Grocery List

After the month of January, when The Great Pantry Challenge ends, we’ll be making a few shopping trips to the bigger towns to re-stock our pantry. 

We buy staples like white sugar, veggie oil, white flour (yes, I know it’s icky, but I still occasionally use it), pasta and some canned goods at Aldi.  Then off to Sam’s Club where we get most of our bulky items like popcorn for grinding, honey, olive oil, cocoa powder, rice, beans and miscellaneous spices. 

I haven’t bought any bulk wheat in almost three years and it’s time to get more.  I used to buy my grains from Walton Feed (www.waltonfeed.com) and Country Life Natural Foods (www.CLNF.org).  Walton Feed generally had cheaper grains, but Country Life had a larger variety of Organic grains and the best Thick Rolled Oats I’ve ever eaten.  I was very happy with both of them, but since we’ve moved farther south the shipping costs are too much to justify either of them.  The last time I bought wheat it was from a bakery about an hour away.  The price was double that of Walton Feed, but still cheaper when you added the shipping costs.

Corn, Rice, Beans, Pasta & Wheat.

Easy long-term storage items.

Some grocery list, hugh?  Where’s the Sloppy Joe mix, the Shake ‘n Bake, the Hamburger Helper and Tombstone frozen pizza you say?  If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time you already know the answer.  I don’t consider most of the items in your local Dominick’s or Jewel (can you tell where I was originally from???) food.  Yes, I’ve eaten my share of Ritz crackers topped with Cheeze Whiz and mini-hotdogs wrapped in ready-made biscuit dough, but I try not to.  And now that Rhiannon has come into our life, I try very hard not to subject her tiny intestinal tract to preservatives, artificial sweeteners and dyes.

That brings us to the reasoning for all the basic staples.  I make our meals from scratch…..most of the time.  I wish I could say that a box of Stovetop Stuffing has never graced our pantry, but I’d be fibbing.  But I do make homemade meals the majority of the time.  It also helps that I really love to cook.  And eat.  My scale is a liar by the way.

Even though I’d like to be able to convince all of you that cooking from scratch is the way to go, I also know that reality is in play here.  Like you work 50+ hours a week away from home and take care of your children.  Or you haven’t made room in your home for a large pantry.  Or you just hate, hate, hate cooking (like my Sister…..I feel sorry for her husband) and can live on a boneless, skinless chicken breast cooked in the microwave on a paper plate & served with a side of mustard and a microwaved bag of steamed broccoli.* 

And as long as your normal eating routine doesn’t include McDonald’s $1 menu every meal, you’ll save money on your grocery bill by cooking from scratch.  Not to mention it’s healthier for you.

If there is still room in your bag of New Year’s Resolutions, please humor me and try to take one day of the week, or even one day a month, and try cooking something from scratch.  And if you’re my Sister, keep your spirits up….and keep the phone number to Little Caesar’s handy. 

*One of the dinners my Sister made me several years ago and I’m not in any way exaggerating.  Wasn’t even butter or salt on the broccoli.  I vividly recall peeling the cooked chicken breast off the paper plate. 

Saving $$ and stocking up on Groceries

Besides the obvious – growing your own produce - how does one keep the grocery bills down?  You can use coupons, buy store brands or generic canned or packaged goods, frequent a Dent & Scratch store, join a warehouse club or shop online to buy in bulk.  Or just eat less (which I probably need to practice more).   Most of these things are no-brainers, but sometimes you can get in a rut and need a thrifty smack-upside-the-head.

Coupons.  I’ve read many a blog and heard of several coupon sites (some which you pay for!) that give tips & hints on how to “stack” coupons to get things half-off or more, sometimes even for just pennies.  I’ve tried the coupon clipping thing, but I found that any coupons that looked remotely interesting were either not a product we normally buy, or the product was still more expensive after the coupon than the generic or store brand.  Not to mention the fact that we don’t get a local paper or even those junk mail coupon flyers in the mail.  So although you may be able to save some cash clipping coupons, I personally can’t justify it for our household.  Sale flyers are another nice thing to have when planning your grocery shopping.  But make sure you aren’t driving another ten miles to get the two items that were cheaper down the road.  You may have saved fifteen cents on a can of tuna, but burned two bucks worth of fuel.

Store Brands & Discount Grocery Stores.  There are very few brand name grocery items I buy, in fact, I couldn’t tell you which items they were until I needed them.  Anyways.  There are only so many canning or food production facilities that provide products to your area.  Do you think that each brand has its own farm and packing facility?  Nope.  Most store brands are packed in the same facility and usually with the same product as the name brands – just different labels.  Some will have different standards though, so it’s not like everything is exactly the same.  Stop falling prey to the fancy advertising.  Try a store or generic brand of veggies (or whatever) and honestly ask yourself if the name brand is any better.  And, if you still think it is better, is it worth the extra cost? 

