Using my supplies prudently: measuring the cheese for pizza

So, I bought four 5-lb bags of grated pizza cheese last week. Of course, I had to make pizza that very same night. I like pizza as much as the rest of the family!

What I did differently, this time around, was to actually measure the amount of cheese I used on each pizza.

The cheese package label said that 1 serving of grated cheese is 1/3 cup. That serving size has 7 grams of protein, roughly equivalent to the protein of 1 egg or 1 glass of milk. So, I went with that as a portion for each person, on each pizza. We eat 1 large pizza, split 5 ways. I used 1 & 2/3 cup grated cheese on each of the 4 pizzas I made (for future meals). That amount is 5 servings of cheese, so just right for one large pizza for our family. And FYI, it melts down to look like much more cheese than when it is first scattered on the pizza.

The label also says that each 5-lb bag contains about 80 of those 1/3-cup servings. At 1 & 2/3 cup cheese per pizza, I can get 16 large pizzas from each bag. And at $9.98 for each 5-lb bag, the cheese portion for each pizza will cost me 62 cents. Factoring in all the other ingredients, I can make a large cheese pizza for about $1. (My crust and marinara sauce are from scratch.)

You may wonder how we can ever manage on 1 large pizza for our family of 5. To be truthful, we like pizza, but more than what the large will serve us is too much crust for most of our family. I usually serve pizza with a couple of substantial sides, like a pasta, bean and veggie salad, or a green salad with hearty toppings, like cooked garbanzos, homemade croutons and boiled egg slices.

Going forward, I plan on measuring more of my ingredients, the ones that tend to pour out loose, like shaped pasta and grated cheese, to make sure I am using the appropriate amount for the dish I'm preparing. My last big stock-up of cheese was in the fall. and it felt like we plowed through it all rather quickly. I'm hoping to make each bag last a month, which means I won't need more pizza cheese until July.


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Another budget-friendly dinner for the family

This was dinner the other night. It was not just budget-friendly, but downright cheap with a capital CH.

• bean burger patties, using 2 cups of mashed, cooked pintos, a cup of cooked barley (for chew), some chopped onions, chili powder, salt, 1 egg and a handful of bread crumbs from the freezer. (The bread crumbs were the pan scrapings from several batches of cornbread. I can scrape about 1 tablespoon to 1/8-cup of crumbs from each pan of scratch cornbread. Then save in a container in the freezer.) I fried the bean burgers in ham fat (stored in the freezer) combined with veg oil. Very good! I offered mustard and BBQ sauce to everyone for topping the patties.
• oven-roasted potato wedges, using potatoes bought in November for 10 cents/lb. I had exactly 5 packets of ketchup (1 per person) from the horrible lunch at a fast food place, the day of my biopsy. (Anything would have tasted horrible on that day, so I won't knock the ff joint too much.) It's been a while since I made a batch of ketchup. I'll do that again the next time I open a large can of tomato paste.
• dried fruit, part of the tray of dried fruit given to us at Christmas
• dill cucumber pickles, homemade last summer with garden cucumbers
• sautéed garden greens (kale and mustard greens) with onions, sautéed in ham fat/veg oil. The garden greens are from late summer plantings, and will continue to give me fresh greens until the end of the month.

This was one of those dinners that probably cost just under $1 to feed the 5 of us. Add in cookies and milk, and we're talking a dinner for 5, for well under $2. Not bad!

Making sure I stick to my budget: thinking on the purchases for a couple of days

You know my plight, by now. Over grocery budget for several months in a row. And now it's time to get it all under control. On Monday, I went online to see what the stores had on sale this week. I made my lists. And then . . . no, I didn't go shopping.

I've got my list on my dresser, and I'm just thinking on it. You know, the same sort of advice given for other purchases -- think about it a few days. Do we really need all the items I wrote down? Can we make do without them? Are these true necessities?

So, my list is not extensive, by any means. This is what I found on sale at Cash and Carry this week:

• mozzarella cheese, 5-lb bags, shredded $9.98
• split peas, 25-lb bag, $16.98
• soy milk, 1-qt., $1.14
• carrots, 10-lb bags, $3.48
• frozen peas, 5-lb bags, $3.54

It looks like a reasonable list, right? Well, after giving it a couple days of thought, here's what I will really buy at Cash & Carry this week:

• mozzarella cheese -- maybe 4 bags?
• carrots -- probably 1 bag, maybe 2?

Here's my reasoning. The cheese is the cheapest I have seen it in over a year. That's under $2 per pound, spectacular for our area for cheese. The carrots work out to 35 cents per pound, good deal for late winter, here. And I'm trying to put a cap on price per pound, on veggies for the time being, at around 59 cents per pound.

The rest of it -- split peas are a good source of protein, but lately I've been gagging on split peas. I don't know why, I used to love them. Now, I'm hoping to find black-eyed peas or lentils to stock our pantry. So, nix on the split peas.

I was considering the soy milk, because it could be a better quality than Dollar Tree's soy milk. But I decided to stick to bargains for this month, so will save a few cents per quart, and buy my regular soy milk.

Those frozen peas are a very good price for frozen peas, at abut 70 cents/lb. (But over my price cap of 59 cents per pound.)  I am reminding myself that I will be finding cabbage for a decent price per pound in just a couple of weeks. And my garden greens are now coming back. I will do without frozen peas for the time being. They'll go on sale again, sometime.

Giving a few days of thought to my grocery list helped me to really pare down my spending for the week. I've used this trick for other purchases with great success. Now with grocery spending, the same old trick serves me just as well.

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