mommato3boys

What is that country song I was country before country was cool....well like you Mother I was cottagecore before cottagecore was cool.

EXACTLY Euphrasyne My "prep pantry" is our normal pantry that we eat out of year round - you know store what you eat and eat what you store. Basically I prep for economic hardships which we have had an abundance of lately and winter weather where we do not want to get out and drive because #1 - it is to freaking cold and #2 - snow/ice. When winter sets in I am like a squirrel, I am in my little nest all snug and warm with my stash of acrons. I buy stuff that we use when it is on sale and put it in the pantry. I will not stock a pantry for 30 years down the road only to struggle now. I only do 5 year plans now, I am old anything after 5 years I maybe pushing up daisies. My ultimate goal is to have a well stocked pantry that will last two years allowing me to get through hard times replacing things as we use them and have the resources. Now that is not to say I do not have "long term storage items" like corn and wheat, etc. I stock whole grains because I do not want a bunch of chemicals in my flour and meal. I was raised by depression era parents. You raise a garden and store the abundace to get through to the next harvest. You buy reduced meat and meat when it is on sale or raise your own. You make do and repair or do without. Left overs are not tossed but put in a bucket in the freezer for winter soups. Cornbread is not tossed either, it goes in the freezer to make dressing, that is if it is not eaten as a snack or dinner with milk. Biscuits are froze and thawed later for breakfast or served at dinner with hamburger gravy and potatoes.

Today is laundry day and I want to work in the pantry some. It is also leftover day, so no cooking but I do need to make tortillas and start a loaf of sourdough bread rising.

We were back in town yesterday for hubby's doctor's appointment and ran by Wal-Mart to grab something I forgot. I decided to grab another couple rolls of breakfast sausage. It had gone up 20 cents from last Thursday (1/18) when I went grocery shopping. TWENTY FREAKING CENTS if it is any consolation eggs had dropped a $1.01 for 18, last week they were $4.14 this week they were $3.13. I didn't price anything else since I didn't have my previous receipt with me - the sausage was bad enough.

I have been trying to decided what to do about storing Alfredo sauce. We are not fans of the dry pack that you make up nor do I like the canned sauce. It has a metalic taste to me. We like chicken alfredo pizza and eat it quite often. Hubby also likes Alfredo Sauce and noodles with broccoli and mushrooms. So this past week I bought the small bottle of Wal-Mart brand Alfredo sauce. Tonight we had chicken alfredo pizza and I was quite impressed with the WM brand. It was actually passable. Hubby liked it on the pizza. So I will add it to the panty list for now.

Hubby is finally vaping only now. He had quit smoking for 16 years but 2000 was a horrible no good year for us. With all the stress he was under he started smoking again. Then when my mother passed away in 2014 he started vaping and has been vaping ever since. Yes we stock up on vape juice for him. His favorite online source closed up shop and now we have to buy local and it is so much more expensive. The only draw back to vaping is he can vape in the car and it doesn't bother me. Smoking is not allowed in my car or my house so he would take smoke breaks when we travel. Now he jokes he only gets 100 miles per potty break from me

Yesterday was food prep day. I managed to make a half gallon of Pico, a quart and half of Verde Sauce and enchilada sauce, a dozen taquitos (there is enough chicken for another dozen but it was the last thing I worked on and ran out of steam), a pound of dry beans cooked and a pound of breakfast sausage cooked for breakfast burritos cooked before I ran out of steam. This morning I made a dozen breakfast burritos and 10 are in the freezer. Oh and 3 and half quarts of veggie broth. The veggie scraps in the crock pot over night and was divided up and froze this morning. So maybe the $156 will last a month. We will see.

Oh how I miss Aldi. When we moved to Texas I was so upset, the closest Aldi is 4 1/2 hours away. I either have to travel to OKC or Wichita Falls. The closest HEB is 3 hours away in Lubbock. So I am stuck with Wal-Mart, United,or Cost plus. There is a Sam's Club just over an hour away in the large city. I want an Aldi backI only shopped Aldi when we lived in NC. I would hit Kroger when they had their 10 for $10 sales but for the monthly shopping (I only got paid once a month when we lived in NC) I would clean the car out fold down the back seat and go shopping at Aldi.

