Last Week of the Month and Our Grocery Budget is Holding Out

One week left in April and I have 52 cents in the budget remaining. That's enough to buy about 4 or 5 small bananas from Walmart or WinCo. While I can see that our supplies are reducing, we still have a lot of food items in the pantry, fridge, and freezers, with substantial amounts of meat, eggs, milk, beans, flour, oats, cabbage, carrots, and sugar. We are starting to deplete all of those nice little tidbits which enhance meals, such as nuts and olives. But that was to be expected, as we're not buying any of those sorts of items, instead sticking to the staples. Easter left us with the nice bonus of leftover ham, ham stock for bean soup, and ham fat for cooking.

Full disclosure on the budget -- I did have to "borrow" from May's budget in order to use a $10 coupon at Target and take advantage of a sale on peanut butter. However, the peanut butter that I bought is kept out of the stock that we are currently using, and won't be opened until May 1. So, that $11.17 will come out of May's budget.

I began working on May's grocery list around the second week of April. In March and April, we stocked up on ground beef, pinto beans, all-purpose flour, and onions. The stock-up items for May include the already-purchased peanut butter, 50 pounds of whole wheat flour, and 35 pounds of vegetable oil. I see lots of baking in my future! In addition to these items and my regular list of staples, I also have two special occasions to keep in mind while preparing my list for May: Cinco de Mayo and Mother's Day. If my funds are used up for the basics, I believe that I can get by with just adding corn tortillas to my list for Cinco de Mayo and a container of strawberries for Mother's Day. The remainder of the menus for those special occasions can be drawn from my basic purchases for the month and what I have at home right now.

I know that this is still early on in my stocking up, but I've still found myself a tiny bit disappointed that our pantry is not yet looking stocked. I know that will come with a few more months of buying in stock-up quantities.

Do you know what I do when I feel down about my grocery situation? I kick myself in the pants and get busy in the kitchen, preparing as many foods as I can think to provide ready-to-eat snacks and lunch items for my family. Even if it's just boiling some eggs, those boiled eggs are one more thing that my husband and kids could grab to eat. Honestly, that thought cheers me up.

This morning, I had one of those days. I was down a bit, struggling with a headache that's only partially responding to OTC painkillers (day 2 of a migraine), and worn out from the weekend. But I knew if I made myself busy in the kitchen, then that would be addressing one of my situations. So, I made a batch of rhubarb muffins, using a small baggie of pancake mix and an even smaller baggie of corn muffin mix, plus rhubarb from our garden, an egg, oil, vanilla extract, sugar, liquid from the canned yams on Sunday, and whey from homemade yogurt. After the batter was in the muffin tins, I sprinkled some leftover crumb topping from pie-baking over the weekend. I also made a batch of pinto bean and grilled onion sandwich spread, a pot of boiled eggs, and a pitcher of juice. These are just simple foods, but as my family members trickles into the house this afternoon, they will be greeted with snacks already made.

We're still making it. That's a good thing on which to focus my thoughts.

Holiday Dinners Using Just (or Almost) What I Have On Hand

Easter dinner went well. I do have to admit, though, that making everything with minimal convenience products is time-consuming. I cooked all Saturday afternoon, and then a good chunk of Sunday to put everything together. Despite this, in my current circumstances, cooking from scratch was the way to go. I was able to put together a nice meal for my family without adding extra expenses. I've included links to the various recipes that I used for yesterday's feast, as they may be of use to your frugal cooking, as well.

The Ham
I bought a spiral sliced ham on sale for $1.27/lb. Safeway also had the unsliced hams, which were selling for 99 cents per pound. In my experience, so far, the unsliced hams have a lot more fat and rind than the spiral sliced hams. It's true, the ham fat can be rendered for cooking. However, this time around, I went for more meat and greater convenience. My budget for Easter this year was much smaller than last year, so I prioritized buying a ham with the money. The ham is the only item that I bought just for Easter this year. By the way, if you have large chunks of fat from your ham, this post tells how I render the fat to use in cooking later.

