Grocery prices are so high that I don’t even want to shop anymore unless I see a remarkable sale. There is one coming this Sunday that I will not miss. Rarely can I say that these days.
Hubby and I were discussing the prices the other day. He has agreed to eat 99% of the time from our pantries, refrigerator, and freezer. Do we go out to eat regularly? Nope. Do we constantly buy fast food? Nope. Once in a rare while, we will get KFC chicken or an Arby’s roast beef and I always use coupons. We do that if we have had a very busy day. In Lent, we will get fish fries from Chiavetta’s. But that is it! It is so much cheaper and healthier to eat our own cooking.
We make all of our pizza using naan bread. We make our own Chinese food. I can’t even remember the last time that we ordered Chinese food. I think it was before Covid. On a rare occasion (maybe twice a year), we will get a sweet at the bakery owned by one of my neighbors. I haven’t even gotten bagels at Panera Bread in a very long time and I still have lots of gift cards. Maybe I will stop and get some next Tuesday for Hubby. He really likes them.
So we are going to eat up what we have here. We may end up having some weird sides when they get low. But we will make the best of it knowing that we are not spending our money and making these large corporations any richer than they already are. We are all getting poorer while they made billions off of us last year and the year before. And it continues and will continue into next year.
Will we ever buy? Yes, of course. Two times come to mind. Fresh produce and dairy products, etc. don’t keep for long. We need eggs, butter, sour cream, cream cheese, cheeses, and cream all of the time. But I will try to buy those only when they are on sale or cheap at Walmart or Aldi’s. I have enough butter to last me until the Thanksgiving sales. While I am thinking about Thanksgiving, I will be buying turkeys and other on sale stuff that is the cheapest during that holiday. I will not pass up a great sale especially on meat. Even though it is harder these days to track prices because they rise so often, I am still doing it. I need to know when I am getting a great deal!
Hubby is the only one eating bread so I will be baking it and freezing it. I can also make him muffins, quick breads, donuts, hamburger and hot dog rolls. He makes pancakes and waffles sometimes for our family Sunday breakfasts. West loves his apple cinnamon waffles.
We are able to make our own salad dressings and sauces when we run out of what we have.
While we are not shopping, I will be putting aside the budgeted money that we are not spending to refill the larders. Things will be expensive to replace but I will carefully watch for sales and cook most everything from just basic foods.
Once my canning jars come today, we should be set for the winter. I hate snow and ice so I will be staying home as much as possible.
The rest of my bins for the freezer came yesterday. So I moved a lot of the vegetables, fruits, shredded cheeses, tortilla wraps, yeast, jam, nuts, etc. to my upstairs freezer. All my meat got moved to the chest freezer.
I plan on sorting all of the meats and fish into the bins today. The things that I want to can today and tomorrow will go in the refrigerator Then I will quickly defrost my chest freezer using my hairdryer and plastic ice scraper. I will show you the results in a later post.
BTW, that piece of meat that I thawed the other day was two filet mignon’s that the butcher had cut and wrapped two together. I found another package just like it yesterday when I was going through my freezer. So Hubby grilled then the other night for dinner. It was a nice surprise.
Are you eating from your pantries and freezers?
