Survival Mode - Food for now.

Ok, so... Its one of those weeks where I want to throw in a frozen pizza for every meal. My dear husband is completing the writing of our Theater's Christmas show and is basically "out of town" in so many words. The show is going to be AWESOME but it requires some sacrifices on our end. Don't all good things? Not seeing much of Daddy in the house is purely exhausting.

Even though he is gone... I am resisting the temptation to eh hem ... eat garbage for a week.

In fact I even threw bone broth in the crock pot tonight as I fed my kids peas, carrots, apples and PBJs. We will do better tomorrow. On a side note school went great today! I guess there is a trade off?

Here's a past peak on last weeks meals:

My experiment last week was trying Kerry Gold butter to see if that should be our next real food switch. It's made in Ireland from grass-fed cows and is supposed to be better for you. We switched from margarine (my ex-favorite) to real butter at least a year ago and I haven't looked back. Seems like a pretty straight forward real food switch. I stocked up on like 20lbs of organic butter for $1,99 per pound a while ago and I'm on my last pound. Getting close to the Holidays I'm hoping Aldi starts carrying butter closer to the $1.60 (?) I think that it was last year. Until then we will just stick with conventional butter.

This week I'm going to try to make a switch to organic eggs. It's so hard for me to pass up eggs for 0.99 a dozen but from what I've read it's probably the next most logical step. More on that....

1- Organic Spinach/Beet/Walnut Salad with homemade super healthy poppy seed dressing, Grilled Cheese, and Broccoli

2- Some kind of pasta

3- Organic Kale and Salisbury Steak with Organic Rice in bone broth

4- Grilled Tuna Sandwiches, Chips, Carrots and Apples (I didn't make this last week.)

5-Cheeseburger Soup w/Bone Broth and Buttered Toast/Crackers

6- Sausage/ Peppers/ Organic Potatoes in Crock Pot

7-  Whole Wheat Tacos with Guacamole

Shopping List this week:

I actually don't need the corn or any of the other items on my Aldi list just thought I should stock up on sale items. I might just skip Aldi and buy booze and chocolate at TJs....I'm going to need it this week!

**I just went to Trader Joe's and the prices were slightly different than my estimate... those Org eggs - yikes - expensive! I got organic celery instead of corn and -- Beer. No, not booze, beer of the root variety. I'm having a root beer float as I type! Total was slightly over $19.**

If Deals were Drugs... I'd be high.

Is that title kind of racy? Am I going to get tagged by government spies for mentioning drugs? (That alone tells you what a naive goody two shoes I am!)  Only to disappoint the snoops with info on sausages and free juicy juice boxes??! Although if they saw my behavior last night they may question my sanity. More on that...

Ok, so I'M not one of those crazy "extreme couponers." While I love the show (if I had cable) I think the excess of it all is pretty crazy! I could only justify that excess if I was giving it away to the poor. Now that sounds appealing! With that disclaimer in mind I DO get a rush high when I get a good deal! It's pretty fun!

Tell me if this sounds weird. I drive up to a dark street at 7:30pm pull over in front of a house I've never been to before... get out and grab a white bag from the front porch and rush back to my car and speed away.

Totally normal, right?!

I swear the bag was only filled with unopened boxes of juicy juice and that they came from a safe reliable source... Even if I didn't really know the people well... Or... At all... All in the name of free juicy juice boxes! Hey, I tested them first before giving them to my kids. :-)

Then today I took a wonderful trip with my kids to target to get these for $.64 each pack! Yes, I'll take a high five!

Click here to see how to get the same deal!

Beyond that it was just an amazing day with my kids in the sunshine at the park. They give me the biggest high of all. Sometimes I crash pretty hard too but my kids really do fill me with an insane amount of joy!

I mean look at this sunshine (and by sunshine I do mean this face!!)

Receive the blessing from little Saint Becket

While all my kids were scrumptiously adorable today Becket got all the cute pictures. He does this little tongue waggle thing and I just want to eat him he is so cute. He is not the typical crawling baby on the go. He really loves to sit with me and hug me. His crawling comes in handy since I am on the move and he needs to follow me everywhere! I so treasure these days since I know they are fleeting.

