Hello, foodie friends and budget buddies! (Corny, I know; forgive me, it's been a long day.)
Today my sister, a good friend, and I canned a total of 61 quarts of green beans. That's 9 pressure-canner loads. That's from about 9:00am to about 6:15pm. That's what our extra house is for.
11 of those quarts are our friends', but the other 50 are ours. Yep, we doubled our stockpile of canned green beans. I'm exhausted (we were stringing and snapping our beans until 11:15 last night!) and my feet hurt, but it was a pleasant, productive time of fellowship. In my totally unsolicited opinion, fellowship is always sweeter when it is productive.
Day 1 tomorrow, and I still have no idea what we're going to have. I really didn't want to begin this journey falling down... Check back tomorrow or Friday to see how I weathered this potential crisis. ;)
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
The Challenge - Extra Challenges...
I thought it only fair, after covering many of the assets I'm starting with, to mention the extra challenges or, if you will, liabilities.
The most immediate and obvious challenge that I see is quite simply the fact that we love good food. Our tastes tend to run along the fresh, organic, expensive lines. For example, a family favorite is a fillet mignon with bacon and/or t-bone steak, garlic and sauteed/caramelized onion mashed potatoes, sauteed fresh mushrooms, grilled or steamed fresh asparagus with a garlic-butter sauce, and rolls. Are you drooling yet? I am! Like I said, we love fresh. We love meat (which is not cheap these days), and we love bacon!
We also adore sugar. Chocolate chips, sweetened condensed milk, and craisins are staples around here. I'm going to have to try to realign our mindset, however little I care to myself, to knowing full well that these items are not necessities.
I also face a couple of practical challenges that are somewhat more difficult to overcome. First, our grain mill is in about 3-4 different pieces. It still works, unfortunately (if it didn't, we'd have gotten a new one by now!), but you have to hold all the pieces together and feed the wheat in very slowly in order for it to continue to work. Budget-wise, I guess it's good that it still works, but the fact that it's broken is a huge deterrent to milling the 300-400lbs of wheat we have.
We, as I have probably already hinted at, live in "the middle of nowhere." Okay, not really, but the closest town that has any groceries is a good 20 minutes away, and the closest Walmart is 40-45 minutes. Costco, Target, and the coupon meccas (CVS and Walgreens) are even farther than that, I think. While in some ways this is good - we can't run off and grab a few groceries in 5 minutes - it can be inconvenient - we can't run off and grab a few groceries in 5 minutes. Thankfully, Daddy works in one of the more major middle Tennessee cities and, if it's absolutely necessary, can grab what we need on his way home. Going to try to avoid that as much as possible though!
Another potential planning and budgeting challenge is our love of hospitality. We often host families and groups around here, and it's always a delightful time of fellowship. We wouldn't have it any other way. Feeding large groups can be a budgeting nightmare though! However, of all these extra challenges, I think I'm looking forward to coping with this one the most!
Then there's also the fact that I essentially don't have any meal plans done... My fault, of course. I'm going through a more than usually uninspired phase, which probably means I should find some time to peruse my favorite cooking blogs, sites, and books. "Food and Wine" magazine (and maybe Epicurious.com) is strictly off-limits though! That sort of inspiration is way beyond the initial budget!
All of the "liabilites" are relatively minor compared both to what they could be and to the assets I have. So, I think we're good! The family's on board with the project - if slightly worried that I'll feed them on beans and rice or cornbread for the next 365 days, and the project officially begins TOMORROW!!! Yikes! (Where did this month go?!?!)
The most immediate and obvious challenge that I see is quite simply the fact that we love good food. Our tastes tend to run along the fresh, organic, expensive lines. For example, a family favorite is a fillet mignon with bacon and/or t-bone steak, garlic and sauteed/caramelized onion mashed potatoes, sauteed fresh mushrooms, grilled or steamed fresh asparagus with a garlic-butter sauce, and rolls. Are you drooling yet? I am! Like I said, we love fresh. We love meat (which is not cheap these days), and we love bacon!
We also adore sugar. Chocolate chips, sweetened condensed milk, and craisins are staples around here. I'm going to have to try to realign our mindset, however little I care to myself, to knowing full well that these items are not necessities.
I also face a couple of practical challenges that are somewhat more difficult to overcome. First, our grain mill is in about 3-4 different pieces. It still works, unfortunately (if it didn't, we'd have gotten a new one by now!), but you have to hold all the pieces together and feed the wheat in very slowly in order for it to continue to work. Budget-wise, I guess it's good that it still works, but the fact that it's broken is a huge deterrent to milling the 300-400lbs of wheat we have.
