Strategic shopping, coupon-ing, shopping the ads, stockpiling=making the grocery budget stretch as far as possible. Not a typical hobby I'm sure you're saying to yourself, I know. And it's frankly more of a necessity than anything, but with the time and energy it requires it HAS to be considered such...if not a job.
I'm reading a book, cutting online coupons, subscribing to budget-saving-blogs, gathering weekly store ads, menu planning and trying to combine as many deals as possible to stockpile our pantry and freezer. They say it takes about 6 months for this methodology to begin to substantially save your grocery budget real dollars (i.e...actually not spend as much weekly/monthly). And they also say (warn, actually...) that until that point...this process can be VERY frustrating. I'm here to tell ya people, it is!
Well, I spent the better part of today in the kitchen preparing meals for our family (the hubs mostly, since I'll be out of town most of the week). Earlier in the week I accompanied a very saver-savvy friend to Costco and was able to get quite a few deals since we split most of the meat, chicken, etc. She is quite the home economist herself, so she also sent me home with some good, cheap, easy meals to try with our purchases. I know...I'm so spoiled :)
Back to the kitchen. The plan was to prepare pork enchiladas, baked ziti and chicken chilli and freeze for the coming week's meals. The pork enchiladas and ziti went off perfectly! The chicken chili on the other hand...well...lets just say that the bird and I didn't quite see eye to eye. I ended up having to toss it. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow?
