Organic grocery bargains and homemade food

I have really had to struggle to keep the grocery budget goal of $100 per week while still eating a healthy diet. I'm committed to organic foods, and what we eat is mostly fresh--fresh fruits, veggies, meat, dairy products. Very little is processed or precooked. I went shopping this morning, and as of today we've spent $217. This should take us to the 18th or 19th of February before I have to do another major shopping trip, so I guess I'm about on target.

I was overjoyed today to find markdowns on 2 of the most expesive things I buy on a regular basis. Horizon Organic milk was reduced to $2 per gallon for containers with a sell-by date 4 days from now, and Organic Valley Organic egg whites were marked $1 per carton. (each carton is the equivelent of 8 eggs) I snapped up 5 gallons of milk and all 6 cartons of egg whites, no questions asked!! The egg whites have about a week before they expire, so I left one carton out and froze the remainder. I did some batch cooking with the milk and froze the rest of it. (did you know you can freeze milk??) This will save me quite a bit on future shopping trips!!

Once I got home with the groceries, I spent the day cooking. I made hummus from garbanzo beans cooked from scratch (recipe in the ehow section), then cut up carrots, celery and cucumbers to serve with it. I also made pimento cheese spread with shredded cheese (sale), a jar of pimentos (free after coupon) and mayonnaise. This spread is wonderful on celery! I put on a batch of yogurt using 8 cups of milk and some starter from my last batch. I use a crock pot recipe I found on another blog that is easy and works well every time. Tomorrow, when the yogurt is done I will make frozen yogurt treats for the freezer. (I'll post a recipe tomorrow) Last, I made a double batch of homemade whole wheat waffles (recipe in the ehow section) and froze them for breakfasts. The kids just love these! We will be having waffles, sugar free syrup, fresh strawberries ($1.77 a container) and milk for breakfast quite a bit this week! Tomorrow I plan to make blueberry muffins from the sale blueberries, and some sugar-free peanut butter cookies. All this cooking should keep us supplied in breakfasts, snacks and treats for the week. Since the 3 of us at home will be eating leftovers for lunch and only my daughter needs a packed lunch, I hope to only have to spend time on dinner for the rest of the week.

Today was my husband's first day at home since the layoff news. His employer had given him 2 weeks of notice, during which he had to work, and yesterday was his last day. I enjoyed having him home today and it was wonderful to have two sets of hands to entertain the little one --that's how I managed to get so much done! We are trying our hardest to make the most of his time at home, and to keep it as stress-free as possible. When we look back on this time in our lives, we don't want to wonder why we didn't make more of it, or to wish we hadn't spent the whole time stressed and missing out on the joy in life. We want to look back and say "Boy, that was fun!"

Like mother, like daughter

I mentioned a few posts back that lately, as soon as I've determined that I need something, a source for it seems to appear. I guess the same holds true for my daughter. She and I have been talking this week about what she'd like to do for valentines for her class party. She's perfectly happy to make them herself, but thus far less than thrilled with her choices of craft materials. I had a few boxes of clearance valentines from years past (3-D bugs and Cartoon Network) but none were really her cup of tea. We have construction paper, but not alot of pink and red. Nonetheless, we were brainstorming and planning to get to work tomorrow night on our best option.

Well, today she went to a friend's house to play, and the mother brought out valentine craft materials to keep the kids busy. To any other child, this is just a fun activity. To my daughter, it was a dream come true!! She got to work and made a valentine for every child in her class and one for each teacher. She was beaming when she arrived home--SO proud to have contributed a solution to our family pact not to buy anything new.

I'm not sure what the other mother thought when my daughter turned her craft project into an assembly line, but I will call her tomorrow and thank her for her patience. Our kids frequently do craft projects together, so I'm sure she found it amusing and was glad the kids stayed entertained for so long!

