A Month of No Groceries!

Yes, you read that title right. We are currently in a month of buying no groceries. We did this in November of 2015 and you can read about it here. This time, there are a couple of reasons why we are doing this. The first of course is to try and save some money in an overly tight January budget. The second reason however is more exciting. Our steers are going to be butchered in a week and we need all the freezer space we can get!

When we did this in the past, we had done it on a whim, and during November. I really didn't think it through, knowing that we would end up having to buy somethings for Thanksgiving, but we plunged forward and made it through.  Yes, we still bought a few groceries, but not nearly as many as we would have during a regular month.

This time around is going to be a little different. We really are under than gun to clean out some freezer space for the beef that we will soon have. Also January is always a tight month for us. There is Christmas that we just spent money on, taxes that we just paid, plus this year our Christmas present to ourselves was a little pricey...a fireplace. A gas log fireplace. It is something that we built ourselves and are so proud of. It is not quite finished yet, but when it does, I will post pictures and how we built it. We are hoping that since it is gas, it will save us money on our electric bill. So in the end, it will end up paying for itself!

So back to the month of no groceries, I really do mean what I say. We are not going to be spending money on groceries during the month of January. Each week on Monday, I will update you all on how we did with the groceries and what I cooked using food out of our pantry and freezer.

So for week one's update: yes we bought a few grocery items. We bought two cartons of almond milk (as soon as I get a decent blender, I will be making it myself!) and some cheese.  We spent all of around $7 for the three items, but it should get us through the rest of the month.

So what did I cook? Well our meals looked a little like this:

Homemade lasagna...take that Stouffer's!

Monday: Salad and Chicken Wings (left over from New Years Eve)
Tuesday: Vegetable Soup and Stuffing Muffins (left over from Thanksgiving that I had frozen)
Wednesday: Smothered Pork Chops (slow cooked with potatoes and onions)
Thursday: French Dip Sandwiches (used left-over pork chops and the juice to make these)
Friday: Pizza (this was at my mom and dad's house and was not planned)
Saturday: Lasagna and Beer Bread (I didn't have ricotta or cottage cheese, so instead I used cream cheese which I did have, and it was amazing!)
Sunday: Left-Over Night (Or clean out the fridge, as I like to call it)

My yummy beer bread! A quick and easy way to make bread.

So you can see that everything that I made was something that I had in my freezer or pantry, but mainly freezer. While I was cooking the hamburger for the lasagna I decided to cook some extra and I will be using that for a Mexican meal this evening.

I love that I was able to take my left-overs from Wednesday and turn them into a whole new meal for Thursday. Doing this challenge really helps me plan out what I am going to cook, and how I can use the left-overs for other meals. The best part is that I am using food that I already have, I am not wasting anything, and I am saving money that we need for other things this month.

Have you ever done this challenge?  Want to join me? Let me know in the comments below!

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A Month of No Groceries: My November Food Challenge Week 4

Well the November food challenge of no groceries for a month is officially over.  This really has been an eye opener for me and my spending habits when it comes to food.  Here is how I did this last week of the challenge.

I did have to buy groceries this past week, but let me tell you why.  I put the turkey that my mom had purchased for our Thanksgiving feast in my fridge to thaw on Sunday of last week.  On Tuesday I went to put it in a brine and realized that the turkey had been thawing and dripping blood into my crisper drawers.  My veggies that I was going to use for the dressing had been marinating in turkey blood for at least a day.  Yuck!  I wasn't about to take any chances, so those veggies were thrown out, my fridge got a good cleaning, my turkey ended up in the brine, and I had to go and buy onions, carrots, and oranges that I used for our Thanksgiving meal.  I also ended up buying two loaves of bread for the dressing.  I had made bread, but I ran out of time and I got really nervous about having enough.  My mom had extra celery so she gave me hers and I didn't have to buy that.  I ended up spending less than $10.00 for what I had to replace.

Our meals this week were sporadic and consisted of quite a few sandwiches, ham and pbj, until the day of the feast.  Since then we have been eating leftovers.

