A YEAR'S WORTH OF MENUS

When I first announced that I wanted to plan out my menus for an entire year many thought me totally NUTS! My thought was you plan a menu every week, so why not collect all 52 menus and end up with your menus planned for the next year. The benefits of having a meal plan are numerous. These posts are about the menus I planned and how I did them.

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

WEEK 2 CHICKEN LEG QUARTERS

As the heat of the summer rolls in my thoughts automatically turn to my desire for a Summer Kitchen or a Canning Kitchen as some folks call them. 

In the summertime humans by nature are more active and therefore need more substantial meals to have the energy to do all we want to. 

It is also a time when more foods are preserved in one way or another in millions of homes.  All of this cooking requires heat and heat is the enemy in the summer.

Today, June 25, 2012, the high is suppose to be 106 degrees.  In June!  What are August and September going to be like?  Record air conditioning bills are expected.  Cooking adds heat to the inside of the house and cranks the air conditioner even more.

So as the summer rolls on here in hot and humid Oklahoma expect to see more and more cold foods and outdoor cooking on this blog.  However, don’t think by outdoor cooking I mean simply charcoaling.  No I use a modern version of the old time summer kitchens by moving my electric cooking appliances, and the heat they put out, outside! 

I am hoping to have a homemade solar oven soon, so be prepared for that adventure.  You will see the beginning of the Summer Kitchen cooking with this post.

The main protein item for this week is chicken leg quarters.  Alas the ones I purchased were not on sale, but at $.78 a pound they are still a decent buy.  I purchase them in a 10# bag, then once we have them home we either cook them all up right then if all the meals are using cooked chicken, or we package them up in two leg quarter packages.  This week it was package and freeze.

We find that for most meals two leg quarters will feed the three adults in our family nicely with proper side dishes. These are labeled and frozen until needed.

So here is our menu for the week:

BREAKFAST OPPORTUNITIES



Raisin Bran

Grapenuts

Oatmeal

Farina

Multigrain cereal

Strawberry Breeze juice

Peaches

Dried fruit

LUNCH OPPORTUNITIES


Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches

Jarred Salad

Leftovers


DINNERS WEEK 2—CHICKEN LEG QUARTERS

Day 1

Baked chicken leg quarters


Cranberry Sauce

Baked Potatoes

Baked Sweet potatoes

Green beans


COMMENTS:

I can hear some of you screaming now, baked chicken, baked stuffing, baked potatoes, baked sweet potatoes and a baked cake?  Woman are you NUTS?  It’s 106 degrees outside!  But remember I’m using my Summer Kitchen.  In this case I am using my turkey roaster and placing it securely in the sunroom out of harm’s way. 

And I’m doing it in layers.  I make use of the heating pans I have for my turkey roaster oven by putting the cake in the bottom of the roaster in a 9 x 13 pan.  The potatoes are foil wrapped and on the bottom of the roaster, next to the cake.  Using my heating pans to hold the stuffing with the chicken leg quarters on top of that.

The trick is all cook at near the same temperature.  You preheat the oven and then fill it.  With it being outside there is no cooking heat in the kitchen on this hot summer day.  Plus, you don’t need to stay with it.  Just set a timer in the cool house with you so you will remember to get the cake out of the oven when it’s done as it cooks faster than the other foods.  I start it all at the same time and just remove things as they finish.
If you don't have a turkey roaster, use your toaster oven and microwave to cook this meal outside and cut your cooling bill.

I baked extra potatoes to use in the potato salad the next day.

If you like sun tea you could even make your tea outdoors.  My family does not care for sun tea. But I know many folks that do.

Dinner Day 2

Fish Sticks

Potato Salad

Cole Slaw


Wacky Cake

Iced tea

COMMENTS:

To beat the heat for this meal I use the toaster oven in the sunroom for baking both the biscuits and the fish sticks. 

DAY 3

Fried Bologna


Macaroni ‘n Cheese

Green Beans

Cucumber and Onion Salad

Peanut Butter/Chocolate Chip cookies

Tea

COMMENTS:

I know it’s a southern thing, but fried bologna is good folks.  When my husband got the slicer going he sliced half of the chub thick and the rest thin.  Then a few of the thick slices were fried and then cut in cubes to serve of up with my friend Kay’s BBQ Sauce.  It took me years to get the recipe from her, and I am so glad I did.  Kay has gone on to her reward, but I have fond memories of her every time I make this sauce.

