Kids Eat Free (or cheap)

I found this great site. It's called Kids Eat Free Sunday.  You can type in your zipcode and the day of the week and see what restaurants your kids can eat free.

Always watch the register

1) We had pizza night. I had a great coupon for "buy a large get a medium for free".

2) Lesson learned. I will admit, I never watch my items being rung up at the register. I do look at my receipt when I get home. I was excited when I went to HyVee to get a Pork Shoulder, it was on sale for $1.99/ lb. Gotta love an unexpected savings! Well, when I got home I realized they rung me up at the full price of $2.99/lb. Ugh! Well, don't worry, I made a phone call and made sure I would get my money back. So my sweet husband went back to HyVee to get my $3.50 and to get my roll of hamburger, while the girls were at their dance class. Ugh! part deux. The rolls of hamburger we all gone! But thanks to my hubby, I got a rain check. So I still get my 5 lbs of beef. (Please note: I didn't spend extra gas to get my savings. He went to the HyVee next to their dance studio and I will cash in my raincheck tomorrow when I do my regular grocery shopping.)

HyVee Ground Beef $1.79/lb

Our local HyVee is having a One Day Sale on September 1st. You can get 80% ground beef for $1.79/lb. It is sold in a 5lb roll for $8.95.

I paid $2.79/lb at Aldi's last week for 80% Ground Beef.



You can check your local ad here.

Shopping Trip Month 2 - Week 1

Total Spent $135.43
Left to Spend $164.57

I spent A LOT this week. I did have my son's birthday party to buy for, but a budget is a budget and if you only have $300 to spend then that must include feeding others.

The upside is I did get a huge 10lb bag of leg quarters for 3.90! That is 39¢ / lb!

Somethings that I am doing this month to reduce cost is to buy less "snacks" and make more. I am going to bake. I love to bake and can bake things a lot cheaper myself. Breads, cookies, muffins, oh my!

Today I made a huge bowl popcorn & raisins with cinnamon & sugar. I made 3 bags for today and later in the week. That mix averages 3¢ per cup.


I love this from gomestic.com. "Extend times between grocery shopping as much as possible. If you go every week, make it ten days, then twelve days. Push it as far as you can. Each day you don't buy food reduces your overall expense."

I am also going to try to reduce the amount of milk used by drinking more water. This is my biggest expense. We eat a lot of yogurt and cheese, so I am sure we get more than enough calcium in our diets. Two meals with milk, one with water.

End of Month / 4 Weeks

Tonight I end my first set of 4 week.

My end of the month spending is $368.62
I spent $68.62 more than my allotted budget.

One thing that really hurt the budget was the eating out. I need to stick to packing meals for trips and eating out cheap if necessary.
Another thing I am going to watch this month is wasting of milk. I have made myself aware this week of the amount of milk that goes down the drain.

Here's to month # 2!

Tuesday Meals

Lunch-
Home- Cheese, Apples, Toast
School- Wheat Crackers, tuna, black olives, fruit strip, applesauce.

The fruit strips that we are have are Fit & Active from Aldi. We love them.
I have also found these little containers to work very well for us.  The Glad mini round containers are the perfect helping size for my girls. They are dishwasher safe and can be used over and over. I can buy applesauce, olives, tuna, yogurt, etc in the big containers that I have always bought them in and save money.

Convenience sizes are almost always more expensive.
For example: Great Value (Walmart brand) Natural Applesauce no sugar added {ingredients are apples, water, absorbic acid( to maintain color)}.
46 oz jar = $1.68 = 4¢ per ounce
6-4oz containers = 24 oz total = $1.50 = 6¢ per ounce
2¢ may not seem like a lot, but if you take that times all the single serving food purchased, it can really add up.

Dinner-
Taco Tuesday!  Hard and soft shell tacos with meat, lettuce, cheese, and tomatoes; Beans and rice; Tortilla chips with refried beans; Corn; and Mandarin oranges.

Sunday Menu

Sunday was food wise, a little different. I mean that in we kinda forgot about lunch. We were crazy busy and nobody stopped to say "Hey, mom, I'm hungry", so we skipped it. Don't worry my kids didn't starve they had a snack one hour before dinner when they all realized they were famished. Dinner was great though. Since we didn't have lunch I went all out. The best part. The whole meal except for the fruit came from either the garden or freezer.

