TEN BUCKS A WEEK!

[Debbie]

I just experienced my first foray in online grocery shopping. True, it was only from Walmart...but it counts just the same.

This was just under $55 worth of stuff...mostly because of those dang finish dishwasher tabs. Sunlight pacs are definitely cheaper but we found they didn't clean our dishes nearly as well. So, the high priced finish tabs it is.

Only a bit of this is for this week's food storage. Although 110 dish tabs will last us over three months!!

I also have a bit of a puzzler going on. Beginning tomorrow, No Frills has bone in skinless chicken breasts on sale for $2.47 a pound, which is half price. A really good deal. Now, we are completely OUT of chicken. So I could stock up. BUT, I know if I wait I can get chicken thighs (bone in skin on) for just under $2 a pound. Obviously that is a better deal. I am so tired of chicken thighs. Sooooo tired of chicken thighs. Tired of pulling the skin off. I miss chicken breasts. (I had to add in the word chicken because without it, that sentence looked dirty. ) The problem is...I don't know when the chicken thighs will go on sale...and...I don't really fancy eating them for a bit.

So...should I get the chicken breasts...or not?

What to do, what to do?

Just like your Finish is a good buy for the dishes, the chicken breasts are a good buy for you! Disclaimer: I just bought some skinless boneless chicken breasts because I just had a craving for something different. DH would eat chicken strips/nuggets non-stop, but I wanted something I could dress up.

 

[stayhomemom77]

The best part about having a food storage stock up plan is that the family knows not to touch those products on penalty of death! Only mom can raid the food storage shelves...which means mom can hide baking ingredients on those shelves with no one being the wiser.

When DH and DS want a chocolate fix, they often raid my baking chips. Then there's never anything there for me to use when I go to make cookies or brownies or fudge. WHEATON!!!! (Alert! BBT reference!) And DD loves to snack on the marshmallows that I need for rice krispie treats and fudge, so those needed some covert ops as well.

So you can bet that these beauties, though not actually part of the TEN BUCKS program, were stashed behind some stuff on the shelves to repose safely until such time as I am ready to begin my Christmas baking.

I AM AWESOME!

 

[stayhomemom77]

Oh. How silly of me to forget. To add to my delight in having my groceries show up on my doorstep...

I received two free samples of shampoo/conditioner and a chance to win a $500 visa gift card if I try them out and tell Pantene about it.

I used to use Pantene all the time and loved it. I can't wait to try this stuff. And free. is. AWESOME. It's the little things.

 

[stayhomemom77]

TEN BUCKS A WEEK
Week Eleven

Can you believe I'm 11 weeks in already?

So, I hid my baking items back behind some stuff so no one else will know they are there. Then I squeezed this stuff into the remaining spaces on the shelves and it's official. I need to clear off a fourth shelf. So that's on my TO DO list for next week. I have no idea where all the cr@p that is on that shelf is going to go...none of it is mine...and it was supposed to be vamoosed six weeks ago...but there we are.

So, this week we have:

2 bottles dish soap $2.26
2 cans pizza sauce $1.48
2 bags brown sugar $3.58
2 bags pinto beans $2.72
TOTAL SPENT: $10.04

I guess, like Noah...I'm loading stuff up in pairs. Maybe if I'm lucky there really is one male and one female of each item and they'll start replicating. Bad joke. Sorry. But that would help out my food storage. Just sayin'!

Anyway...

I'm going to see if I can get pinto beans, black beans and chickpeas in bulk. These are the ones we use the most. Pinto beans are new. I found a slow cooker recipe for homemade refried beans, so OF COURSE I had to try it. It was ridiculously easy and I think they would have been very tasty if I had rinsed the bitter out of them first. I found out about doing that later. The batch was still great as long as you didn't eat them plain. My mom is coming up for a visit in a few weeks and wants to go to Costco. She has a membership but no store in her town. I have a store in my town but no membership. So we go together when she comes. Win win. I'm hoping to find beans in bulk there. And maybe some other good deals. She gets a lot of her GF stuff there so I'll see what they have. I've already budgeted some money for the trip. Maybe I should set aside some more...

 

[star72232]

I just experienced my first foray in online grocery shopping. True, it was only from Walmart...but it counts just the same.

This was just under $55 worth of stuff...mostly because of those dang finish dishwasher tabs. Sunlight pacs are definitely cheaper but we found they didn't clean our dishes nearly as well. So, the high priced finish tabs it is.

Only a bit of this is for this week's food storage. Although 110 dish tabs will last us over three months!!

I also have a bit of a puzzler going on. Beginning tomorrow, No Frills has bone in skinless chicken breasts on sale for $2.47 a pound, which is half price. A really good deal. Now, we are completely OUT of chicken. So I could stock up. BUT, I know if I wait I can get chicken thighs (bone in skin on) for just under $2 a pound. Obviously that is a better deal. I am so tired of chicken thighs. Sooooo tired of chicken thighs. Tired of pulling the skin off. I miss chicken breasts. (I had to add in the word chicken because without it, that sentence looked dirty. ) The problem is...I don't know when the chicken thighs will go on sale...and...I don't really fancy eating them for a bit.

