Category Archives: Pantry Challenge

Monday Menu Planning

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The last week has been very busy. I am finally starting to feel much better and get some of my energy back but unfortunately Matt has become ill. We enjoyed a slower than usual weekend. I did use up the butternut squash I grew last summer. It made am OK soup not something anyone wants repeated.  I did stop at the grocery store to stock up on 2 Liters of Diet Coke. My grocery budget sits at $171.40. Which is over my $150 for two months!   I would consider just throwing in the towel but even if I can keep the total less than $300 for 2 months that is a third of what I typically spend in one month. I am starting to see the end of somethings. In fact, I need to clean the shelves in the laundry room, get them reorganized and make a list of what we have. I do know that in March I will be purchasing both flour and rice from Costco. This works out to be a yearly purchase so not a bad thing. This week theme is simple.

Breakfast- Saturday- Breakfast bowls with bacon and sausage. We did use a container out of the freezer of gravy.
Sunday-Biscuit King   Monday- Sausage Maple syrup muffins (these are a huge hit and most likely a repeat).  Tuesday Wednesday, Thursday and Friday- find it oatmeal, omelets cereal and milk, French toast sticks, sausage, pop-tarts, and eggs. Depending on my energy level, I may add a baked Oatmeal in the mix.
Lunch- Saturday- Left-overs  Sunday- Gregg’s , Monday, Tuesday- leftovers, Wednesday. Thursday and Friday   – left-overs and grab and go is the plan. We still have 2 completely full shelves of left-overs so we have no problem finding something to eat. The kids also make mac and cheese at least once a weel.

Dinner- Saturday- Roasted Butternut Squash soup, Sunday- Lasagna soup. Everyone liked this recipe but we will use regular pasta next time to speed up the process. -Monday- Teriyaki Chicken in crock pot, rice, pineapple and egg rolls.  Tuesday-Brats and French Fries, Cucumbers slices as well. Wednesday- Left-overs from fridge. Thursday- Eating out due to swim meet. Friday-Last 2 boxes of hamburger Helper!  This is an accomplishment for sure!

I am committed to be transparent about grocery spending hoping that will keep me moving in the right direction. Instead of giving up!

Monday Menu Planning

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We have now officially completed 15 days of the longest month of the year!  I am actually starting to be able to move food around. I do need to empty one of the freezers if not two prior to the summer.  My goal again this summer will be to stock the freezers with easy to grab, easy to prepare meals. It has certainly helped this year.  This month I have spent $130.69 on groceries including out subscribe and save. This is a very low amount !  And my goal is to continue. I did order some Listerine and we have picked up sour cream not once but twice!   But let’s celebrate the good things.

Breakfast- Saturday- Sausage links and German baby pancakes!
Sunday-Homemade Bagels and Waffles.  Monday- Carrot soufflé Tuesday Wednesday, Thursday and Friday- find it oatmeal, omelets cereal and milk, French toast sticks, sausage, pop-tarts, bagels and eggs.
Lunch- Saturday- Meatballs and Lil Smokies in the crockpot   Sunday- Sushi buffet, Monday- The kids and I tried out Freddie’s   Tuesday- leftovers, Wednesday. Thursday and Friday   – left-overs and grab and go is the plan.

Dinner- Saturday- Sour Dough Waffles or left-overs from lunch, Sunday- Taco soup-Monday- Meatloaf, squash casserole, green beans, mashed potatoes and meatloaf.  Tuesday-Baked Ziti from freezer Wednesday- Philly Cheese Steak Casserole (from freezer)  Thursday- Chicken Teriyaki Friday-Panda Panda (local Chinese) on the way to swim meet.

Now to just stick to the plan!

Saving on Saturday

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Today the focus was on using what we have!   We headed out really early for Braxton’s ballgame. I did not want to stop and purchase breakfast, so I made a German pancake and a package of sausage links from the freezer.  For lunch, I made meatballs and lil smokies in the crockpot.  And for dinner, I added sour dough waffles.

We also finished taking down all the Christmas decorations. I absolutely LOVED having the curtain rod with ornaments over the kitchen sink. In fact, I liked it so much that I decided that I needed to purchase a curtain to go on the rod.   However, when I found my bag of Valentine’s items, I decided I could use some of these items and hold off buying a curtain. I do love the way it turned out.

I also went ahead and decorated the sign outside again with things we already have! It also turned out as well.

Total spent today was $20 for entrance into the game.

Every little bit counts!