Warning the recipe makes a huge amount, around 5 quarts worth.  Generally I’ll put a jar in the fridge, and the rest I’ll either can or freeze for future use.  When I can it I use the pressure canner due to the butter in it.  Some have told me it could probably be water bath canned safely, because of the ketchup acidity, but I prefer I not take the chance. 

Once you open a jar be sure and refrigerate any leftovers.

My beat the heat strategy for this meal was to cook the BBQ sauce in my large crockpot, and to fry the bologna quickly in the house.  I could have used the electric skillet in the sunroom.  But that would have required me being out in the heat to do it.  I figure the short time it takes to fry bologna wouldn’t be worth me suffering in the heat.  I also cheated and did the bringing of the water to boil for the blue box Mac ‘n Cheese in the house, but because I have an electric stove I was able to turn the burner off as soon as the macaroni was added to the boiling water and the residual heat cooked the pasta perfectly.

The cookies were cooked in the toaster oven in the sunroom.

DAY 4


Jarred salad

Wacky Cake or cookies

Tea

COMMENTS:

Cook the chicken leg quarters in the crockpot in your summer kitchen and you have a filling meal without ever heating up the kitchen.   This recipe combines two Master Mixes to make an entirely separate meal.

DAY 5

Spaghetti and Meatballs

Jarred salad

Garlic toast

Tea

Peach cobbler

COMMENTS:

If you own an electric skillet hit the summer kitchen and use it to make this dish.  Use your rice cooker or a small crockpot to cook your spaghetti noodles.  OR use the same method I used for cooking the macaroni the day before.

The peaches for this meal were purchased as “seconds” at our local feed store.  I got a bag full for $2.50 and they’ve been delicious, but it’s time to finish them up.  So into the cobbler they went.  The cobbler crust was simply Stir ‘n Roll biscuit dough with some sugar and cinnamon added in to a thin version of the biscuit dough that was dropped on the hot syrup from my prepping the peaches and then baked until golden brown in the toaster oven.

DAY 6


Refried beans

Jarred Salad with Chipotle Ranch Dressing

Cinnamon Sugar Flour Tortilla Chips

Tea

COMMENTS:

The first time I ever heard of fish tacos I was a young sahm watching soap operas and one man on the soap was complaining his wife had served him tuna tacos for dinner the night before.  At the time I gagged at the thought of any fish in a taco.

Fast forward through the years and I heard more and more about fish tacos of all sorts.  Then one weekend, back when we were still eating out, we were at Long John Silver’s and they were giving away free fish tacos.  I thought “why not?”  I was hooked! 

Not long after that Taco Bueno started carrying them too.  While one makes them with shredded cabbage on them the other uses shredded lettuce. One uses corn tortillas, the other uses flour tortillas.   Either way they are truly good.  They are something I’ve come to miss since we’ve stopped eating out.  So why not make them at home?  I developed the recipe and was VERY pleased with the outcome.  I hope you will like them too.

DAY 7

Pancakes


Milk

COMMENTS:

We love going to that very famous pancake house for pancakes and waffles, just like everyone else.  One of our favorite parts of the meal is the large variety of flavored pancake syrups.  But why spend the money for so much money for a meal you can make for pennies on the dollar at home in just a few minutes?

As you can see you can easily do Summer Kitchen cooking and help keep your home cooler with just a little pre-planning.