I am not a fan of brown rice either; however, I do like Quinoa (pronounced in suthern - Ken-wa) I bounce between Quinoa and Cauliflower rice. Hubby doesn't care for white rice but will eat parboiled. He had rather have brown rice.

Littlesister, I hope that works for you. It did not work for me, if anything it increased my appetite. I didn't loose any but I didn't gain any either. Since it cold again today my outside plans have been postponed. Today has offically turned into meal prep day for the meals over the next few weeks. Things that will be prepped today: Breakfast burritos - will go ahead and make up about a dozen and get them in the freezer. Marina sauce - this will probably cook overnight in the crock pot since I am using both of my crock pots now. Dry beans - the black beans are already in the crock pot. Pintos have just gone in the other crock pot so they will be ready tonight to bag up and freeze. Chicken - the chicken is cooking now for the taquitos. I plan on making about 2 dozen and freezing them - this is hubby's go to for snacks Today is "feed the starter" day so I will make pizza dough with the discard and freeze it. Enchilda sauce like the marina sauce this will need to simmer for a while, the long the better. I have a pot simmering now since we are having enchilda casserole for dinner. The rest will be froze in ice trays and stored for later use. That will just leave slicing up some onions. I try to keep one or two in the refrig sliced and diced to make it easier when cooking, the onions I have are old and trying to sprout so they will all be sliced and diced and froze.

*****UPDATE***** Wal-Mart was the cheapest this week except for potatoes if I wanted to buy seconds. I could get them for $2 for a 5# bag. More on that later. We have three grocery stores in our area without traveling to Amarillo. Wal-Mart, Cost Plus (this is where you pay "cost" plus 10% and also where the potatoes are on sale) and United Supermarket which is part of Albertson's (think Publix, Food Lion) It is where the influent people (or at least they think they are) shop so the prices are higher. Everything on my list was 20 -40 cents more expensive this week. A lady I used to work with husband is an assistant manager at Wal-Mart and I spoke with him today. He advised me to go ahead and buy things I am going to need for the next few weeks because the next shipment of frozen veggies will see a minimum of a 10% increase. I bought the pepper and onion mix that had already gone up a dime from last week and the stir fry I had planned on using like week 3 or 4 had gone up a dime. Cilantro went up a nickel. My canned green chilies had goine up 12 cents and the zucchini had gone up 20 cents a pound. And to think Wal-Mart was the cheapest. I did catch 3# of ground turkey marked down to $10.06. They no longer carry the rolls I used to buy for $2.25. Potatoes had gone up like 30 cents. Jalapenos had gone up 56 cents a pound. The Riccota cheese had gone up a dime so I bought cottage cheese instead. It was 20 cents cheaper and had 6 more grams of protein. I did buy breakfast sausage which was not on the list. Hubby was adamant that the breakfast burritos would have sausage in them. I bought two one pound rolls of the WM brant for $2.87 each. I also bought smoked sausage which was not on the list and it was 2.81. But will be used in week three for the sausage skillet. It was Earl Campbell* brand. The only other meat that was bought was 10# of leg quarters for 7.72. There were 8 leg quarters in the bag so I cut them up and divided them into just thighs and legs. One thigh will give us plenty of meat in the stir fry and two thighs will make about 2 dozen taquitos. That 10# chicken will last the 4 weeks (or else ) As for the potatoes I don't like shopping the Cost Plus store, it smells bad and the people are rude. So I bit the bullet and paid extra for the potatoes since that is the only thing I would have bought while in there. We usually buy peppers, roma tomatoes and cilantro there because they are always cheaper but not this week. Once you factored in the extra 10% they were the same price as Wal-Mart. Long story short I spent most of my budget for the month. I had alotted $175 for the month and I spent $156 but like I said I bought stuff for week 2-4 also. I need to sit down and figure out exactly what will be used this week and see if I stayed within budget. I know I spent extra on dessert ingredients since we have a function to attend Saturday and I am taking dessert and that was like $7. *Earl Campbell funny - I meet him when he played for the Houston Oilers many many moons ago. He had an account at the bank where I worked. Because of who he was he skipped the teller line and went to one of the VPs and the secretary would bring his deposit straight to us to be processed. Well one day the VP, Mr. Campbell and one of Mr. Campbell's friends brought it in on their way to lunch. The VP trying to be impressive introduced him. I was polite and said nice to meet you. The VP went on to explain who it was and I said that was nice. His friend nudged him and said that I must be upset over the botched play from the weekend. Me being who I am said " no I am not a fan of football" the team mate lost it. I thought he was going to wet himself he was laughing so hard. The VP turned red and Mr. Campbell smirked. I apologized and said I was really not a sports fan, I was more of a bookworm.