More "Free-decorating"

We finally found time this weekend to paint and organize my daughter's room. We should have done it a long time ago--the room needed painting when we moved in--but every time I thought about it, I'd get so carried away with ideas and thoughts and Pottery Barn catalogues that I'd end up too frustrated to even start. I don't know why I thought we needed a major re-do into a magazine quality room, when all my daughter wanted was colors she liked and some space to organize her things. Once I looked through what we actually had, we had all the makings of a wonderful room, and to top it all off, my daughter already LIKED it. The only things she asked for were a desk, a bulletin board and a place to get away from her little brother. We already had the bunk beds (great deal from Pier 1 Kids a few years back) and all the matching linens, curtains, rug and accessories (Ikea a few years back). We just needed to pull it together--without buying anything.

First, we painted the room using the last of the green paint we got on Freecycle back in January. We mixed it with some white paint both to lighten it and to make sure there was enough to do the whole room. We fashioned a desk out of the two night stands she wasn't using with a shelf board across the top, and used a chair from the attic. (we're going to paint it) We found a shelf in the closet that had been in her room in our old house, and hung it over the desk for her treasures. I painted the edges of a bulletin board and covered it with fabric from a pillow case that matched her linens (casualty of a nocturnal nosebleed last year) and hung it under the shelf. We took the lamp from her brother's room (note to self--never leave a 2-year-old in a room with a lamp that you don't want broken--LOL) and put it on her desk. On the opposite wall, we hung the white-framed full length mirror that was in my way in my closet, and repurpose our wicker laundry basket for her stuffed animals. We got two old easter baskets, a pink one and a white one, and put them on the "desk" shelves for storage, along with some boxes she already had that matched her linens. She decided what would go in each box, we labelled them, and she organized her things. I made it clear that nothing without a place to go was coming back into the room, so she chose carefully and left a small pile of "stuff" behind, which will go to charity.

We took the wooden letters that spell her name--we had bought them and let her paint them several years ago, then forgotten about them---and painted them white and hung them over her top bunk. We also hung two flower lamps over her top bunk and a wall-mounted reading lamp over her bottom bunk, both bought at Ikea some time back with good intentions but never used. Last, we took her fluffy pink blanket and wrapped it around the lime-green body pillow that no longer matched, and placed it along the top bunk to give it a sofa-like feel. We made sure not to put the ladder back, so that she can go up there to read and hang out and have one private place where little brother can't bother her. (though I'm sure he'll try :)

I've never seen my daughter so excited. She has never complained about her room and always been grateful when she's gotten something new for it, but she was overjoyed to arrange her shelves, organize her desk and decorate her bulletin board just the way she wanted it. Last night, she voluntarily went to bed 30 minutes early! And today, she had a friend over to play and painstakingly cleaned her room without being asked after her friend left. (no easy task after 2 hours of playing rock star-veterinarian-fashion models!)

Ask and ye shall receive

I find myself constantly surprised so far that as soon as I start thinking of an item that I need but can't buy, a source of the item seems to appear. I don't know how or why this is, but most likely its simply because I'm looking for it now, whereas before I would have just gone out and bought it. My two most recent identified needs were towels and greeting cards.

My husband was getting a card ready to mail to his mother for her birthday this week, and I noticed that our stock of greeting cards was very low--basically down to the stuff that doesn't really suit anyone we know. Now, I'm a big fan of homemade cards, especially for kids' birthday parties and for people like grandparents who get a kick out of them. Otherwise, I'm not that crafty and would really need to do some learning (and come across some second-hand materials) to pull off nice cards for adult friends and such. We were also out of envelopes, and had to scrape to find one to mail a bill. So I had my thinking cap on, but wasn't coming up with much.

The second need I had identified was towels. When we moved into our house 4 years ago, we not only needed towels but lost some to various purposes during the move. We redecorated the kids bathroom and bought new towels to match, but have yet to redecorate the master bath and are still using the 3 or 4 ratty towels that remained. We've always intended to buy some, but have been waiting until we redid the bathroom. After drying off with a hand towel for the hundredth time, I finally decided I needed to find a source of second-hand towels, and I wasn't sure how excited I was about that.

