It's a New Year!

Blessings Darlings!

Yup, a new year.  New chances.  Mostly the same old bills.

Here there has been a change - after months of complications, the Chubby Hubby is now getting Social Security benefits.  He's in his 70's - so since starting it after turning 70 he's getting a monthly deposit that looks HUGE in our eyes.  Between that and my job all of our 'normal' monthly bills will be able to be paid without panic ... for the first time since 1991 (when he left his job with regular paychecks to start his own business.) 

How do I know that we'll be able to pay all regular bills?  Because I made a budget, of course.  We all know that we should know what our monthly regular bills are, but making budgets out of those figures can be scary.  It can show what we're doing wrong (we, for example, are spending WAY too much of our income on rent so CH has space for his business.) 

So, yeah, go forth and see what you spend on stuff last year, so you know at least what minimums you'll be spending this year.

I'm sure that we'll be tweaking this budget.  It doesn't have 'correct' amounts for things like health insurance/meds in it since Bob will be switching to Medicare and paying for that and some of the additional plans for that, and our higher income has me no longer eligible for Medicaid so I'll be paying health insurance and higher medicine and doctor visit copays.

Still, it's a start.

The current budget doesn't have room for savings, tho', and we need to get that in order.  At one point last month our savings account had only $38 in it!  Remember - that's the account that would also be  bail money for some of you who read this regularly, so some of y'all have a vested interest in us having cash in that account!

So our cheapness .... uh ... frugality is going to continue, along with refining what we really spend. 

And, seriously - why is propane still so expensive now that oil prices have dropped?  We finally we able to get the propane tank filled today, and it's going to cost around $950!  What's up with that?

At any rate, this is what we're starting our year with.

Frondly, Fern.

This week's eats.

Blessings Darlings!
We just inventoried the freezers - okay, the Spawn did it for me. Which means some meat is labels "Mystery Meat" because he doesn't recognize it on sight and didn't ask me.  And the list doesn't tell me what FORM the meat is in - is the beef slices, a roast, or cubes?  Dunno!

We'll be eating mostly out of the freezer this month, since last month Spawn's work hours were cut radically so he can't buy much in the way of groceries this month.  Which is life, and it's not TOO bad because last month the stores had a HUGE amount of meat reduced/sell NOW and I bought what I could then.  The freezer's pretty full, and we have spring greens coming out of the lawn and a few from the garden.  And we still have some canned green beans, and I'm sprouting mung beans, etc.

So, this is what we'll eat from May 5 till May 18:

Thursday, May 3 - baked chicken (4 pieces for 3 people), rice, salad, zucchini

Friday,, May 4 - Yaki Soba (it's Japanese Lo Mein, sort of) with 1.5 lb of veggies (cabbage, carrots, mushrooms) and 9 oz pork

Saturday,  May 5 - Home-made Pizza (Cheese, red pepper, some pepperoni), Salad

Sunday, May 6 - Pulled Pork (Leftovers from making it a few weeks back), rolls, slaw (I had mine as part of a green salad and no slaw)

Monday, May 7 - Leftovers.

Tuesday, May 8 - Bi Bim Bop - sort of Korean Fried rice, with bean sprouts, carrots, spinach, mushrooms, zucchini, fiddleheads, some beef, special sauce.

Weds, May 9 -  egg rolls (using the leftover pulled pork, some shrimp, lots and lots of cabbage)

Thurs, May 10 - tacos. Filling will be half bean, half beef.

Friday May 11 - Fried chicken.  Because we can. Salad, broccoli, potatoes

Saturday, May 12 - Spaghetti, red sauce, salad.

Sunday, May 13 - Ribs, slaw, corn bread/hush puppies, salad

Monday May 14 - Leftovers

Tuesday, May 15 - Fried Fish, broccoli, buns? or some other starch.

Wednesday,  May 16 Kalbi (korean BBQ), rice, salad, green beans

Thursday, May 17 - Veggie Omelets, fresh bread, fruit

Friday, May 18 - baked whole chicken, salad, baked potatoes, spinach

I'll need to buy egg roll wrappers, eggs, milk, OJ, salad stuff, butter, ketchup, and a few more items, but not much.  Still, more than the $15 (1/4 of his take home pay) that the Spawn will be kicking in for the next few weeks.

How's your food budget doing?

Frondly, Fern

Infinity and Beyond!

Blessings, Darlings!

It's a quiet morning here in the mountains.  Well, not totally - the Spawn was awoken by an emergency call from work, asking him to cover another shift ... on top of the short shift he's working tonight.  Being woken up by the phone is jarring.

Still, it's the first sunny morning in days.  I can sit out on the deck sipping a cuppa without getting wet.  Instead I'm going over my e-mail, facing where Infinity lurks.

