Tips to Tackle the Cash Register Demon

Ok, my friend who is a wonderful mother,seriously! I look at her Facebook posts and am in awe over all her kids' activities, how put together the kids and SHE look and I find myself wishing I could be a bit more like her. I am *NOT* the picture of organization or put-togetherness. LOL!

But she has five beautiful children and asked how I handle the grocery store... so I am going to parlay this into a free-for-all... meaning I want everyone who can to share their market-saving tips... :)

first of all, I have found that learning when meat is marked down is an AMAZING way to save. For example- I have found that Ray's marks stuff down close to Thursday. Ray's is local so as you can see every person will need to find this day out. I once got 10 packages of kielbasa for fifty cents each. Seriously. Now kielbasa isn't the MOST HEALTHY choice of meat, but a balanced diet is based on choices for the ENTIRE WEEK not just one day. Which, simply put, means it won't kill anyone to make a dish out of kielbasa now and then. LOL! I have purchased Candian bacon for 1.20 (about 15 slices), "diet" hamburgers for under a buck a patty and even bulk sausage for 1.00. The trick to this is that this meat MUST BE FROZEN OR COOKED ASAP! but I usually have menus planned out with stuff in the freezer so I just toss it in until I am ready to cook it.

Secondly- look for coupons. If Meijer's has a 10/10 sale and it includes Pizza Rolls, (I try to cook mostly from scratch, but this is often an easy fix when we are running like crazy), look around for a pizza roll coupon...if you find a 35 cents off coupon and it is doubled, you are paying 30 cents for each bag of pizza rolls you buy. Who wouldn't want to stock up on that??? Also Meijer will offer an 11th item for free. HELLO BONUS! LOL!

Third- make menus and stick to them. I don't mean be so rigid so that if you get a craving for chicken you won't flip a chicken meal with the meatloaf listed for tonight. I usually make up about 12 breakfasts, lunches and dinners and create a shopping list from there. Use your time wisely- if you have a few extra moments on a lazy Saturday afternoon- make up some pancakes and freeze them for breakfasts later on in the month. You can pop them in the toaster to warm them up.

I once heard that a lot of kids in elementary schools do not get breakfast. This saddened and appalled me. I have five kids, I have a chronic condition and I work 40 hours a week. In addition to that 4 out of 5 kids are involved in extra-curriculars, I am a band booster, sit on the school-advisory board for St. Rose and am the recording-secretary for my labor Union. Long story short, if *I* can make breakfast for my darlings, anyone can. LOL! It needn't be elaborate, after all it only takes a few moments to boil water to make instant oatmeal, even less if you pull out some yogurt and bananas, but this is the MOST important meal of the day!!!!

Fourth- try to incorporate a few meatless meals into the fold. My family LOOOOVES potato soup. They love pancakes for dinner. During Lent, I do cheese pizza or spaghetti without meat. It helps stretch your food budget further.

Fifth- there are innovative websites... hillbilly housewife which shares an emergency menu for 4 for 70.00 and believe it or not the USDA offers a pretty interesting guidebook with recipes for eating nutritiously on food stamps. That's the target audience, but I learned a lot from reading it and even have it bookmarked on my laptop. USDA booklet

Sixth- look for hidden costs. If I allowed my four kids to buy lunch at school each day it would cost me $45.00 a week. GASP! So I make them pack. I have adopted the concept of bento boxes... as I have discussed in this blog before, so I won't bore ya! LOL! but it's packing food into (typically) ONE container. Today the kids took 2 pieces of luncheon ham rolled up, two slices of Colby cheese, cherry tomatoes, grapes,a graham cracker and a half container of yogurt. Everything but the yogurt went into the main container- just a typical Ziploc container you can either keep or toss... holding maybe about 2 cups of soup. Monday I made salad and stuffed shells for dinner so on Tuesday the kids took the leftover salad to school. I went to Sauder's and the school marm there talked about the kids bringing whatever Mom had to spare and could pack. I am blessed with more than enough food, but I started taking that concept to heart. So a leftover piece of chicken may get diced up and included in a salad. I may hard boil a few eggs and slip them into the lunch now and then. They've had Doritos ONCE this year- they were left over from a scout pizza party. I try to focus on a protein, fruit and veggie for their lunches.

Seventh- check the ethnic section for food. I found an 8 ounce bag of ABC pasta in the Mexican section for 29cents. I coupled that with the turkey carcass mom sent home after Thanksgiving and made a rich stock. From that stock I made turkey vegetable soup. It was practically 2 cents per serving!!!

SO There ya go... please please feel free to add to this list! Sharing is always fun! :)