Jan who REALLY  wants a solar cooker and dehydrator in OK








Sunday, June 10, 2012

Week #1 GROUND BEEF


WEEK #1—GROUND BEEF
So now that we’ve covered the basic how-to’s let’s do some actual menu planning.  As I said I planned for ground beef for the first week.  We live on a varying schedule here on the Rock ‘n Tree Ranch and therefore most meals are “whenever” only dinner has a set time for those who are home, 5:30 pm whenever possible.  Therefore I merely list what is available for the week for breakfasts and lunches and everyone picks and chooses on those as their taste buds are tempted.  I try to stick with the dinner menu pretty closely, however, because we need the leftovers for lunches and meals later in the week.
I plan on using the following format for each menu post as I go:
I.                   Breakfast opportunities
II.                 Lunch Opportunities
III.              Dinner Menus
IV.              Snack Opportunities
Each one will be expounded on as needed below the listing.
In each one where I have included a recipe on the blog there will be a hyperlink to that recipe.  Each recipe will be categorized with the same terms so you could do a search using the search feature at the left for recipes not only by name, but by what category they fall in.  IE: Master Mix Meatballs would pop up when you searched for ground beef, ground chicken, ground turkey, meatballs.  You could also search for the recipe that used the Master Mix Meatballs by name ex: Sweet ‘n Sour Meatballs. 
When a Master Mix is used in a recipe it will also hyperlink back to the Master Mix recipe if you need it.
As I mentioned before the first few weeks will be familiar to some because they were listed on my original blog, which is now dedicated to my stories, travel info and mystery shopping It can be viewed at: Mystery Shopping
Hopefully this new format will be easier to view the menus and recipes with. So let’s get started:
BREAKFAST OPPORTUNITIES
Hot Cereals available:
Oatmeal
Farina
Multi-grain
Cold Cereals available:
         Raisin Bran
         Grape-nuts
Fruit available:
         Dried cherries
         Grapefruit
         Strawberries, frozen ones after the strawberry dessert is          served
         Mulberries
Beverages available:
         Hot Tea
         Water
         Milk
         Orange juice
COMMENTS
            I had leftover French bread from the week before so I sliced it all up to make the French toast in one big batch.  What was not eaten the day I cooked it was either refrigerated or frozen to be heated quickly in the microwave, or toaster oven for a grab and go breakfast as needed.
All produce is purchased fresh on the grocery shopping day and I try very hard to only get the amount I am certain will be eaten before it becomes too ripe.  Buying in bulk is not good if the food goes to waste.  If I get a very good deal on the produce I will, however, purchase more than we need and then either can, dry or freeze the rest before it becomes too ripe for our food storage.
The mulberries were from our trees, and therefore a free fruit for the week.
Cereals, both hot and cold are either store brand, purchased in bulk or purchased on sale with a coupon to help keep the costs of them down.  I also am experimenting, with some good success on making my own “instant” versions of the hot cereals and pre-packaging them for fast getaways in the mornings.
LUNCH OPPORTUNITIES:
Sandwich Ingredients:
            Peanut butter
            Jelly
            Honey
            American Cheese, either on a sandwich with cold or grilled
            ToastedCheddar
            Bologna
Sandwich Toppings
            Mayonnaise
            Miracle Whip
            A variety of mustards
            Italian Dressing
            Lettuce
            Cheeses
            Pickles, both sweet and dill
            Sliced peppers
            Salt and pepper
Salad Ingredients:
            Jarred Greens
            Sprouts
Soups:
            Tomato
            Home canned beef
Leftovers
COMMENTS
            When serving sandwiches change up the breads on a regular basis to keep things from becoming boring.  An American Cheese grilled sandwich on white bread every time is quite frankly boring.  But when you serve it on rye or pumpernickel it suddenly becomes a sandwich shop sandwich and a special treat.  Also change up the cheese for grilled cheese sandwiches.  I particularly like cream cheese on raisin bread for a special treat.
Don’t forget to vary the butter or oil you use to grill the sandwich as well.  We like using garlic butter for a change, but other favorites include adding different herbs or oils to the toasting process.
The Cheddar Toasted sandwiches are a different sandwich all together, see the recipe to see how they are different.
On the subject of bologna sandwiches remember this comes in all different types and each one has its own unique taste.  I like garlic bologna, but the men in the house do not, so I only get it on rare occasions.  There are also beef bologna, classic bologna, and varieties that contain pickles, olives, and cheese.  Vary your bologna and spice up this plain Jane sandwich.
What you top a sandwich with can make all the difference in the world too.  I often use the salad making from jarred greens (simply greens that have been vacuumed sealed in a jar to prolong their freshness) in place of lettuce on a sandwich, after all many of those greens are lettuce and they add a variety of tastes to the sandwich, as will the sprouts.
Tomato soup too can be jazzed up with a variety of herbs or by dropping in croutons, crackers, leftover cooked vegetables or chunks of cheese for a different taste.
