Nibbling Away at the Grocery Budget

Homegrown Salad

Right now I am nibbling away at my grocery budget.  I've just run some numbers and in 2011 I spent an average of $203.16 a month at the grocery store. In December, when my garden started really kicking in, I managed to only spend $119 for the month.

I am working on being more frugal with my money in general, making sure I've turned off the lights I'm not using, cooking on my airtight wood burning stove instead of using the gas or the microwave.

I've decided I want to really cut back on my grocery bill this coming year, partly by growing all of my own vegetables and some of my own fruit. (Fruit trees take several years to come into bearing, but strawberries only take 2 years to get up to speed and of course melons only take a few months)  While I won't forgo meat entirely I will probably have some meatless days each week, replacing meat with beans and other protein foods that are less costly. This months strategy is to use up the rest of the meat that is in my freezer as well as make a dent in 5 pounds of pinto beans that were given to me.

There are many ways to stretch your food dollars. I bought a large ham before Christmas on sale for .99 cents a pound. I cooked it and had several dinners & lunches of ham, sweet potato and applesauce. Then I made 2 gallons of 15 bean soup out of the leftover bits of ham and bone. Some of that is still in the freezer.

When whole chickens are on sale I try to get several. Each one makes several meals, first roasted chicken with carrots and potatoes, then either chicken and rice soup or chicken & dumplings.  When my kids were little and I either raised a lot of chickens or bought 12 or more on sale very cheap I would cut them up myself. I would save a couple whole ones for roasted chicken dinners. The rest I packaged for the freezer as boneless skinless breasts, legs & thighs for BBQ. The backs, tails, ribs, wings and necks all went into the stock pot and I would make 5 gallons of chicken broth and then can it in pints and quarts for later. I'd use the broth for gravy or as a soup starter. I think I need to start doing these kinds of things again.

So what's on your menus for this week? Tonight I've cooked a large pork roast, so pork, brown rice and salad tonight and probably tomorrow also. Tomorrow I might pull some carrots and beets to go with the  leftover roast. Maybe I'll make a pot of soup too.

This N That

Well I have been very bad! I overspent a bit on my vacation, though I will say in my defense that a great deal of it was bank fees that I hadn't counted on, first they charge for having to convert the transaction from foreign money then they charge for you for using a foreign ATM. Next time I think I will look into having the bank order the money for me ahead of time or something. The other part was not always converting Euros to USD in my head correctly.

But I had a great time in Italy and did a lot of drawing and painting and took like 3,000 photos. No I am not pulling your leg, I really did take about that many shots.

You can see a lot of my photos and some of the places I visited over on my art blog; check the archives beginning August 15th.

Since I've been home I've been working on getting the garden back in business and last week had my first harvest of beans, baby lettuce and baby beets. Photos of those are over at The Edible Garden.

I have decided to eat up a lot of the stuff in the cabinets instead of going to the grocery store.  I have some older canned goods and need to get them eaten up before they get too old. This is also stretching my money a bit so I can buy cement for the rock wall project; we have put culverts in the dry wash so we can drive over to the other side and I am building stone walls around them and along the creek banks to keep everything from washing away. Pictures of this is also on The Edible Garden.

Another thing I've been doing is writing up a storm at Squidoo and making new things over at Zazzle. One of my articles is a yummy soup that I make, Italian Potato Soup, that tastes just like Olive Gardens. I have also been making what I call the never ending pot of soup. For instance if I make a roast chicken and make chicken and rice soup out of the leftovers, when I get to the bottom of the pot I start adding more vegetables to it and maybe even a different kind of meat and just keep eating on it.  Another one I do occasionally is clean out the fridge soup. I just toss in all the leftovers that are in the refrigerator and cook them all up together. Sometimes you have to adjust the seasoning as it might be bland, but it's always good and always different and really doesn't cost anything because you weren't doing anything with those leftovers any way and they were going to go bad and end up in the compost.