Tag Archives: groceries

Clean out the refrigerator before you put away your groceries

Have you ever found leftovers shoved in the back of the refrigerator and forgotten for weeks? Um, me neither. OK, so I have. But not for a very long time, because we have a simple system for clearing out the old stuff these days.

Every week before we go to the grocery store, we clean out the refrigerator. We check all expiration dates, get rid of uneaten leftovers from the week before, and make room for the new groceries.

Not only does this ensure the removal of dated food, it also eases the process of putting groceries away when we return from the grocery store. Because we’ve already shifted and organized everything, it’s easy to fit all of the week’s groceries. It’s also a good opportunity to take stock of your freezer and condiment inventory and make additions to the grocery list if necessary.

Putting away groceries is a lot less stressful when we’re not trying to make space in the refrigerator at the same time.

Looking for more kitchen organization ideas? Check out this week’s Works for Me Wednesday carnival at Rocks in my Dryer.

Menu Plan & Grocery Round Up: 9/27-10/3

My menu plan and grocery round up are a little late this week. We opted to skip the grocery yesterday for Tony’s birthday.

Our grand total this week was $42 and some change! Looks like we had a phenomenal week, huh? Well, not so fast.

We’re leaving town to visit my sister in Seattle on Friday, so we only needed to buy groceries for 6 days this week.

Based on our $50/week grocery budget, we spend roughly $7 a day for groceries. That means our $42 bill was dead on with our budget. Great, but not as great as going $8 under budget would be. :)

Since we’re preparing for our short vacation, we decided to keep our menu very simple this week. We’re also trying to use up some of our pantry staples.

Here’s our menu plan for the shortened week:

Saturday: Monthly restaurant meal (and Tony’s birthday dinner! :))
Sunday: Herb roasted chicken breasts with green beans and mashed red potatoes (see recipe below)
Monday: Whole wheat penne with garlic herb marinara
Tuesday: Sandwiches/leftovers
Wednesday: Whole wheat spaghetti with pesto
Thursday: Homemade pizza
Friday: Dinner with my sister and my parents in Seattle!

Herb roasted chicken breasts and red potatoes

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2 tsp. dried rosemary
2 tsp. dried thyme
1 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. ground pepper
1 clove minced garlic
2 tbsp. olive oil

Combine seasonings with olive oil in small bowl. Spread liberally onto chicken breasts. Cut red potatoes into fourths. Coat in olive oil, and season liberally in salt and pepper. Surround chicken breasts with one layer of potatoes in roasting pan. Roast in 375-degree oven for 30 minutes or until chicken is cooked through and juices run clear.

Now head over to OrgJunkie for more menu plans!

Menu Plan Monday & Grocery Round up: 9/20-9/26

This week was not as successful as last. Our grand total was $68! Bummer.

We’re entertaining some guests tonight, so a lot of the extra comes from a bigger, fancier than normal spinach lasagna that we’re making tonight. We also had to stock up on some staples like flour, peanut butter and jelly, soy sauce, tea bags and coffee filters.

I know – excuses, excuses. I’m consoling myself by reminding myself that grocery bills like this one have now become the exception instead of the rule. We’ve been within budget for the past three weeks, so I’m willing to cut myself some slack for going over.

Here’s our menu plan for the week:

Saturday: Spinach and four-cheese lasagna with salad and fresh garlic bread
Sunday: Roasted chicken with potatoes and green beans
Monday: Chicken quesadillas with refried beans
Tuesday: Leftovers/Sandwiches
Wednesday: French dip sandwiches
Thursday: Chinese style chicken and broccoli
Friday: Homemade pizza

As part of Menu Plan Monday’s Family Favorite edition, I’m also posting a recipe that’s been passed down from my mom. Her classic lasagna includes meat sauce, but we’ve adapted the recipe to be meat-free. It’s delicious. Hope you enjoy!

