2014 Groceries Week 19 - $74.68

I needed chips in a hurry on Friday so I dashed out to the store that morning and also picked up eggs, bananas, cucumbers, and a bunch of clearance yogurt.  I spent $19.11.

I dropped into Albertson's Saturday morning for celery.  I also found this almond milk markdown for $1.99 and I had a $1.50 off coupon.  Also the cottage cheese was clearance priced for $1.99. I spent $3.99  total.

 This was also a Friday shopping trip.  I had some unexpected time to kill so browsed around Albertson's, the nearest grocery store.  I found all this markdown sausage.  I  had $1.00/2 coupons for the Johnsonville and a $0.25 store coupon so I spent $7.70 altogether.  I know I'm trying to use freezer stuff, but I couldn't turn down breakfast sausage for under $2.00/lb.  Seriously.

 Finally, I went to Fred Meyer Sunday for the Founder's Day Sale.  Milk for $3.99 and butter for $1.50 - yes!  I also got more breakfast sausage on clearance for $1.59 and some quinoa pasta for $2.19 each!  This will help a lot with my GF little lady!  I spent $31.10.

Our milk delivery was $12.87 and we didn't get eggs from my friend this week.
Total for Week 19 - $74.68
Total for groceries year-to-date 2014: $1,215.51
Weekly average so far 2014: $63.97

I plan to hit Fred Meyer a couple more times to stock up on cheese and butter so costs might be higher than usual.  I'm also trying to use what's in the freezer, so maybe I won't have too much of buying other stuff.

Katie

Canning Tomatoes - First Time Ever

You might remember that 25 pound box of tomatoes I bought last week? 

 I canned them after a couple of days.  I sorted them out first - good, starting to go, and gone.  Luckily there were only 2 that were gone.

l

Next I looked up ho to can tomatoes in my handy canning cookbook.
There are really a lot of ways to can tomatoes!  I jut went with a cold pack of diced tomatoes for simplicity.  No cooking, no blanching/peeling, just dice and stuff in a jar.

The cookbook was really clear about using nice, firm fruit.  You don't want to heat anything yucky that might be growing on your tomatoes to a high temperature and let it grow inside the jar.  We had a run-in with a mysterious substance on the surface of an applesauce quart earlier this year.  I just tossed the whole jar out, better safe than sorry.  I opted to dice and freeze all the 'starting to go' category.

For the raw pack I just diced the tomatoes, packed them into hot jars, poured boiling water over the tomatoes, sealed, and put in the pressure canner.  Some of the jars leaked out lots of their liquid, as  you can see in the photo below.  I did a little research online and found out it's pretty normal to lose some liquid, but you lose more if you try and cool the jars too fast.  Maybe that was my problem since I was racing to finish and get somewhere on time. 

 

So I put fresh, boiling water in those jars, resealed, and put them in the pressure canner again.  They came out much better the second time around with their nice, slow cool down. The final result was 16 pints with about 8 tomatoes left in the fridge for salads this week.

I'm not sure how economical this process really is.  I paid $15 and a lot of labor to get only 16 jars of tomatoes.  I could have bought 14.5 oz cans of tomatoes at Fred Meyer last week for $0.50 each.  At least this week I know the jars really only contain tomatoes and they are in glass jars.

Katie

Resourceful Broccoli & Cheese Soup

I have 4 gallon-size Ziplocs of frozen broccoli stalks so I thought I'd try some broccoli & cheese soup.  I didn't bother with a recipe and I'm thinking that was a mistake!

Frozen broccoli stalks

Broccoli & cheese for the soup

I heated a can of cream of mushroom soup and added the cheese.

Chopped broccoli

Some ground ham

I added salt, pepper, and garlic because I add that to everything.

It looked OK, but was about the saltiest thing I've tasted in a long time.

I don't know why I added salt.  Canned soup certainly has plenty, not to mention the ground ham.  Oh well. 

I'll try from scratch next time.

Katie

Freezer Progress

I've been 2 weeks working on emptying the garage freezer.  So far, so good!

Remember we got home from Easter weekend travel and found this:

I pulled out those jugs of water first.  I use them to help the freezer not have to work so hard.  Next I pulled stuff off the top shelf since it was the iciest.  I moved those blueberries from the bottom shelf into the house and dug out what was left of the ground beef and took that inside, too.

This is what the garage freezer looks like today:

I hope there are no surprises on that top shelf, but we'll see in two more weeks when I unplug this energy sucker.  The second shelf has a package of Costco muffins and some pound cake.  The third shelf has several gallon bags of broccoli & broccoli stalks.  The next shelf has a half ham, several loaves of store-bought bread, and some frozen dinners.  Finally, the bottom shelf now has some frozen pot-pies and several ice packs.

The ham is the biggest space issue, but I get to use it this week for a potluck.  Whoo!  I also have french toast on the menu to use some of the bread and I'm going to try a recipe for broccoli/cheese soup this week.  My first effort was pretty bad . . . more on that later in the week.

Here are the blueberries tucked on the top shelf of the inside freezer. There are 6 - gallon sized ziplocs of blueberries tucked in there.

 I've put the ground beef in the bottom drawer of the inside freezer.  I plan to fill the rest of that space with meat as well.

Katie

Tuesday Menu Plan

I'm a day late, but since we only ate leftovers yesterday (for both lunch a dinner) I didn't feel an urgency to get this week's menu plan together.

Today, however, is a different story.

Dinners:
Tuesday - Mini ham loaves
Wednesday - Eggs/Ham/Toast
Thursday - Potato Soup
Friday - Ham for Potluck
Saturday - Crockpot Cassoulet
Sunday - Smoothies & Popcorn

Lunches:
Tuesday - Ham Sliders
Wednesday - Egg Salad
Thursday - Waffles
Friday - PBJ
Saturday - Out
Sunday - PBJ

Katie

Cookie Monster Party - Cookies in a Jar

I just ran across this photo and realized it didn't make the cut back when I posted about Jo's 4th birthday a year ago. 

I loved this fabric I found to decorate our guest gifts.  It was a fat quarter for quilting that I found at Ben Franklin.  The fabric had both Cookie Monster and Big Bird on it, but we trimmed it so that Cookie Monster was best displayed.

Katie

2014 Groceries Week 18

I wasn't planning much shopping this week, but had several trips after all.

I went to Fred Meyer Monday to buy tomato plants.  The kids were starving so I picked up grilled chicken breast that I found on clearance.  I was also starving so I bought  cheese curds - mistake - I was so excited to find curds from my hometown, but the fresh, warm curds of my childhood were not found in this container.  Boo.  I spent$14.52

Another stop for more plants and I picked up milk & onions for $2.90.

This was a Cash & Carry drive by after a skating ring birthday party.  The 25# of tomatoes for $14.98 was irresistible.  Add the bananas for a total of $16.19.

I found these apples in the clearance section.  Over 11 pounds for  $4.00 total.

I stopped to pick up my kids' pull-ups and got sucked in to buying this stuff.  I spent $8.73.

Milk was $12.87
No Eggs this week.

Total spending Week 18: $59.21
Total spending 2014 to date: $1,140.83
Weekly average 2014: $63.38

Katie

Garden Update

So my garden was look pretty scary a week or so ago.

Here's how it loooked:

And after weeding for 5 days in a row:

And finally, with a few plants in the ground! 

Hooray!  8 Tomato plants and a bell pepper plant so far.

Katie