Meal Preparation: Grocery Lists

    In a recent job interview, I was asked to describe myself in one word.  Without hesitation I replied “picky.” Throughout my life, my mother has consistently reminded me that I am a very picky individual.  I am picky about clothing, picky about men, and picky about food, just to name a few.  Over the past (almost) year of marriage, I have come to realize just how picky I am about purchasing our groceries and planning our weekly meals.  Honestly folks, I do not believe I can hand the power of the grocery list over to anyone else.  My grocery lists are elaborate and probably a wee bit over the top.  These lists are divided up by category and a price is listed for each item.  If a coupon goes with the item, the coupon is listed along with the price after the coupon discount.  A few days ago I shared my menu plan for last week and the upcoming week. Dinner would be a disaster each night if I did not have my grocery list and menu plan.  These two tools are my secret to getting dinner on the table every night between 6:00 and 6:30.  This plan works but it also takes work.  

    My weekly grocery list is based on two things: items that are on sale and items that we need.  I do not deviate from this list unless the store is out of stock.  If I must have the item, I try to find a substitute of equal price or I simply hold out until the next sale.  My detailed grocery list gets me in and out of the store in about 45 minutes.  This time frame includes checking out with coupons and our trip to and from the store.  It goes to show that being prepared saves time.  Most Saturday’s I have my husband with me to push the buggy and unload at checkout.  While he unloads, I am able to watch the scanner to make sure the prices ring up correct.  

    Speaking of price, most of you know that I have a weekly grocery budget of $60 a week.  This $60 covers every single meal we eat for the entire week.  For our little family of two, it provides us with 42 meals.  To be fair, I will divulge that I place a $50 order with vitacost once a month to restock pantry essentials, which breaks down to an additional $12.50 a week for food.  Even with the vitacost order factored into the equation, we are only spending an average of $1.73 a meal.  Most of the ingredients used in our meals are organic, local, or low pesticide level foods, so $1.73 a meal is a bargain.  

    I exclusively grocery shop at Publix because I love the clean store, the availability of organic products and their generous coupon policy.  We also go the farmer’s market every Saturday to purchase local eggs, beef, and pork.  I wish we could purchase all of our vegetables at the market, but right now it is not financially possible.  Frozen vegetables are a huge bargain over fresh and this keeps me going back to Publix for the majority of our produce.  I have shared before that I utilize southernsavers.com and iheartpublix.com for sale and coupon matchups.  These two websites are indispensable to me in the meal planning process.  I hope the things I have learned and shared are able to help someone else who wants to feed their family real food on a budget.  Below, I have listed my shopping list for this week’s meals.  When menu planning, I try to incorporate as my items as I can which I already have on hand into our meals.  This means nothing goes to waste and we are never overflowing with groceries, but we have enough.  

Meal Preparation: Menu Planning

    Menu planning is a topic that tends to scare most people.  Fast food and frozen dinners have become far too common in our society, because someone was too overwhelmed to sit down and plan a meal.  Since starting the whole 8 to 5 workday regimen, I have found that if I do not have a plan, things go bad.  I literally plan every aspect of our meals, including what needs to be defrosted or prepped the day before, to make dinner happen quickly when I arrive home from work.  My general rule is to stay one day ahead.   For example, I normally do prep work for the next day’s supper while our current supper heats up.  I have about 45 minutes from the time I get home to the time we eat, and we normally eat at 6 O’clock on the dot - because we are old folks like that.

     Typically I plan meals for six days out of our seven day week.  What about that seventh day?  Normally enough leftovers have accumulated throughout the week, so we are able to have a meal from those.  When all else fails, my backup plan is a bowl of cereal for J.T. and a bowl of oatmeal for me.  Don’t judge.  It is better than a drive thru.  For the six days that I do plan meals, I follow a general pattern.  First, I would like to point out that protein comes in various forms.  Eggs, beans and whole grains can be used as a main dish alternative to meat.  We are by no means vegetarian, but reducing our consumption of meat helps us stay within our weekly budget.  This wasn’t a difficult change for J.T. and I. Growing up, my mother served meat at almost every meal, but I would often get choked on the meat.  I believe that is why I always ate very little meat and preferred vegetables and grains.  Before J.T. and I got married he was eating ramen noodles and cereal, with the occasional meal out or Philly cheesesteak sandwich prepared at home.  