JP NOTES: When packing hot sandwiches for lunches place a paper towel in the container for them with the sandwich.  This will absorb the moisture from the heat of cooking and help to keep your sandwich from becoming soggy.
To save money on packed lunches invest in reusable containers such as the Ziploc brand instead of plastic sandwich bags.  A small square Ziploc bowl (2 cup capacity) will hold a sandwich nicely, two if they are thin.
If no microwave or refrigerator is available at work invest in a variety of sizes of thermos containers (often found at garage sales and thrift shops) as well as thermo lunch bags and ice chests for hot foods.  Rinse these containers with hot water prior to filling and they will keep hot foods hot.  Doing the same with a quick fill of ice water prior to filling cold food containers, or storing the containers in your refrigerator will help keep cold foods cold.
To cut expense and mess in a small ice chest for cold foods visit  your local dollar store and pick up blue ice blocks.  Get enough that there will always be one in the freezer while the other is in use.
Now for the biggie:
DINNER WEEK 1 DAY 1
Mashed Potatoes
Black-eyed Peas
Carrot Cake
Iced Tea
COMMENTS
The recipe for the Master Mix Meatballs uses four pounds of ground beef.  This will allow you plenty for this meal, the Sweet ‘n Sour Meatballs later in the week and to preserve the remaining for future weeks either by freezing or by canning.  I can mine because I do not have a free standing freezer.  I can them both plain and in beef broth for future use.  Please handle all food safely and preserve properly.
A triple batch of mashed potatoes is made to be used in the making of the potato salad later in the week, as well as having mashed potatoes again with the meal on day 3. 
The black-eyed peas were home canned from dried peas when I needed to finish filling my canner on a previous day.
This particular carrot cake was made from a grocery store mix that I got for just a few cents by combining a coupon with a good sale on the cake mix and frosting mix to go with it.  At other times I will make a scratch cake if there isn’t such a deal going on.
I made a large batch of the dinner roll mixture, but froze part of the dough in balls to use later in the week to have fresh dinner rolls again.
DINNER WEEK 1 DAY 2
Pinto beans and ham
Carrot Cake
Milk or iced tea
COMMENTS:
The pinto beans were cooked as per package directions and I seasoned them with a ham bone that I had froze for future use from the Christmas ham.
I cooked an extra large batch of beans to use in future meals and to home can for quick grab and run meals.
DINNER WEEK 1 DAY 3
Mashed Potatoes
Green Beans
Baked Apples
Iced Tea
COMMENTS
The brown gravy is made from one of the Master Mix recipes.  The mashed potatoes and dinner rolls are leftovers from the mega batch earlier in the week.
DINNER WEEK 1 DAY 4
Smoked roast
Corn on the cob
French Fries
Black eyed peas
Garlic bread
Carrot Cake
Tea
COMMENTS:
One of the problems one can run into in the beginning is that on the first week you might not have the leftovers I had to incorporate into the meal plan.  In this cake I had smoked roast and French bread both leftover that needed to be used before they ruined.  If you do not have these cruise your fridge, freezer and pantry.  What leftovers could you turn into a good meal on this day?
DINNER WEEK 1 DAY 5
Egg rolls
Ham Fried Rice
Steamed rice, make a big batch for use in future meals
Tea
Almondshortbread cookies with strawberries
COMMENTS:
The Sweet ‘n Sour Meatballs are made with the Meatball Master Mix from day 1 of this week.  I used frozen cooked rice and home canned ham leftover from the Christmas ham, along with eggs from our chickens to to make the Ham fried rice.  The strawberries are the frozen ones mentioned in the breakfast menus.  This was purchased on sale and kept frozen until I thawed them the day of the meal.  You could also freeze your own strawberries if you have a good source for them.
DINNER WEEK 1 DAY 6
BBQ smoked sausage
Cole slaw, make double batch for later in the week
Macaroni and cheese, purchased on sale
Iced tea
Lemon Bars
COMMENTS:
Again we run into first week troubles.  I purchased the smoke sausage in bulk from Sam’s Club and frozen it in meal size portions a couple of weeks prior to setting up this menu.
The bar-b-q sauce was some I made and canned last summer.  
As noted in the menu above make a double batch of the cole slaw because it always improves with age and it will appear again the first of next week.
I confess we LIKE the blue box Mac ‘n Cheese and it will appear a lot over the next year.  I purchase it either in bulk at Sam’s Club or on sale with a coupon whenever possible.
DINNER WEEK 1 DAY 7
Bean burritos
Mexican Rice
Guacamole
Sopapillas
Tea
COMMENTS:
The burritos are made by making refried beans out of leftover pinto beans from earlier in the week.
I basically stir fried some of the leftover rice from earlier in the week with chili seasoning and cumin to taste to make the rice.
SNACK OPPORTUNITIES WEEK #1:
   Carrot Cake
            Almond Shortbread cookies
            Lemon Bars
            Grapefruit
            Fruit Cups
            Strawberries
            Mulberries
            Carrots
COMMENTS:
            If someone snacks hard on some of the sweets then you may need to adjust your scheduled desserts for later in the week.
I hope this helps you in your first week of the year, no matter what month you start in.
Jan who is hoping to stick with this plan for a full year in OK















