One of the biggest budget busters is simply not planning ahead!! Either that or forgetting to use things that you already have! Such is the case in my little home - my mama often got too busy and ended up throwing out whole packages of meat that had sat too long in the fridge. To this day I do get a little tear in my eye if I ever have to throw away Anything!! I have kind of made it my mission to use up use up use up anything!!! I figured it'd be a nice little post to talk about this, as well as ask for your opinions and ideas!
1. Have a scrap pot - either in your fridge or freezer
Often at the end of one of our meals, we have just a dab of beans or carrots or something, not really enough to put back for a whole meal, but just enough to not throw out. Put these in your scrap pail. Now don't just throw everything in there - you want to have an end result you can identify! This is great for a pot of veggie soup at the end of the month - add some of this, some of that and some warm bread and you have a really cheap meal!!
2. Multi-Task!
This will explain the picture at the top! About 2 weeks ago I had the ministers from church over for dinner. I planned a big meal of lasagna, bread, corn & desserts. I've never made lasagna in the 3 years we've been married - only when I was at home, since DH once stated he didn't care for it. However, this time I was at a loss for what to fix, and I had a surplus of hamburger, not to mention that the sauce and fixings were on sale. Well, I overbought cheese, noodles & cottage cheese as well, and after I checked the expiration dates this weekend, had a eureka moment! I had enough left over for another pan of lasagna. Don't worry - after Tim ate my lasagna, he was thrilled and cheerfully said "add that to the meal list!" So today I pulled out the reduced hamburger meat I got on Saturday, made hamburgers from 1/2 the package for lunch, then fried up the rest and ended up with 2 more pans of lasagna! One sat in the fridge for tonight, the other I actually made in the dish, but with foil underneath and around, so that when it's all frozen solid, I can go out and pop it out of the pan (I'd hate to be without that pan for a month or so) and rewrap and label, so that any night I'm feeling puny (since I tend to get very sick with pregnancy) I can pop it out and voila...supper! Do this with lots of things. If you have a meal that you know makes lots of leftovers, plan to not use them, and instead freeze half so that you make 2 meals out of it!
3. Clean your fridge out regularly
When the fridge is so packed and overflowing, you can't really see what you have in there! Too many times good food and some of our money gets lost in Mt.Fridgemore. ACK! Don't allow your hard work to go to waste - organize that fridge! I have a system that works well for us - the top shelf is butter, the water cooler, and leftovers. Second shelf is a tupperware container filled with eggs, the tubs of things like cottage cheese, sour cream, etc. and any meat that needs to thaw (in another tupperware or glad container) and the bottom shelf is for drinks. bottom drawers are for cheeses and veggies/fruits, little middle drawer for lunch meats, hot dogs, bacon, etc. It often does get packed up, but then I just have to rearrange, and reaquaint myself with what I do have so that nothing gets wasted!
4. Plan those meals!!!
I often plan my meals to use up the same package of meat. Like today - normally I don't have such a big lunch, but DH slept in and so I didn't fix breakfast after all. I normally would've maybe had hamburgers tonight, then fried the meat and left it in the fridge for lasagna later this week. With chicken - I buy split chicken breast, cut the breast off for a meal, then boil the bones, using the shredded meat for quesadillas or pot pie on another night. The broth is used too - either that week or frozen for later. Taking 3 minutes today often helps save an hour later on! If you take the time to plan out those meals, it helps! We can't eat a whole pan of cornbread alone on one night, so if we have cornbread on mondays, I plan another meal around thursday with you guessed it - cornbread! Using up leftovers and reducing waste helps the grocery budget a LOT.
That's just a few quick ideas I had - I know they're basic and that most of my visitors will no doubt already know them and most likely will be 10x better at the budget than I, but alas, I have to blog and sometimes blogging involves that which everyone already knows. :)
Share YOUR ideas!
(picture compliments of tonights supper - rice krispy chicken & scalloped potatoes!)