Scratch & Dent Stores.  We have two of these stores in our area.  I wouldn’t really count on this type of store to provide me with everything I needed because the items change weekly, but it’s a nice place to check out.  Just make sure that if the canned goods are dented that the actual contents haven’t been compromised.  And definitely stay away from any bulging cans (and let the store manager know about them).  One of these stores routinely had a lot of organic & “hippy-dippy” foods there and I loved it!  Nothing wrong with the items, most within their expiration dates, but the items just weren’t selling quickly enough in the big stores around here.  So I got great deals on some obscure (at least to the folk around here) organic items.  I think the best deal I got was for 6 oz. of dried Shiitake mushrooms for $2.49.......I just used the last of them with our Mu Shu Veggie supper last night.  Wish I had bought more.

Mu Shu Veggies with Rice

Warehouse Clubs.  The closest one we have is Sam’s Club and it’s two hours away.  We buy popcorn (for grinding into cornmeal), white & brown rice, olive oil, white sugar, bulk spices and baking additives like vanilla.  We used to have an individual membership but ended up quitting it last year.  The membership dues were $40 a year, and even though we split the dues with my Mom, we still couldn’t justify the $20 cost as we were only going twice a year and I’m not even sure we saved $20 on buying in bulk.  So now we hitch a ride with a couple we know who does have a membership (thanks Ed & Sandy!!) and buy stuff with them.  Remember to compare the prices though!  There are some items (like pinto & black beans) that are still cheaper in the 5 lb. bags at the discount grocery store than it is at Sam’s. 

Online Shopping.  For those of us out in the boonies, online shopping is often the only way to find those hard-to-get items.  And that may mean something as “simple” as Vanilla Chai tea.  Hard-to-find is all relative around here.  Unfortunately, online shopping has one major drawback; shipping costs.  And escalating fuel costs are going to make shipping costs climb even higher.  You should take your fuel costs into consideration also.  An online item may cost more when shipping fees are added but if you’ve got to drive an hour to get something “cheaper” than it was online, are you really saving any money?

Another important tool in your shopping bag o’ tricks should be a price book.  A small booklet that you keep with you during all shopping outings that has the current prices of items you frequently (or even sort-of-frequently) buy.  I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve been at a store & stare at the price of carrots and wonder if they were cheaper at the store I’m going to be going to next.  On your next shopping outing, take a few minutes to jot down the prices of your regularly purchased items – and which store they were at.  You’ll thank me the next time you’re staring at the bag of romaine lettuce and wondering if you saw it cheaper down the road.

Food prices are continuing to rise every month (if not every week).  More than likely your paycheck has not followed this trend.  When you see a good deal on something at the grocery store, instead of buying one or two, buy a half-dozen or more.  And make it a practice every time you go to the store.  Stop buying just one or two cans or packages of such-and-such.  Not only will you have to make fewer trips to the store, but you’ll be on your way to having a nicely filled pantry.  Just make sure it is something that your family eats on a regular basis and that its shelf life is within the limits of when you think you’ll need to restock. 

One of the most important mottos for stocking your pantry is “Store what you Eat and Eat what you Store”.  I’ll talk more about that and long term storage items next blog.  Yeah, really exciting, I know.

The Great Pantry Challenge, Part 2

We started the New Year’s Pantry Challenge with a week of Woodstove Only cooking.  I reheated the leftover pork chops from New Year’s Eve dinner, baked three loaves of bread, baked potatoes, made two batches of soup, baked beans, and a few other easy things like canned veggies heated on the stove.   I even made two small batches of cookies. 

I took the cover off to see if the cookies were done....not quite.

Since the chickens are on their winter egg-strike, breakfasts usually consisted of oatmeal with apple butter and toast.  Cooking on the wood stove wasn’t rocket science, but it definitely took more thought & time than using our electric stove and range.  I was pretty happy with how the loaves of bread turned out so I may continue baking bread in the wood stove when the logs have burned down to coals.

I was going to start Part 2, Vegetarian cooking, on Monday, but we had to finish pork steaks from Sunday night and then Mom brought over homemade meatballs on Tuesday.  So I started our vegetarian week yesterday with oatmeal & fruit for breakfast and spaghetti & broccoli in a goat cheese sauce for supper.  I made extra spaghetti and had a lot of leftover sauce that I made for Mom’s meatballs so I also made a dish of “Polish Lasagna”.   It’s basically lasagna but instead of using lasagna noodles I used layers of spaghetti and my cheese layers were just goat cheese, mozzarella & parmesan (no egg).  I threw the casserole in the freezer for a meal later on this week. 

"Fast" food, Krazo Acres style.