Menu w/o Money

Ok, so whenever we are about to open a show money gets really tight. Tis the eb and flow of production expenses prior to ticket sales. Anyway, so I have a challenge for myself. Money spending freeze means eating out of the freezer and pantry this week. Since I haven't gone shopping for pretty much a week already it might be a challenge, no it will be. I will get milk and eggs and basics...but I'm going to try and not buy anything else and use up things in the freezer and pantry. I already pulled out some pears I froze this summer and added Tastefully Simple's Mulling Spice and it is, oh so YUMMY!

I read this blog where this girl and her "guy" (in NY City no less) spends only $30 per week on groceries. They eat REALLY healthy and, to be honest, kind of in small amounts, but very gourmet and its kind of intriguing. This girl actually spends precious little groceries money on fresh limes and herbs. That would not feed my family - no way - but its fun to read and very frugal and not wasteful! Anyway...

I went through the pantry and freezer (notice I did not say fridge as there is not much to find there) to take a full account of what I can scrounge up and here is the menu for the week:

Monday: Pea Soup and Grilled Cheese/Meat Sandwiches
Tuesday: Egg, Rice, and Broccoli Ham Bake
Wednesday: Mock Chow Mien
Thursday: Chicken Fried Rice with Edammame
Friday: Out
Saturday: French Meat Pie
Sunday: Pancakes w/Homemade Rhubarb Sauce and Whipped Cream

I will probably not stick to certain meals on certain days as I flow with the whims of my cooking desires and appetite but here goes nothing to no shopping! Its actually a pretty decent and different menu considering... I have to thank Our Lady of Lourdes for the frozen French meat pie and my mom for the Pea Soup (although I rather dislike Pea Soup Jeremy says he likes it.)

Happy eating!

$1 for $30 worth of food??

No, I am not an extreme couponer, although I envy their dedication and mostly their savings.

Free food from a friend? No.

I actually went out to eat at a "restaurant" and with my friend's help ordered $30 worth of food!

I paid ONLY $1 to purchase the coupon at GROUPON. So, yeah, dinner with a friend for her birthday became a very affordable and fun outing for ONE DOLLAR!!! If you haven't checked out GROUPON yet you should there are some serious steals! Since I rarely get to eat out this was a really fun treat and cheaper than eating at home. I meant to take a picture because the place was kind of a bar and my friend and I had brought our toddlers which felt awkward at first but once we realized no one else was there and our boys could destroy the place we enjoyed the good laugh, good food, and good time!

Happy Savings!

Starving Artists - Edition 5 - MN Zoo

The local libraries offer  free passes the MN Zoo, if you are lucky enough to get one, it is a great deal!

I've visited our local library everyday this week to get these coveted passes because Aidan is with us and we have been planing on going to the Zoo while he visits. We budgeted for the passes in case I couldn't get them free but I was really hoping to save that chunk of change!

Monday... I was there when they opened. No Pass.

Tuesday... I got there 2 hrs before they opened. I noted hours in my calender and left. No Pass.

Wednesday... I got there when they opened. No pass. Shoot! I meandered around getting a couple new CDs for Augustine and my Ballroom Dance Social. I almost started to check out when I gave one final glance at the rack that holds the free passes. There was ONE pass! They must have put them out after I entered!! I snagged it with as cool of an expression as I could. Yelping with joy in the library is so not cool.

I will tell you who will be yelping with joy this weekend... the Stanbary Family as we enjoy the animals and Augustine shrieking and laughing for joy at the animals. He took particular interest in the otters. I will post that video soon, it is to die for adorable!

Thank you God for this blessing!
Sarah

Starving Artists - Edition 4 - "Drink your milk!"

Pardon me while I tangent off for a while (again) on my starving artist editions of this blog.

I now have a brand new reason to be frugal this summer. It has come to me in the form of a shaggy brown haired creature with a bottomless pit of a stomach. No, this creature is not an animal although by the way he eats you might think - horse? Nope, but close.

Boy.