We, as I have probably already hinted at, live in "the middle of nowhere." Okay, not really, but the closest town that has any groceries is a good 20 minutes away, and the closest Walmart is 40-45 minutes. Costco, Target, and the coupon meccas (CVS and Walgreens) are even farther than that, I think. While in some ways this is good - we can't run off and grab a few groceries in 5 minutes - it can be inconvenient - we can't run off and grab a few groceries in 5 minutes. Thankfully, Daddy works in one of the more major middle Tennessee cities and, if it's absolutely necessary, can grab what we need on his way home. Going to try to avoid that as much as possible though!
Another potential planning and budgeting challenge is our love of hospitality. We often host families and groups around here, and it's always a delightful time of fellowship. We wouldn't have it any other way. Feeding large groups can be a budgeting nightmare though! However, of all these extra challenges, I think I'm looking forward to coping with this one the most!
Then there's also the fact that I essentially don't have any meal plans done... My fault, of course. I'm going through a more than usually uninspired phase, which probably means I should find some time to peruse my favorite cooking blogs, sites, and books. "Food and Wine" magazine (and maybe Epicurious.com) is strictly off-limits though! That sort of inspiration is way beyond the initial budget!
All of the "liabilites" are relatively minor compared both to what they could be and to the assets I have. So, I think we're good! The family's on board with the project - if slightly worried that I'll feed them on beans and rice or cornbread for the next 365 days, and the project officially begins TOMORROW!!! Yikes! (Where did this month go?!?!)
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
The Challenge - Assets, Part 5
I believe I'm going to make this the last post in the "assets" series. Wow! I am so blessed to be starting this adventure with all this!
First of all, I need to expand on part of yesterday's post. I mentioned that, because we're part of their CSA, we get a basket-full of fresh, organic produce from Beaverdam Creek Farm. What I didn't mention was that, being neighbors and friends, we occasionally go over and help them out. In return we get left-overs and "scratch and dent" produce. It really is a huge blessing! Just yesterday we brought home over 10 gallons of green beans! Hopefully we'll get around to canning them in the next couple of days.
Okay, so along with all the groceries I get to start with, I'm also beginning with a very easy family. Really the only food allergies we have to deal with are pecans and walnuts, and they're definitely easy enough to avoid or substitute.
On top of that, we're not really very picky! We've always had the "eat what's set before you" rule - often we didn't even have the option of not eating! This, I'm sure, helped expand our palates.
One of the biggest assets, I believe, is that we absolutely love "soul food," good Southern cooking! Thankfully this type of food is generally quite cheap. Southern cooking was, if I'm remembering some of my past research into it correctly, developed at least in part because they didn't always get the best cuts of meat, or have lots of seasonings. They used what they grew and what little they could afford. Generally, Southern cooking stretches over several meals pretty well, and the food is good, stick-to-your-ribs food.
Some other types of cuisine we enjoy are:
First of all, I need to expand on part of yesterday's post. I mentioned that, because we're part of their CSA, we get a basket-full of fresh, organic produce from Beaverdam Creek Farm. What I didn't mention was that, being neighbors and friends, we occasionally go over and help them out. In return we get left-overs and "scratch and dent" produce. It really is a huge blessing! Just yesterday we brought home over 10 gallons of green beans! Hopefully we'll get around to canning them in the next couple of days.
Okay, so along with all the groceries I get to start with, I'm also beginning with a very easy family. Really the only food allergies we have to deal with are pecans and walnuts, and they're definitely easy enough to avoid or substitute.
On top of that, we're not really very picky! We've always had the "eat what's set before you" rule - often we didn't even have the option of not eating! This, I'm sure, helped expand our palates.
One of the biggest assets, I believe, is that we absolutely love "soul food," good Southern cooking! Thankfully this type of food is generally quite cheap. Southern cooking was, if I'm remembering some of my past research into it correctly, developed at least in part because they didn't always get the best cuts of meat, or have lots of seasonings. They used what they grew and what little they could afford. Generally, Southern cooking stretches over several meals pretty well, and the food is good, stick-to-your-ribs food.
Some other types of cuisine we enjoy are:
- Mexican
- Italian
- Thai
- French
- German
- Chinese
- Middle Eastern
- Classic American (Hamburgers, hot wings, and apple pie! Oh, yeah!!!)
Monday, August 29, 2011
The Challenge - Assets, Part 4
Wow! When I started listing my assets, I never imagined it would go on this long; this is great!
