Thursday, February 19, 2009

Busy, Busy & Money Saving Meals

No pictures since my camera batteries are dead. I have to remember to put good rechargeable batteries on my shopping list. I finished up working on Monday except for a few hours of paperwork that I will go in and complete next week. I had good intentions of staying home all week. The lure of the sales at CVS and the need for cat food got me out of the house Tuesday. I thought I could last longer without shopping. I was able to take advantage of most of the CVS sales and ended up with $11 more in extra bucks than when I went in.

Yesterday was some early spring cleaning. My house is in sad shape and needs a good thorough cleaning. I started in the bath and laundry rooms. I hope to finish each area within a week. If not I will just work until everything is marked off the list and then move on to the next room. Tomorrow's main to-do is to clean the cabinets in the bathroom and the pantry area in the laundry room. I can restock the bathroom from my stockpile and get a good idea of what I have in smaller pantry.

Today was plenty of cooking. I made a reasonably priced pot of Brunswick stew. The pork was free thanks to my dad who killed a hog at the end of last year. I had $4 in chicken breasts, $4 in vegetables, cheap ketchup and barbecue sauce at about $2, and free Worcestershire sauce. I will say I had $10 in the entire pot, and I got 8 meals out of it. I think $1.25 is reasonable for a meal for two with probably one serving of leftovers. I packed it in reusable freezer containers.

My second big cooking today was pizzas. I made six to put in the freezer. I did the dough in my bread machines and par-baked it. I added cheese ($10), turkey pepperoni ($3), ground deer ($0), mushrooms ($1.50), piece of onion found at the bottom of the fridge, half a can of crushed pineapple ($.50), part of a bell pepper ($.50), and a large can of olives which we chopped ourselves ($1). I used about a bag of flour ($5). The rest of the dough ingredients including the yeast were minimal so I am not going to try to figure out the cost of those. Let's round up to $24 for the total cost; that is only $4 per pizza. Keep in mind I live out in the country so delivery pizza is not an option. The closest pizza place is about 10 minutes away and a pizza the size of the ones I made is $15 and loaded with grease. I can cook these frozen pizzas in about 20-30 minutes. I was able to use healthier ingredients. Give homemade frozen pizzas a try. The trick is to put the cheese on the crust first and add sauce sparingly.

I admit DH did pick up sandwiches on the way home as I was sick of both pizza and Brunswick stew and too tired to cook anything else. We did get two meals out of the sandwiches and ate chips plus drinks here at home. I saved some of the chicken and chicken stock from what I cooked for the stew. We will have chicken and noodles (found a piece of a pack of those in the fridge too) tomorrow night for supper.

Today's cooking took pretty much the entire day but I have 14 meals for the coming weeks. Both are things we really like so I have no doubt that we will eat all of them.

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