Making Do without Missing A Thing--Putting It All Together--final week

   SO----so many of you have asked questions about numbers. How much does it really cost to feed my family each month? It is really $200? Am I sure I dont slip in a little money here and there to "tide things over" a bit? I had a couple questions about WIC and using that for milk and beans--am I including that in the totals?
   No I am not. We drink milk all the time, and so I can imagine that if I were to include the six gallons of milk that WIC provides each month, and the four bags of brown rice, and the two bags of beans, then it would most likely add about $32 to our budget each month ($24 for the milk, $5 for the brown rice and $2.50 for the beans). Do we purchase everything else? yes. So if you want to bump that number up to $232 a month to feed our family of five, I guess you could do that. Just so we are all on the same page.

image courtesy

   The problem with those numbers are that many times we leave with some of that money in our pocket. Purchasing in bulk, canning, gardening, dehydrating, shopping the sales.........all of those have given us a wonderful pantry that we have built up over the last couple years. That we pull from all the time and replace as we can. Each year we strive to put more and more of our family's basic needs away for later use. It takes organization, creativity and planning. :) But it is really fun to do in many ways. My kids love arguing over who gets to choose the next jar of jelly, or which kind of granola or fruit roll ups we are making next. My husband loves coming home from a hard day at work and sitting down to a lovely meal that his wife cooked from the provisions earned from our hard work.
   You know, when you have to count every mouthful, and make sure that each one is worth the best amount of nutrition and health, you become careful with what you spend on each bit. You want to make sure it is the very best possible for what you can afford. I mean, who buys hamburger when you can purchase steak, right? Unless your hamburger IS your steak, and its hamburger or no meat at all! Or you can change your perspective to see what do I NEED, compared to what I WANT and I am USED TO, and now how can I work all of that into my budget?

   I just thought I would give you a cost breakdown of one of my weekly meal plans so you can see how much is spent per day of grocery money, and how much has been put up on our own, or in bulk, or through sales. As grocery prices continue to rise, especially with gas on the rise again, we will see these prices change, but you can still shop the sales, learn to purchase and when, and start doing more things on your own from basic foods to save money
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   Meal Plan---week Three

Monday:
   Breakfast: poached eggs with green onions, hashbrowns (from dehydrated store bought hashbrowns), and maple sausage links
   Lunch: Calzones and canned vanilla pears with nutmeg topping
   Snack orange slices, graham crackers with cream cheese
   Dinner: Stuffed porkchops with green beans, cheesy rice, and apple cake
(Monday costs: Breakfast--eggs and oranges are bartered for piano lessons, green onions, pears, green beans and apples, plus the tomatoes and carrots for the calzones are from my garden/someone else's garden and cost us little to nothing; hashbrowns, vanilla extract, cream cheese, and porkchops were all purchased on sale at up to 50% of regular price. Rice is a basic staple and is purchased in bulk, as are the ingredients for the bread, the cake, and the stuffing (which is made at home from stale bread). The only things that were purchased full price on this day would have been the maple sausage, graham crackers and cheese links, unless I could pick them  up on a sale.)

Tuesday:
   Breakfast: Blueberry waffles with mock whipped topping and blueberry syrup
   Lunch: Cowboy Macaroni with peaches
   Snack: apple slices with fruit dip, apple cake (yep, apple theme day)
   Dinner: Chicken Carbonara, garlic bread and Rich chocolate puddingg
(waffles, topping, pasta, breads, and pudding are all made using simple ingredients here from home that are purchased in bulk quantities. Blueberries, peaches, apples, tomatoes and salsa are all provided from my garden, from neighbor's trees that otherwise go to waste, or purchased in the peak of season at low prices and put up for the year. Macaroni is purchased in bulk, cream cheese is purchased on sale at 50 cents a block to $1 a block around holidays and kept in fridge until used (can also be frozen). Bacon is often ONLY purchased on sale, because I will not pay $4-$6 for a package of bacon knowing how low its nutritional value is. When we purchase a pack of bacon, depending on what meal plan we are on, it is either cut in half and stored or cut in thirds and stored.)

Wednesday:
   Breakfast:  Maple Walnut Oatmeal
   Lunch: Baked Potatoes with Creamed Peas and carrots, topped with bacon bits (the real stuff)
   Snack: ants on a log, and dried fruit and granola snack
   Dinner: Chicken and Dumplings with a large salad
(oatmeal and nuts are purchased in bulk, we harvest our own black walnut trees as well. Maple flavoring is one of those things I pay full price for right now as I have not found a good deal on it. Baked potatoes are purchased when on sale, no more than $2 for a 10 lb bag. When they go even cheaper, we purchase large quantities and can them for meals. Peas and carrots are either mixed from the garden or purchased on sale from frozen and dehydrated. Celery is full price unless on sale because I have had poor success with growing it myself. Dried fruit and granola snacks are made using large cans of tropical fruit cocktail you can get in the bulk section of the grocery store, rinsed and dehydrated, then combined with other bulk ingredients to make your own. Cost for an entire batch of granola is normally about $10, but it makes around 5 lbs, which is a month worth of snack, and cereal, and muffin toppings, etc, for 5 people. When I cook a chicken, normally paid around $6 for it, it is split into four meals immediately after cooking. In this meal, the chicken is shredded, the veggies are dehydrated from garden or grocery sales on frozen veggies, and the topping is made from my master mix. Salad greens are either purchased on sale or come from trade for piano lessons.)