Today is grocery shopping day. We are going to go ahead and start our $20 week challenge since we really need to get moving on a few projects and plug some major holes in the pantry since the move. It is going to be a little more than $40 this week since I have to buy coffee. I can't believe I ran out of coffee. I thought I had at least another bag but I can't find it. I think one of the kids went shopping in the storage pantry and the coffee was on there list . Kids gotta love them. I will also pick up an extra couple of sweet potatoes and sprout them. I can't get sweet potato sprouts here, actually seed potatoes are hard to get here also. I am on the hunt for organic potatoes today also just in case I can't find seed potatoes. I am going by Tractor Supply to see if they have this seed and fruit trees selection out yet. I want blueberry and blackberry bushes this year. Plus a few more seeds I am looking for, I have checked all the suppliers I trust online and they are out of most of the ones I want so now I have to hope and pray locals stores will have some.

Mt_Rider we hope use use it as a root cellar ... maybe... We are trying to decided if it can be used to store propane and gasoline as well. I had rather store those things in there if we have to choose. The closest gas station is about 15 miles away so we need to have extra stored but don't have a locking garage to store it in. We may end up investing in one of those garden tool sheds and store the propane/gas in there. There is so much to be done and moving has set us back and helped also. The to do list keeps getting longer and I am not marking off "got 'er done" fast enough. It seems for each marked off item I am adding 4 or 5 to dos.

Today I planned out the garden spaces and researched how many plants are needed per person. I need to walk off the back yard to get an idea of how much square footage we actually have. We also need to collect pallets to make a pallet fence to protect the garden. We have a storm shelter right in the middle of the yard so I have to work around that. The front yard is going to be herbs and the back yard veggies. The front yard is the size of a postage stamp so I will be using mostly containers for herbs and maybe blueberries and strawberries.

Mother my scenario was based on limited supply. Since I live in a high Hispanic area I went with the basic Hispanic foods. I doubt very seriously I will be able to get fresh veggies when rationing starts. I remember my parents sprouting dry beans and planting them. I am not sure that will work anymore but we are going to try it this summer. I have my garden planned out and hope to have a good harvest this summer/fall. There are a few more seeds I need to get like peas, collards and mustard greens. I saw where someone took organic potatoes and sprouted them so I will try that. I have grow bags in my Amazon cart. I plan on using 15 gallon grow bags for potatoes. I need to stock more basics. Since I am a type II diabetic I try to avoid carbs so I need a fairly good size garden to get us through until harvest of 2025. Tonight I was making a list of how many plants we needed per person. Since it is just the two of us I think my little backyard will be sufficient. However, I am putting in a cold frame so that I can extend the growing season for things like greens and squash. I missed getting garlic in the ground for spring so I am hoping I can do a fall harvest and plant some for a spring harvest also. There is no way I can grow enough tomatoes for our meals. We are tomato people so I will need to stock canned and dehydrated tomatoes.

I think a lot of people are going to be shocked when they are handed a bag with flour, meal, powdered milk, and dry beans. If they are lucky they may get a jar of peanut butter, cheese, eggs and butter. I don't think "convenience" foods will be in the "rations." I think they will be the first thing that disappear. I am learning to make pop-tarts from scratch. That is hubby's weakness. He loves blueberry pop-tarts. My mother used to be a director of a senior citizen center and they would get government commodities to pass out. This was usually a bag of dry pintos, a block of cheese, a can of peanut butter and maybe a can of pork. I think that maybe what we see again.

