The focus this
month was to continue eating from my kitchen freezer to use up anything
remaining from 2023 as well as to use up what was currently in the refrigerator
and pantry. I made it all the way to the
end of March and can now officially call this pantry challenge complete. All food
in the freezer and deep freezer is now 2024 or newer and the items in the
fridge and pantry all fresh and current with very little food waste so far this
year. Yes!
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| On sale, digital coupons & markdowns! |
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| More sales & digital coupon savings |
Because I was
using up things I already had on hand I was able to focus more of my grocery
budget on stocking the freezer with good quality meats at a very good price as
well as some more dairy and toward the latter half of the month a good bit of
fresh produce and some frozen broccoli florets.
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| Stock up LTFS items |
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| Digital coupons & markdowns saved me a bundle |
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| I am vacuum sealing everything I buy now before it goes into the deep freezer |
Most of the meat
I purchased this month was on markdown and included steaks as well as preformed
one-third pound beef patties (my version of fast food) and a ten count pack of
pork loin chops. Pork breakfast sausage
was on sale for $2.99 a package so I picked up four of those packages and because
they were already vacuum packed I was able to add them right into my deep
freezer.
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| $2.99 each for these packages of sausages |
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| Score! |
A couple weeks
later a sale Italian sausages at $2.99 a package allowed me to restock the deep
freezer as I had no Italian sausage in there. I enjoyed some of the steak and burger
patties, but then I repackaged all of the remaining meat into meal sized
portions and vacuum sealed it before tucking it away in my deep freezer. My beef shelf is completely full, the pork
shelf is full and has overflowed a bit onto the chicken shelf.
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| I decided to vacuum seal four sausages in each package before placing them in the deep freezer makes them $2.40 each |
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| Two pork chops per vacuum sealed package making them only $1.00 per package! |
I added dairy
items – cream, sour cream, cottage cheese, two pounds of butter, yogurt and
milk, all of which was on sale or I had digital coupon offers making all of
these things much more affordable. The
butter was vacuum sealed and added to the deep freezer and I am hoping to add
more butter in there as the year progresses.
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| Delicious & nutritious meals! |
Fresh produce
was purchased on sale or with a digital coupon offer. After using up every last bit of what I already
had on hand I was able to restock the crisper drawer in my refrigerator the
last half of the month. With asparagus
in season I was able to purchase plenty to blanch and vacuum seal. I added three one pound packages of asparagus
spears to the deep freezer for only 99¢ each.
Doing it myself saved me $3 per package over buying it in the frozen
vegetable section at the grocery store.
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| Another item checked off my restock list |
My nonfood
purchases consisted of two tubes of toothpaste bought on sale for 99¢ each, a
bonus size bottle of shampoo and a bonus size bottle of conditioner at $1.25
each. These were items on my LTFS
nonfood restock list and I was happy to be able to check them off of my
list. Total spent on nonfood items rang
in at a mere $4.48.
As you may
recall, last month I went way over
budget, but since I had extra cash on hand it didn’t adversely affect me overall. I was blessed with a nice tax refund so I
used part of it to get a jumpstart on my restock list and take advantage of
some really good sales. Nonetheless, I
do want to get back on budget so I had to be a little bit creative this month
with my budget.
Last month two lovely people 😍 were kind enough to buy me coffee last
month and I wanted to honor that and make very wise use of their gifts so I used those proceeds to
cover the cost of some of my grocery purchases.
Adding that to my monthly budget helped me to shave quite a bit off of
that deficit I began the month with. My
food purchases this month came to $66.05 leaving me with a rollover deficit of only $10.84
which means I’ll be starting the month of May with a budget of $89.16. I think I’ll be right back on track moving
forward, especially as my deep freezer is pretty full and my stock up list is
now much shorter. How did you do this
month? Any great bargains too good to
pass up?
I have been eating down my freezer (I don't have a deep freeze) and trying to be mindful of eating out only once a week. Usually this is on Mondays when I am tired and craving Chik-Fil-A. (: I did put together a small LTFS situation in my pantry and haven't needed to pull anything out of it. Like you, I look for mark downs in the meat department, and Thursdays are the day for that. I should look into the vacuum sealer!
ReplyDeleteWay to go!
ReplyDeleteI was getting really low on meat in the freezer. The clearance meats hadn't been available but one day last month I lucked out and at 3 different stores I was able to scoop up quite a bit. My husband likes to grill out once a week so I like to have burgers & steaks available. Otherwise, he'll go pay full price!!
I want to add for anyone new to freezing bargains who doesn't have a vacuum sealer that I've frozen butter without sealing it. I recently used up butter that was 2-3 years old and it was fine. Also I once read that some vegetables you can skip blanching if you will be using them within 2-3 months. I have done that in the past. There's been times where the choice was between throwing them in the freezer or throwing them out because I had no time for blanching. I put in freezer and used later and they were fine. Green beans need to be blanched. I've frozen cabbage and broccoli without blanching. I freeze lemons & limes whole. A lot of time the issue is quality of freezing an item long term rather than safety. YMMV