Working, working, working

I haven't gotten my 15 minutes of blogging in for quite awhile now.
However, yesterday I started to get plans in shape to change that.  I was working on a schedule, and trying to get one in place.
I was also trying to get my family onto the same page as I was, however they were being confrontational about the whole thing.  There were a multitude of excuses of "why nots".

I hate "why....nots..."

Over half of the day yesterday, I was doing meal planning.  My version of meal planning is trying to get one dinner listed in my calendar for each night.  For the year.  Some nights are easy, like Christmas Eve.  We always have fondue on Christmas Eve.  Holidays are easy too.  It's the rest of the year I have trouble with.
Here's what I do:
Each day of the week is assigned a certain type of meal, generally by the protein, but not always.
Sunday = chicken/poultry
Monday = pork
Tuesday = pasta
Wednesday = soup/stew
Thursday = beef
Friday = sandwiches/pizza/vegetarian/breakfast for dinner
Saturday = leftovers

From there, I hit my cookbooks.  Yesterday I started with one I had only tried one or two recipes from in the past, and worked my way through it.  Now, I know that Wednesday is soup/stew night, so I found all the recipes for soup or stew or chowder or whatever, and filled in as many Wednesday night from that cookbook as I possibly could.
Sometimes, recipes for soup or whatever are in a different section, like chicken.  Or vegetarian.  It can be a hunt to find them, so I go page by page.  I went as far as I could in that cookbook for each day.
Once I had gotten through that book, I picked up another.  One that had a lot of recipes that I know my family likes.  I got all those into my schedule.  This way we have a nice combination of things we KNOW we like, and a whole bunch of new stuff too.
On days when I don't have any writing to do, I can go through and try to get some of these dishes made ahead of time, effectively turning them into freezer meals.  If they don't work as freezer meals, I can at least get most of the ingredients together into one bag, label them and put the date when we're suppose to have that particular meal.
Next on my mass re-organization of my life, I'm going to be coming up with a cleaning schedule.  Let's hope that works, too.

Or at least it's imperfectly perfect.

To Budget or Not To Budget...

Can I tell you a secret?

I don't really have a food budget.
Now, for a family that lives paycheck to paycheck, that might seem kind of shocking, but it's the truth. However, there is a good reason for it.

We never know what is going on clearance at the grocery store from one week to the next.  Mostly what we buy on clearance is meat.  Since we have a nice size chest freezer, and I'm kind of turning into a canning freak, buying up a lot of meat that is on clearance turns into something of a steal for us.

Here's how it works:  Meat, like fruits and vegetables, have "seasons".  Sort of.  So your local grocery orders the usual amount of, say, ground beef from the warehouse around the holiday season (Thanksgiving to New Years).  But really, who is buying ground beef during that time?  Most people are buying turkey and ham and roasts and stew beef and things like that.  Most people are not wanting a lot of ground beef.  So, the ground beef winds up going on clearance.  My husband (who is a meat cutter, and therefore can alert me to the really great deals) will call me and ask me if we have enough money to get extra meat.  I will let him know what the finances say, and tell him how much he can spend.  This past holiday season, we wound up scoring over 30 lbs of ground beef for less than half what it would have normally cost us.

We also shop all the special sales.  When the bags of frozen boneless, skinless chicken breasts go on sale buy 2, get 3 free, yeah, we go crazy.  We will buy the max number we can, which is usually 10 bags.  There are generally around 7-9 breasts in each bag.  We use, AT MOST, three per meal.  So generally, what I will wind up doing is opening the bags and re-packaging them with our FoodSaver machine.  (I really recommend a FoodSaver machine.  It is fantastic and is great for helping preserve food.)  (This is NOT an affiliate link.)  We do the same with the chicken leg quarter family packs.

Basically, we stretch the meat out as far as it will go.  Casseroles and soups go a long way in our house.  They might not be fancy, but they are filling, and that is what we are looking for.

All our other staples- flour, eggs, sugar, etc- we buy in bulk whenever we can at our local big box store.  I love to cook and bake, so buying the basics in bulk makes my life a lot easier.  I do the same with our spices and herbs.

 Buying in bulk means having to store a lot.  But it also means that I know I will have on hand what I need, when I need it.

It's my imperfectly perfect way of doing things.