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| blackberry syrup made with love |
Cheap & Cheerful posts show, week by week, how a budget of $135/month for groceries works out for our family of 4.
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| Friday |
Friday
leftover baked beans (even better then second time around)
hotdogs
sauteed onions, garlic, and garden Swiss chard
sauteed tomatoes
hashbrowns
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| Saturday |
Saturday
scrambled eggs with cheese, garlic, and onion
pan-fried garden potato slices
fresh tomato wedges
salad of Swiss chard and lettuce in a homemade vinaigrette
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| Sunday |
Sunday leftover night
leftover refried beans (last week) topped with cheese and leftover marinara (also last week)
leftover brown rice (again, last week)
simple steamed carrot slices, swirled in the saucepan with butter
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| Monday |
Monday
Tex-Mex rice and lentils, with canned tomatoes, onions, chard, garlic and seasonings, topped with cheese, avocado, homemade plain yogurt, homemade salsa
blackberry crisp
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| Tuesday |
Tuesday
garbanzo bean and veggie soup
zucchini bread
cole slaw
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| Wednesday |
Wednesday
pasta and cheese with pepperoni and topped with homemade marinara sauce (daughter bought the pepperoni)
steamed carrots
leftover blackberry crisp
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| Thursday |
Thursday
waffle omelets filled with ham, onions, Swiss chard, and cheese
simply baked acorn squash, dotted with butter and sprinkled with cinnamon
pancakes with homemade blackberry syrup
The menus, themselves, only partially explain how my family of 4 adults gets by on just $135 per month for food groceries. It's true, I do plan meals that are scratch-cooked and use very simple foods, such as dried beans, brown rice, eggs, and basic produce. In addition, procuring those foods inexpensively, or even for free, constitutes the other half or more of the equation. My October grocery planning post provides an idea of what we spent on specific food items this past month.
Produce is often cited as a significant expense in grocery shopping. This month, we continued to use the least expensive commercially-farmed fruits and vegetables. Our purchased produce used in dinners this week included: onions, carrots, canned tomatoes and tomato paste, avocado, and cabbage.
In addition to grocery purchases, we are also still using garden and foraged produce. This past week, we've been able to harvest the following produce items from the garden to use in our meals: garlic, Swiss chard, tomatoes, potatoes, lettuce, and acorn squash. We were also used frozen or canned blackberries and zucchini from summer foraging and gardening.
The final element of our frugal dining involves minimizing food waste. The pancakes on Thursday were made with salvaged milk skimmings leftover from making yogurt. When you heat milk, skin forms on the surface. To produce a smooth and creamy yogurt, you then strain off this skin. I save that stuff to puree and use in baking. We used leftovers on several nights, sometimes using those foods in new ways and other times, using them just as is.
By the way, I didn't do any grocery shopping this week, so my grocery spending is still at $133.13 for the month of October.
So that's how we eat well on so little. On to something you may find more interesting in a quasi-voyeur sort of way -- my frugal fridge. I thought there were a few interesting things about the current state of my refrigerator to which you may relate.
- top left, leftovers: Silk container has leftover homemade marinara sauce; a stack of leftover ham topped with leftover ham stock; quart of homemade yogurt in the back; homemade mustard on top of homemade ketchup.
- left center shelf, daughter 1's shelf, foods either she's bought with her own money (canned frosting, a juice pouch) or foods from meals she hasn't finished (yes, we save foods we haven't finished then eat them later.)
- lower left shelf, daughter 2's shelf, her purchased or unfinished foods from meals. We waste as little as possible -- notice the third of a glass of milk in the front.
- top right, beverages: Kroger orange juice (on sale 1st week of Oct), Great Value (Walmart brand) milk (recently lowered their price on gallons of milk, now cheapest milk in my town), homemade kool-aid, an old bottle of cola in the back. The 2 right containers have leftover refried beans and leftover soup (made of other leftovers). Those 2 foods are in that spot to remind peeps to use these foods ASAP for lunches or snacks. Just behind those 2 containers is my 1/2-gallon of almond milk (my 1-month supply of non-dairy milk just for me -- lactose intolerant.)
- right center shelf -- the dairy shelf: to the left, a container of homemade soft butter (butter blended with oil to stretch the butter); behind that half a block of tofu in water; a dish of boiled eggs; behind that a container of leftover skimmings from making yogurt; to the right, eggs that I repackaged from a big case into an old, pre-used carton. Eggs are often cheaper in 5 dozen or more packs, but those packages take up too much space in the kitchen fridge. I store the rest of those eggs in the garage fridge.
- lower right shelf, 2 5-lb bags of shredded cheese.
- the produce drawers -- to the left, a bag of yeast (yeast keeps well in the fridge) and various take-out packets of condiments. To the right, lots of onions purchased in a 50-lb bag, the last of the 4 heads of cabbage bought at 18 cents/lb, the last of the carrots bought in a 10-lb bag, some beets from the garden that I need to cook.
That's my very frugal fridge.
I buy very few commercial or convenience foods. Whenever my daughters feel they want that sort of food, they buy it for themselves. They're adults and are free to use their money that way. They are also very busy people, working, volunteering, and pursuing less traditional career paths. So, I can understand not wanting to take the time to mix up a batch of frosting. Plus, when you grow up not eating commercially-prepared foods, there's this aura of mystique that surrounds those foods in a person's mind. It's "the other." We've all wanted to see what was on the other side of the fence in some area of life, haven't we? Anyway, my daughters are also very generous in sharing "their" foods when they cook family dinners, each daughter cooking one night per week.
Enough rambling from me. I hope you had a wonderful week and have lots of fun or relaxation planned for the weekend.
