The grocery ads came in the mail today and they were pretty bad again. Mostly processed foods. Though the one store has sirloin steaks for $4.99/lb and the other has London broil for $3.99/lb. I guess that means I will be buying the bulk of my groceries at Winco this Friday, but I will get some of the beef. I will shop at Winco first in case their regular prices on those two meats are better.
I think I am going to make a two week meal plan this week. Since I am getting out $400 for the next two weeks, I want to see if I can just do the shopping for two weeks, leaving a little for bread, milk, spinach, and lettuce for the second week. If it doesn't work out than the next payday I will get out $400, but set aside $200 for the second week. But I think I can do it if I plan carefully and maybe even have some money leftover. It would be great if I could get the budget down to $175 a week or $350 bi-weekly.
I am planning 3 pasta meals based off what I already have on hand, spaghetti, chicken alfredo, and gigli (cone-shaped pasta with a ruffled edge). We also do fried chicken twice, based on what I have on hand. And I am thinking of cutting up the roast I have and doing kabobs with it. There is also an eye of round in the freezer I could make into something. I'd like to make chicken shawarma at least once, if not twice, it is so easy in the Instant Pot. I also have a bag of frozen shrimp that I can get two meals out of, maybe shrimp scampi or shrimp kabobs. I might make zucchini lasagna as well, since I have a lot of zucchini from the garden right now. Maybe a chicken and green-bean stir-fry as well, since I also have green beans from the garden.
I have been buying staple buckets from Thrive Life each month. This month was a 5 gallon bucket of cane sugar. Last month was whole wheat flour, the month before white flour, and the month before oatmeal. Next month is rice. They come with gamma lids so seal well. I'd like to stock up on a couple more buckets of white flour and 1 more of sugar after that.
I don't know if anyone has been noticing here, but on other groups I am on, the supply of flour, sugar, and even rice in the grocery stores has been dropping drastically. I don't want to have to worry about running out. I've gone sometimes and the whole flour section (except the specialty flours) is wiped out or there is only one 10 pound bag of sugar and all the 5 pound bags are gone and there are only 1 pound bags of boxes. I don't like what that implies. It isn't just one store, either. And it is the big chains as well as the little guy. I've noticed it at Safeway, Haggen, Fred Meyer, Costco, and Wal-Mart. The only place that seems to have a more steady supply is Winco and even they don't have as much as it seems they should.
I guess if you don't cook a lot from scratch you don't notice these things. But as I tend to bake a lot it is really obvious to me when the staples are so low. Having some back up buckets on hand makes me feel more secure in my food storage and pantry. I may worry about it more than in the past because of that 10 month block of unemployment. Our pantry and food storage got us through that time period very well. I think I will always be worried now if our supplies run low, so I'm trying to not let that happen.
Bad Ads and Shortages
August 9th, 2018 at 02:18 am
August 9th, 2018 at 03:02 pm 1533823363
Apparently there's some huge grocery warehouse in Tacoma that serves a lot of different stores, in the entire Northwest. The warehouse is moving or something, and there have been IT problems, etc. It's even causing some shortages as far away as Alaska. I hope for your sake that things settle down soon!
August 9th, 2018 at 03:04 pm 1533823445
August 9th, 2018 at 07:32 pm 1533839523
https://grasslandbeef.com/
August 9th, 2018 at 07:36 pm 1533839807
As for Grassland beef, I will say that it seems expensive, but the meat has very little fat on it, so you get a lot out of each package. Out of a london broil that was around 3 pounds, I made about 8 meals for my husband and myself. I don't buy ground beef or pork sausage from them, though, because I can get it locally.
August 12th, 2018 at 07:23 pm 1534098239