Our pantry and freezer shelves have just gotten more and more bare as time has gone by, since I’ve only been buying what we need for each week. With winter coming, I wanted a better-stocked inventory of food and other items. So, I did a big grocery stock-up from Walmart. It was so expensive, but many of the things will last more than one month, so I anticipate my spending will average out to be less in the coming weeks. (I hope.)
Until I started tracking our spending with my new budget planner from Clever Fox, I had no idea how much we were spending on food. It was a bit of a shock! I am determined to reduce our grocery spending so that we can put more money towards paying off our debt.
My Saving Strategy: Freezer Cooking
Even though I am in the midst of remodeling my bathroom, I took a day off from that and spent it in the kitchen. I made a list of what I wanted to cook ahead and put in the freezer and then I got to work!
The first thing I did was start broth using some chicken bones I had saved in the freezer from the last time I roasted whole chickens. I usually make my chicken broth in the slow cooker, but it has to cook overnight, and I don’t like to smell food cooking while I am sleeping. It keeps me awake! So, I Googled it, and of course you can make broth in an electric pressure cooker. I ran it three times on the soup setting to get all of the goodness out of the chicken bones and got three containers of broth, which I will freeze for later use.
While the broth was going, I browned nine pounds of ground turkey. This gave me seven bags of ground turkey for the freezer (and one extra portion for Grampy to make a green chile wrap). We do not eat beef, so anything we would put ground beef in, we use turkey instead. I will use it to make things like Sloppy Joes, Beef Nacho Casserole, tacos, chili, Hamburger Stew and Baked Beans and Hamburger. Having the ground turkey already cooked cuts down on preparation time.That is nice because I don’t start making dinner until after the daycare kids leave, around 5:00.
I also cooked two pounds of turkey sausage. I froze this in eight packages. Four were small amounts, and I will use them when I make homemade pizza for Pizza Friday.
Pizza Friday has become a tradition. First I made pizza just for Grampy and I and the daycare kids. Then my daughter and grandkids joined. And then my grandkids’ dad started coming. Then I started having Grampy run some over to my other daughter at work since she doesn’t leave for a lunch break. And sometimes her husband stops by if he’s working nearby. I was making pizza every Friday, but that got a little tiring. Now I do it once or twice a month. But they will call and ask, “Is today Pizza Friday?” 🙂 I hope when they are grown, my grandkids remember Pizza Friday at Granny’s house.
The rest of the sausage I froze in two larger portions. I will use it when we have biscuits and gravy, or in a breakfast casserole. I sometimes substitute sausage for ham in my Ham and Green Chile Breakfast Casserole.
I didn’t get pictures, but the day before I also made a CrockPot of Green Chile and used the pressure cooker to make BBQ pork for sandwiches. We had purchased a large pork loin on sale a while back, and I used half of it for Green Chile and the other for BBQ pork. There wasn’t any Green Chile left to freeze, because it’s Grampy’s favorite. I froze the BBQ pork in portions to make sandwiches. The daycare kids love BBQ pork sandwiches.
And now for the Baking!
At Grampy’s request, I made a batch of my Homemade Granola. I added a splash of maple syrup to it, and it tastes great! He likes to have yogurt and granola for breakfast.
To help keep the breakfast budget low, I make pancakes and French toast for the daycare kids. I switch off each week: pancakes one week and French toast the next. They love scrambled eggs, but eggs have just kept going up in price. We have them once a week now.
Since we are heading into fall and I love everything pumpkin, I made these Pumpkin Pancakes. They were good, and I will be making them again. I had a half loaf of bread left from the previous week, so I turned it into French toast. Both freeze well and are a quick and easy breakfast.
I was starting to get a little tired at this point, but I kept going, determined to finish my list! (I didn’t finish, but I got really, really close!) Another family favorite is Pumpkin Bread. It takes around an hour to bake, so that gave me some time to work on painting the bathroom.
I wanted to try a new muffin recipe. One of my little guys has recently become offended by the blueberries in my usual blueberry muffins. He hands the muffin back to me so I can pick out the blueberries. 🙂 I tried out these Hot Cocoa Muffins. I’m not sure what size of muffins she made, but the recipe said it made 12, and I got 21 muffins! They are pretty good, but really more like a cupcake than a muffin. I prefer blueberry or banana muffins. I will keep looking for a blueberry muffin substitute.
And that was all I could do on my baking/cooking day. I could have persevered and made the biscuits and scones, but I don’t need biscuits until later in the week and the scones were a treat for Grampy. I will make the scones one evening and we will have them with our morning tea.
The Conclusion…
I’m curious to see how we do on our food budget for the rest of this month and next. I know that freezer cooking saves a lot of time and chaos in our busy house. When I do my next round of freezer cooking, I think I will split it into two sessions. Maybe I will do meats or meals one week and baking the next. This was really a lot of cooking to do in one day! I enjoy cooking, but not quite so much at one time.
Hopefully this will give you some ideas to help your grocery budget, and some ideas for recipes to try.
Happy cooking!
See you later!