Other things I’m planning on having are at least two soups, a batch of chili with cornbread, loaded baked potatoes, enchiladas with beans & rice, veggie stir fry and some sort of lentil dish.

After the Veggie Only week, we’ll have a How Cheap Can We Eat week and a Dry Storage Foods week (meaning nothing from the fridge or freezer).

We’re already half way through the month & with the exception of the bunch of grapes and the bananas Grandma bought for Rhiannon, nothing new has come from the grocery store.  I did, however stop at the store yesterday to return a Christmas gift.  Our Fire Department has a gift grab bag & I got a nice set of glasses.  Which doesn’t seem like anything special except that I was really wanting a new set since we haven’t had a matching set in several years.  One of the new glasses had a crack in it so I went to return it.  Since I was already at the store I picked up a few other things like kitty litter & windshield wiper fluid and not only managed to stay away from the grocery section, but didn’t even buy any of the kinda-unnecessary things that usually end up in the buggy.

Half a month of no grocery stores and I’m patting myself on the back.  How sad is that?  I suppose I really didn’t realize it until recently how often I went and really how unnecessary those trips were.  Was I having to go so often because I really needed something, or because I needed something to do?  I suspect the latter as I’m normally a very good list-maker and store trips never used to be for just one or two items. 

I think that my blog for tomorrow (or whenever I get to it) will be something along the lines of bulk buying and thrifty shopping.  Or something entirely different. Try not to let the suspense kill ya.

Filling the Freezer

Since I spared you all from the step-by-step photo journal of the actual butchering process, I figured I could at least show you what the hind & front quarters look like going into the oven.  There are cuts of meat that look “worse” in the grocery store, so if this grosses you out, I’d hate to be with you at the meat counter in the store.

These cuts of meat aged for a day & a half.  Not as long as I’d have liked it to hang, but I had an opportunity for some uninterrupted butchering time (i.e. Grandma was over watching Rhiannon….thanks Grandma!) and took advantage of it.  I seasoned them with a basic seasoning salt, garlic & onion powder and wrapped them up in foil to keep it moist. 

They slow cooked in the oven for about five hours at 300 degrees just until the meat falls off the bone.  I got two pounds of meat and one pound of dog / kitty treat meat.  It doesn’t sound like much, but the 2 pounds for us is just meat – no fat, no bones, nothing but pop-it-in-your-mouth tender goat meat.  I could have been pickier about it and got more meat out of it but it was getting late & I was getting tired. 

Today I’m going to cut out the tenderloins, ribs and neck and wrap them up for the freezer.  As much as I like the tenderloin cuts, I’m really looking forward to a rib dinner.  Visions of a meat goat herd is filling my head again.

I often wonder what my reaction would be if somebody came up to me 15 years ago and told me that I’d be raising, eating and enjoying goat meat.  Although I suppose “exotic” meat wouldn’t have really freaked me out even when I was a kid thanks to my adopted grandpa, Bernie.  I have him to thank for so many things, one of them being how to skin & butcher an animal.  I vividly recall being called into the garage one day after school to find a dead raccoon hanging from the rafters and given a lesson on how to skin an animal.  Same went when deer hunting season came.  And the parties at Wilma & Bernie’s house were awesome; beaver tail, bear, goose, moose, elk……you name it, we ate it and loved it.

Now this may not seem like anything special to most country folk, but at that time I was a pre-teen living in the suburbs and attending a well-to-do Catholic grammar school.  I don’t recall if I had any conversations with my classmates about my “strange” grandpa, but can you imagine how it could have sounded?

Schoolmate: “So, what did you do this weekend Carolyn?  My Dad took us skiing at Villa Oliva.”

Me: “Well, I learned how to gut, skin & butcher a raccoon, although we didn’t actually eat this one because it was too old and it was basically for practice.”

Schoolmate:  Stares at me wide-eyed, jaw agape.

Me:  “Bernie said we could eat the next one as long as it’s fresh.  Maybe I can bring some in my lunch and share it with you.”

I’m not sure if Christine received the same “training” as I did or not.  But given her aversion to most meat products, and her ability to only eat meat that doesn’t look like what it was before being butchered, I suspect not.  But who knows.  Maybe she’ll chime in & let us all know.

My adopted Grandparents, Wilma & Bernie. 

We miss you very much!

Homemade Hot Cocoa

Since it’s been cold outside lately, I’ve been drinking a lot of tea.  But sometimes, ya just need something different.  Like hot, liquid milk chocolate in a cup.  So here’s an easy recipe for a hot cocoa mix using stuff you probably already have in your pantry.  It’s nothing like Kathy’s REAL hot chocolate, but I have to make do with what I have right now.  Although if you’re in the vicinity of Downer’s Grove in the winter & want a treat, go to Louisa & Millie’s Chocolates (http://www.lmchocolates.com/) for a cup of hot cocoa.  To.  Die.  For.

