Cooties and Todays results

Mike came home sick today. I put him straight to bed. I just got off the phone with my dinner guests for tomorrow and it turns out that Rosa's husband is not feeling well either. So I guess tomorrow will just be Rosa and her 2 daughters and us. I will have plenty of leftovers.

So I made the adobo (quite yummy thanks Ashley) and it made about 10 servings. After dinner that leaves 7 helpings for Mike's lunch. The chicken cost me $13.00 which makes dinner tonight $1.30 serving. I am not including the seasonings or the rice because we buy rice in huge 50 lb bags (so what add a penny to the total for rice?) and I didn't want to bother with figuring out the cost of the vinegar and seasonings.

Spoke to my girlfriend, Nora, (actually her hubby, Rick, cause she was busy in the kitchen) and she said to add 1 Tbs of tapioca per cup of liquid in my apples. I am going to cook up my crisp before bedtime and will see how it turns out. Then I will prolly just serve this one tomorrow :) Kate refuses to eat apple crisp (weird weird girl) and so she is planning on having left over brownies from yesterday (she cooked them). I will hopefully post a pic or two of the crisp (the adobo while yummy wasn't very photogenic lol). Well I'm off to bake :) Good night all xox

Grocery shopping and getting ready to entertain guests for dinner tomorrow

Following the wonderful advice in FF (Family Feasts for $75 a week by Mary Ostyn) I went to the bulk foods department at one of my local Safeways (we have several of them). I picked up all the spices I would need for my next 12 meals and saved a bundle! I then went to the meat department and they were having a buy 1 get 1 free sale on all the meat on my shopping list! I totally stocked up! I will have to check my grocery log to see how I did price wise but I am feeling like I got quite a bargain so we will see. I also purchased store brand items for a lot of my purchases today which I don't usually do (I know I should). According to the sales receipt I saved $60.07! So for my shopping I got $196.77 worth of groceries for $136.70. Still sounds high until you take into consideration that I bought  22lbs of meat and 8 of those pounds are 7% hamburger (I always buy this and pay a premium because I am trying to keep fat out of our diet and you don't have to drain this hamburger which also saves a step). So far I am feeling good about this trip :)

Now to portion out all the meat, and log my purchases into my grocery log. Hopefully tonight I will be able to start logging my purchases into Quicken as well.

While I am in the kitchen I am going to start cooking dinner ( I know it's early but I am making Chicken Adobo and I am thinking that I can start it now and finish it after I pick up my daughter from school). This will also have the added benefit of me not having to package up meat that I am going to use today. The recipe my girlfriend Ashley gave me uses 6 pounds of chicken so I am sure that we will have tons of leftovers to put into containers for other nights and for Mike's lunch.

I am thinking that after our trip to Florida that we should seriously consider getting a second freezer. I noticed on Mary Ostyn's blog that she had a butcher prepare a whole cow for her freezer and I have friends who also stock pile meat this way and everyone says what a great price per pound it is and that is better quality meat as well. I would love to be able to do this!

Tomorrow we are having our first dinner guests at our new place! I am so excited to be able to play hostess :) While at Safeway I picked up some steaks (BOGO) and I am planning on serving them with baked potatoes, salad, green beans, fresh bread and apple crisp! It has been so long since I have had people over for dinner so I am probably making too much food but left overs are always nice to have on hand for lunches. I am planning on using the Apple crisp with crunchy oat brown sugar topping (page 246 for those of you playing along) from Mary's book but I am going to use some of the apples that I canned in ultra light syrup instead of fresh apples. I have a wonderful friend named Nora who is already a complete Domestic Goddess and she adds quick cook tapioca to her canned fruit when she is making pies. I am wondering if I added tapioca to my apples and then used Mary's recipe for the crumb and seasoning how that would turn out. I think I will try making it tonight so that if it bombs I can try again tomorrow and no one (but anyone reading this blog) will be the wiser :)

Well enough stalling... Time to get to work implementing my evil plans bwah ha ha :P

Chapter 1- A good place as any to start

So the first chapter of Mary's book asks "what would you do with an extra $100 a month?" The first thought that came to mind was that's not a lot of money! Then after I thought about it for a second or two further I realized that it all adds up and what would I do with an extra $1200 a year? So to answer the question, I really want to own a home. I realize that $1200 won't do a whole lot toward that goal but it would be nice to have as a down payment on new furniture, repairs, etc for the new home. If nothing else it would pay for most of the moving expenses :D

I don't currently know how much we spend a month on food (eating out and groceries). I will have to tally this up sometime this week and let everyone here know what my starting numbers are...I'm sure it isn't going to be pretty.

So my first goal is to find out how much I am spending and what I am spending it on. I have picked up a copy of Quicken and hopefully tonight I will get that set up on my computer. Mary says that she spends only $75 per month for each member of her household for food! That seems really impossible to me but I suppose with her having 12 people to feed that you have to be very frugal. My goal is to cut 10% off my food bill in the next month. This will officially start after our trip to Florida because I plan on enjoying myself there and while not going crazy money wise I also don't want to be cutting coupons for everything and eating nothing but peanut butter and jelly.

Day 1

Today has been a poor start to the mission. To start off I slept in and Kate, my beautiful artistic daughter, was late to school. Granted she could have come and checked on me to see what was taking me so long but she was enjoying the morning in front of the computer and lost track of time herself... Oh well. So we race out the door and get her to school.

I brought along my copy of Family Feasts so that I could go to the container store and pick up a couple of containers for Mary Ostyn's pantry chapter. It is amazing the number of different types of containers you can find in the container store. After about an hour of perusing I finally allowed the overly helpful staff to help me figure out what I needed. I picked up 2 small containers for the taco and spaghetti mix recipes. (Page 274 for those of you playing along with me). I also picked up a wooden plate organizer so that hopefully I can get my dish cupboard organized. Whoever designed my kitchen cupboards should be shot!

So then I realized that in my rush to get out to Kate's school I forgot to take my medication and that I had completely skipped eating. So I was bad and went to Qdobas for lunch...

Like I said... so far not doing too well. 

The current mission...

In the past my family and I have spent way too many meals out of the house, spending tons of money and enjoying the experience immensely. However, in an attempt to save up money to purchase a home for ourselves so that we are no longer living in an apartment the current mission is to attempt to cook at home and save money. In order to do this I will be following the advice of Mary Ostyn's book "Family Feasts for $75 a week" http://www.amazon.com/Family-Feasts-Week-Penny-wise-Paperback/dp/B0032EX13E/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1287002079&sr=8-2



So without further adieu I bring you day 1. Wish me luck :)