Tuesday Thoughts

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  1. I am tired of being sick. I have some form of sickness since Christmas Day. That is 16 straight days of not feeling 10%.  I do feel better but when it hits I am just miserable. Because of the weather delay tomorrow morning (see below) I am debating taking nyquil tonight to try and knock it out!
  2. I had my first remote learning day in two years.  Zach and Kendall were both out of school. Today’s weather has been horrible rain and wind including thunderstorms.  I looked at right after lunch to thisMy green stalk was full of dirt and stands about 6 feet tall with the platform.  I am hoping that nothing is broken.
  3. On of the things that I am trying to accomplish this week is cleaning up my home email. I am un-subscribing to any email that is possible. Unfortunately, a lot of spam my firewall prevents me from reaching. But I am hopeful to reduce the massive amounts of junk email I receive. This will also save me money as currently I am working to not spend any extra for the months of January and February along with the pantry challenge. IF I don’t know about a sale I can not buy what is on sale.
  4. Our washer was repaired yesterday which means I can now finish up the laundry, from the camper. I wanted to get everything clean so that in March all I have to do is load in food and clothing.
  5. I was able to redo our monthly budget. This year’s focus is paying down debit. I want to start actively paying more than I am spending in both groceries and gas. This will take some discipline, but I am ready to conquer it!

Monday Menu Post

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I had to make an additional trip to the grocery store this weekend as we were out of both sour cream and cocoa powder.  My total was $15.98 which brings my regular spending to $26 and including Amazon $98.   This is still well within my budget.   I am going to focus on using items in the pantry for this first month. In fact, I have made a list of at least 10 meals that I will be planning to use in January.   We do have two swim meets which means at least one of these we are going to be eating out.

Breakfast- Saturday- Quiche and cinnamon rolls
Sunday- Matt’s breakfast casserole.  Monday, Tuesday Wednesday, Thursday   and Friday- find it oatmeal,
omelets cereal and milk, French toast sticks, sausage, pop-tarts, bagels and eggs.
Lunch- Saturday-My Dad’s chicken stew using a whole chicken from the freezer.   Sunday- Mexican food from a new restaurant, Monday-
leftovers Tuesday- leftovers, Wednesday. Thursday and Friday   – left-overs and grab and go is the plan.

Dinner- Saturday-More chicken stew Sunday- Sausage and Potato soup-Monday-Baked potatoes- using the rest of our potatoes before they went bad!   Tuesday-Taco pasta from freezer Wednesday- Everyone is grabbing food on the way to the swim meet.  Thursday-Southern ground beef casserole from the freezer.  Friday- Chicken sandwich and French fries on the way to the swim meet.

Saving on Saturday- Pantry Challenge

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Each year #threeriverschallenge (a youtube channel I LOVE) host a pantry challenge for the months of January and February.  I usually attempt to participate in January only.  This year I have decided that we will attempt to participate in both January and February.   To be completely honest, we did not start the challenge until January 3rd because of our travels.  I did run to the store on Wednesday 1/3 to grab milk and cream cheese, spending a total of $10.  My goal for the challenge is spend less than $150 over the next two month not including my subscribe and save from Amazon.  I did start to prepare the kids on the way home but to be honest we are so fully stocked right now it will take a good couple of weeks if not a month for anyone to notice that I am not buying new items.

I have gone thru my subscribe and save on Amazon, reducing my scheduled delivery from 25 items to 5 items for a total of $72.97.   I will do this again in February as well.  I am hopeful that we have enough lunch grab and go items to make it but I may need to keep some of those in the subscribe and save.   My plan is to set aside $500 each month for the purchase of a side of beef.  The remaining monies will be used for medical debit from last year.

This past week, I focused on simple easy meals. Wednesday night, I made pepper steak in the crock pot and also made some rice.  Thursday night we had tomato soup and grilled cheese.  We used sour dough bread from the freezer for our sandwiches. Friday was spaghetti and meatballs.

As I was thinking on Friday, I remembered that we have 4 more whole chickens in the chest freezer outside.  I sent Lily down to find one and start it defrosting in a sink of cold water.  I came home and used the instant pot to cook the entire chicken. Last night I separated the meat and bones.  The bones and skin were thrown in a crockpot with water to make a delicious batch of broth.   This morning I started the cut up chicken, 2 onions and 7 cups of potatoes in a huge stock pot on the stove. I am making a batch of my Dad’s chicken stew   this is really a labor of love, as it requires almost 4 hours of cooking. My plan is chicken stew for lunch and dinner. I will also be freezing at least one additional if not two additional meals. I am hopefully for a couple of lunch as well but we will see.