No, not just, "boy". TEENAGE BOY that is taking after his father in height. I know the cliche' "eating like a teenage boy". But do you really understand what this means? Have you lived with a teenage boy recently?? I have a HUGE respect for mothers with teenagers, always have, but now I really do! My time in the kitchen has doubled in cooking and cleaning since he has arrived.

Aidan is his name. He is a wonderfully sweet boy who loves his little brother and can get him to shriek with delight at his silly antics and play for hours. Aidan is the beautiful reason I have my husband today. It was the shocking news of his conception that turned my wayward husband (only a sophomore in college) to seek mercy and grace from Jesus. It turned his life around and was the very driving force for his re-conversion. God makes all things new and he truly does use bad for good. Aidan has an innocence that one could only dream for of a child growing up in downtown Chicago and going to a public school. I truly feel like that is indeed the grace of God and Jeremy's fervent prayers for his son.

So, with all that said, we really do enjoy having Aidan stay with us for a month in the summer. However, my frugal "momness" really starts to blare when he is with us. I'm trying not to nag but not only does he eat strings of continuous meals/snacks, much like my toddler actually, but in larger potions, he wastes more food than I would. I know my mom would love to know I am finally getting a taste of my own medicine. Since I was also one to just take a portion of food and throw out what was left on my plate. For example this morning he poured a large bowl of milk and added cereal to it. He ate the cereal and left the milk, or so it appeared by looking at the leftover milk. Now, as a child I would have dumped the milk. Actually it was probably my mom making me drink the gross sugary milk that made me start eating cereal with no milk at all. However, now that I buy the milk... I DRINK THE MILK. As I watch him dump out 1 1/2 cups of milk down the drain I can't help but think, no, not of the children in Africa, but of Augustine and how that would be half a days milk for him. Down the drain. Ug.

The positive result is that I am clipping ever more coupons and scouring stores even more carefully to save us from spending unnecessary amounts of money and stretching our budget. So, I will certainly be sharing more deals and posting more "Starving Artist - Editions" than I normally would.

So here is a nugget from all this penny pinching:

Aldi this week has a bunch of Dole bananas that are getting brown. They are $0.44 per bunch. There is also a sign next to them saying, "brown bananas buy one bunch get one free". That means I was able to buy 4 bunches of bananas  for $0.88. So this morning I whipped up a double batch of whole wheat banana bread and mashed and froze the rest of the bananas for another batch next week.

For more great money saving deals check out this great blog "Money Saving Mom" that has been really inspiring me to pinch my pennys. I also really enjoy my dear friend's Frugal Friday's posts at Adventurous Beginnings.

Happy penny pinching!
Sarah

Starving Artists - Edition 3 - Ground Turkey

Yes, I am writing a post about ground turkey.

It's kind of my family's best kept secret that is no longer a secret.

Growing up I remember my family won a gift card/certificate for groceries and my mom was stocking piling her cart with frozen "tubes" of ground turkey. A guy came up to her and was like, "If I had won I'd be buying steaks!" Later my mom shared the story and how her mental reaction was like, "This will last us weeks. Which we NEED. Steaks would last a day." My mom is amazingly frugal she is not a freak at couponing but boy does she know how to make a tube of toothpaste or bar of soap last to the last drop.

My mom would make a lot of things with ground turkey, instead of ground beef, and I've grown to LOVE it! It is lean with no gristle (yuck!) and can be used in tons of recipes! I lucked out and married a man that also loves my cooking with ground turkey. This post is not only about how yummy ground turkey is but also what a steal it is at the store. A steal for meat anyway.

Right now at Rainbow Foods you can get 1lb of Frozen Ground Turkey (Louis Rich Brand) for $1.00! An entire pound of lean turkey for a dollar people - that is awesome! I usually stock up and never spend more than a dollar per pound.

That means I can feed my family a meal of Meat Spaghetti for: $3.20
Ground Turkey - $1.00 (Rainbow)
Whole Wheat Noodles - $1.20 (Trader Joe's)
Spaghetti Sauce - $1.00 (Aldi - they have the cheapest best tasting "cheap" sauce I have found)

That is just one example of many but using ground turkey I can easily afford to give my meat lover man meat at every dinner and keep the cost at usually less than $7 per dinner. I also cook with frozen chicken breast (best deal I have found is COSTCO) and fish and even turkey ham (best deal I've found is ALDI) but ground turkey is definitely our staple.