    We always start off the week with meatless Monday at our house.  In the winter I prepare more soups and in the summer I serve vegetable plates.  Tuesday is normally roasted chicken, but sometimes we have meatloaf.  A lighter meal is served Wednesday night.  J.T. is the orchestra director at our church and he has rehearsal every Wednesday evening.  We eat a little earlier than usual and J.T. prefers to eat less than he normally would.  Thursday night is another “meat” night.  We either have individual pieces of meat or meat chopped up and incorporated into beans, eggs, or rice.  BFD (breakfast for dinner) is served each Friday night.  It has become a Spann household tradition.  Since the addition of a waffle iron to our kitchen, BFD has become a breeze to prepare.  I make the waffles in advance and freeze them.  On Friday, all I have to do is reheat them in the oven for about 8 minutes while J.T. fries the eggs.  Saturday is our big leftover day.  This is a nice break because I generally spend much of the day prepping for the upcoming week.  I know Sunday is technically the first day of the week, but I normally view it as the last.  Each week, I invite my parents over to eat with us after church and meat is always served at this meal.  Pot roast and chicken piccata are favorites as well as meatloaf or roasted chicken.  This is by far our biggest meal of the week, with dessert served at the end.  Listed below is my meal plan for last week and the upcoming week.  These plans include meals and basic pantry staples (granola, crackers, etc.).  I try to space things out so that I do not have a lot to do in the kitchen on any one particular day.  Also, you will only see dinner menu plans listed.  I always make enough food to serve at least four people.  We pack up the leftovers and take them to work the next day for lunch.  I hope this shows you how to plan meals to be both cost and time effective.  This is a two part blog series.  I will be posting part II, the grocery list, within the upcoming week.  Stay tuned! 

Whole Wheat Graham Crackers

    My how I have missed my cooking blog over the last few weeks!  A new full-time job plus a crashed computer hard drive equals no blog posts.  My sweet husband has been a saint and taken care of my computer issues.  I cannot count how much time he spent at the computer store getting my documents, pictures, and music recovered.  From now on, I will be backing my files up on another device.  Lesson learned :)  Also, my very gracious father gave me his old laptop computer which he no longer needed.  For $75 I have a new (used) computer with all my old files loaded on it.  

    I have yet to figure out a good balance between working, cooking, cleaning, laundry, and blogging.  Out of everything that must be done I know that blogging is not an absolute necessity, although, I do enjoy this creative outlet and miss it terribly.  For now I will leave you with these graham crackers.  They have become a new pantry staple in our household for J.T.  He prefers to eat them with peanut butter or ice cream (or both).  I have adapted the original recipe from The Homemade Pantry by substituting all whole white wheat flour and butter.  This removes the white refined flour and shortening - two things I avoid.  Before adapting the recipe, I followed the original version.  J.T. cannot tell a taste or texture difference between the two recipes.  I will warn you that these crackers are hard work.  Rolling the dough out takes some serious arm muscle power.  I hope to eventually adapt this to a slice and bake recipe, but for now the workout will not kill me.  One of the main reasons I love this recipe is that it can be made in advance and frozen.  You can then pull out however many you need and recrisp them in a 375 degree oven for 3 minutes.

Recipe adapted from The Homemade Pantry

Ingredients

• 2 ¼ cups whole white wheat flour
• ½ teaspoon kosher salt
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ¼ teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• ¼ cup brown sugar
• 7 tablespoons butter, chilled and cut into cubes
• ¼ cup cold water
• 4 tablespoons honey
• 2 teaspoons vanilla