           




GETTING STARTED



I actually started this theme back the first of the year, but as things always go, life happened and I strayed from the path.  So the first few menus will be familiar to those of you that have been following my “See the USA the Mystery Shopping Way” blog posts. 

I plan on expounding on the menus, including more of the recipes, as well as more substitutions and variations to help you customize your own menus to suit your family needs.  Along the way I may mention various websites I have found helpful to me in my planning.  I have no association with these websites/companies, just a satisfied customer.   Occasionally I will, however, also refer to my other blogs and website and include the links. 

While planning for three healthy appetite adults works well for me if you have 7 children, as many of my friends do, you will have to adapt the recipes to suit your needs obviously. 

You may also need to take in consideration things like allergens and likes and dislikes.  My son prefers to not have onions in his food.  Not due to the taste, but due to the texture of them.  So any menu item I’m planning on a day he is home from work will most likely have onion powder in it instead of fresh or dried onions or onion juice.  He also has trouble with certain foods due to allergies, so I simply either don’t serve those foods on the days he is home for dinner, adapt the recipe to prevent allergy problems or I have a back-up menu item for him. My wonderful husband is what I call a selective eater, so he gets similar considerations.  On the nights he is working too late to dine with us, or is traveling for work my son and I will have foods my husband doesn't care for, but we like.

We also eat meatless a few days a week for financial  and health reasons—I’m a tightwad.  This often means you will see a meatless breakfast for dinner at our house 3-5 times a month. 

Your family may not care at all for any of the meals I list.  Substitute meals your family likes.  The entire idea is to plan out your menus to what YOUR family likes.  I’m merely trying to give you examples.

As I go along I will include recipes that contain substitutes and variations.  You will see a lot of what I call Master Mixes that can be used in numerous ways, I’ll periodically include the recipes for these as well. 

A word here about Master Mixes, these are substitutes for those pre-packaged mixes you find on your grocery shelves.  So any recipe you have on hand that you normally use one of those mixes for will work well using them.  The Master Mixes have numerous pluses to them:

A.    They are generally cheaper to make and use then the pre-made ones.  Of course if you are an extreme couponer, then that may not be so.  Always do a cost comparison to see what is more economical for you.

B.     They take only a few minutes to make up and generally keep for 6 months or longer if stored properly.

C.     YOU, not some corporation, controls what goes into them.  If you are cutting back on salt, you control the amount of salt that goes in.  If you can’t or won’t use refined sugar, then substitute out for them by all means.  Need gluten free? Adapt the recipe to fit your needs.  You are in control.

D.    You control the portion size you need.  If your family eats pancakes and waffles several times a week.  You make up huge batches and refrigerate or freeze the extras for future meals, but if they are a once a month item, then a small batch is all you need in your pantry. 

E.     You adapt for your family’s likes and dislikes.  Remember the no onion male in my family.  He loves salads and various salad dressings.  Many call for minced onion.  Only he doesn’t like it remember, so I use onion powder for a smoother dressing and no texture problems for him. My husband doesn’t care for round steak, so a Master Mix that calls for that will have another cut of meat put in it.  Yes, there are meat Master Mixes that will appear along the way.

Back to getting started.  This blog is the way I am doing it.  What works well for me may not work well for you, this is merely a guide to help you get started.  While I choose to do a “meat a week”, you may prefer to do it entirely different.  I will be using the “best buy” list from http://frugalliving.about.com/od/bargainshopping/tp/Best_Time_To_Buy_Everything.htm I originally started this idea back in January, but like I said life happened and things fell along the way side.  So here it is 6 months later and I’ll start again, using June 1 and the seasonal items with it from here on out. If you are starting with the menus at another time of year simply adapt where necessary to get your best buys.

