All You Grocery Challenge ~ Day 9

Our menus have been less than interesting lately; but with my commitment, I shall press forward!

Breakfast this morning was leftover whole-grain pancakes with peanut butter & jelly for the kidlets, leftover sausage biscuits for hubby & me.

Lunch was bean burritos for the kids (tortillas smeared with refrieds and topped with cheese, nuked for 30 seconds) and ham/cheese omelettes for hubby & me.  We all had watermelon and grapes, too.

For supper we had a date night.  After dropping the kids off at my in-laws, my hubby took me out for Chinese to celebrate our 10th anniversary, which is Wednesday.  We are actually going on a little getaway to Branson in the next couple of weeks for our *real* celebration.  ☺

All You Grocery Challenge ~ Day 8

Okay, I know I'm behind (as usual).  Now I have to try to remember everything we ate since Wednesday!  Too bad I already chunked the menu and made this week's!

Wednesday 6/23 Breakfast:  steel cut oats

Wednesday 6/23 Lunch:  last of the spaghetti & other various leftovers

Wednesday 6/23 Supper:  barbeque muffin cups (canned biscuit dough stretched into muffin tins, mixture of cooked ground beef & leftover shredded roast with brown sugar & bbq sauce, topped with cheese), homemade french fries, grapes

Thursday 6/24 Breakfast:  sausage/egg/cheese rolls (I make the dough in the bread machine with my cinnamon roll dough recipe.  Used 2 pounds of Jimmy Dean to make a huge skillet full of sausage gravy.  Scrambled 2 dozen eggs.  Spread the sausage, gravy, eggs, & shredded cheddar on dough, rolled up, and cut like cinnamon rolls.  This made 3 dozen, which lasted us a couple days.)

Thursday 6/24 Lunch:  Leftover foil packets (beef, onion, potato, & green beans) and bbq muffins

Thursday 6/24 Supper:  Quick peanut butter & jelly sandwiches before hubby & the kids headed to his folks' to watch a movie

Friday 6/25 Breakfast:  Whole grain pancakes with homemade syrup (I used w.w. flour, flax seed, & wheat germ)

Friday 6/25 Lunch:  Made my own version of Hamburger Helper with lean ground beef, egg noodles, parsley from the garden, & spices

Friday 6/25 Supper:  roasted leg quarters, new potatoes straight from garden ("baked" in microwave and buttered/salted/peppered), green beans, then we went blackberry picking at a local nature trail

Saturday 6/26 Breakfast:  leftover sausage/egg/ cheese rolls

Saturday 6/26 Lunch:  We went to a family reunion with a huge potluck.  Our contribution was deviled eggs & gooey butter cake.

Saturday 6/26 Supper:  Leftovers from Friday's lunch & supper

Sunday 6/27 Breakfast:  Canned jumbo biscuits (like Grands) & maple sausage patties, Ovaltine chocolate milk

Sunday 6/27 Lunch:  Tuna salad sandwiches made with 5 cans tuna, 10 boiled eggs, 2 chopped apples, mayo & relish (took leftovers to a lady in church who just had surgery)

Sunday 6/27 Supper:  Totino's pizzas & watermelon ~ a really fun supper we tried last Sunday night (and now I've used all my Totino's coupons!)

I finally did my first grocery shopping that 'counts' for this challenge:  Spent $26.26 at Aldi on Friday and $11.66 at WalMart this afternoon (Wmart mostly was 'junk food' for our upcoming trip, plus our Totino's for supper).  Week's Total:  $37.92

We will be really low on groceries after this week, but we are headed to Louisiana for a long 4th of July weekend.  After we get home, I'll have to go on a big grocery shopping spree.

Neat Post About Toilet Paper Prices

I hate buying toilet paper!  I just got out a new roll this afternoon (noting that there is now only one remaining roll in that package, which it seems like I *just* bought) and thought, "Ugh ~ we used up that 'huge' pack quickly!"

Well, lo and behold, I just read the neatest post at Deal Seeking Mom about toilet paper stock up prices.  What a great tip:

Look at the front bottom of the toilet paper package to determine the total square feet. Now insert a decimal point in this number two places to the left. If the cost of the package minus coupons is less than or equal to this figure, it's a decent deal -- basically $0.01 or less per square foot!
Example:
TP #1 = 400 sq. ft.; price = $6; stock-up price $4, so not a fabulous deal....
TP #2 = 650 sq. ft.; price = $5; stock-up price $6.50, so definitely a bargain!

All You Grocery Challenge ~ Day 3

I posted yesterday about All You's Grocery Challenge, which I would *love* to win!  The top prize is $1000 grocery store gift card, and I think that prize just rocks!  It would last us about 2-3 months!  Actually, I'd probably be tempted to splurge and just use it all in a month... but I'd have quite a nice stockpile, and we'd be eating good!  :-)

I did find out that grocery purchases prior to June 20 don't count in the contest, so scratch the totals I posted yesterday.  I'm still at $0.00 for now, according to the rules of the contest.  Fortunately our garden is starting to produce pretty well, too, so that's more "free" food that we can still use in the contest.

Today's breakfast was cereal (Special K with Strawberries and Kashi GoLean Honey & Flax) for the kids, and my hubby made me and himself a ham & cheese omelette, which I ate with salsa!  <3

Lunch was leftover spaghetti ("chunky garden style") from last night.  

When everyone gets up from nap time in a little bit, we will polish off the "Fruity Banana Freeze" (I mixed plain yogurt, bananas, canned crushed pineapple, cherries, & pecans and froze it all ~ we thaw for 20 minutes before eating) and grapes.