Directions

1. In the bowl of a heavy duty mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, mix together the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and brown sugar on low speed until everything is combined.  Add the chilled butter.  Start at the lowest speed possible and bring the speed of the mixture up gradually to a medium high.  Beat the dry ingredients and the butter until the mixture resembles a coarse texture.  
2. In a small glass measuring cup, stir together the water, honey, and vanilla.  With the mixer on low speed, slowly pour the wet ingredients into the dry.  Gradually increase the speed of the mixer until the dough begins to come together.  The dough will be crumbly but should hold together.  Roll the dough into a ball and wrap it in wax paper.  Refrigerate for at least 2 hours (or the dough can be frozen at this point).  
3. Set the dough out of the refrigerator for one hour before you begin rolling it out.  Lightly flour two pieces of wax paper.  You will be rolling the dough out on a large dough board or pastry mat between the two pieces of floured wax paper.  Divide the dough ball into quarters (it is easier to work with smaller amounts of dough at a time).  Roll the dough ⅛ to ¼ inch thick.  Use a 3-inch biscuit cutter to cut out the crackers (or you can attempt to make perfectly symmetrical squares).  Place the cut out dough on ungreased cookie sheets.  Using a fork, poke several holes in the top of each cracker.  Bake at 350 degrees for 11 to 12 minutes.  Yields about 32 crackers.  Remove the crackers to a wire rack to cool completely before storing.  Keeps for up to one week in the pantry and for three months in the freezer.  

Publix & Farmer’s Market – March 2, 2013

     I survived my first week at the new job, working full-time.  While I would be fibbing if I said it wasn’t a major adjustment (waking up at 5 everyday AND eating lunch without my favorite pooch), it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be.  We both had clean clothes to wear all week, dinner was on the table every night by at least 6:30, and we both had a lunch of hot leftovers for work the next day.  Mission accomplished.  Waking up at 5 o’clock all week made sleeping in on Saturday impossible, so we headed off to Publix and the farmer’s market at 7:45 am.  I was able to get a large majority of meal prep for the week done before lunch time on Saturday.  I am hoping for another smooth week of getting dinner on the table.  Below is a list of my menu plan for the week and you will notice that many items have “(freezer)” listed beside them.  These are things that I am pulling from my freezer, which I either made yesterday or a few weeks ago.  I have recently fallen in love with my tiny freezer and I find it comforting to come home after a long day to find that dinner is practically done.  Many of these recipes will be coming soon to the blog, but for now here is my menu plan for the week:

Sunday

·         Herbs de Provence Chicken

·         Broccoli Rice Risotto

·         Sautéed Cabbage

Monday

·         Easy Pea Soup (premade on Sunday)

·         Whole Grain Corn Muffins (freezer)

Tuesday

·         Roasted Chicken

·         Black Bean Tomato Rice (freezer)

Wednesday

·         Veggie Burgers (freezer)

·         Cornmeal Griddle Cakes (freezer)

·         Roasted Brussels

Thursday

·         Breakfast Casserole Bites (freezer)

·         Stir-fried Broccoli & Carrots

·         leftover whole grain corn muffins

Friday

·         Leftover Breakfast Casserole Bites

·         Waffles (freezer)

Saturday

·         Leftovers

·         Dairy

o   ½ gallon Publix Greenwise Organic milk @ $3.99

o   (1) 8 oz. block Cabot Vermont Cheddar Cheese @ $2.50

o   Silk Almond milk @ $3.35

§  $0.55/1 manufacturer coupon - $2.80

o    Eggs @ $4.00 (farmer’s market)

·         Grocery

o   (1) Publix Greenwise Organic Toasted Oats Cereal @ $3.79

o   (2) Publix Greenwise Organic Oats @ $3.98

o   Publix Greenwise Organic Coffee @ $5.99

o   (1) 15 oz. can Muir Glen Organic fire roasted tomatoes @ $1.34

o   Vlassic Farmer’s Garden pickles @ $2.99

§  $1.00/1 manufacturer coupon - $1.99

o   (1) 6 oz. can Muir Glen Organic tomato paste @ $1.09

·         Meat

o   Publix Greenwise skinless chicken thighs @ $2.69/lb. – $11.89

·         Frozen

o    (2) Cascadian Farm broccoli @ $4.98

§  (2) $0.75/1 manufacturer coupons & (1)$2.00/2 Publix coupon - $1.48

o   (2)Birds eye frozen peas @ $1.99

o   (2) Birds eye frozen Brussels sprouts @ $2.45

·         Produce

o   Organic Bananas @ $0.99/lb. - $1.95

o   1 head green cabbage @ $2.15

Total before coupons              $63.33

Less: coupons used                   (5.05)

Total with Tax                        $58.28