All right, I’ll admit right up front that I’m planning a trip to Penzy Spices and Trader Joes in the next week or so. Otherwise, though, I’m going to try to severely curtail the grocery shopping this month.
I’m a good frugal bargain-finding shopper, so I have a LOT of stuff stocked up. Upright freezer is full, small freezer stuffed, fridge falling-out packed, and several gallons of milk in the spare fridge in the garage. (Not sure it will last the month, though.) I also do go to the local food pantry a few times each month, but since the goal is saving money on groceries (and since I get to make the rules!) I’m making an exception for that.
Anyone want to play? We can share menus, shopping costs (you may really need coffee, for example. Or booze.), trials and tribulations, and general comraderie and support. Being frugal is way more fun when you aren’t doing it alone.
Here, put on a party hat and let the festivities begin!
Oh man, this would be fun. I cleared out all the clutter in my cabinets between Christmas & New Year’s though, so I have nothing to play with!
Well, I do have a freezer full of meat. Maybe I could play with that. It’s about 60 days worth of meat though.
Who can tell me what I should do with a pound of leftover spiral cut ham?
Mmm! How about:
Ham and collard (or other) greens…I’m on a greens kick lately
Hash brown casserole
Leftover pasta with ham, cottage cheese, peas, and stir in an egg (there’s a name for this but I can never remember it)
Or freeze it to add to soup later…always a good alternative for leftover meat!
I’m sort of doing this already. We’re closing on our house on the 18th so I’m trying to use things up, like that box of Zatarans or the phyllo dough in the freezer. I don’t think it’ll diminish my food buying dramatically, though it is encouraging creativity. Tonight I made a sort of open-faced spanikopita pizza thing with the phyllo, spinach, tube o’ pesto, and goat cheese. It was fantastic, if I do say so.
Tomorrow I’m using up peanut butter, a quarter bottle of asian vinaigrette and spaghetti noodles. I’ll marinate some beef I bought today in the asian dressing, broil it and make a peanut sauced noodle.
I might join you. We have two small chest freezers, and both are full. To be fair, one of them is my stocking-up for after our twins are born freezer, and it’s full of prepared food, not raw ingredients. I could still use up my pantry and the stuff in the other freezer.
I also have lots of ham and turkey. Creamed turkey, ham and turkey potpie, turkey in butter chicken sauce, ham and pea soup.
I have soooooo many potatoes! And sprouts! What am I meant to do with all the sprouts?!
I’m with you!
Checks pantry. Finds half a bag of rice.
Um… this shouldn’t take long.
I just went on my post-season meat-buying excursion, so my downstairs freezer is full – ground turkey, boneless chicken breasts, beef stew meat, pork chops, and London broil.
One thing I do to save money, especially during the winter, is buying bags of frozen veggies. Our local warehouse store, changes them out every so often. Right now we’ve got haircots verts, “carrot balls” (it’s a variety of carrot that actually grows into a baby ball), two varieties of mixed veggies, and frozen chopped spinach.
I’m letting the actual pantry run down, though. I’ve got a 6-pack of sweetened condensed milk in there which 1) I have no idea where it’s from, or 2) how old it is :shudder:
I need to get in on this also. First step, for me, will be to empty out, clean, and re-organize the pantry, maybe this weekend. I do this every couple of years, get of expired stuff, and get a better feel for what I actually have on hand. I know there’ve been times where I’ve bought replacements for something because I couldn’t find it in the damn clutter there.
We also have stuff in the basement freezer that has been there for up to two years (yeesh). It’s still good, but we really need to clean it out and see what we have there. Some prepared stuff, at least one whole chicken, we’re having a chicken breast dish tonight that we’re making from a package of boneless chicken we found in the freezer…
I’m glad I’m not alone. I need to organize my pantry too. Luckily it consists of two fairly small closets. One is a reformed linen closet where I keep a lot of canned goods. The other is in the kitchen and contains not only canned goods, but also all the baking supplies, convenience type crap, sodas/snacks, and other everyday type items…plus pet food and whatever is in my way at the moment. It’s actually organized in layers at the moment.
I want to make some sort of southwest tortilla casserole for dinner tonight. Pretty sure I have everything I need, although I’ll probably have to thaw a chicken.
My main issue is that both kids have birthdays this month. Tbone wants tacos. I think I have everything except maybe lettuce for those, and maybe I’ll make him snickerdoodles. The Weeping Princess has requested chicken strips and brownies–I have to make sure I didn’t give away all my brownie mixes at Christmas!
Okay, this will sound evil, and I may be pitted (be warned - I never go to the Pit,so it doesn’t bother me) but if you have all this, can shop at TJ’s and Penzey’s, why are you going to the food pantry a few times per month? I thought that was for people who couldn’t feed themselves right then. Not just an auxilliary food outlet because, hey! free food!