In my day to day cooking I use a lot of food storage items.  I am not a prepper, nor am I LDS, I am simply a woman who likes having foods on hand for any emergency.  While I may never have a huge abundance of food at my beck and call, I will always have enough for dinner. 

A word singing the praises of food storage for “not the end of the world” scenarios.  Years ago my father-in-law was losing his battle to heart disease.  Family came in from all around to be with him in his last days.  Because I had an abundance of sleeping space and a camper we often had as many as 30 people at meal times at my home for over a three week period.  I easily fed all 30 people good basic meals with few trips to the grocery for perishables. 

Right now my food storage is not that extensive due to being like so much of the nation and having had both the men in my home unemployed for 18+ months. Luckily both are back to work now and the garden is thriving, so I will slowly build my food storage back up as I work my way through the year’s worth of menus.  

How and if you build a basic food storage system up is your own personal choice.  I will always have the basics on hand for at least surviving a winter storm or something similar.  I recommend you do too.

I personally love the convenience of dried foods.  I’ve done many a calculation on how using dried foods saves my family money, not to mention time in the long run.  Here is a prime example of my calculations on the subject from a post I recently did on a yahoogroup:

“This is how I calculate the costs.  Let’s take celery, my favorite to have on hand at all times dried food. 

1.     Celery is one of those things that fluctuate in cost constantly and it seems I never need it when it is cheap.

2.     Most recipes call for 1 -2 stalks of celery, but you can’t purchase it that way, so you have to purchase a whole bunch.  But unless you are eating a lot of celery that week/month the rest dies a horrible death in your fridge.  So now you have wasted most of your purchase and you have a blob to throw out and no one wants to touch that thing!

3.     Much of a bunch of celery in inedible by the time you trim off the bitter parts, so there is a lot of waste there as well even if you use the whole bunch.

4.     Convenience it takes only a little hot/boiling water and about 5-10 minutes to rehydrate the dried celery and unless it is a meal where I need to sauté the celery in butter/fat I don’t even do that I just throw it in the soup, dressing whatever and let it rehydrate as it cooks with the other foods.  Compared to fresh celery which you must clean, trim, string, and slice/dice.  Not to mention the extra dishes you dirty up while doing that.

5.     Dry is easier to calculate on increasing decreasing amounts in recipes—who wants a ½ or ¼ stalk of celery in their fridge? So less waste there too.

6.     Need celery powder or celery salt for a recipe?  You can pulverize the dried celery easily to make your own, you can’t do that with fresh celery.

7.     Less storage space needed, and it doesn’t have to be refrigerated!  Great when the power dies.

Now based on those seven items do a cost comparison. Celery  in this area usually runs over $1 a bunch, sometimes close to $2.  Generally I only need it for 1-4 recipes  (say roughly 40 ¼ cup servings per year) for the month so I end up spending roughly $12-$24 a year on fresh celery and wasting a lot of it.  At Honeyville Grains the everyday price for a #10 can of celery is  $15.39 and contains roughly 40 ¼ c servings.  So right up front it is cheaper to use and that is before their very common 10% off sales or purchasing case lots(6 cans) for $82.99.  The only drawback is the shipping, which is always  $4.49 no matter what you order or how much (unless they are running a free shipping sale).  But then I never order just one can at a time, so the shipping gets pretty miniscule per can when I order. Other places like Emergency Essentials, Shelf Reliance and such also have great deals on shelf stable items and all run sales.  Also check out amazon.com they have a LOT of dehydrated foods.  I am slowly filling in the Ishopare ap on my ipod that is a price book that helps me see when a sale is truly a sale on the things I want/need for my pantries and other household items. 
I will say that I find I am using more celery than I use to now because I always have it on hand now, where previously I didn’t and didn’t want to drive the 16 miles to get some.  But is that a bad thing? My family is getting more fiber and nutrients as a result.  I’m also cutting down the amount of meat we eat when I up the veggies in a meal, so I save even more money there.  My next purchase will be dried meats and I’ll let you know how my family likes those once I get them and we start incorporating them into our weekly meal plan. 
I use the same type considerations for things like carrots (really handy to have the carrots already diced and just drop a little dried into all sorts of meals I didn’t use to put carrots in just to add a fleck of color and oh yeah extra nutrition.   