My plan is to discuss the pantry challenge each week in one of two ways. If it is as simple as what we are eating with very little to no spending I will include in Monday menu planning. If something requires a bit of explanation then I will do a separate post likely on Saturday.

Are you participating?

Thursday Thoughts- Groceries!

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  • Groceries has consistently been one of our biggest expenses. It is also one of the expenses that I monitor very closely using this blog!  I was able to find my groceries expenses all the way back to 2011 this morning!   Which we will discuss in depth in just a few minutes.
  • Last night, I decided that I would finish up my grocery shopping for the month.  Mom and I went into Aldi to grab some fresh veggies and other things in ended up spending $110, this was much more than I had anticipated. I had also decided to grab both Zach and Kendall and head to Costco. My grocery budget does include paper goods, cleaning products and most other things you can purchase at Costco.   We also needed to purchase some extra drinks to take with us to Florida.  My total at Costco for last night was $650.
  • I decided the last week of November, right after Christmas to try out Walmart grocery delivery. I will not be continuing mainly because I am too cheap for it. But I am also disappointed with the level of service and being able to get all the things I want.  I had an order for today which is around $70 and probably one final order before we leave if needed.
  • Wow that sounded expense and it is!  For the month of December, we will end up spending around $1600!  Ouch
  • My next step was to see what my average monthly spending was for 2023. We have spent over $10,400 in 2023 which is an average of $866 a month.  My goal was $975 a month so YAY!  I did manage to stay under budget for 7 of 12 months!   Totally unexpected that I managed to stay in budget this year, but this is a HUGE success! One that I plan to build on see below.
  • Lets’ review some numbers for fun:  in 2011 which included diapers for one kid we spent an average $821 per month.  which was the high amount spent prior to the this  year. Our lowest amount spent on groceries per month was $460 a month in 2013. A more shocking comparison is that in 2019 we averaged $506 a month. Rising to $550 in 2021 which is expected as we were stuck at home and rarely ate out. Finally the average for $2022 was $700  a month.
  • After taking all the in and mulling over the numbers. I am going to maintain the budget at $975 for 2024 especially with a teenage boy in the house and the planned purchase of a cow next summer.
  • Starting in January, I would like to start saving to purchase another whole cow in the summer. Ideally, I would put $500 a month in a saving account for six months to make this happen.   We have a ton of food in multiple locations, and I am really working on keeping it organized and to work through the food that is here before buying new things.  I also need to start to clean out the freezer of all the prepared meals that I made this summer.   I will definitely need the freezer space.  My plan is to start the year by participating in the pantry challenge for both January and February which should also jump start the saving fund.

Five Things Friday- Grocery Version

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Noone is surprised or can argue the fact that groceries price has risen significantly this year.  I am now also feeding 3 teenagers!  So it is a struggle to feed us without breaking the bank. Here is how I am working to keep our budget intact.

  1. Costco chicken…. I picked up a chicken yesterday while getting the tires rotated on the Equinox.  We had just the plain roasted chicken with sides for dinner yesterday.  It easily fed six of us.  I stripped the remaining chicken meat put it in the refrigerator and placed the bones and skins in the crockpot to make chicken stock.  We used one package of the chicken for dinner tonight and will have another full meal if not two from the remaining chicken. That means we had enough meat for 3 meals for $4.99.  I also made approximately 6 quarts of chicken stock.
  2. Thanksgiving Turkey- I am in charge of providing the turkey for my families Thanksgiving this year.  I was watching for sales as the normal price of $1.29 a pound was just too much. Food Lion had a sale this week, that if you spent $35 you could purchase turkey for twenty-nine cent a pound.  Although I really did not “need” any items. I ended up get a 26-pound turkey for $6 and change.  The original cost of the turkey was $64.67, and my final total was $51.64.
  3. Aldi has for the past two years has “rolled back” prices on many items needed for Thanksgiving.  There is a 12 can limit per item.  I purchased both a case (12 cans) of green peas and corn.   I may return and purchase other items later in the month.
  4. Minimizing food waste.  We have had several vegetables that have been sitting in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks now. I also purchased by accident 2 10# bags of potato, each bag was purchased a week apart. The first bag I opened to make baked potatoes last week had already started to spout.  I decided to make these items shelf stable before they needed to be tossed.  I ended up canning 10 quarts of chicken pot pie base and 9 pints of cream of potato soup.   This should actually last over a year but used items that would have otherwise been thrown out!
  5. Eating from the pantry and only buying items that are either on a signficant sale or items that we have ran out of. For example the green peas, I used the last can last weekend for a 7 layer salad. The cans of corn were 50 cent cheaper than what I am currently getting with Subscribe and Save.    I am using the ALEXA app to keep up with items we run out of and am trying not to shop unless absolutely necessary!

