Going for Not Broke

I sat among my mom, a couple of her brothers and both of her sisters as they reminisced recently about their childhood. Having grown up in rural Oklahoma at a time and place when most families had their own garden, mom and her siblings laughed as they talked about the foods they ate. My grandma did not buy tomato sauce in cans, boxes of single-serving packs of yogurt and frozen pizzas. She bought gunny sacks of flour, large boxes of non-instant oatmeal and beans. Lots and lots of beans. They got their veggies from their own garden but did little canning, so the greens they ate came from in-season produce only. "We were all skinny back then," one of my uncles said, and his siblings agreed with hearty laughs. I couldn't help but be envious of what my grandma's food bill back then must've looked like. She didn't buy foods in convenient packaging. She bought a limited array of staples for cooking. I doubt she ever heard the phrase, "What's for...

Over the weekend, I saw a film via Netflix called " Hungry for Change ," which talks about the benefits of a raw food diet. Because my husband and I could both stand to lose weight, and because we don't want to pass along our unhealthy habits to our daughter, I decided to incorporate more raw foods into my menus. Therefore, I'll be buying a lot more fresh produce in the coming weeks. And, I need to be diligent about cutting up and preparing the veggies before they spoil so that the money spent doesn't go to waste. I hate tossing out uneaten vegetables and fruits, but yet I find myself doing it now even without buying as much as I plan to as my family tries eating more greens. To start off, though, I spent extra money. I bought a few kitchen gadgets I don't already have that can help me prepare veggies more quickly: a mandoline slicer, spiral slicer and a blender. Hopefully, I put them all to good use, otherwise, that's just even more money down the dra...

Thanks to a tummy bug my daughter had then gave to me, I'm a day late posting for this week. Hopefully, I'll be back on track after this. Grocery Shopping The last time I went grocery shopping, I went to a Walmart Supercenter at which I haven't shopped in a couple of years. I wasn't happy with that Walmart's ground beef selection. Most of the packages were 75/25 (25 percent fat), and I prefer 90/10. There was only one package of 90/10, and it was so bloody I didn't want it touching my other groceries. Therefore, I settled on two 2.25-pound packages of 85/15. To make matters worse, the packages didn't weigh out as they were marked. The first thing I usually do after I unpack the groceries is weigh out the ground beef so that I can divide it into as many 1-pound packages as I can get, then turn the rest into 4-ounce hamburger patties, then freeze it all for later use. Therefore, for the two 2.25-pound packages I bought, I should've come up with fou...

I buy frozen cooked veggies because they’re handy to toss into my homemade frozen dinners as a side dish for an entree. If I make chicken, I can just shake some frozen peas, carrots, green beans, corn, etc., into the food container with each individual serving. I’ve decided to quit buying prepackaged frozen veggies, though, because I can get more food for less money if I buy fresh vegetables instead. I’d like to be able to cut up and cook the veggies, then freeze them in a bag, so that just like with the store-bought packages, I can shake out what I need as I need it. The problem, though, is I don’t know how to keep them from freezing together, which they’ll do if I cook them in liquid. So, I decided to try a steamer. I thought that unlike with boiling them, they don’t get dunked in the water, so maybe they’ll remain loose when frozen. So, on my last trip to the grocery store, I bought some carrots, green beans and yellow squash, and I spent a chunk of Saturday cutting up veggies...

I have a subscription to Reader's Digest, thanks to a gift card for Amazon I got for my birthday, that's delivered once a month to my Kindle. In the November issue, there is a list of things to buy this time of year because they're generally cheaper. Among them is frozen vegetables. I don't think I've ever noticed seasonal price fluctuations in frozen veggies, but I am going to keep my eyes open for really good sales.

Today is a grocery shopping day, and as I looked through the refrigerator to see what we have and what we don't, I noticed that the veggies I bought on my last shopping trip still sit on the shelves. My plan was to cut them up, cook them and freeze them for use later, but two weeks later, I've yet to make the time. Based on past experience, I think the carrots are probably still OK, but not the green beans or the yellow squash. They're both on my grocery list again; hopefully, this time I get them cut up and stored early. Otherwise, it's all just money down the drain.

