, 2012

Last night, we had some nice pork chops & carrots from the freezer, along with muffins whipped up from my muffin mix. The muffins taste great plain or with some frozen berries mixed in (I did half and half).


 Some other things we've had over the last few days

 

Budget Relief Pantry Challenge 1/22-1/25/2012

January 25, 2012
Breakfast:  Bacon Egg Cheese Sandwiches
Lunch:  Tacos
Dinner:  Baked White Fish   and grilled cheese (Ok, weird combo but really, kids have to eat)

January 24, 2012
Breakfast:  Cereal
Lunch: Sandwiches
Dinner:  The teen brought us home some pizza from the place she works!  She was so nice to give us some fast food on this pantry challenge :)  She's probably sick of all the home cooking and lack of snacks.

January 23, 2012
Two of the kids were under the weather, so we just had soup, mac n cheese, applesauce and some 7-up!  We also had some more leftovers.

January 22, 2012

Breakfast: French Toast.  I have boxes of Egg Beaters in the freezer.  Did you know they freeze well?  This is an excellent, easy dip for French Toast!
Lunch: Leftover Hashbrown Soup

Dinner:  Martha's Baked Chicken
Corn, Biscuits

This is the easiest chicken to make.  It's really good, too! 
You just season the chicken pieces with a little Mrs. Dash, salt and pepper and bake @375 for 45 min to an hour.

CookN Easy Baked White Fish

This has got to be one of the easiest and tastiest ways I've found to prepare fish.  You basically throw some white fish fillets in a baking pan or dish with some butter, seasoning and frozen veggies and bake for 39 minutes at 375.  SO easy.  I based it off of this recipe here.

Baked White Fish

16 oz fish filets (White Fish like Tilapia, Flounder, Sole)
16 oz Bag frozen veggies of your choice
TBSP of butter
Seasoning of choice (original recipe calls for Old Bay, I used Lemon Pepper Fish Seasoning)
Lemon (I omitted due to using Lemon Pepper)

Place filets in sprayed pan or baking dish.  Put some butter & seasoning on top.  Top with some lemon juice or put lemon slices on top if you're using the lemon.

Add the frozen vegetables.  I used a mix of broccoli, red pepper and corn since it's what was in my freezer.

 Bake @ 375 for 30 minutes (mine took 35). 

 Serve! I think this would be nice with some rice.
I think I will also try this with other fish, like salmon.  It might even be a quick easy way to do chicken breasts.  

...and more Pantry Challenge

Here's the link to the last few days.  http://www.cookncents.com/p/budget-relief-pantry-challenge-here.html

Yep, we're still eating from the pantry/freezer/fridge.  Yesterday, I bought milk, eggs, bread and cheese at the store, but so far those are our only food expenses.

Here's some more meals we've made from our well-stocked kitchen!

 Philly Cheese Steak Sandwiches made with leftover flank steak.

 Hashbrown Soup

Chewy Granola Bars

Pantry Challenge: What we are eating

Here's the link to our Budget Relief Pantry Challenge if you want to see what we've been eating the last few days.:


http://www.cookncents.com/p/budget-relief-pantry-challenge-here.html

Here's what we dug out of our freezer & pantry for dinner yesterday:

Mixed Veggies, Potatoes & Flank Steak.

So far, we've only bought milk ($3.29 @ CVS but I used a $10 CVS card from a previous CVS deal) and cheese ($1.89).  Everything else came from the pantry/freezer.

Grocery total:  $5.18