Meal Plan Monday

It's monday here, and it's pouring rain. I've got 2 loaves of bread in the oven, and the house smells wonderful. I'm almost done with the laundry and K-girl is sleeping. I'm feeling pretty random today, and i need some structure. Here's what I'm planning for this week. Grocery day is friday, so I'm feeling good. I bought 10 lbs of tilapia last week, knowing that fish is healthy for you, and we never eat it. So I've got to find lots of fish recipes to try!!

Like I said, I'm feeling pretty random and unorganized today, so these meals are VERY vauge. . .

Monday: Something with tortillas, maybe tortilla stack. . .
Tuesday: crunchy fish fillets
Wednesday: chef's salad
Thursday: meatloaf, or something with ground beef
Friday:chicken of somesort. . .feeding sister and her boyfriend before her big marathon, so a carb-filled meal
Saturday: leftovers/fend for yourself--probably fish patties
Sunday: grandma's chicken

hrm. . .that's something!

Meal Plan Monday

I'm usually really good at planning our meals out. I do it for about 2 weeks at a time, from payday to payday, then shop on payday.

I also don't eat the meals on certain days, and I plan for leftovers! Mostly because I can't cook for less than 6 people. I just make a list and we'll eat them sometime during the week :)

Here's what we're doing:
baked potatoes with artichoke sauce
pasta/meatballs
gyoza, miso soup, and rice
mini meat mounds
rice and lentils
leftovers
Fend for yourself (FFY) (I do this on nights Captain jax is working nights, because I don't like cooking for just me, since K-girl doesn't care what she eats)

Sooo. . .what are you eating this week? :)

My new toy--or a late food storage friday post

I did it. I bought it today. My wheat grinder!!


I'm so excited! It was kind of pricey, (around the $260 price) but it holds 12 cups of flour, is more compact than the others I looked at, and I've read god reviews on it. Plus a lifetime warranty on the milling heads? Not too shabby. The most important thing to me was size. I needed something that I could store in my limited space here in the basement. Because this one is two parts, the mill and the flour container, I can grind a full 12 cups of flour, keep it in the container in the kitchen and store the mill in the storage room.

I'm making a loaf of bread with the flour right now. I'll let you know how it works out :)

Oh yeah, this also grinds beans! that means I can try the bean flour cream'o'chicken soup recipe I got from everydayfoodstorage. Woot! :)

What Are You Willing To Pay?

This is something I struggle with. I have a hard time knowing what a good price for something is. I try to use coupons as much as I can, but it doesn't always work. Bethany, over at The Good Ship Lollipop, posted what the highest amount she would pay for certain things.

What Are You Willing To Pay?

It made me feel better knowing I'm not doing too bad! I always feel like things are ridicuously priced, but I did a few calculations and realized a lot of things I buy are under what she would pay. And she's a bargin QUEEN.

Sugar for example, I paid about $.30 a lb, which was great, and for boneless/skinless, I won't pay above $1.50. Of course, we live in different states and things are probably different because of that.

Go check her out and see how you're doing!

Budgeting

I just went through my bank account from Jan 1st, to today. I wanted to see where all our money was going, because I seems like we can't put money away in savings no matter how hard we try, and we're not really living within our means.

Which bugs me a lot, because for crying out loud, we live in my in-laws basement. Rent is NOT that expensive, we should be able to put money away right?

Here's what I learned:

• We eat out (either Captain Jax going out for lunch, or picking food up for us on his way home) W-A-Y too often.
• We need to pay off our debt
• We need to stop using 'extra' features on our phones (like texting)
• Besides those things, we were actually doing pretty good.

Let me tell you about my budget and how I set it up, and maybe it will help you get one. I plan for two weeks at a time. We get paid every two weeks so I plan from paycheck to paycheck. And even though it scares me a little bit, I'm going to share actual figures with you here. *deep breath*

Paycheck #1/#2
Budget amount: $600/$600

Church Offering	$75/75
Rent	$250/$0
Food	$75/$75
Gas	$50/$50
Phone	$75/$75
Captain Jax	$25/$25
Krystal	$25/$25
Debt	$25/$0
Savings	$0/$250

Actual Amount:$600/$575

This is my goal. And we're starting fresh this pay period. I'll let you know how we do.

