I have been buying oatmeal every morning at work for $1.00, but I know my Irish oats bought in bulk at Winco and cooked at home is even cheaper than that. So I have 4 days worth cooking on the stove right now. I have successfully frozen it and microwaved it at work in the past. I just needed to get back in the habit.

Also my neighbor across the street borrowed my large crockpot to process a bunch of apples into apple pie filling and brought be a pint when she brought the crockpot back yesterday. I have a pie in the oven too.

It's amazing how much more I can get done around the house only working 4 hours a day. My shoulder is feeling a lot better and I am probably going to have to increase my hours when I see the doctor again, next Thursday. Until then I am going to balance getting stuff done around here and sitting with ice on my shoulders each day.

By the way have we all been watching "Hoarders" on A&E?? Everyone seems to be purging... me included.

Edited to add: Just mixed up apple muffins to put in the oven when my sweet potato fries are done! What has gotten into me?

DH is at Costco so much that he got to know the head butcher. Turns out he lives around the corner from us. One day he was at our car wash and DH turned on the self-serve for him. A week later he brings us a huge package of pork chops on his way home.

Today DH is in Costco and goes by the meat department and the Butcher has 3 prime grade steaks set aside for him. He did have to pay for these though. They rarely get prime grade in and DH had expressed interest.

So I run the drill
ME: where's the receipt??
DH: I don't know, somewhere (vaguely looks around) $22.00 for these 3 huge steaks.
ME: How did you pay for them I ask?? DH: Cash.
ME: Your allowance?
DH: Yes.
ME: Never mind I don't need the receipt, your allowance is already budgeted out.

Hey if he is so desperate for some steak he spends his allowance on it, who am I to complain! And he really is trying to save all receipts for me and go along with the no eat out thing for the month.

So yummy barbecued steak, I ate about 1/4 of mine with the fingerling potatoes and barbecued asparagus ($1.48 lb at Safeway yesterday). DH had a hard day at work.

So I talk to DH this morning. We need milk, orange juice (since I am now getting his illness) and half and half.

What does he come home with:
The 2 gallons of OJ-check.
1/2 gallon of half and half-check.
but also:
Tub of chicken noodle soup-$9.99
2 doz eggs -$3.19 AND
Pork Twists??? Dog treats- $9.99

He claims to only "tolerate" the dogs! Ha, as if, he spoils them worse than I do.



He stopped at Safeway and got 1/2 gallon of milk, since I am sick, 2 gallons from Costco seemed a bit much when it was dated January 10th.

I wish I could make myself do the shopping....

Okay for full disclosure, he took out $100.00 cash and spent $40.37, which means we still have approximately $60.00 to last the until next Tuesday. And the dog treats actually go into the pets category, not food, which means we really have $70.00. We had the chicken soup for dinner and it was delicious with plenty for another meal or two.

I pulled out a plain envelope and put the rest of the cash in it.

I am determined to stick to this even with his impulse purchases.

I got this recipe from: http://freezerchicks.blogspot.com/

French Toast Casserole
1 pound load of Italian breast
8 ounces cream cheese
1/2 cup sugar, divided
1/2 tsp vanilla or almond extract
1/2 cup chopped pecans, optional
4 eggs
2 cups milk
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tablespoons butter, melted

Cut bread into cubes. Place half in greased 9 x 13 pan. Microwave the cream cheese until melted, stirring halfway (about 30 seconds). Stir in half of the sugar and the extract into the cream cheese. Pour this mixture over the bread (will not cover completely, sort of spread it around with the back of a spoon). Sprinkle nuts over cream cheese layer. Top with remaining bread cubes.

Beat the remaining sugar, eggs, milk, cinnamon and melted butter together. Pour over bread cubes. Freeze at this point or let sit overnight in fridge. Bake at 350 for 35 minutes. Serve with syrup or fruit.

NOTE from Janet: I use any type of bread I have on hand for these recipes and they always turn out great. If I have frozen them, I just take them out of the freezer the night before and put it the oven on time bake. Then they get their thawing and soaking time.

NOTE from Me/Homebody: I found whipped cream yummy on top of this. I made it for Christmas 2007 for the first time and my family really liked it. This second time I didn't add the sugar in the milk/egg mixture and did not add the butter either and there were no complaints, so it must have been okay!