Saving On Saturday

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The weather in North Carolina is rainy and chilly.  I am so glad that we are caught up with outside tasks.  Even better is the rain barrel that we put together last week (see the details) is currently filling and we can dump to make sure all the window cleaner is out of it before we use any water on the garden.

Today was spent trying to save money around food.  If you read even 3 or 4 post on this blog, you probably know that groceries are our third highest expense behind the mortgage and Tahoe payment.  I have been working on using up excess food for most of this year. One of the things I wanted to be able to do was condense our freezer food down.  This morning we were able to move around some meat and turn off our oldest freezer.  This will give the old freezer a chance to defrost and also save a small amount on our electric cost at least for the next month until I will restart it to store items from the garden and stock with easy to prepare meals for next school year!  While rearranging we found 4 packs of bacon, a unopened bag of frozen biscuits, an unopened bag of meatball as well as a coconut cake which was desert at dinner.    I spent some extra time this morning checking and making a Costco list. I am going to call it a success as spent $465 at Costco which included 2 prepared meals and a snack for Matt and Kendall.  We enjoyed the rotisserie chicken for lunch, I pulled enough meal off the bones for a chicken and rice soup for tomorrow’s dinner along with a couple of sandwiches as well. The crockpot is going with chicken broth that I will tomorrow.

I was also able to move some food around and now have all but the cereal in the kitchn area instead of spread all over the house!

I also already have a plan for both dinners and lunches next week with two days to continue preparing so that will make tomorrow much easier all the way around!

 

Sunday Catch Up

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The last three weeks have been hard. A constant struggle to keep a good mental attitude along with the additional stress of financial responsibilities have made things easier to leave unsaid until I could process.

I am hopeful that we are through most of the unknown and can now work on getting the financial part taken care of.  This is hopefully one of a couple of post in the next week to catch up with where we are at.  This post will focus on the medical side of things along with financial cost.

Matt had surgery on Valentine’s Day to remove a known basil cell cancer spot from his cheek. We knew that there was a strong possibility that future surgeries may be necessary.  Unfortunately, it was confirmed on February 16th that they did not get all of the cancer. We returned on March 22nd and were given four options.  After much thought and pray, Matt decided to undergo a second surgery. This surgery came with greater risk including nerve damage and facial weakness, along with the same knowledge that the surgeon may not be able to remove all the cancer cells. This second surgery occurred on March 8th.  My God is the great physician with the results a complete success, all the cancer has been removed AND no weakness or nerve damage!  This surgery is not the very end as Matt has another spot on his shoulder that will need to be removed this year. The surgery has also highlighted high blood pressure that will also likely require medical intervention this year as well. We have been discussing both of these needs and will attempt to address in a timely manner, but we also are trying to be good stewards of our money as well.

Matt does not have medical insurance.  His current employer does not offer it.  We have checked into having him on my insurance, but the rate is $400 a month.  He also checked into purchasing through the marketplace, but those rates are between $600 and $900 a month.  We knew going into both surgeries that we would be financially responsible.   Each surgery cost around $4200 with additional expenses we currently have medical bills at around $9500.   Obviously, these are not items that I had on my mind with our 2023 budget.

We also have been surprised by a $400 tax/ tag bill for the Tahoe. Although it is small it also adds to my financial stress.

So what does this mean financially for us.

We did not want to cancel our Disney Trip nor our annual beach trip.  I am determined to keep enjoying the kids over the next 2-6 years before we become empty nesters!  We have decided to increase our debt load over the next year.  This was not an easy decision and one that some people will not agree with however we decided and will continue to work toward our end goals.

One of the steps that I am taking is to continue to eat out of our freezers and pantry, I am also going to become even more diligent on not wasting food.  We currently have not spent any of our grocery budget for the month, instead used credit card points to purchase needed items. Although the pantry challenge is official over, my goal is to limit the budget as much as possible until June. More details of what we are eating will be given in my Monday Menu plan.

I had already decided not to purchase any additional seeds or plant starts this year. This is now even more important than ever.  I am planning to do a post this week with a garden update including current plans and dreams. A chicken update should be included with this as well.

We are re-evaluating all expenses and seeing where that we can reduce our spending.  I am not sure that we are prepared to make some of those sacrifices and if we decided to keep things the same we will continue to work at paying down debt and enjoying life at the same time.

Hope you will hang around for the journey!