Today, I'm going to introduce y'all to where we get some of our fresh foods. It's quite simple, really, and a huge help to the grocery budget. We're farmers. I alluded to that fact in the last post. We don't make our living farming yet, but we get quite a bit of food from it. Our farm is Belle Springs Farm in the hills of middle Tennessee. We just recently started trying to make a more viable business out of our farm, so things are still works in progress. For just our family though, we've supplied a nice portion of our own beef, chicken, pork, and dairy in the past 3-4 years. At the time of this post, we have the following:
Today, I'm going to introduce y'all to where we get some of our fresh foods. It's quite simple, really, and a huge help to the grocery budget. We're farmers. I alluded to that fact in the last post. We don't make our living farming yet, but we get quite a bit of food from it. Our farm is Belle Springs Farm in the hills of middle Tennessee. We just recently started trying to make a more viable business out of our farm, so things are still works in progress. For just our family though, we've supplied a nice portion of our own beef, chicken, pork, and dairy in the past 3-4 years. At the time of this post, we have the following:
- 1 old dog, a blue heeler named Lily
- 8 Jersey dairy cows
- 3 cows - only 2 currently in milk. (Herd shares available! See farm link above for details!)
- 2 hopefully bred heifers. We hoping to get a vet out here soon to check on that.
- 2 young heifers
- 1 bull
- 32 beef cattle... or so. Mostly Angus.
I'm looking forward to the day when I can once again add chickens (layers and broilers), turkeys, and pigs to this list. As it is, I'm grateful for the endless supply of milk and the possibility of beef.
That's our farm. We're extremely blessed to live right next to Beaverdam Creek Farm! We have a CSA share from them. Let me tell you! Those Certified Naturally Grown veggies are delicious! Some of the veggies we have recently received in our CSA basket have been the following:
- Green beans
- Okra
- Tomatoes
- Potatoes
- Peppers
- Onions
- Garlic
- Leeks
- Squash (yellow, patty-pan, acorn, and butternut!)
- Watermelon
- Cantaloupe
- Basil
It's so wonderful to have fresh, organic, in season veggies available to us! I'm looking forward to figuring out creative ways to use them in my meal planning!
Saturday, August 27, 2011
The Challenge - Assets, Part 3
I cleaned out the chest freezers; everyone rejoice with me!!! I got rid of a few random pieces of bean-seasoning bits that were 3+ years old, and I made the executive decision to go on and get rid of the pints and half-pints of oatmeal and cream of wheat berries that have been in there for over 2 years. By way of an explanation for each of those respectively, we had 4 hogs that we processed about 3 years ago; the smoked, fatty ends of the hams and whatnot were wrapped separately to be used as flavor in beans, soups, and stews. As for the oatmeal and wheat berries, we used to occasionally use them in muffins, but, as you can see, we haven't in ages.
Anyway, after I was able to see, I did my best at putting like things together (beef with beef, chicken with chicken, veggies with veggies, etc.). Once I finished that, I had a pretty fair idea of what was in there. At that point, I will admit, I had to fight off some minor twinges of discouragement. My lazy self noted a decided lack of things we used really often and/or are quick and easy to prepare. Here's a quick overview of what I found:
Anyway, after I was able to see, I did my best at putting like things together (beef with beef, chicken with chicken, veggies with veggies, etc.). Once I finished that, I had a pretty fair idea of what was in there. At that point, I will admit, I had to fight off some minor twinges of discouragement. My lazy self noted a decided lack of things we used really often and/or are quick and easy to prepare. Here's a quick overview of what I found:
- Pork (all of it's quite old...)
- 1 very large fresh ham
- 1 what I think is a smoked ham
- Various bean-seasoning bits
- 4 packages of country ham, all small-ish
- 3lbs of breakfast sausage
- Chicken
- About 8 whole, all but 1 from a trusted source (Some of us watched "Food, Inc." the other night...)
- Beef
- 2 large packages of ribs that are... really old.
- 3 large packages of roasts + 2 more individual roasts
- Fruit
- 2 quart bags of mixed
- Several bags of blueberries
- Veggies
- Several, but not many, quarts of squash casserole "mix"
- 2 pints (or are they half-pints?) of butter beans
- 1 small bag of black-eyed peas, I think...
- 4 or 5 small packages of spinach
- Roughly 2.5 - 1lb bags of green peas
- 5 bags of ready-to-be-fried okra
- A few pints of shredded carrots
- Nuts
- 1 large bag of hazelnuts
- 1.5 bags of chopped walnuts
- 1.5 bags of pecan halves
- 1 bag of almonds
- Dairy
- 9-ish lbs of homemade butter
- 16 lbs of homemade cheese that's somewhere between mozzarella and ricotta
It looks like a lot, but, as I said earlier, a whole bunch of stuff we usually use is gone. For example, note the conspicuous absence of ground beef or venison on the list. Thankfully we're going to take one of our steers to be processed in the near future. (More about our farm next time!)
Friday, August 26, 2011
The Challenge - Assets, Part 2
As I organized the various parts of our pantry this past week, I took the change to get a rough estimate of some of our more "bulk" items, or the items we seem to have stocked up on. This list is not the complete list of my total assets when it comes to already-purchased foods, but it'll give you an idea. I'll start with the home-canned stuff.