So back to the recipe:

6 cups powdered milk, 1 cup cocoa powder, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup chocolate chips.  Put the sugar in a blender with the chips & whiz away until the chips are chopped up pretty fine.  Dump the sugar & chips into a bowl, add the cocoa & powdered milk & mix thoroughly.  3 – 4 Tablespoons of mix per cup of hot water.  Adjust amount to your taste (and the size of your mug).

....or adjust to Rhiannon's taste

Store in a canning jar or zippy bag & when the chocolate mood strikes you’ll be ready.  If you keep the mix in the fridge it should keep for about six months, longer in the freezer. 

And don’t forget to leave room for toppings!  As if a hot liquid concoction of sweetened milk & cocoa isn’t enough. 

Of course, there’s the old standby, marshmallows.  But by far my favorite hot cocoa topping would have to be whipped cream.  Would you believe that up until this year, my Sister had never graced her cup o’ cocoa with whipped cream?  What a sad thought.

How about chopping up some of those leftover Christmas candies like Andies mints, peppermint patties and peppermint sticks?  Toss the chopped sweets into a hot cup of cocoa & stir away.  Heaven.  Or if you have company over and want to be really fancy-pants, melt some chocolate chips in a double-boiler (or the microwave) and dip a peppermint stick into the chocolate, let the chocolate harden & then serve it with your hot cocoa to use an edible stirring stick. 

First Snow of the Year

This is the second snow of the winter as it did snow a teeny-tiny bit on Christmas, but technically it’s the first snow of the year – and hopefully the last.  More ice-bucket chipping in the morning and trying to convince the chickens that the snow will NOT kill them.

I don’t know how those of you in snow-prone areas do it.  Or why.  I suppose some of you crazy folks actually like snow, or sub-zero temperatures, or having to walk through foot-high snow drifts to haul hay and chip 2” thick ice out of water buckets.  They say you get used to the cold.  But then again I suppose I’d get used to somebody poking me with a sharp stick, but I generally try to avoid unpleasant things.

It’s not like we’ve never considered living in some of the northern states.  We actually looked at some property in Wisconsin that was right on the Menominee River & you looked across to the UP.  It was beautiful, peaceful…….. and we had to wear snow shoes to walk the acreage.  I’m not the most graceful person in snowshoes and definitely not the most pleasant after falling a dozen or more times.  When Paul gets in one of his “I need more space” kind of moods & asks me why we don’t live in the mountains of Idaho I just say one word, “Snow”.  And he immediately returns to whatever else he was doing before the urge to become a hermit hit him.

Even though we moved south it wasn’t far enough that Krazo Acres doesn’t get hit with nasty winter weather and I have a sudden, but fleeting urge to move even farther south.  Then I recall how very, very hot it is here in the summer.  One of my girlfriends calls August “The Month of Sweaty”.  So even though I should be happy where we are I’m sure we’ll still complain about it.  Maybe complaining will warm me up.  Or maybe I should just get myself a cup of hot chocolate.

Sounds like a good blog post for tomorrow. 

Sad, but necessary task

Today was butchering day.  Don’t worry; I didn’t post any pictures of the actual butchering as my Mom and Sister would probably end up yacking all over their keyboards if they saw the process in photos.  Honestly, I think that more people need to know where their meat comes from and how it got to their dinner plate, but that’s an entire blog post in itself.

Anyways…….

One of Nettie’s kids from this spring was a male so we banded him, let him nurse on Nettie for ten weeks, then put him with Pan.  He was half Saanen & half Nigerian and after eight months he just wasn’t going to be getting any bigger or meatier so it was time to put him in the freezer.  I’m sure there are some people who butcher the male dairy goats earlier and we may do that next year.   

Last year we had two male freezer goats and they had a LOT of fat on them.  Meaning I was feeding them too much grain & not getting any more meat out of it, although in my defense I’ve never done it before. So this year I went lighter on the grain & also supplemented his feed with a lot of acorns. 

This one didn’t have much fat on him at all, so I’m pretty happy.  It’s cold enough in the garage that we’re going to let him hang & age for at least a day.  We’ll quarter him and I’ll wrap up the ribs, tenderloins, backstraps and neck for the freezer.  Instead of taking up freezer space on the front & hind quarters I’m going to slow cook them in the oven, pull off the meat & then freeze that in small zippy-bags for quick meals later on. 

I keep tossing out hints to Paul that I’d like to start a small meat goat herd.  Of course, that means more fencing, more feed….more work.  But when I see a meat goat & then look at the scrawny carcass of the goat we just butchered, I wonder why we don’t butcher them right after they’re weaned so we don’t have to spend any more time and money on hay & grain for them.  Just one more thing to ponder I suppose.

Tomorrow’s post will be “nicer”, I promise!