July 3, 2012

So I have decided that I am going to try and keep all my information about shopping and planning on here as well.  I have been wanting to keep track of how much I am spending on each thing, when I fill up on what we are missing and their prices.  I am not very good at charts or spread sheets and so maybe this will be a good start to keeping better track.

Today started just horrible.  I went back to bed at 5:45am after I put Remington back in bed.  I turned my phone sound off so I missed every alarm.  Russ was 40 min late to work, but he did stay and help me get out of the house.  Because I didn't get the homemade granola bars that I wanted to do this week, we just didn't have breakfast.  I did grab an orange and slice it yesterday morning.  That was super awesome, but I just didn't have time this morning.  What normally takes me 40-45 min round trip from my house to the Robinsons to work, I managed to do in 25 min this morning.  It is amazing what can happen when you hit all the lights green.

On my way to pick the kids up I did a very very quick grocery run.  We buy all our milk for the month on one trip and we freeze it.  We go through about 10 gallons a months or more.  I also stocked up on chicken and brats in the deep freezer.  I bought 19 dollars worth of chicken and then I came home cut off the fat, bones and tendons and put them in separate bags to freeze.  I always put 1 1/2-2 chicken breasts per bag.  I end up with 8 bags of chicken between the two packages.  It does take time to do this, but I learned early in our marriage that frozen chicken was best for me to cook because then I could just pick it out and use it and if Russ gets something unpleasant in a bite to eat it ruins his appetite.

In our deep freezer storage we always have:

Chicken, whole chicken's from my in-laws, plain chicken breats, marinated chicken (that I mix and put in each bag before it freezes) and chicken patties
Beef- hamburger meat (frozen in 1 lbs bags), steaks (that I find on sale), pre-made hamburger patties (Russ favorite is the private selection provolone and mushroom from Smith's which we only have on rare occasions), brats, sausage links and patties, stew meat, pre-made meatballs and a couple roasts I found on sale.
Pork- stew meat, pork chops, and tenderloin roasts
Fish- Salmon (I stock up on the frozen pre-packaged individual servings when they are on sale at Costco), fish sticks and Swai from Walmart.  I almost got cod for fried fish yesterday while I was at smith's because it was such a great price, but i will have to wait until next month to consider it.
Random: hot dogs, corn dogs and lunch meat

We have been looking at purchasing a generator for a while because all our meat food storage is in our freezers and that would be bad if it thawed.  But we buy things in bulk and then package them into small bags the size of one meal.  We have two deep freezers.  One is just for milk and meat.

When I go grocery shopping I have been trying to buy in season fruits and vegetables.  After I get home I have to figure out what we are eating first and either cut it up or prepare it for meals.  I try and put everything in easy to access.  It has made it a lot easier to grab things.  It makes the afternoon I come home from shopping long and tiring but worth it.  For example I cut up the cantalopue, washed mushrooms, etc.  The list just gets long and not worth writing.

While we had fresh milk, chicken and eggs I had Russ help me make Pad Thai.  It is crazy just how much works goes into such a meal.  However, it was probably the best time we had ever made it.  My job is the chicken with fish sauce, rice vinegar and sarachi hot sauce.  Russ does the eggs, noodles, bean sprouts and crushes the peanuts.  I got out the fresh carrots we picked and thinned from the garden and shredded them to put on top.  It was an awesome meal.  Madalynn needed some real coaxing just to be able to eat, but not getting some homemade root beer that we made last night did the trick.  Yep, we ended the night making homemade root beer for drinking and floats for the 4th of July.  It was awesome.