MMmm.... Vegetables

Just look at all this wonderful, healthy food! There's so much greeeeeen!


I always forget how much I really do like fruits and vegetables, till they're in season. Mmmm....
This is pretty much all of my breakfasts, lunches and snacks for this week. Doug will also eat some of the salad, but I'll eat most of it.
Cost breakdown:
milk = free (will explain how in a minute)
tomatoes = free (from garden)
2 oatmeal x 9 cents a serving
1 special k cereal x 9 cents a serving
2 servings grapes x 26 cents each
2 servings applesauce x 18 cents each
2 bananas x 16 cents each
2 apples x 25 cents each
3 pretzel crisps x 12 cents each
tons of lettuce- green leaf and iceberg- total of 1.75
2 eggs at 10 cents each
40 cents worth of celery
75 cents of broccoli
20 cents worth of carrots
not pictured: some chicken i will grill tomorrow night. 2 servings x 40 cents each
not pictured: kraft chunk cheese 2 x 21 cents serving
Total cost for my breakfasts, lunches and snacks: About 7.00.

And who says you can't eat healthy food on a budget? It's easy in the summer!

This trip here:

I spent 4.22, and saved 30.30. The milk- yeah, they PAID me to buy it.
Smart Source milk 1/2 gallons were on sale for 1.99.
I had manufacturer coupons good for 2.00 of any 1/2 gallon Smart Source milk.
Sweet- free milk.
ALSO- Meijer had a store coupon for 1 off any 1/2 gallon Smart Source milk.
I wondered.... would Meijer allow both coupons? They always allow you to stack manufacturer coupons with their store coupons, but this.... this would make my balance go negative.
They also had good deals on applesauce and peanut butter so I stocked up (can you tell kids live here?). I had enough other stuff on my order to "eat up" some of the overage from the milk coupons.
Ahhhh.... free milk tastes the best!

So, I am about 5 weeks into my charity challenge. I've spent 1.21 and have gotten about 75 dollars worth of stuff.

A bunch of cereal from my earlier post, feminine items, deodorant, etc. Good stuff, that they can use. Yay!

Spent 16.71, saved 52.42, and left with 11.00 in register rewards.


Spent 8.00, saved 89.34, and left with 13.00 in register rewards.

At Meijer, I went in intending to get just 2 cereals, 4 cracker packs, 4 mixits cereals, cheese, juice and milk.

They have a promotion right now that if you buy any 10 Kellogg's/Keebler/something else items in any transaction, you get $10 in rewards back. Well, the Mixits were price dropped down to 99 cents! That means you can get 10 of them for 9.90, plus tax, and get 10.00 back! So, I did my first trip as planned, dropped it all off in the car, and went back in to get more mixits. They're not great, but aren't terrible. And they're OK as snacky cereal, cause there's no sugar coating to get all over the kids. They can eat it like popcorn.
I don't know where I am going to put them. Cereal has been crazy cheap recently because of school starting just around the corner. Back to school time is a great time of year to stock up on cereal and portable snacks. So, my pantry is pretty much stocked full of cereal.

I am going to donate 10 of the mixits to the Inner City Mission (remember- I am doing a $20 charity challenge).

Portion control through freezer cooking

One of the easiest ways to not overeat, is to not have food you don't need lying around. I try to control my portions partially through freezer cooking. I cook up a big batch of whatever, then freeze it in single-meal portions.
The last time I did this, I cooked up 13 or so pounds of ground beef that I had gotten for pretty cheap. It wasn't the lowest-fat beef, but eating the right portion of the better-tasting non-low-fat beef is more satisfying to me.

I got out my biggest mixing bowl and threw a bunch of ground beef in. 4 or 5 pounds. Crunched up crackers, threw some Sweet Baby Ray's in there, garlic and onion powder, salt and pepper, some random beef spice I got for free at Meijer a few weeks ago, a couple of eggs, some milk, etc. (I don't measure- my meatloaf is different every time.) I pat it into cube-ish loaves, about 3/4 pound each. They are about 8 ounces cooked. I also make it into meatballs, because that's what the kids like best.
I cook them somewhere between 375 and 400 for about 35 minutes or so- the meatballs maybe 20-25 minutes.


I also just brown a large amount of the ground beef, and freeze it for later. So, I can just pull ground beef from the freezer and plop it into whatever recipe I am making- spaghetti, tacos, soup, whatever. I do about 1.5 cups in each container- about 8 ounces, usually.

I also made up hamburgers, but don't pre-cook those- I just make the patties and freeze them frozen. 1 each for me and Doug, and 1 for the kids to share. I make it similarly to the meatloaf- throw a bunch of stuff in, mix it up, and hope it tastes good.

I ended up making 7 meatloaves, 15 hamburgers, a bunch of meatballs, and 9 containers of cooked ground beef that day.

We ate the meatballs that day, but that means that I spent about 2 hours in the kitchen and ended up making enough "meat" for 21 meals (7 meatloaves + 5 hamburger packages (3 per package) + 9 plain ground beef.

I won't go into too any detail, but I also cooked up chicken that day, too, and got enough for another 6 from that! I don't think cooked chicken freezes as well as beef, so I don't do that very often.

When you're ready to eat, you can just pull meatloaf directly out of the freezer and nuke it for 2 minutes. While it's warming, mix together brown sugar and ketchup (maybe 1/4 cup total) and put on top after the 2 minutes. Microwave another 2-3 minutes till heated through. Delicious!