- 50 quarts of green beans
- 14 quarts of apples
- 1 quart and 8 pints of apple sauce
- 1 pint and 4 half-pints of apple butter
- 16 randomly-sized bottles of apple cider vinegar
- 27 half-pints of pepper jelly
- 2 pints and 72 half-pints of squash relish
- 6 pints and 1 half-pint of cucumber relish
- 11 pints and 2 half-pints of peppers (pickled, I guess)
- 4 pints and 1 half-pints of bread and butter pickles
- 2 quarts of tomato juice
- 2 pints of salsa
- 5 half-pints of extremely spicy, green chile hot sauce/enchilada sauce
- Some red wine vinegar
Aside from the home-canned stuff, our more major stock items are:
- 6 - 50lb bags of hard red wheat
- 50lbs of hard white wheat
- 50lbs soft white wheat
- 25lbs of pop corn (actually... that might be a 50lb bag...) and several small bags
- 25lbs of white flour (don't judge me!)
- 25lbs of steel cut oats (plus a good bit in a 5 gal. bucket...)
- Roughly 10lbs of macaroni
- 1 - 106oz. can of cheddar cheese sauce (gag)
- 2 - 105oz cans of crushed tomatoes
- 1 - 105oz. can of tomato sauce
- 2 - 30oz. and 12 - 6oz. cans of tomato paste
- 8 - 14.5oz. cans of diced tomatoes
- 5 - 10.75oz. cans of tomato soup
- 3 - 4lb boxes of salt
- Roughly a gallon and a half of local honey
On top of that, we've got several large bags of dried beans, the types and sizes of which I cannot at the moment remember. Rather a random assortment of things, no? Stay tuned to see what, if anything, happens with these items throughout the coming year!
Well, I didn't get around to organizing/going through the chest freezer yesterday as I had hoped (too busy attempting to make this blog aesthetically pleasing...), so I'm going to try again today.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
The Challenge - Assets, Part 1
First of all let me say that the template of this blog will probably be constantly changing for a while. I'm not really liking the way Blogger is fencing me in when it comes to text color - particularly on the side bar.
Okay, yesterday I mentioned that I was starting out with a bunch of "assets." Today, I'll start by listing what spaces are at my disposal. The challenge, remember, begins in exactly one week. This week I've been reorganizing all our food stuffs so that I am able to tell precisely what we have. One of the benefits of doing this is that the shelves look a LOT neater, and the spaces are used much more efficiently.
We have roughly 3 1/2 of these industrial/restaurant wire shelves, similar to THIS, that are used as our pantry (our new-to-us, 110 year old, frequently remodeled house has no pantry...). I've spent the last couple of days looking through everything on those shelves and making them nice and pretty. ;) Well, more organized anyway.
I wish I had a before picture 'cause this looks a LOT better!
On top of these three shelves, we have currently in use 2 chest freezers and 2 refrigerator/freezer units. I haven't yet gone through those... (but I'm planning on it!). I've got some plans for a few smallish changes, but they haven't happened yet, so I can't really include them in my assets.
Anyway, that's the kind of space I have. Check back tomorrow (hopefully) for part 2. I might actually get around to listing some of the food items we already have on hand.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
The Challenge
Hello! Welcome to the Food Budget Meets Foodie Family blog. I'm Laura, and I will be your friendly guide through the next year or so of our big adventure!
What's the scoop?
Not ice cream, unfortunately. Or gelato. Nope, it's a challenge, but I currently prefer thinking of it as a grand adventure in which I most likely get lost, fall down, and learn a whole lot!
A few weeks ago, Daddy and I came up with a clever, little scheme which potentially enables me to earn a bit of cash every month. Starting on September 1st, and continuing at least a full year, I'm going to take over our family's grocery budget. This results in me taking over the meal planning as well. Any money left over after grocery shopping and whatnot, I get to keep. I've got quite a bit of incentive to just do beans and rice for a year, but I don't actually think I could do that, even if I wanted to.
You see, there's six of us 2 parents, 4 kids (ages 20, 18, 16, and 8 on the day of this post). We're all foodies here. We love good food. A lot. So, I'm planning on learning all sorts of creative ways to make good things last. Yes, we'll probably still shop at Walmart, and Costco has our business if only for the paper products. We love eating natural/organic and local foods as well, but it depends on the budget as to whether or not we actually get to eat that %100 of the time.
In the next day or two I hope to post a list of my assets; I'm starting out with quite a few, thankfully! The goal that I have for this blog is to post each day's meals, hopefully with some pictures scattered here and there, and a budget review once or twice a month. If I happen upon any money- or time-saving recipes that are exceptionally delicious, then I'll post those as well.
So climb aboard and experience this adventure with me, and, if you enjoy what you see (or think you will), go ahead! Spread the word! The more the merrier! I welcome any helpful hints, good recipes, and friendly comments!
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