When potatoes hit $5 a 5# bag here this last winter I simply went to the basement and brought up the dried potato slices, dices and hash browns that I had purchased on sale earlier in the year.  Any more I only use fresh potatoes for things like baked potatoes.  No rotting  or sprouting potatoes in this house any more!”

You notice I mentioned the ipod ap ishopare.  I paid around $2.99 for this ap and I love it.  It has all the conveniences of a price book, without the bulk of carrying a heavy binder around.  I enter the info online and download it to my ipod.  It allows me to instantly compare the prices of a single item at numerous stores/websites so I know when a sale is really a sale. 

Now you don’t NEED an ipod ap to do this, you can do it as I did it for years, with a spiral notebook and a pencil.  In fact I still collect my data that way and simply enter it online in the computer at home. KNOWING your prices can save you hundreds a year.  You can also make notations as to when you found different foods on very good sales and be prepared for the next time they go on sale.

Another program I use is Master Cook Deluxe.  This is a wonderful recipe program that allows you to either cruise the cookbooks that are included in it, or create your own.  It also allows you to “size” a recipe immediately to meet your needs, creates grocery lists, plan menus and much more.  I use an older version of it, but just read the program has recently been purchased by a new company that will be putting out many upgrades on what I already have.  I am very pleased with the version I have, but it does have some bugs in it.  So I’ll be anxious to see how they improve it.

Again you don’t need a computer program to do this, I just find it simplifies everything for me to use it.

Good tools are essential to an easy time of preparing meals in the kitchen.  We all have our favorites, but there may be a few things I will suggest you might not exactly have in your kitchen.  Especially where Master Mixes are concerned.  Not everyone has a bowl that will hold 16 cups of mix.  If you don’t, don’t panic, don’t run to the store to purchase one, use your big stew pot, a roaster pan or even a clean food grade bucket to mix the Master Mix in.  It doesn’t matter the container, all that matters is the capacity to mix in.

For  flour based Master Mixes I highly recommend a wire whisk, but if you don’t have one, stir well with a fork or a large spoon.  The important thing is to simply get it mixed well.

I have an old heavy duty Oster Kitchen Center that I use when doing bulk cooking, but again, you don’t have to have one, it’s just handy to have. 

If you are going to can then you need jars and rings.  If you want to vacuum seal foods, then you need a sealer, but you CAN do without these, it’s just more time consuming.

Storage containers for the Master Mixes can be something as simple as 2 liter bottles you have collected and cleaned and dried well.  We have used these for years and have successfully stored popcorn and other materials in them in excess of 10 years and still have a quality product to use.

To use two/three liter bottles cut the top off of one of the same size to create a funnel to fill the other bottles with.  Tap the bottles as you are filling them either with your hand or on the counter top.  The more you tap, the more air your force out and the more that will fit in the container.  The more air you force out, the better the storage quality will be. 

I label both the side and the top of the bottle with its contents because I store my two liters on their sides.  They take less space this way and you can readily see everything you have available.  I do place a “chock” on either side of the two liter pyramid I build or in a cardboard box laid on its side to keep the base of the pyramid I build from rolling out.

Whether you use “official” storage containers, or two liters labeling is essential.  Everyone has their own labeling system and you will need to develop what is best for you to easily understand. 

I write directly on the part of the bag you cut off when using vacuum sealed bags with a permanent marker.  On jars and other containers I will reuse in the future I use a peel and stick label, much like a file folder label with a permanent marker.

It is important to label everything you store to avoid disasters in the future.  Brownie Master Mix looks just like Chocolate Pudding Master Mix, but they are not interchangeable. Same goes for canned or frozen chili and spaghetti sauce mixes, but you could get away with interchanging them a bit.

I HIGHLY recommend that if you are going to can your foods the way I do that you invest in the Ball Blue Book and follow its USDA requirements religiously.  There is no savings in all this if you poison your family. There is also an excellent free yahoogroup that has a wealth of information and helpful people on it for canning.  You can join this group at: Canning2-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

So now that those basics are out of the way let’s get started.

To do it the way I do you choose your main meat for the week.  Because we eat a lot of ground beef I chose to start with it, in subsequent weeks I use other meats, but will have already prepared ground beef ready to go for “fill in” meals.  I also tend to plan menus around ground beef every two to three weeks. I have ample recipes that my family likes to do this with without duplicating meals very often throughout the year.