StG
I’ve been on a huge soup making and freezing kick with the excess produce I bought for Christmas. So far I’ve finished Broccoli/Cheese, Corn and Potato Chowder and Turkey Vegetable. Next up is Squash/Sweet Potato and then I’m finally safe from mass produce suicide.
I’ve been meaning to go through the pantry and clean it out but it’s highly unlikely to get done in January 
Not to worry. I don’t pit anyone.
Shopping trip to Penzey’s and TJ’s is a Christmas present. It won’t be a huge mega-trip, just a few things I don’t seem to find locally.
Plus (this is a big one, I guess) we have a really good food pantry with really liberal guidelines, one being that it is actually okay to use as an auxilliary food source to allow families a little more wiggle room in the budget for other bills. I sometimes rely on it pretty heavily, other times it’ s a source of vegetables and fruit that I can’t usually spend much on.
I was sick and missed a lot of work in Oct/Nov, and the medical bills are rolling in…thus, not much grocery budget for a while. You’ll just have to take my word for it when I say that I am way, WAY within the financial guidelines for our pantry. (But again, the financial guidelines are only one qualifier; there is a long list of other ways one can qualify without feeling guilty.) I also donate a lot when I have the money and hit a good sale…I can sometimes donate 30 half-gallons of milk (or 20 dozen eggs or such) for $15, and get more than $15 worth of groceries in return. They’re happy, I’m happy.
Actually, a lot of what I have in my pantry has come from there. Right now they have absolute truckloads of canned corn, with signs that say “Take a case of corn! Recipes available!” That sort of thing. It’s a great place and I consider it a blessing.
I’ve been on a huge soup kick too! But I’m not good at freezing soups…they just don’t seem the same after I thaw them out. The one exception so far has been black bean soup, which is mostly beans and meat and tomatoes, all of which I can deal with when thawed and reheated.
Any soup that contains potatoes, though (and most other veggies as well)…I don’t know, the texture changes so much. Any advice or super good freezer soups would be much appreciated!
Any kind of potatoes or pasta will practically dissolve into the soup, so yeah, avoid the really starchy stuff. Most other veggies may be softer when it’s thawed, but for most soups you’ve cooked them to softness anyway.
Vegetable beef soup (sans potatoes) does well.
When I make turkey or chicken soup, I freeze it with no problems. Then again, it’s just the stock plus the meat, plus some carrots / celery, which you want cooked into softness anyway. They keep their shape just fine. I serve this with noodles of course, but I always just cook those when we’re ready to eat the soup.
Epicurious has a barley / lentil / swiss chard soup that freezes very well - I’ve got a container right now that I need to zap for a very-belated lunch. Super-healthy also, in fact this inspires me; I’ve got all the ingredients except the chard and maybe I’m low on the chicken stock.
I used up an expired angel food cake mix today, and a small box of powdered sugar! The only bummer is that I bought a rather large bag of powdered sugar because I didn’t remember having the small box. So, kind of a step forward and a step back there.
I have bags and bags of pasta and noodles. Last night I cooked half a bag, drained, mixed with a (cooked) frozen brick of spinach, garlic, olive oil, and a half a bag of frozen shredded mozzarella. It was OK, and I had the rest for lunch today with a wedge of (cooked) frozen pizza I had wrapped up and hidden for just such an occasion. I have a lot of frozen hamburger I’m cooking and using up, and Friday I’ll cook that Jennie-O frozen turkey roast thing my mom gave me. Saturday, I’ll make burritos, Sunday meat loaf. I can go for a week without major shopping because I store stuff in the freezer in case of a snow storm. But as it will be in the 40’s, might as well use it up and stock up again before the next blizzard forecast. Got soup, soup makings, and flour and yeast for the bread machine. Bring it!
I’m not much of a cook, but the search by ingredient feature on Allrecipes.com may be helpful: http://allrecipes.com/Search/Ingredients.aspx You can enter ingredients that you do and don’t want to be included in the recipe, so you can put in things you already have and see what comes up.
This is a great idea - I wish I’d seen the thread before heading out to the store today! I mostly bought fresh vegetables and dairy, though, so I didn’t add much to my pantry. I’ll join in and try to use up my freezer and pantry stockpile this month, instead of buying anything new. Time to get creative!
I made my casserole. It was okay but not much better than that. The tortillas just sort of dissolved so it didn’t have the texture I was shooting for. Luckily I had plenty of sour cream!
No inspiration for tomorrow yet. The kids will be with their dad, though, so I can do something simple or cook Food Only a Mother Would Love.