Well, lo and behold, I was helping a friend unload some things from her car when I saw a box brimming with brightly colored towels. I aksed her about them, and she said the box of stuff had more or less been pushed on her by a family member clearing out clutter, and she took it to be polite but didn't want it. She nearly jumped for joy when told her I'd take it. The towels were clean and in good shape, and also contained a new-in-package bundle of washcloths. The bright colors work in the kids bathroom, so hubby and I will be using their towels in our bathroom. Problem solved! I forgot to take a picture before I washed them and put them away, so everyone gets to enjoy a view of the kids' bathroom cabinet--LOL.

The crown jewel to it all was what I found in the bottom of the box--a grocery bag full of over a hundred greeting cards and envelopes for every occasion! I was very surprised and couldn't believe two such hard-to-find items were taken off my list with one fortuitous glance into the back of a friends car. My daughter immediately confiscated the box, since I have a birthday coming up. I happened to notice that when she returned it to me, the Mother's Day card I had seen in it had dissappeared too. :)

More "Free-decorating"

I mentioned earlier this week that I've been keeping myself busy rearranging downstairs, trying to make the house into just what I want without buying anything new. Earlier in the week I finally got the idea to move our oversized contemporary furniture out of the family room, where it never really fit, and move our more traditional formal living room furniture in. I absolutely love the results, and have been happy every day since. That left me with our burdensome rejects in the formal living room, where we began to question the function of that room and whether we even needed that furniture at all. Well, after quite a bit of thinking and deciding I dreaded all the "craigslisting" that would be required to buy and sell things for the room, I panicked and called a friend. Luckily, she's a good friend and has been for years, and also has a business "remixing" people's homes to redecorate at minimal expense. And luckily, we do favors for each other all the time so she was glad to come over and check out my situation, and even brought a friend. I heaved a sigh of relief when she looked at the furniture and said "Oh sure, this can work". We spent the afternoon moving pictures, mirrors, plants and other items from room to room so that the formal living room got what it needed and no room was left lacking. I am able to use the large pieces of furniture, and have a only a coffee table and end tables along with a piece of contemporary art to put on Craigslist. I LOVE the result, and it didn't cost a cent!

We also managed to find time to rework the formal dining room adjacent to the living room. We removed the small mirror that was over the buffet and relocated it to the space above the office desk. We replaced it with a much larger and more dramatic antique mirror that my parents had given me when they moved. I don't have table linens other than holiday, so my friend grabbed one of the long sheer scarves from the window swag and fashioned something out of that, topping it with my breadbasket and some silk ivy that had been on a shelf. We pilfered buffet lamps from my breakfast room (where they never really looked right) and added height with a few books. And for the grand finale, my friend remembered a rug she had stored away unused and offerred it to me, since she was moving and didn't plan to take it with her. It just so happened to coordinate perfectly. Now I love the room!! I"m beginning to feel like I have a new house!

Shopping at home for groceries

I'm so glad I spent the month of January learning to resist the temptation of sale ads and make do with things I have at home whenever I need something (or think I need it--LOL) because I am now using the concept to try to cut our grocery bill while still eating a healthy diet. At one time, I was a coupon queen--one of those people who can walk out of a grocery store with a hundred dollars in groceries for free. Over time, our budgets and diets and health needs have changed, and I have become pretty picky about what I bring into the house, and pretty laid-back about what I pay for it. And since I never really LOVED to cook, I've gotten a little lazy. But in looking at what we spent on groceries in January ($633), I decided I needed to put a little effort into trimming that back. My goal for February is to cut back to $100 per week. I realize there are people out there who can feed their families on $100 per month or less, but my family has its particular set of challenges. We have, among other things, an egg allergy, lactose intolerance, hypoglycemia, reflux, and a sensitivity to food additives and coloring. Two people in the family have to follow a low-carb diet, so I can't base meals on pasta or other starches or even serve too many of them in one meal. It is quite difficult to put a meal on the table that everybody can eat, so I try to stick with what works. For the most part, our household is 100 % sugar-free (with a tablespoon or so of honey used in baking) and about 80% organic. I don't buy many prepackaged or processed foods, and try not to buy anything individually wrapped.