Dinner:  Asian Flank Steak, Mashed Potatoes, Roasted Veggies, and Fruit Salad

The Asian Flank Steak is one of my freezer meals and a favorite for Jim, Warren, and I. (I would say the girls, but they had peanut butter sandwiches).

This recipe comes from "Don't Panic, Dinners in the Freezer"
One great part about this is a Flank Steak is one of the cheaper cuts of meat, but because it marinade and is thinly sliced you can't tell. (let me know if you can't read the recipe and I will type it out.)

I freeze mashed potatoes. I buy a big 5 pound bag of potatoes. Jim peels them for me because he's awesome like that. I boil and mash them all and put them in several quart size freezer bags (a good size for my family). Now when I want mashed potatoes, I just get them out of the freezer, heat them in the microwave, and fluff them with a fork.

The roasted veggies was just random veggies that I had on hand from the garden. I used squash, zucchini, tomotoes, and green peppers. I sliced them and put them in a bowl. I added olive oil, balsamic vinegar, kosher salt, thyme, and parsley. I don't have measurements as I just eye balled everything. To roast them, place aluminum foil on a shallow pan and add veggies. Make sure to not have anything on top of another because this will cause them to steam. Set oven to 400°, place pan in oven for 10 minutes, gently rotate and then cook for another ten minutes.

The fruit salad is what I do when I have have a small amount of several different types of fruit. We had bananas, stawberries,and blueberries.

Nothing Like a Trip to Kill the Budget

On our little trip we took this past weekend it costed us. Costed us $70.25 in food.

Here are the reasons why:

-Dinner. Note to self, no matter how late you are running, pack dinner. Spending $24.81 at McDonalds just isn't worth it. Although I know that there are cheaper ways of eating at McDonalds and we usually do that, but well. Long trip, running late, lack of motivation.
How we eat cheap at McDonalds if interested: For our family we could have gotten 1 McDouble, 3 apple dippers, 2 McChickens, 2 small fries, a ten piece nugget, and waters for about $14. That would have fed us just fine and is normally what we get. The kids share the 10 piece nugget.

-I forgot to pack my ingredients. I chose to make an oriental salad for a class reunion because I had those ingredients on hand. I didn't have to buy anything. Well, I realized 2 hours away from home that I forgot the ingredients. Talk about a "darn it" moment. So here I go to Walmart. $17.32 later I walk out with my ingredients, cereal (because we don't eat sugar cereal and wanted to make sure we didn't have to), and some other items that you see scratched off because they aren't food. Yet another reason why I should never go to Walmart unplanned.

So almost an entire weeks budget on barely anything.

chocolate chip zucchini cookies (because we all need a little something sweet now and then)

I made chocolate chip zucchini cookies and they were so good. I got the recipe from here, but altered it a bit. Note: these are more of a soft cookie than a hard cookie.
I used butter instead of margarine, unbleached vs bleached flour, and chocolate chips instead of raisins.

These versus Chips Ahoy turn out to be a much better value and are healthier in most areas. They also, in my families opinion, taste better. This is a cheap cookie that can be  made and frozen. I tripled the recipe and froze 2 portions. I do this because it is so much easier to buy a package of cookies than to have to get all the ingredients out and bake them from scratch. So I baked a whole bunch and when I want cookies, I will take how many I want/need out, defrost, and enjoy.

Cost:

Chocolate Chip Zucchini Cookies- Total= $1.83
                                                      per cookie=.05
Chips Ahoy- Total= $3.69
                     per cookie= .28

Huge difference! 67% savings!

Nutrition per serving (because I am suppose to be frugal and healthy):

Chocolate Chip Zucchini Cookies-
     89.6 calories
     3.84g fat
       - 2.94g saturated fat
     13.34g carbs
     .5g fiber
     1.24g protein
     70mg sodium

Chips Ahoy-
     160 calories
     8g fat
      - 2.5g saturated fat
     21g carbs
     1g fiber
     2g protein
     105mg sodium


    
    *Acknowledgement
        For my bff who stood up twice, stubbed her toe, and consumed chocolate chips just so I could know how many servings I used in this recipe. Thanks, Brie!

Shopping Trip Week 1

I was very proud of myself this week. I managed to stick to my list except for flour and lunch meat. I wanted to make cookies and bread and wouldn't have had enough flour to do all that. I added the lunch meat simply because I forgot and didn't want my poor husband to starve as this is what he eats for lunch.
I spent a bit more than I had hoped, so I will have to adjust my menu and budget the next weeks.