Green Bean Casserole
The traditional green bean casserole calls for commercial fried onions. I make my own substitute using bread crumbs, butter, and onions. This post explains how I do this. For Easter, I used 1 can of green beans (bought on sale last fall), 1 dented can of waxed beans (paid 26 cents because the can was dented), a handful of frozen green beans (because it seemed like there was to much sauce), 1 can of cream of mushroom soup (bought on sale last fall), soy sauce, pepper, and milk, along with my homemade version of the French's fried onion topping.

Sweet Potato Casserole
I had a can of yams that were bought on sale last fall. I pureed the drained yams with eggs, spices, and some of the light syrup in which the yams were packed. I set aside the remainder of the yam's light syrup, to use in baking later. My family's favorite topping for sweet potato casserole is a praline one. However, I was out of pecans for this holiday and opted for marshmallows instead (which I had in the freezer).

Curried Pea and Peanut Slaw
The idea for this recipe came from the comments on a post back in 2014. I amended the idea slightly and created a salad which my family loves. Here's my version in this post. For the dressing, as I was out of mayonnaise, I used plain homemade yogurt as a substitute for both the mayo and vinegar, and added a pinch of salt to taste. I had chives in the garden, so used those in place of green onions. For the peanuts, I opened a can of mixed nuts and picked out a handful of peanuts. The rest of the can has been tucked away to use in a batch of caramel nutty bars on Father's Day.

French Bread
I've discussed our butter and oil situation, here. In a effort to conserve both, I opted for homemade French bread in place of the traditional dinner rolls. French bread uses hardly any oil and is more open to spreads or dipping oils other than butter. (In my family, butter is the favored spread for dinner rolls.) The post in this link has the recipe that I use for an all-purpose French bread, pizza, and calzone dough. It's a really great recipe and very easy for me to remember. For Easter dinner, I made the recipe into 3 long and skinny baguettes. For a spread for the French bread, I combined strained homemade plain yogurt (to the consistency of soft cream cheese) with very soft butter (in a 2 to 1 ratio of yogurt to butter) and chopped rosemary, garlic powder, and salt. The resulting spread was very tasty, and my crowd agreed that it was better than butter. So, there you go. Just when I think my substitutes are inferior, my family votes them superior, at least some of the time.

Watermelon Pickles
We're out of almost all pickles and olives, now, so I brought out a jar of homemade watermelon rind pickles, from a couple of years ago. the recipe that I've been using for watermelon pickles for the past 30 years is in this post.

"Bottled" Water
I used one of my salvaged sparkling cider bottles to "bottle" some tap water, which I chilled for several hours before dinner. My son and his wife also brought some sparkling beverages. I also made a large pot of tea, using tea that I had on hand. So, we were good with the drinks.

Jayne's Rhubarb Custard Pie
Since it's now rhubarb season where I live, we had a rhubarb custard pie for dessert. In fact, I made two pies, so I would have 1 to give as an Easter gift to my son and his wife. Making 2 pies isn't a whole lot of extra work for me but is a nice thing for them, as neither of them bake pies to my knowledge. If you grow rhubarb and don't have a recipe that you enjoy, the recipe for this pie comes from a good friend, and you'll find it in this post. We love the custard filling so much that I was thinking this could make a delicious rhubarb dessert, without the pie crust or crumb topping, in place of our usual rhubarb sauce. I'll let you know how it goes when I try baking the filling by itself. I use a scratch pie pastry recipe for the crust. It's reliable, easy, and freezes well. Here's a link to that recipe. The batch makes 5 crusts-worth of pastry at a time, which sounds like a lot. However, you can freeze it in single-crust portions to use later. It's good for both savory and sweet fillings, so I use this for chicken pot pie as much as for fruit pies.

In addition to the food, I used what I had for the table and buffet decor. You all saw the egg shell and violet table setting pieces. I also cut enough tulips from our garden for a pretty little bouquet for the buffet. The bonus is that we now have a nice bouquet to admire, indoors and out of the rain for the next couple of days.

I hope that you had an enjoyable weekend!