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Friday, February 27, 2009

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!

Monday, February 16, 2009

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! :)

Friday, February 13, 2009

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!

Saturday, February 7, 2009

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!


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


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

Friday, February 6, 2009

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! :)