Infinity - something boundless and endless. I'm not talking about the Internet, actually I'm not referring to the computer/online at all.  I'm facing a part of myself, evoked by e-mail.

The evocation came from a Woot ad.  I LOVE reading Woot ads - they have the best damn copy writing on the planet, and I read the ads daily for inspiration (I stole styles for business letters and ads more than once).  However, this ad was different.

I want the product.

That doesn't happen all that often.  I'm not that into what they actually offer most of the time.  In the years I've been reading the ads I've bought two items - both for the business not for 'me' per se.

And in wanting the item, I allowed myself to wonder how I'd fit the purchase into our budget.  Which meant having to think of all the other things I wanted to spend money on.

That, my dears, is where I came face to face with the Infinite. My own needs, wants, and desires.

From the actual necessities (basic food/clothing/shelter, paying off what I've already got, and maintenance of what we already have), to my wants (different home cooked food, tailoring of clothes, etc) to my desires (everything else in the universe that I want!!!! and want NOW!!!) - there was infinity. 

It was scary.  And humbling - I don't usually think of myself as being as materialistic as I am.  Denial works, but only for a while.

But I'm sure I can achieve denial again.  So I'm writing a blog post distract myself from the reality of the experience, and with the distance of a few minutes of time I'm pretty sure I'll be able to get back into comfortable denial.

And then I'll get back to work on my basic needs, by planting some turnips and spinach in the fall veggie garden.

Frondly, Fern

Cheap menus

Blessings Darlings!

I was asked what my menus are for this funds-free time/cash-flow problem.  So, here you go!

Breakfasts are mostly hot cereal - oatmeal with dry milk, dry fruit, nuts or grits or cornmeal mush.

Lunches are soups, often with open face grilled cheese, and with an apple or orange.  I make a gallon or so of soup once or twice a week.  Currently we are having split pea soup.

The dinner menu is where the variability is.  Now, while we are currently working on a $40 a week budget for 3 adults and two cats, before we were on an $80 per week budget.  That allowed me to fill the freezer and pantry, and is allowing us to eat a larger variety of foods now.  I'm only buying meat for one meal in the next 3 weeks, altho' I am buying eggs and cheese.

So, our dinners for the first 3 weeks of 'middle class survival' eating are:

Shrimp Yaki Soba, using cabbage, carrots, and home-sprouted bean sprouts.

Sausages (in hot dog buns), potatoes, cole slaw.

Stew with beef (beef is leftovers from a previous dinner.)

Eggs - veggie omelets for Chubby Hubby and I, sandwich for Spawn; and fruit and home made rolls.  We'll do this once a week.

Pork Fried Rice, featuring more home sprouted bean sprouts.

Fried Chicken - we will have this 3 times - I made a lot and froze it because chicken was on a GREAT sale; home-canned corn, veggies

Pasta Carbonera, salad, veggies

Superbowl Sunday - okay, I'm buying a pound of deli meat/cheese and one tomato and making subs.  But I'll make the bread and cole slaw myself.  And pop corn, not chips.

Corned beef - I've a corned beef brisket in the freezer.  This will be at least two meals, maybe 3.

Chicken or pork stir fry - more cabbage/carrots/bean sprouts in use, rice.  Once a week.

Pasta with meat sauce, salad, veggies. Some pasta once or twice a week.

Home-made steak and cheese, because we have thin sliced raw beef in the freezer and I can make rolls.  More cole slaw with this, and potatoes.

Tacos - filling half beef and half black bean.  Taco bell has nothing on me.  I can make tacos where the filling is only 38% beef myself!

Spanish rice.

Pulled pork (we smoked a pork shoulder that was at a GREAT price recently)

Veggie Flautas

Mackerel/salmon patties/crouquettes

Pancakes

Waffles

Remember

I can do this because I have a fairly full pantry.  I've not even worked the canned ham or tuna into rotation, mostly because I think the guys will be using them for half sandwiches at lunch when we don't have cheese. Or we could use them at dinners with soups, an have peanut butter at lunch.  We have options. 

More Cheap Eats

Blessings, Darlings!

Since we're still digging out from moving expenses (not only was moving more costly than we had figured, but when you're self-employed all that time spent packing, loading, unloading, unpacking you don't earn a penny!) my choice for February is to either have a working cell phone or food.  And my cell phone isn't that expensive... so it's going to be a very low food budget month.  Like $200 for the month.