I read in a magazine one way to save money is by having one, really cheap, meal per week. So, thanks to ground turkey and Aldi's sauce, Spaghetti is our really cheap meal and it cuts down significantly on our budget each week. It's also healthy, and not a sacrifice to eat as it is quite delicious!

Bon Appetite fellow starving artists!
Sarah

Starving Artists - Edition 2 - Blessings from God!

God really seems to bless us in things rather than money. Which is quite wonderful!

Jeremy was on a pretty sweet high calling me while heading home from Office Max. Both of our computers are about to die and he finally had to break down and replace his because he was spending hours the night before cajoling, convincing and trying to get it to "stinking unfreeze will ya!" (That quotation was mine. ;-) He had called to say that he had gotten the laptop he needed and that he had some good news!

Apparently he had noticed they had some deal. If you buy a computer and they do not ask you if you would like to buy the Microsoft Software for it you get it free! It's kind of like if you check out at the store and they forget to give you your receipt than you get a $5 gift card or something. Well, considering this "free" item was a whopping $150 chances are not good they will forget. I mean, heck, I haven't even ever gotten the free super size to my value meal. They always ask. Well, I think God decided it was Jeremy's day to be blessed.

The clerk did not ask Jeremy about the software and when he went to stamp his receipt (that means they asked you). Jeremy was like, "Is that stamp to verify that you asked me about the software? Because I was never asked. I don't want to get anyone in trouble but I noticed the deal and specifically was waiting to be asked and I wasn't."

Boooooooooooooyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

The manager came over and gave him the expensive piece of software. We hope no one gets in trouble but we are also pretty stoked about the savings! Thank you God!

I love to hear stories about God's provisions big or small, do you have a story to share? I would love to hear it!

Sarah

Starving Artists - Edition 1 - Berries all year round!

They say that artists are starving. Well, that is true in some cases, and is quickly becoming a reason for fear in my home as ticket sales at the theater drop to a dangerous low. Who can compete with this weather??

I may be acting a bit overly dramatic on this topic but it inspired me for a new series of posts on how this family of starving artists gets by on a super tight budget.

Each year I wait and I watch for seasonal deals at Aldi. If you don't shop at Aldi you should start. They have incredible deals on most things and its worth the extra trip and the quarter you need to "check out" a shopping cart. I have to note though that the quarter is not required. If you are like me and say... 'I don't need a cart' only to later find yourself carrying and balancing food items on every strip of body part that is useful for carrying and dropping spaghetti sauce to the chagrin of everyone around. Than, no, a quarter is not required. Recommended but not required.

So one deal that I watch... and wait for... and set up calling trees for... is their blueberry sale. At one point each year their blueberries go on sale for as low as $1.00 per pint. I load up and freeze them for blueberry feasting year long! This year my Mother In Law mentioned they were on sale for .49 a pint and my jaw hit the floor! Turns out strawberries were as low as .39 each container too! Jeremy and I were just heading out to a performance but I was desperate to get a piece of this deal! She offered to pick up a bunch for me...

She got two cases of each for me!!!!!!! Wooohoooo! Now that's money saving at its finest! I sure do love a good deal and now the two berry lovers in the house will get berries all year long. That chest freezer came just in time.

If you come upon a deal like this here is what I recommend for storage for easy access...

1. Wash berries in a mixture of water and vinegar. Apparently the vinegar cleanses the chemicals off, I got that from my mom and find it works well and it is natural and cheap. Next rinse with water.

2. Spread berries out in a single layer on a cookie sheet and freeze.

3. Once frozen, loosen berries from the pan with a spatula and put into freezer bags. 

This system allows for clean berries that are loose in a bag together for easy measuring for recipes or toddler snacks.

Nope this family will not starve for lack of berries, not this year anyway. :-)
Sarah