Grocery Challenge!!!

Ok, I'm doing the grocery challenge again! We have soooooooo much food in the house now from the holiday's PLUS all the meat in the freezer from my Hubby and his hunting. I'm going to try for one month to spend $10 a week at the grocery store. Basically purchasing milk. I'm going to make bread in my bread machine and try to get by on what we have in our cabinets and fridge/freezer. I plan to do many crock pot meals because of our schedule.

After this month I will see where I'm at with food and possible go to the $25 a week challenge for the next month, depending on how much I have left.

I know a few of my friends joined me in the past, please LET ME KNOW if you are joining in again!

It is so wasteful to have this much food and continue to purchase more food just because I don't FEEL like what we have in the cabinets. So this is my mission and I"ll keep you posted!

We may go to our beach house this week for a few days so this will be when I will be tested big time. I need to pack the car with our food from our home if we go! No clam chowder...waaaaa No "Cracked Crab" . How will be survive? LOL

I'm determined to get out of debt and to build my savings account back up. So this is one of my first baby steps in getting there.

I'll keep you posted!!

Grocery budget

I didn't stick to my $25 grocery budget when our family was down but I'm back on track again. I've also been packing the girls lunches everyday and making sure they eat breakfast at home (and not at school). It's been an adjustment for them but they are doing good with it overall.

A friend of mine decided to come on board with me and do the $25 a week challenge and she says she is doing well and has about 5 other people who have joined the challenge. Very cool!

A couple tips on stretching your meals is left overs.

1. Make sure to keep your left over vegetables. Even when you only have a few left, place them in a container in the freezer and just add them each night. When you have enough you can pull them out and use them in vegetable soup or stew. Even those small amounts add up pretty quickly.

2. BEANS BEANS BEANS. They are very cheap and they really are so many things you can do with them. You can put them in the crockpot the night before and let them cook all night or you can boil them on the stove. I like to make a large batch of beans so they are already cooked for ease and they freeze well too! You can make beans and ham hock (yum), Chili beans, plain ol' okie beans, Mexican beans that can be left whole or refried (I have a great recipe for this and it is soooo easy). You can make a casserole and add beans (great filler). And using cornmeal and making cornbread from scratch is very easy and very good. I add honey to mine and the kids LOVE it, they prefer my homemade version over the boxed/bagged cornbread I used to buy and it's much cheaper from scratch.

3. We are still doing our breakfast for dinner one night a week. The kids love it. Pancakes are a great hit and very cheap.

4. My sister is saving a lot of money using coupons. You can look up the store you go to online and it will show you their sell ads and it will also (many times) give you printable coupons. Some stores have double coupon days, or will match other stores coupons. Great way to cut back if you have more time than money. =-)

My brain is dead today so that is all for now but I will back on more often, things are getting back to normal soon (hopefully). LOL

Take Care!

Spinach Dip

So I was cleaning out my fridge today and I have Spinach dip in there that expires after today. I hate to throw it out, hardly any was eaten....... So I have decided I'm going to experiment. I'm going to put the spinach dip in a pan, heat it up, add a little bit of milk to thin it out a bit, then I'll add some cheese I have until it melts. Then I'm going to cut up potatoes and put them in a casserole dish and stir in the spinach/cheese mixture, top it off with a little more cheese (cuz you can never get enough cheese right?) and bake it. If it isn't any good, then I wasted some potatoes and cheese but if it is then I made a fun recipe and didn't waste the spinach dip.

I have spareribs and honey BBQ sauce going in the crock pot. It smells so yummy!

I'm down to my very last diet soda and with my $25 a week challenge I figure I wont be purchasing any soda this week. Soooooooo no problem, I am making sun tea! I actually do love tea, so it's all good. =)

I'm off to finish entering in my budget online. (My Dave Ramsey Total Money Makeover) I love that guy!

Hugs,
Steph

20+ day Meal Plan

I went through my cabinets and I thought I'd post my Meal plan that I have so far

Meat loaf, salad and mashed potatoes
Hamburger gravy over potatoes or biscuits
Chili Beans, corn bread and fried potatoes
Mooseghetti (spaghetti), bread and green beans
Enchilada's, salad, beans and rice
Stew, bread
Vegi Soup and bread
Chili dogs, pretzels
Beef (moose) and Bean burritos, rice
Chili Verdi, beans and rice
BBQ (moose) sandwich
Roast, potatoes and vegi
Steaks (deer) potato, vegi
Hamburgers, mac-n-cheese
Sloppy Joe's, vegi
Goulash, vegi
Chicken, pilaf, vegi
Chicken noodle soup

I plan to rotate these dishes along with doing a breakfast night...Chocolate gravy and biscuits, Pancakes and sausage, etc. once a week (my kids are very excited about this) and doing a left over night once a week, or when we are able.

Hope this gives some ideas.........Wish me luck!

Grocery $

My little sis said she is starting to clip coupons. Well, this got me started in trying to save "grocery" money........So I've been surfin' the web looking for meals to make with hamburger meat. Money saving ideas. Well, I don't have "hamburger" meat but I do have Moose meat that is ground up like hamburger meat. My husband "The great hunter" has filled our freezer with Moose, deer and wild boar. So I have a lot of ground moose and sausage. Anyway, I came across this challenge last week and I decided to take. It is $25 a week for 6 weeks. I'm on week two right now. So far so good. The idea is to use up everything you have in the cabinets that just end up staying there and not being used. The $25 is for milk and perishables. With a family of six the $25 will be difficult but I figure even if we don't make it the full six weeks I will have at least cleaned out my cabinets and saved money along the way. But I'm committed to try hard. With a freezer full of meat this will be very helpful for me.

So last night I put beans (dried, I have a big bag in the cabinet) in the crock pot (love the crockpot, my little sis got me a crock pot cook book too!) and let them go all night. This morning I will add ground moose, sausage and I have onion in there and some diced tomatoes I will add also. I don't have peppers and some of my usual things I add, but I'm sure it will still be good. I plan to make cornbread to go with it and fried potatoes.

I was cleaning out my fridge and I have carrots and celery that needs to be eaten before they go bad, so I'm going to make either vegetable soup OR stew, haven't' decided yet. In fact I may do stew one night and soup another. I actually am sure I have enough vegetables to do both.

I'll keep you posted and let me know if you decide to take the challenge with me! I'm excited!