So last Friday I did shopping that will get us thru' 2 - 4 weeks, with some fresh food added at times.  I bought 15 pounds of white flour (I grind my own whole wheat flour already, but husband and son aren't yet hungry enough to eat 100% whole wheat everything), two dozen eggs, two gallons of milk, lots of sale priced apples and oranges, two pounds of carrots, a bunch of celery, three pounds of frozen green veggies, cat litter, and a few other things. I do wish I could have afforded more veggies and a few cans of cream of mushroom soup, but I just didn't have the money.

I figure we can get thru' February spending maybe $40 a week on food and such.  That would be $8 on milk, $15 on produce, $15 on meat, and $5 on 'misc'. "Meat" includes eggs and cheese, for those keeping score at home.

Oatmeal with dried milk and raisins for breakfast.  Soup and maybe peanut butter sandwiches for lunch.  Lots of cabbage and carrots featured in dinners.  I've 2 1/2 weeks of dinners planned, and we'll see what meats may or may not go on sale for meals later in the month. Sunday night we had shrimp yaki soba (the shrimp was a BOGO purchase, and we used bean sprouts and cabbage in it), Monday night we had a little sausage with cole slaw and buns, Tuesday pot roast leftovers became a stew that will double as a lunch later this week, tonight is veggie/cheese omelets and home made rolls......

Of course, as this hits it has also become clear that the bag of mung beans I've been using for sprouts are past their prime - the sprouting ratio has dropped.  Instead of getting 3+ cups of sprouts from every 1/4 cup of dry beans I barely got 1 1/2 cups the last time.  I've one more bag that's about the same age - we'll see how that goes - but I also have two newer bags I bought this fall.  They should still be in good shape. 

Prep Shopping

Blessings, Darlings!

As of this moment, I have $12 left to spend on food thru' the end of Thursday, given our food budget and the shopping I've done so far.  Which is pretty good, given that I underspent by $8 last week, and I really don't have anything left of the 'need for meals this week' list.

Which leaves me more money than usual to add to our food storage.  And that's a good thing since all of us preppers and survivalists and preparedness and just plain broke folks have noticed that food prices have been rising thru' the roof!  Last summer's droughts in Europe and Asia, this winter's flooding in Australia and South American (well, summer floods for them) have caused havoc in food prices.  Rising oil prices are affecting food prices, too, as is diversion of grain into ethanol and into increased meat production.  And the weather we've had in the US is causing 'temporary' jumps in produce prices due to damage to crops in the deep south and California.  Even my winter veggie mainstay, cabbage, has been hit hard by the freezes in Florida.  Strawberries are off the scale in price!

So I'm looking at what foodstuffs to use the food dollars for.  I could use more white wine for cooking, I'm getting a bit low.  That won't take much of it.  So, do I get two 5 pound bags of sugar and one 5 pound bag of flour to add to my storage?  Or do I get another 50 pounds of wheat berries really meant for livestock feed at Southern States or Tractor Supply?

Frondly, Fern

Schedule

Blessings, Darlings!

A friend of mine has an interesting approach to menu planning - she has decided on what species for every day of the week, and then decides on how to cook it from there.  So, Friday night is always chicken, Wednesday  night is always veggie pizza delivery since she and her husband work late that night, etc.

OTOH, I build my menu around what's for sale that week, and can serve lots of something if it's cheap.  Like chicken 4 times in a week!

Since we have a big old freezer (literally old - we bought it in 1979), I am considering combining the two ideas - menu by species but purchasing LOTS on sale.  It might not work perfectly, but then again it might.

Have any of you tried this yourself?  Do you have other ideas for the menu planning part of life?

Help!

Frondly, Fern

Food costs

Blessings, Fronds!

I'm trying to figure out why my food budget is so frakkin' high. Well, I KNOW why it's high - too much spent on meat and some spend on soda pop. But I can't figure a way to get the rest of the family on board in reducing those items.

Here's the basic summer weekly spending, excluding things I don't buy weekly (like beer, wine, flour, sugar, etc)

$12.00 milk - 4 gallons
4.50 soda (4 2 liter bottles)
7.50 one loaf bread at farmer's market, one pkg buns, one cheap loaf bread
15.00 produce
3.00 oj
20.00 meat
6.00 eggs (free range organic, 2 dozen

That's already $68, and I'd LIKE to only spend $80 a week. Doesn't include cereal, staples, etc. To keep family happy would take $100 a week. And there's only 3 adult humans and two cats!

Son would be willing to drink more v-8 fusion instead of cola, but that costs even more. Husband wants 'some' cola in the house - which means son will drink it. Bread costs are lower in winter, when we can't get great bread at farmer's market, same with eggs.

I have to find a way to get them on board. Like, having one meal a week without meat? Cutting back on soda? Great bread every OTHER week?

Dramatic Sigh.

Frondly, Fern