Spinach Lasagna

Classic Marinara Sauce:
1/2 of an onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 (14.5-ounce) can of diced tomatoes
1 (14.5-ounce) can of tomato sauce
1 (5- to 6-ounce) can of tomato paste
2 tablespoons of parsley
¼ teaspoon of sugar
¼ teaspoon of kosher salt
1 teaspoon of dried basil
½ cup of red wine

Cheese Filling:
3 cups of ricotta cheese
½ cup of Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon of parsley
1 teaspoon of oregano
1 package of frozen spinach, thawed and pressed to remove excess water

1lb. lasagna noodles
8 oz. shredded mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese for sprinkling

Saute onions and garlic in 1 tbsp. olive oil. Add diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste, parsley, salt, and basil. Stir until tomato paste is blended into sauce. Bring to a slight boil. Add red wine. Reduce heat, and simmer for 30 minutes.

In a large bowl, combine ricotta cheese, Parmesan cheese, parsley, and oregano.

Thaw spinach in a microwave or stove top. When it’s cool enough to handle, put it in a clean kitchen towel and squeeze to remove excess water. Incorporate into ricotta cheese mixture.

Boil lasagna noodles for 10-15 minutes according to instructions on packaging.

Build lasagna in an 8×8 pan beginning with a small layer of sauce to avoid sticking. Lay down noodles with no gaps followed by cheese filling, sauce, mozzarella cheese, and Parmesan cheese. Repeat twice for a total of three layers. Top with a layer of sauce, mozzarella cheese, and Parmesan cheese.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30-45 minutes until cheese is bubbly and beginning to brown. Allow to cool for 15 minutes before serving.

Serves 4-6 people.

If you’d like to make this recipe my mom’s way (with ground beef), just add beef to the onion and garlic and cook it completely before adding the tomato sauce. She also uses cottage cheese instead of ricotta. It’s saltier, and may be a bigger hit with the kiddies.

Keep in mind, this recipe is three in one. The marinara sauce is absolutely divine on spaghetti, and the cheese filling is perfect for stuffed manicotti. Mix it up to maximize your meals!

Check out OrgJunkie for more meal plan inspiration!

Life without a microwave

Yesterday, Kelly at Almost Frugal Food wrote a post about heating and reheating food without a microwave. Like Kelly, I don’t have a microwave, and I don’t want one. So I thought I’d throw in my two cents and tips on the topic.

Cutting the microwave out of your life is a great way to improve your diet. My husband used to live predominantly on microwaveable food in college. Generally, the stuff is pretty bad for you.

Cooking without a microwave is also better for your budget. Convenience foods, which come complete with high-tech packaging designed to make them taste less like microwaved food, are also a drain on the budget. Cooking with whole foods from scratch is much more economical than packaged convenience foods designed for microwave cooking.

I’ve also just never been completely comfortable with the idea of microwaves, to be honest. The idea of toxins and carcinogens being released by heating plastic in the microwave is more than a little disconcerting. Am I being paranoid? Probably. But I can live with that.

The bigger issue is that I hate the way food tastes when it’s heated or reheated in a microwave. It always comes out with a chewy, dry consistency. For the longest time I thought I hated leftover pizza. Turns out I just hated the way it tasted when it was reheated in a microwave.

Many people react with shock and horror when I tell them I don’t have a microwave. “How do you reheat anything?!” It’s like the entire fabric of their universe is crashing down on them.

I’ve never understood why people are so horrified by the idea of life without a microwave. The truth is, there’s nothing a microwave can do that a stove top or conventional oven can’t do better. It takes a little more time, but the tastier results are worthwhile.

Soups and pastas can be reheated simply by throwing them into a pot or skillet over medium-low heat on the stove top. Pizza, casseroles, and lasagna can be reheated for 10-20 minutes in a 300-350 degree oven.

Need to defrost meat? Refer to your menu plan before you go to bed, and place the meat you’ll need for tomorrow’s dinner into the refrigerator to thaw for 24 hours. Forgot to take your chicken breast out of the freezer last night? It happens. Just put it in a bowl in the sink with slow, steady stream of cool water trickling into the bowl. It’ll thaw in about 20 minutes.