Occasionally I have little "mini-nervous breakdowns" about the disorganization in my house. So my latest one involved not being able to find a library book, but somehow it led me to cleaning out our pantry. I was amazed at the amount of food we had that was past it's due date. We must have had 30 cans of chili that we don't remember buying and it's so old there is no date on it. We also 20 cans of tuna dated 07/2007 and a bunch of other assorted stuff. I felt terrible throwing it away, so I called the local St. Vincent de Paul dining facility. They were happy to take it all.

The intake person asked if we wanted a receipt. DH automatically said "No". I said, "Oh yes we do!" Guess who pays the bills in our house, sees the tax accountant each year and has a file to put all tax related items... yeah me that's who!

So now I am really ready to stay organized, rotate the food in the pantry and get all that stuff in the freezer eaten!

One year ago I picked up my sweet Landon at the animal shelter in Grass Valley, CA. I lasted 4 months without a dog thanks to my daughters sending me pictures of dogs from petfinders.com.

I miss my daughters....

So today in honor of trying to not spend any money we don't have to spend, we had friends over for breakfast instead of going out. On the menu was quiche (from the freezer), potatoes fried with red bell pepper and onion, sausage bites (bisquick, cheese and a package of the bear sausage cooked and crumbled small), fresh fruit salad, bacon and orange juice and coffee. It turned out very well and cost about $15.00 for the entire meal with leftovers!

DH made carnitas tonight and instead of pulling pork loin from the freezer we paid $1.28 a pound for at the local Winco, he found large pork loin chunks for 98 cents a pound yesterday. So we grilled that tonight after grilling tonight's steaks. We will be having carnitas tomorrow. Here is the recipe if anyone is interested and it freezes well.

Carnitas

2 pounds boneless pork loin cut into 2-3 inch chunks
2 tsp salt
½ tsp cumin
½ tsp oregano
2 pressed garlic gloves
½ onion, thinly sliced
2 tsp sugar or brown sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Place pork, spices, garlic and onion in a large stockpot. Cover slightly with water and bring to a boil. Cover pan and reduce heat. Simmer for one hour. Add sugar and lemon juice. Remove lid and simmer until liquids have nearly boiled off.

The carnitas can then be grilled before serving them. However, they can be served as is immediately or frozen and stored for future use.

Serves 8

We eat them with plain boiled beans or in a tortilla with grilled pepper, onion, and avocado.

Grocery total so far this month: $150.26, right on track for my $300.00 budget.

We find out this evening where OD is going for her ultrasound internship. She was hoping for Ft. Worth, Texas, but the hospital decided not to sign a contract for this year. She was very disappointed. The placements are sort of like getting your name drawn out of a hat. You have two choices and put them in one or two different cities and somehow they draw names out.

DH cooked Saturday and yesterday we went to friends for Easter Dinner. The only thing we took was that Jalapeno/artichoke dip and crackers from Costco.

So our grocery spending was quite low for last week. My groceries at Winco were $31.67, the skinny cows from Safeway $4.89 and $14.97 at Costco for a half gallon of half and half and the dip and crackers.

Tonight is venison burgers again. They were delicious and we have the buns leftover, so what the heck we are having them again, what 3 days later?

We had boneless thighs (from the freezer) barbecued marinated in Soy-Vey sauce and are having stir-fry tomorrow made out of the leftovers.

Then I think we will have Lasagna from the freezer Tuesday, more (leftover) stir-fry on Wednesday and then I will need to figure out something for Thursday and Friday.

This week's ancillary spending will be high. Dear Doggie's one year checkup is tomorrow and DH's oil and transmission fluid need to be changed in his truck. However, groceries should be low again, will probably just run to Safeway for veges for tomorrow and may run into town later this week for more stuff. Maybe I should plan next week's menus.....

Okay I am going to be honest here. I don't cook. I have not cooked more than a meal here and there for over 25 years. Wait I take that back, I did a few of those OAMC things back when the girls were all home that we worked into the menus.

So our local Safeway was remodeled and had a grand reopening sale. We received 3-$10 off $50 purchases.

So one day we go try to find stuff to add up to $50.00 (on sale of course) so we can get our $10.00 off. One thing we bought was Bertolli "Complete Skillet Meal for Two" at 2/$10.00.

So tonight DH is feeling not well so I pull one out, plop it into the skillet on medium and come back in 10 minutes where it is DONE! I selected the Shrimp, Asparagus & Penne combo.