Necie, I just added stuff like the cornbread mix to account for the cost but I will be making my own. I will not be buying canned beans, I will cook dry beans from my pantry. I will probably use the money alotted for the canned beans and buy another bag of dry beans same with other items like the cornbread mix. This challenge is more for me to see how many healthy meals and how far I could stretch said alotted amount of money. I am pretending that we have had a "Black Swan" event and the gubberment is only giving everyone $20 a week for food since there is no more food banks. Yeah I made up a Mt_Rider scenario where there is a major food crisis and the gubberment had taken over the food supply. I did not post my scenario on here anywhere, just hubby and I are working though this. So in my black swan event every family has been issued a "food card" and it is resupplied every week depending on something I never got that far, but our card will renew every Tuesday at midnight. You are given $20 per adult per week to feed your family. I didn't factor in children I just based it on adults. I guess for those with children I would say $15 a week for the first 4 babies and then $10 for each one after that. If you have a baby that needs formula that is a different card. There is only one grocery store open in your community and everyone has to shop this one store. There are no sales. That is why I was using the Wal-Mart app for all my prices.

Cake mixes are sort of a waste for us. We are more cookie people. A cake will go to waste before we eat it. However, this past year I did buy cake mixes to make cake mix cookies for the grands, some church functions and to provide dessets for funeral meals for church family. I had several left over because I caught them on sale and had coupons so I bought extra, why I don't know. Now I am faced with what to do with these cake mixes. Then I saw a tick-tock video of cake mix waffles. I thought why not. So I have used my two chocolate cake mixes to make chocolate waffles. They are light and fluffly, cakes mixes do not crisp up. They are good topped with fruit and whipped cream or coolwhip. And one waffle is just the right size for me and hubby. I did make up the whole box and freeze them. Without frosting they are not too sweet. Hubby likes when I take and put a little whipped cream between two and freeze them. He said it is like eating an ice cream sandwich. Other than norm ie... cupcakes, regualar sheet/layer cakes and cakemix cookies what do you do with your cake mixes?

That is about the only good thing living this close to the border right now. We get a lot of fresh veggies and fruit from Mexico. Our Latino flare fare is cheaper because we have such a large Latino population. If I shop the Hispanic food section I can get Latino labels cheaper than store brand and it is the same product. I mean black beans are black beans. The only place I can get them cheaper than the Hispanic food section is Dollar Tree. I just have to be careful sometimes they only have 12oz bags instead of the 16oz bags.

Yeah, that is what I am struggling with with these menus. I am hoping to fine zuchinni for about $1.25 a pound so that we can have zoodles instead of pasta. I can also use zuchinni in the stuffed shells instead of pasta. I am will not have buns with my hotdogs nor will I have tortillas with my burritos. I will have naked burritos aka burrito bowls. The mornings that we have pancakes I will probably just have boiled eggs, cheese and nuts or jerky. I am not a fan of bread. I will make it all day long for hubby because he doesn't seem to have an issue with carbs This maybe a one and done but I needed to see if I could do this for emergency sake. ... As for the convenience of prepared food with toddlers...girl I hear you. I raised three and lived to tell about it. There is 3 years between the oldest and middle and 2 years between the middle and the youngest. So I had 3 under the age of 5 and 2 in diapers at one time. I didn't think the middle one would ever potty train. I am not sure what was harder 3 under the age of 5 or 3 teenagers in sports

Mother I will be making our own tortillas and bread. I am well stocked on pasta. The only reason I added it in was to account for the cost if I had to purchase it. Same with the canned beans. I will cook a pound of dry beans and that will be more than plenty for all the recipes. I would make corn tortillas but I never can get them thin enough or they crumble on me. So to me is just as cheap to purchase them. I can get store brand pasta for $1 or less and store brand AP unbleached flour for less than $2 for 5# so I try to buy 2-3 bags whenever it is in stock. They don't sell it in 25# bags. I can only find self-rising in that big of bags. We don't drink anything but water that is why there is no tea or other drinks add. We do drink coffee but I order whole beans online and do not count that in my grocery budget. I will need to purchase stuff to make homemade creamer but that will come out of the remaining $15.

Oh shoot, you are correc Mother, I omitted avocados from week one. So with this week's prices adding 2 more avocados will increase my total by a $1 for a total of 42.76 with a grand total of 144.61

Euphrasyme, a good Pico recipe is Roma tomatoes seeded Jalapeno peppers (if you want heat leave the seeds if not seed and devein) Red Onion Cilantro Lime juice This is my DIL recipe and she is from south Mexico. Dice your tomatoes, peppers, onion and cilantro add 1/2 of lime and you are all set. I usually do about 8 tomatoes, 3-4 peppers depending on the size, 1/2 of red onion (why they call it red when it is purple I have no idea) the leaves of a 1/2 bunch of cilantro mix together and add juice from 1/2 lime. This will give me about 2 quart jars.