I was really hoping that I could have made it through the month and tell you that I spent nothing on groceries. What I can tell you is that I spent less than $100.00 on groceries this month and for that I am extremely proud!  For groceries, we generally spend anywhere from $300.00 (on a slim month) to $500.00.  Our freezer also looks much better.  In fact I plan on taking inventory of what we have left and organizing it so I can access food better.  Our pantry has less food in it, but it is still a mess.  I do need to organize my pantry, but that will be a job for a cold snowy day.

I did learn some things while going through this process.  And I thought I would share what I learned with you.

Take Inventory
At the beginning of the month, take an inventory of what you have in your pantry and freezer.  Be sure and write down what you have on hand.  You might be surprised to find that you have multiples of an item.  My favorite inventory worksheets can be found HERE. Just scroll down till you see Cleaning & Organizing and you will find both the pantry inventory and the freezer inventory worksheets that are free!

Plan Meals
Once you have your inventory of your foods, then start planning your meals for the month.  This is a great time to sit down with the family and let them help plan the meals.  I know my kids have favorite meals that they always want me to make.  As I write down the meals I make notes of what I have on hand and what I will need.  I also make notes if it can be a slow cooker meal, or if it will take additional time to make (making it the perfect weekend meal).

Cook From Scratch
Cooking from scratch is a great way to save money, use up your stockpile of groceries AND eat healthy.  I love to cook from scratch, but unfortunately I'm not always home to be able to.  Some of my favorite things  to cook (or bake) are bread, cookies, and soups.  What I have found is that it doesn't take much extra time to make, you can control the ingredients that goes into the food, and it tastes so much better!

It's Okay to Make Mistakes
It is okay if you make a mistake.  It is okay if you have to go and buy groceries, when you didn't plan on it.  I experienced some stress because I wanted to be really successful in this challenge.  At first I thought that if I bought groceries, then I had failed.  That is not the case at all.  The savings my family experienced is enough for me to call this challenge a success. Plus I have the bonus of using food that might have ended up being thrown out instead of eaten.  So now I have learned not to be so hard on myself.  We all experience setbacks and we can always turn those setbacks into something positive.

So how did you guys do?  Did you make it through the month?  If any of you tried this challenge let me know in the comments below how your month ended. 

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A Month of No Groceries: My November Food Challenge Week 3

Well, week 3 didn't go as planned.  I'll tell you more about that later.  The good news is that the meals we had were much better than week 2.  I was actually able to plan ahead and cook more!  Here is what we had.

Monday: Leftovers from take out we got on Sunday
Tuesday: Taco Soup (Recipe to come later)
Wednesday: Loaded Baked Potatoes
Thursday: Beans & Ham and Mac & Cheese
Friday: Beef and Bean Enchiladas
Saturday: Meatloaf, Mashed Potatoes, Peas, and Homemade Bread
Sunday: Clean out the Fridge Night!

I'm happy to report that the beef and bean enchiladas used the most leftovers of any of the meals.  I had leftover tortilla shells, leftover homemade enchilada sauce in the freezer, and leftover beans from the night before.

Beef and Bean Enchiladas. Yummy goodness inside!

And then you can see our Sunday evening meal was a clean out the fridge night.  I wanted to make sure that all the leftovers from the meals we had this week were eaten and not taking up valuable space in the fridge since in just a couple of days it will be Thanksgiving!  Already the turkey (that my mom so graciously gave me) is in the fridge thawing and getting ready to be roasted on Thursday morning.