The only thing we can’t make is microwave popcorn. No big deal. We buy stove top Jiffy Pop. It’s more fun anyway. :)

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Our method for meal planning

It can take a while to get the knack of meal planning. We’ve been doing it for two years now, and our method has evolved into something that works pretty well and helps us save money, so I thought I’d share with all of you.

Every Saturday or Sunday morning depending on our schedule, my husband and I sit down with the store circulars for the two grocery stores near us. If we haven’t picked up the circulars, we can find the sale information at MyGroceryDeals.com. It’s completely free and easy. You just enter your favorite stores, and it gives you their sale information.

First, we go through all of the current sale prices to see if anything jumps out at us. There’s usually at least one meat sale every week for beef, chicken, or pork. Knowing which meat is on sale gives us an idea of what kind of meals we’ll be making. If there’s nothing on sale, like this week, then we stick with chicken, because we usually buy it in bulk and always have it on hand.

We also look at the sale prices for produce and dairy. A great deal on certain vegetables or cheese might encourage us to make one of our favorite vegetarian dishes.

If we’re crunched for time or we’re not feeling creative, then we stick to a basic repertoire of quick and easy meals that we make frequently. These include things like tacos, chicken quesadillas, BLTs, & chicken and broccoli. Our repertoire is constantly evolving and growing as we try new things.

If we’re feeling creative or we’re in the mood to expand our repertoire, we search for new recipes that include the sale items we’ve decided to buy. Our favorite website for this is FoodNetwork.com. It has an easy search interface that allows you to enter the ingredient for a list of meals that include it. Other good sites that we’ve used include AllRecipes.com, Elise.com, and Taste of Home. There are many recipe sites on the web based on the same principle, so sometimes all it takes is a simple Google search.

Once we’ve decided on our meals, we plan which nights we’ll eat them based on ingredients we’re using or reusing and other factors. For instance, if we’re having fish, we always cook it the same day that we buy it. If we’re roasting a whole chicken and using the leftovers for chicken quesadillas later in the week, then obviously the roasted chicken comes first. If we know we’ll be pressed for time on a certain night, then we’re sure to plan for a quick and easy meal. Ingredients with a long shelf life are saved until the end of the week, and weekends are reserved for more complicated recipes.

We organize our grocery list based on the layout of the store. All of the items are split up into categories: Produce, Dry Goods, Dairy, and Meat. We go through each recipe and write down its ingredients based on the categories.

Categorizing all of our items streamlines the shopping process, and makes it easier to remember everything on our list. We don’t run the risk of back tracking to the produce section for an item that was written in at the bottom of the list. If we’re shopping the sales at more than one store, then we note on the list where the item will be purchased.

Finally, once our list is complete, I go through my coupon stash to make sure I don’t have any useful coupons. I usually don’t since we don’t buy many processed foods, but it never hurts to check.

This is the method that we’ve found most effective for both time and money management. What methods work best for you?

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Menu Plan Monday & grocery round up – 9/13-9/19

Since we stocked up on 5 pounds of chicken breasts last week and I wasn’t thrilled with this week’s meat prices, we decided to stay away from the meat department today.

The result is our best grocery bill yet: $50.42! That doesn’t include $15 at Costco for our monthly purchase of coffee and mozzarella cheese for homemade pizza, but I’ve decided to leave that out so I can savor this week of budget perfection. Yes, I know it’s cheating. No, I don’t care. :)

And now for this week’s meal plan:

Saturday: Porterhouse steak, white potatoes, and green beans (We bought the steak on sale weeks ago, and one steak feeds both of us.)
Sunday: Late summer minestrone soup with garlic toast
Monday: Arroz con pollo adaptation (made with chicken breast instead of a whole chicken)
Tuesday: Leftovers
Wednesday: Italian grilled cheese & tomato sandwiches
Thursday: Grilled chicken breast sandwiches with oven fries
Friday: Homemade pizza

It’s so satisfying when I’m able to stay within budget!

Be sure to visit OrgJunkie for more great meal plans.