Anyone want to join in on the $20 a week per person grocery challenge? If so please post your menu and local prices. My menus may change depending on sales I missed a good sale this past week so hopefully in another week or two they will have another good sale.

Ok here is Week 2-4 menus and prices from the Wal-Mart App Week 2 Brunches Breakfast Burritos Mollettes Pancakes Omelettes (may do crustless quiche instead not sure yet) Oatmeal Pancakes Breakfast Burritos Lupper Sausage potato Pan Chicken Parm (*the base sauce will be used for three other meals this week) Spaghetti* Stirfry & Rice Italian Bake* Pizza Chili Wal-Mart App (these are the current prices as of 1/13 and will probably change before I purchase) Eggs (I have opted to purchase an 18 count on week one increasing that total by 1.34 but it will give me enough eggs for week 2) Smoked Sausage 3.28 Potatoes 2.98 Chicken (this is a package of 5 chicken breast and the other 3 will be used in the next two weeks) 7.48 Parm Cheese 2.22 Crushed tomatoes canned x2 3.04 tomato sauce .96 Ground Turkey 3.68 Italian sausage 3.98 Stirfry veggies frozen 2.54 (will use the leftover rice from last week so no cost there) Pepperanoi 2.58 ham canned 1.52 pineapple tidbits .98 Chili beans x 3 2.46 Chili tomatoes .92 Tomatoes with green chilies .96 green chilies .84 Spaghetti pasta .98 Pasta shells .98 Total for week 2 $42.38 Week 3 Brunches Ok I am sick of the brunches we have been having so I will be adding yogurt, cottage cheese, granola and fresh fruit this week. Yogurt and granola Pancakes Gravy & Biscuits Cottage cheese & berries Smoked turkey b'fast skillet B'fast Burritos Sausage English Muffins Luppers (lots of leftovers this week this will allow for the fresh fruit and extra sausage.) Leftover Spaghetti Leftover beans made into burritos Leftover chili Will use leftovers to make chicken tacos Mushroom Alfredo Leftover Italian bake Week #3 Wal-Mart App prices Eggs 18 count 4.14 (this will be enough for week 4 Yogurt 5.47 Cottage Cheese 2.58 Blackberries pint 3.37 Strawberries pint 2.88 B'fast sausage 2.87 Smoked Sausage 3.28 Cheddar cheese 16oz block 3.68 Spinach 1.98 Mushrooms 16 oz 3.12 Green Onions .88 Alfredo Sauce 1.82 English Muffins 1.50 Patty Sausage 3.88 (this and the English Muffins will make sandwiches for next week also) Milk 2.86 Total for Week 3 $40.63 Week 4 Brunches Cottage Cheese & Fruit Yogurt & Granola Leftover B'fast skillet Pancakes B'fast Burritos Molletes Sausage Muffin sandwiches Luppers Will use the chicken from previous week to make Chicken Burrito Bowls Mexi-Hotdogs Tuna & Mac/cheese Casserole Stuffed Shells (Will use the base sause from week 2) Pizza Taco Spaghetti Cowboy Casserole Wal-Mart App prices Turkey Dogs 3.97 Pepper Onion Blend frozen (cheaper than buying fresh peppers) 2.58 Tuna .96 Mac&cheese box will use left over cheese to make it taste better .58 Cottage Cheese 1.98 (cheaper than Ricotta cheese) Jumbo Shells 1.84 Fire Roasted Tomatoes 1.18 Whole Kernel Corn .645 Mexi Cornbread Mix (will make my own using pantry items but this is the only way I could figure out how to count it in the budget) 1.12 Black Beans (same here I will use dry beans but counting a can in the budget) .82 Hotdog Buns (may make flour tortillas instead that is what I usually do) 1.38 Bananas 1.35 (they are .27 each on the app so I counted 5) Avocado x2 $1.00 Total for Week 4 $17.50 So if I say on budget and don't take hubby shopping with me I will stay within the $40 a week budget. The budget is $160 for four weeks and I will spend $143.61 we don't pay taxes on food here in Texas so that will be the bottom line.