Our Wednesday night meal

Now for the bad news.  I did buy groceries this week.  I broke down and got some things that we really needed for meals and for Thanksgiving.  Here is a run down of what I ended up buying:

• milk - $2.87
• celery - $0.49
• 2 lbs. carrots - $0.99
• 10 lbs. potatoes - $1.49
• corn - $2.00 (4 cans)
• sharp cheddar cheese - $1.79 (block)
• sliced ham - $3.29 (all natural)
• cream cheese - $0.89
• coffee creamer - $1.69
• Cranberries - $0.99
• mandarin oranges (I gave in to the cryings of my children, they love these!) - $3.56 (4 cans)
• 3 lbs. sweet potatoes - $0.99
• pumpkin - $1.78 (2 cans)

So for under $25.00 I was able to get a few groceries that helped supplement our meals, and will help make the recipes that I plan to serve for Thanksgiving.  While I was really hoping that I could get by without buying any groceries at all this month, I think this is pretty good.  Remember I did spend some the first week, and while I didn't give you a total on what I had spent that week, I will tell you now.  It was $18.00 for 4 items.  Those 4 items were purchased at Wal-Mart.  The items above I purchased at Aldi.  It makes a big difference.  So while I'm not happy that I bought groceries, at least I did save money on them.

Tuesday's meal, taco soup, yummy!

This week is going to be tricky with making meals.  I don't want to make big meals that we will have lots of leftovers due to Thanksgiving coming up.  I don't want to take up space in my fridge now that it is cleaned out, but I do want to continue to cook our meals.  I guess you will have to wait and see how we do this week, and see what kinds of meals I can come up with for my family, and hopefully resist the urge to buy any more!

So tell me, how did you guys do this week?

2 comments budget, cooking, food, groceries, no spend, sustainable living, tips

A Month of No Groceries: My November Food Challenge Week 2

We have just finished week 2 of no groceries and I can tell you that it is getting harder.  I can also tell you that life is getting busier as you can probably tell since this post is late.

The good news is we did NOT buy any groceries this week. The bad news is that we did eat out a couple of times. The reason we got take-out  is because this weekend we were working hard on putting siding on our house. Since it was just Steve and I putting on the siding, I wasn't able to take the time off to make meals. Plus by the time we called it a day from putting up siding, we were both exhausted!

This picture was too cute not to share, plus you can see the mess behind them from the siding project

What bothers me about the meals we bought, was the money we spent.  We could have used the money spent to purchase enough groceries for at least 1 week probably longer. :-/  What I should have done was plan ahead and had something in the crock pot, or fixed a meal ahead that would have been easy to reheat.  However the way last week went, that just didn't happen.

My lack of planning was the real issue this weekend.  I now realize that I need to plan ahead.  I have always been horrible at meal planning.  Even if I do plan ahead, I don't stick with it.  

As for meals this week, it has been interesting to say the least.  This week was probably one of the most stressful weeks I have had in a long time.  Not due to the no groceries, but to other things that were going on.

Monday: Kids ate at my sister's house; Steve and I ate pbj

Tuesday: I honestly don't even remember

Wednesday: Crock pot chicken (big fail) turned chicken tacos

Thursday: Goulash (family recipe coming soon)

Friday: scrambled eggs, hashbrowns, sausage, gravy, & biscuits (honestly the best meal this week)

As you can see we had some issues this week with the meals.  On Monday, the kids ate at my sister's house. Actually I had a couple of bites (alright more than a couple!) of her chicken and dumplings.  They were delish!  I definitely need to get her recipe.

Tuesday I honestly cannot remember what we had.  Wednesday I took one of my freezer chicken meals and put it in the crock pot.  It did not turn out well.  This is the second time I have fixed it and the second time that it was horrible.  I will not be making brown sugar chicken again!  I ended up shredding the chicken and used some tortilla shells we had to make chicken tacos.

Goulash - our family's recipe

 
Thursday I made my family's recipe for goulash.  The kids had been asking for this one.  They love it!  I will be sharing that recipe with you very soon.  And Friday it was breakfast for supper.  Really it was my favorite meal.  I love breakfast!

Our yummy breakfast for supper!

My goals for this week are meal planning and making some meals ahead so that they will be easy to heat up. Even though we do not have activities this week we do have siding to finish installing so long as the weather cooperates.  Hopefully this week will be a little easier and I can do more cooking!

So for those of you doing this challenge, how did you do?  Let me know in the comments below.