On a recent trip to the grocery store, I reached for a package of shredded cheese, but then I wondered, "Can I save money by shredding it myself?" So I walked over to the bricks of cheese and noticed that yes, the price was better, so I loaded up because I had a lot of dishes that called for cheese on the menu for the next two weeks. The last time I went to the grocery store, though, I noticed that I didn't look closely enough. Sure, the price for a brick of cheese is less than buying a bag of cheese that is already shredded, but the price per ounce is better when you buy the shredded stuff. I don't understand the hows and whys of that, but at least I know to look a little more closely when I'm shopping next time.

This week is another grocery shopping week, and I'm dreading it. I had at one point managed to get my grocery spending under $175 every two weeks, the last few trips have not gone that well. They've all totaled more than $200, not including any supplementary trips I needed to make later. I'm not really sure what I can do to cut it more at this point beyond rethink what we've been eating. Over the past few months, the price of ground beef has gone up quite a bit, and much of what we eat has ground beef in it. I had been buying the leanest beef available, but on my last grocery trip, I bought 90/10 meat. Perhaps we'll need to eat more chicken.

Since Thursday, I've finished a freelance project, finished getting stuff ready for the consignment sale, got most of the for-sale items dropped off, and I chopped, cooked and froze a bunch of fruits and veggies so they wouldn't spoil. I had hoped to get some frozen dinners made and put away as well, but hopefully I can tackle that today. I thought about gathering up the items for the consignment sale that my husband and I forgot to take with us, but I think I'll just plan to stick them in the next sale. I also need to bill my client for the freelance work I did; hopefully, I'll get my check before I need it to buy paint, but I'm not holding my breath. I'd rather not take the funds out of savings, but I will before I'll charge it.

Yesterday, my husband and I celebrated our daughter's first birthday by taking her to the park and letting her swing. It started raining on us, though, so we headed to the mall so she could try out its play area, then we had a little pizza for dinner. Afterward, we stopped by Sam's Club to buy gas and some trash bags. It was close to closing time when we left, and on our way out the door, one of the workers asked us if we'd like a free chicken. Apparently, about 20 of the rotisserie chickens had reached their sell-by date, so the store was giving them away for free. I think it's wonderful the store did that! Of course, I took one. Years ago, my mom worked at a senior center as a cook. She and the two other workers there cooked up meals for the elderly. If there were any leftovers, they were required to throw it away. I think that's just insane. I figure the management probably didn't want the workers to intentionally make extra every day so they could take s...

Not too long ago, I'd buy a 5 to 10 pound bag of potatoes and other produce items every time I went grocery shopping, and by the end of the two weeks between grocery trips, more than half of the package would be spoiled. I hate wasting food, but I also didn't want to have to drive to the store every few days to buy more produce. Is it really cost effective to buy fewer produce items at a higher price several times as opposed to buying them in bulk and losing half the package? I don't know. I have tried "green" bags, which are supposed to keep veggies from spoiling so quickly. Either I didn't use them right or they don't work because I didn't notice any difference in how quickly my produce spoiled. These days, though, I try to schedule a cutting session during which I peel and shred as many veggies as I can, chop them up and freeze them for use as needed. This works great for onions, carrots and bell peppers but not so well for potatoes, whi...

One money-spending habit I've been reluctant to give up is dine-out Fridays, which is basically just what it sounds like. Each Friday -- for years now -- my husband and I have dined out rather than sit in the breakroom and have sack lunches. Fridays can be rather hectic days, and getting out of the building just seems like more of a break to me than sitting in the breakroom. Over the past week, I've been thinking about cutting it back to just one Friday a month, because each time my husband and I go out to eat like that, it costs us roughly $25, or $100 a month that could be going toward bills. Add to that the fact that my husband and I both need to lose weight, and dining on a more nutritious meal that I can control the ingredients in just seems to make more sense. I've pretty much decided that tomorrow will be our last dine-out Friday until September. Hopefully we can stick to that, because an extra $75 in our pockets each month can go a long, long way.

I've been noticing over the past few months that I found fewer and fewer coupons that I can use. I attribute this to a couple of things: With the exception of just a couple of grocery trips, I've been doing the bulk of our grocery shopping at Aldi, which doesn't accept coupons. Because I've been trying to cook more and in bulk, I've been buying more ingredients and fewer prepackaged foods. Coupons still come in handy for things like makeup, hair coloring and baby products, so I still look through the fliers every Sunday when I get my paper. However, most weeks, I don't find anything at all to clip. The good news is, though, that we're paying less for groceries anyway. I am a big fan of Aldi.

