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?

5 Things Friday- Travel Edition

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  1. My mom, Granny, Amanda, Braxton, Lily, Izzy (Lily best friend), Kendall, Zach, Matt and I headed to Haley’s in Florida with the camper on Thursday December 28th.  The trip down started at 4;45 and we arrived around 6:30pm so a 14 hour trip including stops for gas, breakfast and lunch. We headed home on January 2nd.  Lily and Izzy were in the car with Granny as Amanda had flown home on Sunday. We started the trip around 8:15 am. and arrived home at 11:30, a 16 hour trip. It took us 6 hours to get out of Florida instead of 4.   This was I felt like our longest and slowest trip ever.  After much discussion, we are not exactly sure what we could have done differently to make the trip shorter.
  2. Everyone included David and Haley headed to Disney Springs on Friday December 29th, which was Granny’s birthday.  Braxton got his face painted as well!
  3. Saturday was our Christmas celebration. I spent a couple of hours at Urgent Care.  After dinner, Kendall, Izzy, Lily and I headed to the camper. I went to sleep, and the girls enjoyed a girls game which included lots of giggles. Matt and Zach stayed and watched a football game at Haley and David’s. Zach ended up staying at Haley’s for Saturday, Sunday and Monday night. He and Ryder played lots of video games.
  4. Sunday, New Year’s Eve was spent eating and laughing and just hanging out! The girls headed to do a little bit of shopping at Target and Ross. Lots of football was watched as well. I ended up back at the camper early. But everyone else set off fireworks and played with sparkers! It is always nice to spend time with family.
  5. Monday s adventure included a cold trip to the beach! I put my toes in the water, it was cold. Zach and Braxton played in the water. Everyone else watched them as the water was too cold. We all enjoyed just being on a beach the first day of 2024!

Wordless Wednesday- Trip

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One of our favorite things to do when we travel is EAT!  Our recent trip to Florida was even better because some of the time David cooked some of the best food I have ever eaten!

Cracker Barrel is our first traditional stop on a trip!

We celebrated Granny’s birthday at Disney Springs at Earl of Sandwich-one of our absolute favorites!

 

We also ate at Texas Roadhouse for dinner!

Our Best place that we ate is also our newest favorite place!  This will be a definite stop each trip to see Haley! These are called Bento boxes!

Year in Review-2023

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Groceries- Budget $975   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!  I am planning to leave this amount unchanged for 2024 but will hopefully be able to incorporate the purchase of a whole or half side of beef.

Auto/ Gas. Goal -= $600 a month. We spent $5740 on gas. Which is an average of $478 a month.  We did manage to spend over $600 on gas in 3 of the last 12 months. I can explain this with the fact that we travelled each of those 3 months. I am going to reduce the budget to $500 a month to leave some wiggle room for traveling as well.

Blogging- 15 post per month. Yet again, I did not meet this goal. I was able to blog 15 times last January and 17 times last May.  I am going to leave this goal, as a form of accountability.  I do enjoy reviewing blogs but sometime blogging gets pushed to the back burner.

Exercise- I am struggling both with my health and how to improve it!  I am losing a small bit of weight.  I ended the year at 220.   Hopefully I will be under 190 by the end of 2024.

2023 brought lots of celebrations and also a fair bit of change.  I hope to make 2024 less stress, fun and need to enjoy some additional down time for sure!

December in Review

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December was a hard and busy month. I got to make two trips to Florida and visited with Haley both times!  We have had quite a bit of sickness this month. Matt missed 3 days of work. I have missed several days of my Christmas Break due to being sick.  Now is the time to start looking ahead and planning for the future after reviewing goals of course!

Groceries- Budget $975   $1564.96 Goal NOT met!  I am heading into the pantry challenge where I hope to save enough to purchase at least half a cow this summer.

Auto/ Gas. Goal -= $600.  Goal NOT Met!  We have spent $561.57 this month.  The most expensive part of our trip to Florida was gas. We get 8.9 miles to the gallon when pulling the camper.

Blogging- 15 post per month.  9  post this month.  I am continuing to struggle with this again.

Exercise- I am struggling both with my health and how to improve it!  I am losing a small bit of weight. I have been sick at least the last week and half so no progress.

Earn extra money: a $50 gift card from Fetch.  I am at 45552. That means I need 7448 more points. Or 30 more receipts to scan at the minimum.  I seriously doubt I hit this goal before March at this point but I will keep working.