4 comments budget, food, groceries, no spend, sustainable living

A Month of No Groceries: My November Food Challenge Week 1

Well, the first week of buying no groceries has passed.  If you haven't read my post about my November food challenge, the you can read it here, but basically the challenge is to go through a whole month without buying groceries.

Actually this week was not as bad as I had thought it would be.  The excitement of the challenge was there to keep me going.  Normally, I live for Wednesdays where I can read the grocery store ads and see what is on sale that week.  And now that the holidays are nearing, there is usually some pretty cool baking supplies that are available that aren't available at other times of the year.  Or at least they are harder to find.  But I was good, and didn't look at the ads until Friday, when my curiosity got the better of me.  Old habits die hard I guess.  Still there was nothing in those ads that tempted me. 

Another thing that helped a lot this week was the fact that we were able to stay home every night!  That hasn't happened in a couple of months.  But football and cheerleading are over for the time being.  Nothing starts again until the middle of January.  We do have church on Sundays and cub scouts on Mondays, but the rest of our days are our own.

Being able to stay home during the evenings this week, allowed me to fix supper every night.  It wasn't always a grand meal, but we were able to use up some food from our freezer and pantry.

Here is the real kicker.  Even though we didn't buy any food (see below for a few exceptions), we did receive some food.  A friend whose son has started taking piano lessons from me brought us some deer meat, and some bierocks that she makes which are awesome!  I put those in the freezer and I can take one of those to lunch when I don't have anything else!  We also received some fresh veggies from my mother-in-law.  She had bought some for a party she was having and she didn't want the left-overs so we ended up with them as well.  We also received a gift of a very nice beef roast from some friends of ours. 

What amazes me is how blessed we are that even though we aren't buying food, we still receive it.  This same thing happened to us last year, during a no-spend month.  God does provide!

I want to share with you our meals that we had this week.  For a couple of meals, I was able to use left-overs and turn them into something else for another meal.  I love it when it works out like that!  Also, please don't judge on some of these meals.  I am going to be better about adding in veggies or fruit.  There are a couple that after I looked at them, are not the healthiest, but hey, we ate!  Here they are:

Monday: Porcini Mushroom Tortellini, roasted green beans, peaches
Tuesday: Pork chops, stuffing, and beets
Wednesday: Hamburgers, fried eggs, and tator tots
Thursday: Pork roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, crescent rolls
Friday: Hamburger pizza (from leftover hamburger) and BBQ Pulled Pork Pizza (from left-over pork roast)
Saturday: SOS (slop on a shingle) This was made from leftover gravy from breakfast and leftover hamburger and roasted turnips
Sunday: Beans and Ham with cornbread and slaw.

BBQ Pulled Pork Pizza - made from leftover pork roast.

It wasn't until Friday that I started making things from scratch, and making due with what I had.  I really wanted to make a BBQ pork pizza, but we didn't have pizza crust and we didn't have shredded cheese.  So I found a somewhat quick pizza crust recipe on Pinterest. The one I usually use takes 1 1/2 hours rising time.  I did not have that much time.  While we didn't have shredded cheese or sprinkle cheese as we call it in our house, we did have sliced cheese that I cut up into little squares and used.  The crust turned out great, and no one was the wiser when it came to the cheese!

The kids devoured the hamburger pizza before I could take a picture.

As for Saturday's meal, that morning I had made biscuits and gravy for breakfast.  I usually don't cook breakfast except for on weekends.  We ended up with left-over gravy and I still had a hamburger patty left-over which gave me the idea for SOS, or as my husband says slop on a shingle.  Actually that first "s" stands for something else, but I will leave that up to your imagination.

SOS or Slop on a Shingle as we call it.

I also made two loaves of white bread to put the hamburger gravy on.  I really was afraid that this meal was going to be a flop.  Growing up we would have it every once in a while.  In my early twenties, I used to fix it quite a bit because it was inexpensive and easy.  I didn't know how Steve and the kids would react to it.  To my surprise, they loved it!

Homemade white bread...my favorite!