Now, tell me about how you budget, and what works for you? Perhaps I can glean some information from you that will work for us! :)

GIVEAWAY!!

I've been spending a lot of time with the Fun With Food Storage Gals lately. The desire and need to have a plan in place has been really strong lately and our family has been focusing on it. Almost all extra money goes towards that. Almost. :) We still like to play.

They have a baby-steps checklist that they email to you every two weeks. Then you spend those two weeks getting everything for the baby step they emailed you. When the next one comes in two weeks, you're ready for it. After a year you should have everything in place from where to store your food, to water, to knowing what you have on hand.

Baby steps. . . baby steps to the food storage :) (that's from "What About Bob?" in case you haven't seen it)


Anyway, now they have created an ebook for you to purchase!! Then, those of us who don't have the patience to wait for all the emails to come can download it for just $17!! WOOT!!!

And you can enter for a chance to win it for free!! We all love our free stuff don't we? I'm a cheapskate, you all know that! All you need to do it blog about, twitter it, facebook it, email it. . .GET THE WORD OUT THERE!!! Then go check out their site for their email and let them know that you did. :)

Red Box Wednesday

Every Monday and Wednesday, you can find codes to get free rentals from Redbox. I'm going to start doing my best to post those for you!

Here's today's code, good until midnight tonight: GTL456

If you need help finding a redbox near you, check out Redbox.com

RedBox Monday

Here's a code to get you a free Redbox DVD today!

2GR4N8

If you don't know what redbox is, or where to find one near you, check out Redbox.com

Food Storage Friday

Is it friday again? The days have become a blur to me. . . .and I haven't posted in a while.

I'd like to tell you about the 12 meal plan. (actually, you can pick whatever number you want, 12 just fits nicely with a year). The way the 12 meal plan works is to give you enough supplies to make 12 meals, 31 times, so they will last you for an entire year.

Clear as mud?

Good, let's move on.

Pick 12 meals that your family would eat and that you can store the things needed. Meals like spaghetti are good. off the top of my head I can't think of any other ones. But I have a head cold (STILL!!! it's been lingering back and forth for about a month now).

After you pick your 12 meals, make a list of all the ingredients for each meal (how much you'll need to make each one) and multiply it by 31. So for spaghetti, if you use one package of noodles each time you make it, you'll need 31 packages. Every month you pick ONE of your meals and buy all the ingredients to make that meal 31 times.

At the end of 1 year, you will have enough meals to last you for a year in your storage! Fantastic! And if you wanted to go above and beyond, another idea is to pick breakfasts and lunches as well. Breakfast could be easy since there are so many muffin mixes and dry mixes you could just add water to.

I'm going to work on my list and get back to you. Let me know what ideas you have! and good luck!

Give Away!

Nope, not here again.

Someday, but not today.

Head over to the Grocery Cart Challenge and check out her giveaway! It's for a diva cup, which is a WONDERFUL way to save money on pads or tampons. Plus it's environmentally friendly! No worry about clogged toilets or extra garbage when that dear monthly friend comes to visit.

I've been too scared to try one, I'm not going to lie, but if I win one, I'll try it! :)

Food Storage Friday

I'm in the market for a grain mill. Also known as a wheat grinder. The reason for this does have to do with today being Food Storage Friday, I promise.

Wheat has an amazingly long shelf life. As in 30+ years. If you're looking for things to store long term, this is a great item. And I want to store it. But I have a hard time knowing what to do with wheat. Growing up, we would eat cracked wheat for breakfast. I don't know how my parent's made it, but I love it! It's nice to have a warm breakfast when it's like 10 degrees outside.

My mother would also grind her wheat in an old commercial coffee grinder (this thing was HUGE, and super noisy--scared the living daylights out of me more than once!) and have wheat flour.
A lot of wheat grinders are electric. Which is nice, until you have no power for an extended period of time. You have to live off your food storage, and you have all this wheat, and can't grind it into to flour--which is easier to find something to make with than whole wheat.