I counted 12 small shrimp, the equivalent of about 2 stalks, okay maybe 3 stalks of asparargus and about 1/8 cup of pieces of red pepper. There were about 1 inch pieces of frozen red stuff that I assume was the creamy tomato basil sauce. I measured it after it was done and it was about 3.5 cups.

It was fairly tasty, but I started adding up how much it would have cost to make it and decided it is time for me to start doing some more of that Once A Month Cooking thing.

It would be easy to put this meal together and freeze yourself.

Freeze a bottle of vodka pasta sauce, in an ice cube tray. Trader Joe's is very good. Cook up a package of penne pasta, chop up some asparagus or broccoli. Open up a jar of roasted red peppers from TJ's or chop up some fresh. Count out 12 little shrimp from a pound of those 20-25 per pound shrimp. Cook the veges and shrimp together. Toss in the drained pasta. Layer in single layer on a cookie sheet and stick in the freezer for 20 minutes. Pack into freezer bag with a couple of cubes of frozen sauce and there you are!

DH arrived home from Las Vegas this morning (hmmm is that why he doesn't feel good) and while he was gone I had a frozen leftover meal of bow tie pasta and a chicken breast left from chicken cacciatore he had made. It was enough for two meals and was delicious.

Anyway Bertolli has definitely got me thinking!

My husband is cleaning out the freezer. He did something similar last week in our pantry. Unfortunately he decided to throw out some cans of food that we probably have had since the days of our children believing in Santa!

He decided to place the cans that needed to be used soonest on a top shelf so that when meal planning, we would look to this cans first when deciding what to create for dinner.

He is going to use a similar method in our freezer. We have chicken dated April 2006, which means it is a few months past it's prime freezer life (9 months for chicken from the charts I have seen).

While making scones this morning (from scratch natch) DH brought in some mystery packages that we had properly sealed with our food sealer. One of them I recognize as Turkey soup base.

Now turkey is a great year round by and we usually pick up a few extra during the holidays. I feel very virtuously frugal as we simmer the carcass and then pick it clean. Unfortunately those frozen packages never seem to actually become soup!

DH also found a zip lock bag that had a few of his favorite teryaki marinated then barbecued chicken thighs. He was quite distressed when he realized he missed out on microwaving and enjoying one of his favorite foods.

So our goal is to organize and recognize that in order to be truly frugal, we must take that second step and actually eat our leftovers or second harvests. The first step is to have a set area to put those things, which in our case is the top shelf of our freezer and a top shelf in our pantry.

Happy Sunday!

Here is my bedroom color, if you can call it a color with black and white. It's very dull to some I'm sure, but very soothing to me.

It's a gray day here on the North Coast and OD is home for a visit before her college starts. She gets so busy with work and school that she starts buying frozen stuff to eat, so I decided to send her home with some frozen food.

My plan is burritos, lentil soup and lasagna. DH is at Costco buying some supplies, but I also have some of the ingredients on hand, like the pinto beans (just boiled for 2 minutes, soaking for 2 hours, then throwing in crockpot the rest of the day), a large can of tomato sauce, canned tomatoes and onion and bell pepper, lasagna noodles, lentils and chicken broth.

I won't be sending it all home with her, which will also help us on those busy days. I will have to be careful the rest of the month to keep food under $500.00.

I did a freezer and pantry enventory and here is my freezer enventory (Dido inspired me):
4 lbs butter
2 pkg of cooked turkey leftover.
2 pkg of turkey broth (with meat in them).
2 pkg pork tenderloin (Costco)
2 cornish game hens
6 pkg - 2 in each of chicken breasts (Costco)
2 pkg - 2 in each of New York Steaks (Costco)
1 rib eye steak
1 chuck roast
2 large racks of pork (Costco carries this around the holidays, leftover from last holiday season)
3 large pkgs of pork of some sort, boneless chops? (that's what happens when we don't label pkgs)
4 pkg of pork for carnitas or chili verde (basically chunks of sirloin for $1.28 lb)
1 pkg of sliced beef for carne asada (sold at same store that sells the pork sirloin chunks - Winco)
6 pkg of bone in chicken breasts-3 in each pkg
22 pkg of 1/2 lb each venison burger
10 pkg of venison steaks (about 3/4 lb each)
1 frozen orange chicken pkg meal from Costco
1 large bag of frozen strawberries (Costco)
1 whole filet mignon (having tonight for dinner)

Then in the small freezer above the frig I have another pkg of strawberries almost gone, whole wheat flower, flax seed and 3 different containers of ice cream (partially eaten).