Making it stretch, one month at a time

Over the past year or two I have been asked by several friends and family on how we can afford to buy groceries for our growing family , as well as our two furry children. Most people are shocked to hear how little I spend , and how little I shop . I've even been told it's impossible, to spend that little we must be starving or eating grass . A lot of people ask how I do it , what do you eat, how do menu plan a month at a time . Which is the reason I am writing this blog , to answer those questions .

I use to be a person that just went to the store every week with a vague list and bought whatever sounded good, and usually ended up spending around 300-450 dollars a month  and was just for me and my husband . Half of the stuff I bought didn't get eaten and usually went in the trash before I could use it . A few weeks before our first child was due I quit my job waiting tables . I was just getting to large and it was hard being on my feet for that long everyday . When the money wasn't there to spend that much every month I had to make adjustments . If I wanted to stay home it was time to learn how to do things differently. So I decided to start menu planning , at first it was just a week at a time , then eventually 2 weeks at a time . One month I menu planned for a month at a time and was amazed how much money it saved us . Our grocery bill dropped from 300-450 a month to 150-250 a month . It has stayed about the same ever since, even after adding 3 soon to be 4 children to the family .
In my opinion the reason I'm able to feed my family so cheaply is because :

#1 Menu planning . I don't plan breakfast and lunch , although I do buy things that are suitable for those meals and just kind of wing it . If I know we will be having company on a certain day for lunch I will plan that lunch but just for my family it's just whatever sounds good that day . I mostly plan dinners and desserts . I menu plan for a month at a time .  I do one BIG, usually 3-4 hour grocery trip a month . I usually hit 3 stores : Aldi's , Wal-Mart and Sam's . I know it sounds like a lot but shopping at all three saves us alot of money, especially shopping at aldi's . That alone saves me about 50 dollars or more per trip . Then I do one trip a week for fresh produce , milk and bread . I buy a different meat every month , and I buy in bulk . I buy beef one month , chicken the next , pork the next and fish as needed . My mother in law bought us a Sam's membership a couple of years ago and it saves us alot of money . Especially on meat.

#2 My garden and my canning! I cannot even begin to tell you how much I love gardening and canning . It saves us huge amounts of money every month . We can our own beans , carrotts , corn , cream corn , applesauce , tomatoes , spaghetti sauce , pizza sauce , peaches , pears , sweet potatoes , jellys , jams , tomato soup , potatoes , pear sauce , pickles and the list goes on . I never have to buy veggies and most fruits . The only things that I regularly buy is banana's and sometimes blueberries and strawberries . I also freeze things like squash , zucchini , green peppers , diced onions , shredded potatoes for hashbrowns and many other things .That way I always have it and never need to buy it .

#3 Cooking from scratch saves us a ton of money. I make all of our pancakes, about 25% of our bread, biscuits , cornbread , cookies , and brownies from scratch . I do use a mix for cakes though, just haven't mastered that one yet :) .I will occasionally do frozen biscuits or rolls for a quick addition to breakfast or dinner .

#4 Leftovers save a ton , but I never plan them into my menu . You just never know what will be leftover and when it will happen . So if we have it one night a week is leftover night . If we have leftover soup or meat from a meal it gets frozen and used later .

#5 I do NOT coupon on a regular basis . From my experience most coupons are for processed food that I never use . Why use coupons on things that you won't use . The only reason I might use a coupon is if it was already something I was going to buy , and that coupon would make the brand name item cheaper than the brand that I normally buy anyway .

Preparing for a Grocery Trip

Getting ready for a grocery trip can be a long ordeal . Depending on how motivated I am it can take anywhere from a couple of days to a week . Which isn't easy with 3 little kids , especially when I can only really plan during nap time or when they are in bed at night . I was always start by doing what I call inventory . Meaning I go through what we already have , and make a list of what's in our two refrigerators, deep freeze, and our two pantrys . That way I know exactly what I have on hand. I will look through that list and see what I can make out of what I already have . A lot of the time I can make quite a few meals out of what I already have without spending a dime . Other times I might be lacking an ingredient or two but that's much cheaper than paying for the whole meal . This month I was able to plan these meals without needing to buy anything, or almost nothing :
Goulash, Salad and Garlic bread-the only thing I will have to buy is the sauce . I had the meat on hand, the noodles, and the bread .
Homemade Pizza- I just have to buy yeast to make the crust. I already had the sauce and toppings and this is  on the menu twice this month .
Oatmeal Pancakes- I didn't have to buy anything .
Chimichangas and salad- I just had to buy the refried beans and tortillas. I already had the meat and enchilada sauce and the veggies for the salad .
Homemade Vegetable Beef Soup over brown rice- I just need to buy the meat and the broth .
BLT'S- I will just have to buy or make the bread, and buy the bacon .
BBQ Pork Sandwiches- I had to buy nothing because it was frozen leftovers from another time when we had this for dinner .
Ham and Bean Soup and cornbread- I had to buy nothing . I had the beans , veggies and the ham was leftover from a previous meal .
Potato Soup- I had to buy nothing . It was frozen leftovers from a previous meal .

After I do that , I plan the rest of my meals around what I have . I might only have one ingredient needed , but that's one ingredient I don't need to buy . I buy as little as possible . The routine around here is we have breakfast for dinner once a week a least , one really nice meal with a homemade dessert a week , and Friday's are always pizza night . So I first put that into the equation and then fill in the remaining days with cheap meals , and casseroles . I always try to fill the meals with vegetables from our garden , because that's free . We eat a lot of vegetables with most meals .
I almost always every month use new recipes that I find in cook books , and mostly ones I find online. I just get tired of the same old thing all the time . I usually mix new and old recipes together, and it makes for a menu full of variety .
After the grocery list is made it's time for the hard part, the shopping . Which believe it or not I enjoy because I almost always get to do it by myself . One of the few times where I can go anywhere by myself  :)