Protecting your freezer stockpile in a power outage

When Tropical Storm Hanna was pummeling us with wind and rain last night, I have to admit it wasn’t just the noise outside that kept me awake. I woke up at 3 a.m. to realize the power was knocked out, and I was worried about our stockpile of chicken breasts, beef, and steak in the freezer.

Obviously if the storm had been more serious, our meat would have been the furthest thing from my mind. But in this case, the only thing the storm really caused was a power outage and some heavy wind. As I lie there in the complete dark, I realized: I never thought about what would happen to our bulk meat investment if we lost power for more than an hour or two.

I did consider our freezer before the storm hit, but honestly I wasn’t expecting to lose power for very long. Luckily we didn’t. It was probably only out for 2-3 hours.

The night before the storm, we bought a 10-pound bag of ice that we stuffed into the freezer. We arranged the meat on the bottom of the freezer, and stuffed the bag of ice on top of it. We also followed the advice of Kacie at Sense to Save and froze a gallon jug of water to take up the extra space in the freezer. We also keep our Kitchen-Aid stand mixer’s ice cream maker attachment in the freezer in case we decide to make ice cream on the spur of the moment. It stays pretty cold for pretty long after it’s frozen.

As soon as the power kicked back on early this morning, I checked the freezer. The meat was still rock solid and very little ice was melted, so I think it’s safe to leave it in the freezer.

However, I hadn’t thought about what I would do in the event of a long-term power outage before the storm. I had a lot of time to think about it last night when I was tossing and turning, though. I decided that if the meat was partially thawed by the time the power came back on, we would cook all of it up today, use as much as possible in bulk cooking, and freeze the meals. Throwing it away would have been the last resort in the event of a long-term power outage that lasted all day. If the meat thawed completely, and we couldn’t cook it immediately, I wouldn’t have risked it.

What about you? What steps do you take to protect your bulk meat purchases if the power goes out?

Menu Plan Monday & Grocery Round Up: 9/6-9/12

As it turned out, Hanna wasn’t too bad at all. The wind and rain kept me up all night, and the power was out for a few hours, but overall it was pretty mild. Thankfully. Now that the skies have cleared, it’s back to business as usual today.

We spent $57 on groceries for the week! That includes 5 pounds of chicken breasts bought at $1.99/lb. Most of our meals are chicken-based, and $1.99/lb. is the cheapest I’ve seen it in my grocery stores, so I like to stock up when it hits that price. We should have plenty for the next few weeks!

And now on to our menu plan:

Saturday: Blackened catfish and rice pilaf
Sunday: Round roast and mashed potatoes
Monday: Chicken fajita tortilla soup
Tuesday: Sandwiches/leftovers
Wednesday: Whole wheat spaghetti with marinara
Thursday: Three-cheese stuffed manicotti
Friday: Homemade pizza

We were in the mood to mix things up this week, so we took a lot of time planning our meals to include new things (the manicotti) and old recipes that we haven’t made in a while (chicken fajita soup). I’m really looking forward to our menu for the week!

Now head over to Org Junkie for more menu inspiration!

Menu Plan Monday & Weekly grocery round up

Woo hoo! We stayed within our budget this week!! Our grand total was $57! It seems like it was easier this week, too. I felt like we were buying a lot of extra stuff (the hubby has been missing snacks, so we picked up some crackers and pretzels even though they’re not technically part of a meal). We also bought the ingredients for homemade ice cream for a special Labor Day treat. Even with all those extras, we made it!

Thanks again to everyone who offered tips and advice! :)

And now on to the meal plan for this week:

Sunday: Chicken and broccoli stir fry
Monday: Burgers and oven fries (in honor of Labor Day!)
Tuesday: Leftovers/sandwiches
Wednesday: Pasta with meat sauce
Thursday: BLT sandwiches
Friday: Homemade pizza

For breakfast we bought cereal and eggs. Lunches will be leftovers, salads, and sandwiches, as usual. We decided to keep things very simple this week. I’m sure that’s part of why it was easy to stay within budget. But hey, I’m all about simplicity!

Be sure to check out more meal plans at www.orgjunkie.com!