So the big question is, did we buy any groceries?  Well...kinda.  When I made the pizza crust on Friday, I realized that I didn't have that much yeast.  And then I used almost all of what I had left on Saturday for the bread.  So Sunday we went to Wal-Mart and we bought yeast, as well as coffee creamer, Pepsi (my husband's addiction), and potato chips (also my husband's addiction).  If it was up to me alone, I would have bought the yeast and that would have been all.  But I'll admit since my husband wanted the coffee creamer, I will enjoy that as well.  As for the Pepsi and the chips, well they are all his.

I'm hoping that the second week goes a little better and that I will be able to tell you that we bought no groceries!  On a positive note, my mom has a turkey for Thanksgiving, so we won't have to buy one!  I'll be getting a turkey from her to cook for our festivities.

So did you decide to do this challenge?  If so, comment below and let me know how your week went.

6 comments budget, food, groceries, sustainable living

My November Food Challenge: A Month of No Groceries

I can hardly believe that it is already November! October is always one of those months that is filled with football games, birthday parties, and Halloween festivities.  With all those activities, the month tends to fly by.  This year was no exception. 

With all of the events and activities there was very little time for me to cook for my family. We have gotten into the rut of either grabbing fast food on the way to or from an activity, or we just plain and simple eat junk! The couple of meals I did make tasted so good. It made me realize how much I have missed eating real home cooked meals. Our fall garden did very well so those home cooked meals included such things as spinach and green beans and will soon include turnips and peas as well. There is nothing as good as fresh veggies from the garden! 

Our very messy pantry!

As I was trying to figure out some ideas for meals for this week I was looking through the pantry and freezer and the amount of food we have is astonishing. My first thought was that I really needed to organize my pantry. Then I realized I don't need to organize it, I need to use it! The same goes for our fridge/freezer and our deep freeze.

Our deep freeze...this is only the surface.

That's when I had a great idea! Why not go a whole month without buying groceries? I was so excited about the prospect of not going grocery shopping. I looked and we have plenty of staples...flour, sugar, eggs (thanks to our ducks), potatoes, onions, etc. We have meat in the freezer from the cow we butchered, and even some pork leftover. We could actually do this!

I went to go tell Steve my great idea and then it hit me...Thanksgiving! I completely forgot about Thanksgiving. And we are hosting this year. I don't have a turkey in the freezer. But I do have pumpkin for pie, and I have cranberries for sauce, and I can make bread for stuffing.  I started thinking, maybe I can make this work. 

Our fridge freezer, it is pretty packed!

After telling Steve my plan he agreed that we could do this and that we needed to. The savings from not buying food could go towards purchasing siding for our house which we desperately need. It would also allow us to use the food we already have, and not let it go to waste where we would eventually throw it away.  I hate to waste food!

In my thoughts about how this would take place, I started thinking about how we might need to make some exceptions, or what I needed to get, just in case.  Those kinds of thoughts are what have gotten us in this food hoard mess in the first place!  I am not going grocery shopping.  If I run out of bread, I'll bake more.  If I run out of milk, I have powdered.  We have lots of grains, we have veggies from the garden, and we have meat and eggs.  WE CAN DO THIS! 

So this month, I will be keeping you posted on how this challenge is going every Monday.  In fact this post was supposed to be published yesterday, but life happens!  I will even let you know some of the meals that we have made, and I will start with what we ate last night.  We had Porchini mushroom tortelloni in my homemade canned marinara sauce, roasted green beans from our garden, and canned peaches for dessert.  It was Meatless Monday for us.  The family loved it and there were just enough leftovers for lunch the next day!

Our "blue plate" special meal.

I want to stress that this is NOT a no spend month, this is simply a no grocery month.  Do you hoard food?  Would you like to try this challenge yourself?  If so, let me know in the comments below!

Read my post on how we did with this challenge during Week 1
Read my post on how we did with this challenge during Week 2
Read my post on how we did with this challenge during Week 3
Read my post on how we did with this challenge during Week 4

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