This one, pictured above is the one I'm currently looking at. It's from Emergency Essentials, and the price isn't too bad either. It's on my list of things I need for my food storage supply. Along with a camp stove, and water purifier. If only I had thought of these things when I was working at an outdoor/camping store in college and could get awesome discounts!

A 'Buy 10 get $3 off' Deal

This week, my Smith's Grocery store (also known as Kroger in other places) is having a pretty good sale. Buy any 10 participating items and get $3 off when you check out. Cereal was one of those things on sale. I like to buy cereal when it's a good deal, because Captain Jax loves to eat it for breakfast. I personally would rather have eggs, but he'll eat through it. He's kind of picky though, and the kind he likes (read:chock full of sugar) isn't usually the kind of sale.

This week though, we were in luck!

Order One

I saved 61% off this order. Or $21.30. I got ten items that qualified (and that I had coupons for) and my total after tax came to: $13.67. My store sale savings were $15. 40, and my coupon savings was $5.90

Order Two

This was the bigger one. I saved 77% on this one!! ($33.57) my store sale savings was $25.52, and my coupon savings was $8.05. Want to know how much I paid for 7 boxes of Lucky Charms, and three boxes of pizza rolls?

$10.16

I'm feeling pretty durn good about my deals today

Food Storage Friday

I've decided to add some new features to this blog. I realize I don't post very often, and it's all pretty random stuff anyway. Just me trying to make life better for my family! So, I thought I should have some theme days on the subjects I like to cover here. So far I have "Food Storage Friday".

Check here every friday for some Food Storage tips!

Today, I want to show off my splurge. Gamma Lids.


You can usually find these lids at any emergency preparedness store, but if you happen to live in an area that doesn't really have anything like that, you can find them online. And I know, they're kind of pricey aren't they? I paid $7.99 PER LID for these suckers! You can find them cheaper online, but I didn't think that far ahead, they were kind of a spur of the moment purchase for me.

What's great about these is how easy they are to use! They come apart into two pieces: the seal and the lid.


and you just hammer the seal onto your bucket, and twist the lid on! Easy as that! and it's a tight seal as well. The reason I love these, it because I've started storing lots of things in buckets and I don't want bugs to get into them! I keep flour in one bucket, sugar in another, packages of powdered sugar in another, and yet another keeps my pasta.

This way, I can buy things in bulk, like a 25lb bag of sugar, and store it so the bugs can't get it. I don't know if they're waterproof, and frankly, I hope I never have to find out! But these lids are a whole lot easier to use than the standard lids that come with the buckets. Go check them out! :)

Snow Day

It's a snow day here at our place. We got about 2 1/2 feet yesterday and my car has become buried. That's ok though, because I don't trust it in the snow anyway.

So I decided to go through our food. I pulled out every unopened item from the storage room and the pantry and went through it all.

I really thought we had a lot more than this, but that's everything folks! and after writing EVERYTHING down, I decided we probably have at least a three months supply of food that we could live off of. Which is reassuring to me.

As I've mentioned before, I'm LDS. My church leaders council us to have a years supply of food storage. at minimum, a three-month supply I believe. I understand for some people a years supply just isn't possible. It's really not possible for us either, as we live in a basement apartment, and don't have much storage space. But it's important for our family to follow the council of our leaders and obey.

So I wanted to know where we stood, since it's a new year, and I have resolutions for our family to have a food supply that we can live off of. I don't have a food storage of items our family won't eat, because it won't do us any good. For example: we don't eat hardly ANY beans, lentils are as close as we get, and sometimes refried beans. But pasta. . .wow, we eat that all the time! so have about 40-50 lbs of pasta right now. I don't know how long that will last us, but I think it'll take us at least 3 months to finish it off, if we ate it every day.

and now that I've written everything down, I know exactly what we have, and I can plan meals from our pantry. That will help cut down our food budget, and I can put the money somewhere else it's needed.

Happy snow day everyone! :)