My supper plan was *supposed* to be roasted leg quarters with leftover baked beans & potato salad... but I forgot to thaw the chicken.  So, I am headed out to the garden in a little bit to dig some new potatoes and pick some green beans.  I have some 100% beef patties that were on rollback at WalMart, and I'm going to make foil-packet-dinners with beef patties, onion slices, new potatoes, and green beans. 

Any cheap, healthy, and creative meal ideas would be welcome!!

All You Grocery Challenge

I have entered this year's All You Grocery Challenge and am looking forward to the challenge of lowering our already-incredibly-small grocery budget and shooting for a chance at the $1000 prize.

According to the rules of the challenge, I need to keep my grocery spending below $25 per week per person, which would be $175 ~ NO PROBLEM!  Ha ha, I haven't had this much to spend in a while.  Things have been really tight, as we are trying to pay off my midwife, pay off hubby's dentist, and pay for a bunch of vehicle repairs.

I did my grocery shopping for the first week this past weekend.  I spent a total of $129.25 at Aldi & WalMart, and that should *almost* get us through two weeks, I think, with a quick run next weekend for produce, milk, and bread.

The official challenge started yesterday.  We had Special K with Strawberries and bananas for breakfast (the cereal was snagged at Walgreens for $1/box after sale, coupons, and Register Rewards).  We had a Father's Day lunch at my in-laws ~ I pitched in the baked beans and potato salad, and MIL grilled chicken tenders and burgers.  For supper we had Totino's frozen pizzas, bought with a coupon, and a whole watermelon.  Yes, my crew at a *whole watermelon*!  That meal right there was $7, but it was really fun and sort of out of character for us.  My kids never get to eat frozen pizza, so they thought it was quite a treat.

For breakfast this morning we had steel cut oats with maple flavoring and brown sugar added.  The lunch plan is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with grapes or bananas; and supper is spaghetti, corn, and garlic bread.  I cooked a huge package of extra lean ground beef that I pick up reduced-for-quick-sale at WalMart the other morning.  I made two meatloaves out of it and froze them, and I browned the rest with onion.  I used a little bit of it in yesterday's baked beans; and the rest will go toward tonight's spaghetti sauce, Mexican Meatza, and bbq muffin cups.

I will be keeping the chronicles of our grocery challenge here, so bear with me for a few weeks while I post about little more than grocery budgets and really cheap meals!

My Scripture Memory Routine

"Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee." ~ Psalm 119:11

It is fairly easy for our children to memorize God's Word (and most anything else, too!), but us 'older folk' really have to work at it!  I thought I'd share my scripture memory system for those adults who are interested in doing more to learn and remember God's Word.

Whenever I am reading my Bible and come across a verse that I'd like to commit to memory, I write it down on a 3 x 5 notecard.  I have quite a stack of such notecards, which I keep rubber-banded together in my purse; and whenever I do my scripture memory, I select one that I'd like to memorize that day.  It just depends on my spiritual needs at the time and often whether I am up to tackling a long verse or passage... or just being lazy and settling for a short one (which is okay, too!).

When I select a verse to memorize for the day, I flip the notecard over and put the date at the top.  Down the left side of the card I write 25, 20, 15, 10, 5, W, and M.  The first day that I am working on that verse, I read it a few times until I can say it from memory; and then I quote it 25 times.  I mark my progress with tally marks.  Then the second day I say that verse 20 times, 15 times on the third day, etc.  After five days I pretty much have the verse committed to memory and just brush it up with a weekly review on Sunday afternoons while waiting for my husband to get done driving his church bus route.  I do the weekly review for 7 weeks, and then I stick the card into the monthly review section of my stack.  I review all of my old verses monthly.

When do I actually *do* my scripture memory work everyday?  My preferred time is early in the morning, before everyone else gets up.  However, more often than not, I do it while I'm walking on the treadmill.  It makes my exercise time less boring, and... it makes my scripture memory time less boring!  I kill two birds with one stone, and it really makes my "15 minutes of loving movement" go by a lot faster.  I am 7 months pregnant and no longer do my full-blown interval workouts via Jonathan Roche's "No Excuses Workouts."  I just hop on the treadmill starting at 2.0 miles per hour, bump the speed up every minute 0.2 mph, max out at 8 minutes/3.4 mph, and then start bumping my way back down to 2.0 until I hit 15 minutes.  It never takes me longer than that to do my scripture memory.

Since I keep the cards in my purse, I also pull them out at my boys' soccer practices, my 7 year old's piano lesson, while my hubby is driving, and any other "dead space" time.  EVERYONE can carve out 10 minutes a day to memorize God's Word, even exhausted pregnant mamas of five little ones.

Fried Taters

This is a cheap and easy recipe that I need to utilize, like, TODAY to use up the spuds that are starting to sprout in my potato bin!

The key to really good, crispy, fried potatoes that are soft on the inside but crunchy on the outside is a cast iron skillet coated in *cold* oil.  Do not heat the skillet or the oil before beginning.  Just pour some vegetable or canola oil in a pan and add diced potatoes... about this big:

Dump them into the oily pan, crank up the heat (about medium high), season liberally with salt & pepper (time saver:  I combine my salt & pepper 2:1 in a cheapo pepper shaker), and cover the pan.  When browned on one side, flip with a spatula and continue cooking.

Make sure they are adequately seasoned, and serve with almost anything at any meal!  If you really have good taste, throw in some chopped onion and/or pepper with the raw potatoes!