Grand Total: $86.30
Left to spend:213.70

Milk was .20 cheaper! Big deal when you buy on average 18 gallons a month.

The poly bags on the Walmart receipt is popcorn. This is such a great snack or munchie. It is high in fiber, so cheap (at .05 per serving), and can easily be altered. Our favorite toppings are kosher salt, parmesan cheese, and cinnamon & sugar. I am excited to try to make chocolate popcorn. I will have to omit the peanuts since Warren can't have them yet. Not quite healthy, but a great frugal dessert.
What's you favorite popcorn flavor?

In case you are wondering why in the world I have two Walmart receipts. I made a mistake that I had never done before. I left an entire bag on the turn style. Oops. Luckily, Walmart believed me and let me have my items back for free. Lesson learned.

If there is anything on the receipts that you are curious what it is feel free to ask.

Let the fun begin!

I have decided that I am going to attempt to feed my family of five for $300 or less a month. I currently spend between $400 and $500 a month. This month I spent $473. My food budget will include eating out and food from the store. According to The US Census Bureau in 2009 (published in 2011) the average cost to feed a family of five are as follows:
Thrifty plan-$557.76
Low Plan- $708
Moderate Plan-$876.96
High Plan- $1237.44

This challenge for me started when I read an article that talked about two families who must feed their families for under $300 because that is all they have due to hard times and at times they have to actually miss meals. It also stated in the article that poverty stricken people tend to be overweight because it is cheaper to buy processed convenience foods and eat at McDonalds than buying healthier food. I in all honestly would like to prove this wrong. I want to think that $300 can feed a family. That if we budget, meal plan, and stick to a list and shop at the right places it can be done.

Our family has some dietary guidelines that we follow that may make this a little more difficult (or could end up proving my point even more). We do not buy anything that has food dye in it. So there are things that we buy at the HyVee health market that costs a bit more than a different brand at Aldi. We also eat a lot of fresh produce, this as most know can be expensive. I try to not by things with high fructose corn syrup which if you read labels is in so much. And I buy greek yogurt because of the protein due to Breanna refusing all meat.

I have been doing some reading to try to find some tips.
--I am an impulse shopper. I can go in with a list that should cost $27 and end up walking out with $63 worth of stuff (I did this last week). So I really liked this idea.
Identify weekly, biweekly, and monthly needs.
This is how I  will split mine up:
     Weekly-fresh produce
     Bi Weekly-anything that can be frozen (milk, cheese, butter, meat, etc) and anything that keeps well in    
     the 
     fridge (eggs, yogurt, etc)
     Monthly- all non perishables (cereal, noodles, canned goods, etc)
This will keep me out of the stores as much as possible to avoid those darn "gotta have it" purchases. When I walk in to get fresh produce, I go straight to the produce section and straight to the register. I may need blinders for those pesky items they put at the register.
--I am going to organize my pantry, fridge and freezers (yes we have two) so I am not buying things that I already have and making sure I don't assume we have something when we don't.
--I am going to start feezing desserts so when those sugar munchies hit I won't be so temtped to run to Caseys and get a cupcake.

Somethings that I already do to cut costs is:
--Waste nothing. We do not throw aways leftovers, we eat them. Any bananas that turn brown get mashed and put into the freezer for banana bread and the heels of bread also gets frozen for bread crumbs. I never purchase bread crumbs. I am hoping to find more ways to not waste.
--My BFF (as Jim calls her, LOL) and I share a garden. This does/will help greatly with the costs of veggies.
--I also make freezer meals. When I make a meal that can be frozen I double or triple the recipe (or quadruple for pancakes and waffles). We eat one and freeze the others. This helps for those times when you either don't feel like cooking or don't have time to cook and might end up going out to eat or ordering a pizza.
--Jim has is making me a great excel spreadsheet with the price of the things that I buy so I know what I am going to spend before I walk in to the grocery store (thank goodness for a tech savvy husband). I will share that when it is complete.

What I plan to put on here is my menu for the month, recipes, maybe even a picture if the meal looks really yummy, my grocery list and how much I spent. So I guess if you want I can pretty much do your food planning for you assuming that you like to eat what we eat.

My next step is to make my monthly menu and figure up what I need for my three lists. And I am sure a whole lot of adjusting to make it under $300.