I've had to stop looking at the grocery sale ads and coupons, because what I am tempted to buy right now is nothing we should eat. I mentioned in my last post that when I feel a little stressed, I love to bargain-hunt because it brings me a measure of control. Well, I've had to stop myself more than once from getting out the coupons and making my list of all the foods I can get for cheap or free, because once I got them home I'd spend all my time keeping the kids out of them. Crazy, huh? So here's what I did--I shopped at home first. I looked through everything I had on hand and decided to go ahead and use it as long as I can to avoid having to buy anything. I spent a day cooking, and made a quadruple batch of pumpkin muffins using a large can of pumpkin still hanging around from the holidays. We all love these, and they make good breakfasts, snacks and lunch-box fillers. I also made 2 loaves of very easy whole wheat bread, a double batch of homemade whole wheat waffles for the freezer, and a double batch of frozen yogurt treats . I cooked down a chicken carcass and froze a couple of quarts of broth, then used all the leftover odds and ends of vegetables in the fridge to make soup. (which I froze in individual containers for lunches). I made homemade popsicles with the juice drained from a can of pineapple and also with some leftover yogurt. And over the last couple of days I've been cooking dried beans as I have the time and getting them into the freezer so that we can stretch the meat that I put into our entrees. We've even been using all those hotel packets of coffee in the morning, just to use them up. So all in all, these things stretched our groceries out for several days past when I normally would have decided we were "out" of food. And luckily, since we had so many extra homemade things around, I was able to pare the grocery bill down to $91 while still buying everything organic.

My sister and I were discussing the other day how ironic it is that when you "simplify" your diet, it becomes more complicated. There is nothing easier about baking a batch of cookies or a loaf of bread when you could simply rip open a bag and be done with it. But there is nothing quite like those times--the kids "helping" at the counter, the little one climbing on a chair and sneaking his chubby fingers into the bowl for a taste of whatever he can get, the smell of baking permeating the house. Opening a box or bag robs you of all of that. So in a way its easier, but look at what you've missed. The camraderie in the kitchen and the wonderful smells of food are things that make a house a warm and loving home. I'm glad to have these times!

Freetail Therapy

With my husband out interviewing for jobs and the idea of unemployment still settling in, I learned somethng about myself--this is when I normally shop. And its not for the reasons that others might seek retail therapy--I'm not looking to spend money or buy some wonderful thing that will make me feel good about myself. This is when I go into super-bargain-hunting mode, because when I find that incredible deal or two I feel like I've regained a measure of control. Well, I'm glad for the opportunity to understand that part of myself, but it still didn't keep my hands busy while hubby was interviewing and the little one was napping. So I focused my attention on something in the house that has always bothered me--our family room. This room is not terrible, but it has never been what we want. Its a hodgepodge of styles--the traditional style entertainment center that had gone so well in a different house, the oversized contemporary furniture and art that we bought when we moved in and were trying out a different style that we turned out not to like--LOL. So the room isn't awful, but its always been "off" and its always bugged me. What we really needed in there was some smaller furniture, like what's in the formal living room. And something traditional, like what's in the formal living room. So finally, after 4 years, I got the brilliant idea--why don't I just move what's in the formal living room into here?? So move I did. And I'm finally, finally happy with that room. As I seem to be continually saying since I started this blog and this new way of "shopping at home", I don't know why I didn't do this a long time ago! My daughter came home and said she felt like she was in a completely different house. And somehow, that's how I wanted it to feel. Its too bad the pictures don't show the extent of the change! And after moving the other furniture into the formal living room, hubby and I were struck with a thought--why do we even have a formal living room, anyway? We never use it. We don't want to mess it up! It is a large area of our home devoted to no actual purpose. So we started thinking of better uses for it. The ideal thing would be to make it into a library. We are a family of avid readers with tons of books and no space devoted to them, so this would make the space usable and create efficient storage of the books that are currently all over the house. We can accomplish this by culling furniture and other items from throughout the house, so we can actually just put that oversized furniture that never worked for us on craigslist and be done with it. So we'll get working on that next.

Again, why didn't we do this a long time ago??