Thursday:
   Breakfast: French Toast with bananas and butter/powdered sugar glaze
   Lunch: chicken, tomato and cheese Quesadillas
   Snack: carrot sticks with ranch, Zucchini bread
   Dinner: Pork ginger stir fry with fried rice (uses up leftovers from this week)
(french toast is made using stale bread when I need to use it up. Bananas go on sale every Wednesday for 39 cents a pound. Lunch is made using homemade tortillas, leftover shredded chicken (this time the chicken made 5 meals), tomatoes canned from my garden and cheese purchased on a three month sale cycle. Carrots are one of the most nutritious and inexpensive snacks you can give your family, Zucchini bread is made from shredded zucchini I froze from my garden produce. Pork stir fry uses up leftovers, including only one pork chop from Monday's dinner. Rice is purchased in bulk, veggies are from on sale or my garden. Seasonings are purchased in bulk at our house too, and I can tell you how many times I have purchased fresh ginger on sale and dehydrated it. Makes amazing ginger powder and is always fresh)

Friday:
   Breakfast: Cream of Wheat with fresh fruit
   Lunch: Homemade egg noodles with ground turkey and zucchini cheesy sauce
   Snack: fruit smoothie roll-ups from the dehydrator, Zucchini bread
   Dinner: curried chickpea mash with naan bread, jello salad
(Cream of Wheat is always purchased on sale, fresh fruit is purchased every week,  which when combined with fresh veggies, normally amounts to atleast $30 of our $100 grocery budget money twice a month in the winter. That is one thing with canning and stored foods, you need to have fresh items as well. But since those are relatively inexpensive compared to other things, you are getting what is best for you with what you have. Ground turkey is purchased a case at a time when meat sale cycles happen. Zucchini is from my garden. Fruit smoothie roll ups use yogurt I have made from either fresh or dried milk powder, and frozen or canned fruits that I have put up myself. Chickpea mash is one of the cheapest meals you can have, especially if you make the chickpeas from dried. One bag of chickpeas makes around 4-6 cups of beans for the basis of this meal, and the veggies are always inexpensive in the store, unless you grow your own and pull them out for this kind of meal. And we all know Jello is not very expensive but makes for a nice occasional treat for the family.)

Saturday: 
   Breakfast: cold cereal or toast and cocoa,
   Lunch: Michael's Chicken Noodle soup with fresh breadsticks
   Snack: any fresh fruit, or vegetable in house, and orange almond muffins
   Dinner: Meat Lover's pizza: uses pepperoni, sausage, canadian ham,and venison burger on a marinara sauce. I sneak pureed carrots/onions into the red sauce and sprinkle the pizza with basil and spinach flakes.
(Cold Cereal would normally be bagged cereal purchased on sale or homemade granola. Toast is my bread, cocoa is made from a big batch I make in November to last the whole winter. It costs around $15 to make but lasts 5 months, so no big deal with that large amount of money. Third meal using the same chicken, veggies are either inexpensive or already dehydrated from other even better sales, noodles are home made. Orange Almond muffins use either dehydrated products, oranges I got on sale, or the small packets of almonds that are inexpensive when priced against the larger bags. The pizza is definitely one of our most expensive meals, even with the Venison burger costing us nothing other than trading butchering skills. The other meats are not purchased unless on sale, then we stock up, and I also only use about 1/2 lb of the burger and sausage. Still, this is expensive and one of those "treat meals" we talked about before.

Sunday:
   Breakfast: Caramel rolls with Caramel sauce
   Lunch: baked chicken with Parmesan couscous, Vegetable medley, and Farmer's rolls
   Snack: orange almond muffins, and fruit salad
   Dinner: leftovers or waffles
(Last meal with the chicken---about  half of the chicken has been saved for this meal for 5 people. Couscous is purchased on sale if possible, but mostly paid full price for unless I can get it through my co-op Azure Standard. Vegetable is frozen and purchased on sale, farmer's rolls use eggs we barter lessons for.)

   So does that give you a better picture of how we pull all this together to make these kind of meals for as cheap as we do? As you can see, making things from scratch, and gardening in particular really shaves money off each week. The cost of the bulk of fruits and veggies I use is minimal at best--the cost of a seed and water, or my time in harvesting it.
    I was blessed last night to be able to have a conversation with one of my piano moms, who is quickly becoming a good friend. She is just starting to read this series, and I think is definitely starting to think outside the box and figure out what she can do and where she can change things. It is such a blessing to me to know that others are reading this and growing and stretching.
   We are in uncertain times right now, no matter how the media would like to convince you everything is rosy and getting better. I would like to know where they are seeing it, because I am seeing more friends and families losing their incomes, their homes, or just plain unable to make everything pull together and work on the same amount it did last summer. If gas prices continue to rise, we will see that even more, so pass this on to someone who could use it and who you care about this week. I know I am!

 Many Blessings to you and yours,

Heather