Because meat is GENERALLY cheaper if you purchase it in large quantities I purchase most of my meats in 10# lots.  At Sam’s Club the 10# chub of 80% (my family’s preference) lean ground beef is $.40-$.60 per pound cheaper to purchase it in the 10# chub.  They do not have this chub displayed, you have to ask the butcher for it, but they do have it in the back.  It is the exact same meat as in the smaller packages, it just hasn’t been reground to make it pinker and repackaged.  If you have the freezer space or the time to do a major canning session and the cash it’s even cheaper to purchase a case (8) of these chubs at a time.  Since I have neither the freezer space or the cash I go with the 10# at a time.

Before I ever bring it home I plan my menu for the week and how I will preserve the rest of the meat.  We no longer have a free standing freezer.  I can all excess meats following the safety measures laid out in the Ball Blue Book cookbook. I am very careful in the canning of meat and other food items. I also occasionally dry meat, again following every safety precaution possible.

Once I’ve decided on the meat of the week, and checked the grocery sale ads to see what side dishes might be on sale,  I look through my recipes to see what might be good for the family for that week.  I try to include meals that will use much of the same type preparation, and/or that have items that leftovers can be used successfully in for other meals.  An example: A meatloaf on Sunday makes good meatloaf sandwiches for the work week lunches.  Or chili, spaghetti sauce, and taco filler all require browning the meat as the first step.  So I plan on doing all the browning on the first night that we are having one of those meals.

I use the meat of the week for 3 or so main meals.  The rest I fill in with meatless, or meals that can be made from meats I have already home canned or otherwise preserved.

I cruise the sale ads online for the grocery stores I shop at, most major grocery stores now have their weekly ads online, so you can view them without having to purchase a newspaper. I compare the prices with mail ordering the groceries.  Both amazon.com and walmart.com have free delivery on groceries and often their prices are cheaper than if you made the trip to the grocery to do your shopping once you consider fuel, sales tax and impulse purchases. 

I include items from the sales ads either for the main meat of the week or for the side dishes when the price is good.  I also purchase a minimum of two of everything I need at the sales price.  One for using that week, and one for food storage.  If you purchase two every time you use one you will soon have your food storage built up without really feeling the pinch.

I also check the garden for any foods that might come ripe that week to use in the weekly menu.  You do not need a lot of land, or even any land at all to grow a garden to supplement your meals.  A large flower pot will work well and fit into most any space.  I personally have a decent size garden and a good helper in it, but not everyone does.  Even if you only grow herbs on a window sill fresh herbs add a lot to a meal and basically zero cost.

My menus for each week include breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks for each day of the week.  Once you get started you will soon figure out the ease and flow of the system and before you know it you will have a year’s worth of menus all laid out, one week at a time.

After you create your menus, print it out, then create your grocery list for the week, right down to the total quantity you need for the week of each and EVERY ingredient.

Now shop your food storage, do you have enough of EVERY ingredient on hand?  Check your quantities, don’t take for granted you have enough of any one ingredient, VERIFY it.  Make a list of everything you do not have on hand and then consult your price book and see where it would be best to purchase the items. 

Now do all your shopping for the entire week before the first day of the week.  Don’t try to shop and do prep work on the same day, if you do you are setting yourself up for problems.  Life happens and even the sturdiest of us are subject to getting tired.

The first day do all the prep work you can, brown the meats, chop the veggies you can do ahead of time, put your Master Mixes together and POST YOUR MENU where the entire family can see this.  This is important, this gives them a head’s up that this is what we are eating this week, what is available for them to snack on, and what leftovers they BETTER NOT TOUCH if they want to eat later in the week.  Nothing worse than planning on a pound of ground beef that you have already browned for spaghetti sauce to discover that your teenage son has consumed it as a “snack”.

I plan desserts for every day, when they are readily available we actually eat smaller quantities than if they are only occasionally available.  A batch of cookies lasts longer if they know there will be another “sweet” for them on down the line.  Sometimes our desserts are fruit based, other times they are a sinful sugary treat, but they are always there.

So now you have the basics, let’s get started on the year.
Jan who hopes this hasn’t been too preachy in OK.