Making it work when I work
Posted by: TammyOur oldest son is now in college. The next son will be in college in less than two years and the third son will start college just as the middle son gets out. Basically, we’re paying tuition for the next ten years! That said, my paycheck is now devoted to saving money for college, the food budget and the extra things that come along. I’m working more hours outside the home now and those hours run into the evening and dinner time. I started to realize that the biggest drain on my paycheck , besides the tuition saving, was the food budget and how we were always running way over the food budget!
I had to take a hard look at how and why I was always running over budget on our food bill. Granted, three teenage males is a heavy drain on any food bill, but I quickly came to realize a major issue: my work nights and for a bit, my foot and ankle injury. Many nights it was easier for my husband to grab take-out and those easy but pricey “already prepped foods” from the grocery store than to prepare a meal at home. Chinese take-out ran us over $50! The local grocery store had fried chicken tenders and potato wedges that are really good but buying enough for five of us cost us $40! When you’re working hard to stretch a grocery budget of $200 per week, a $50 drain for just ONE meal is too much. Now that I’m healing up, I am determined to work harder to keep us in the budget.
Over the next weeks, I’ll share some of my favorite “prep ahead” items with you. I have so many favorites that I realized it was impossible to put them all in one post!
I buy my hamburger in bulk; ten pound packages when the local butcher puts 90% lean on sale if you buy the large-sized package. On my last trip, I bought thirty pounds of hamburger. I begin processing the hamburger by making hamburger patties. I know that hamburger patties are easy for the fellas to prepare on my work nights using our George Foreman grill. I make the hamburgers, lay them out on plastic wrap on a cookie sheet and then freeze them so that I can put a meal’s worth of frozen patties into foodsaver bags and seal them up.
The next way I process the hamburger is by making batches of browned hamburger. I used to freeze up the hamburger in bags, defrost it and THEN brown it. My friends here at Frugal-Families put me onto cooking the hamburger FIRST and then freezing up the cooked meat. Cooked hamburger thaws very quickly and by having it cooked ahead of time, it’s a HUGE time-saver! Browned hamburger is the base for taco meat, chili, sloppy joes and any number of casseroles. I can make the taco and sloppy joe meat before I go to work and then the boys just have to reheat it in the microwave. Chili is warm and ready in the crockpot when dinner time comes. I can prepare casseroles ahead and then leave it in the fridge with baking instructions ready to go.
Meatballs-I make my own meatballs, but even if you buy them already made, they are a big time-saver! I bake them up then freeze them out on a cookie sheet before bagging them up in zip-type freezer bags. I can easily pull out what I need for a meal and they’re already cooked. I use meatballs for meatball grinders, pasta night and sweet and sour meatballs over rice with a quick stir-fry of vegetables (love the frozen stir-fry vege mix for that). I also freeze up RAW mini-meatballs that I can drop into pots of soup (soups are so easy in the crockpot).
Meatloaf-Like meatballs, meatloaf can be cooked and then frozen. Make sure you defrost your meatloaf in the fridge to keep it at a safe temperature until you reheat it.
I’ve been working hard at keeping things on track for over three weeks now. I’m happy to report that for three weeks, I’ve actually had a few dollars remaining from our $200/week budget!!!! Yes, meal-prepping can be time consuming but there are shortcuts that can save time and eating in versus take-out equates to saving a huge amount of money. We work hard to earn out money and I much prefer to save what we have instead of trying to earn more of it.
Maybe next time we’ll talk chicken.