I always keep boxes of forks and spoons in my desk at work so that I don't have to remember to take flatware back and forth to work for my lunch. I didn't trust myself not to lose them in transport. However, as I near the bottom of the fork box, it occurs to me that I've been taking my food storage containers back and forth with me for weeks now while I've been making my own frozen dinners. I've remembered my dishes every day; why wouldn't I remember a fork or spoon? Therefore, I've decided that once the boxes in my desk are empty, I won't buy any more. It won't be a big savings, because it takes me about six months to go through a box, but it's a savings nonetheless.

A few notes on what's worked and what hasn't. Groceries . Aldi has its drawbacks. I can't get everything I need there, it can be really crowded at times, and a few of its foods (eg., canned ravioli) just aren't as tasty as other brands, but without fail, I spend less when I shop there. For someone like me who has trouble mastering the art of extreme couponing, Aldi does a good job of trimming the grocery expenses. I'd still like to trim it more, but I think that will require some more creative meal planning.  Status: Some Money Saved. Meal Planning . I began establishing a menu and then shopping to the menu a few years before my daughter was born, so this is nothing new. However, lately I've been trying to change up what I fix so that I make more foods that can be done in bulk. This way, I'll have leftovers for another day and leftovers for frozen dinners for when my husband and I are at work. I'm still experimenting with this, but so far, I think it...

I've been looking at my recipe books when I can to see if I can come up with some additional recipes that I can make in big batches so that one cooking session will net a meal or two and some frozen dinners. For this round of grocery shopping, I plan to make: Roast Chicken with Potatoes and Carrots (a recipe I found in one of my Weight Watchers cookbooks) Mexican Chicken baked potato (also from WW, but I'll need to make it slightly different for my husband's share) Turkey lasagna Scrambled eggs and potatoes Hamburger stew (same as I made last time) Out of last time's batch, the only thing I turned into frozen dinner entrees was the stew and beans. We had the leftovers of the hamburger quiche for an at-home lunch, and due to an unusually hectic schedule, I never made the meatloaf, but I still have the stuff to make it.

Because my daughter has been sick for part of last week, I didn't get around to blogging, but thankfully, she's feeling much, much better now. I didn't get to spend as much time as I had hoped gathering recipes for my first run at making my own frozen dinners. I had envisioned finding things like a low-fat lasagna, a way to make lean burgers on the go, etc. Instead, here is my list for the first one: • Ground turkey meat loaf and veggies. • Crustless cheeseburger quiche. (Also made with ground turkey.) • Hamburger stew. • Beans (per suggestion from Steve in my last post.) Ideas I've seen online include labeling and dating everything before putting it in the freezer. I don't know what the best marker for that is, because it needs to be washable so that I can reuse the dishes. However, labeling won't be absolutely necessary until I have enough stuff in the freezer that I forget what's what. I've got time to figure it out.

I've been trying to give some thought to what kinds of foods would make good homemade frozen dinners.  (My first post on the topic is here .) Tomorrow is grocery day, so I'd like to have an idea what kinds of things I can make to make sure I have all the ingredients. So far, I'm planning stew (per my husband's request) and a crustless cheeseburger quiche. Hopefully, I can think of another seven options between today and tomorrow.

My college roommate was the first person I knew who was a big-time couponer. One of our local grocers tripled coupons on Wednesdays, so each week in preparation, she's clip whatever she could from the Sunday papers. I can still see her sitting on the floor in our apartment literally giggling in anticipation of the savings she'd get. After her shopping trip, she'd walk in the door with four or five sacks -- the paper ones, not the plastic ones most stores use now that hold just a handful of items -- for about $15. She got a high out of it, and if I had ever been able to duplicate her success, I probably would've, too, but I never could. What got me was that she would buy things like coffee and dog food, just because she had a coupon, while neither of us was a coffee drinker and we had no dog. She would give those items to other people she knew who could use it, but I never understood being able to get any kind of savings out of buying stuff you don't need. ...

Even though I enjoy MyCokeRewards and it has saved me money, I know that the amount I spend on soda is too high. If I didn't spend as much as I do, I'd have the money to buy the reward items on my own and have some money leftover. Ideally, I'd like to do more than cut back. I'd like to cut out soda altogether, but going cold turkey on the caffeine can be very tough. I know. I've done it before. So, my plan is to cut back. A lot.