So...should I get the chicken breasts...or not?

What to do, what to do?

I'd get the chicken breasts. With the amount of bone in thigh and legs, paying a bit more per pound for breasts makes sense.

I see people talking about getting boneless/skinless chicken breasts in the states for $1.99/lb. I'm excited when I find them for $3.99/lb!

 

[Debbie]

The best part about having a food storage stock up plan is that the family knows not to touch those products on penalty of death! Only mom can raid the food storage shelves...which means mom can hide baking ingredients on those shelves with no one being the wiser.

When DH and DS want a chocolate fix, they often raid my baking chips. Then there's never anything there for me to use when I go to make cookies or brownies or fudge. WHEATON!!!! (Alert! BBT reference!) And DD loves to snack on the marshmallows that I need for rice krispie treats and fudge, so those needed some covert ops as well.

So you can bet that these beauties, though not actually part of the TEN BUCKS program, were stashed behind some stuff on the shelves to repose safely until such time as I am ready to begin my Christmas baking.

I AM AWESOME!

Moms gotta do what moms gotta do! When my kids were little, I'd mark the freezer goodies with "Aunt Susan". They wouldn't think of taking Aunt Susan's stuff, so it was fair game for me to label thusly.

 

[Shmily1]

TEN BUCKS A WEEK
Week Eleven

Can you believe I'm 11 weeks in already?

So, I hid my baking items back behind some stuff so no one else will know they are there. Then I squeezed this stuff into the remaining spaces on the shelves and it's official. I need to clear off a fourth shelf. So that's on my TO DO list for next week. I have no idea where all the cr@p that is on that shelf is going to go...none of it is mine...and it was supposed to be vamoosed six weeks ago...but there we are.

So, this week we have:

2 bottles dish soap $2.26
2 cans pizza sauce $1.48
2 bags brown sugar $3.58
2 bags pinto beans $2.72
TOTAL SPENT: $10.04

I guess, like Noah...I'm loading stuff up in pairs. Maybe if I'm lucky there really is one male and one female of each item and they'll start replicating. Bad joke. Sorry. But that would help out my food storage. Just sayin'!

Anyway...

I'm going to see if I can get pinto beans, black beans and chickpeas in bulk. These are the ones we use the most. Pinto beans are new. I found a slow cooker recipe for homemade refried beans, so OF COURSE I had to try it. It was ridiculously easy and I think they would have been very tasty if I had rinsed the bitter out of them first. I found out about doing that later. The batch was still great as long as you didn't eat them plain. My mom is coming up for a visit in a few weeks and wants to go to Costco. She has a membership but no store in her town. I have a store in my town but no membership. So we go together when she comes. Win win. I'm hoping to find beans in bulk there. And maybe some other good deals. She gets a lot of her GF stuff there so I'll see what they have. I've already budgeted some money for the trip. Maybe I should set aside some more...

Can you share the recipe? I love refried beans!

 

[stayhomemom77]

**Rinse thoroughly or presoak beans and cook in fresh water so they won't be bitter (a step I missed)
**I used my immersion blender instead of a potato masher


SLOW COOKER REFRIED BEANS
TIME: 8-10 hrs
SERVES: 10-12
INGREDIENTS

• 6-8 cups water
• 1 pound dry pinto beans
• 1 onion, peeled and halved
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
• Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

PREPARATION

1. Place beans in slow cooker and top with 6-8 cups water, or so that beans are covered by 2-3 inches of water.
2. Add onion to beans and stir in chili powder, garlic powder and cumin.
3. Season generously with salt and pepper, then cover and cook on HIGH for 8-10 hours, or until beans are tender.
4. Remove onion, then use a potato masher to mash beans as finely or coarsely as you like.
5. Taste and adjust seasoning, if necessary, serve hot and enjoy!

Recipe adapted from Good Cheap Eats

 

[stayhomemom77]

I'd get the chicken breasts. With the amount of bone in thigh and legs, paying a bit more per pound for breasts makes sense.

I see people talking about getting boneless/skinless chicken breasts in the states for $1.99/lb. I'm excited when I find them for $3.99/lb!

Yep. I was the same. I resorted to buying them frozen just so I could get them for under $4 a pound. I don't mind the bones most of the time though...I can make soup stock out of them. But it's nice to just have boneless, skinless breasts and I've been doing without for a while now.

 

[barkley]

My mom is coming up for a visit in a few weeks and wants to go to Costco. She has a membership but no store in her town. I have a store in my town but no membership. So we go together when she comes. Win win. I'm hoping to find beans in bulk there. And maybe some other good deals. She gets a lot of her GF stuff there so I'll see what they have. I've already budgeted some money for the trip. Maybe I should set aside some more...

if you've got the store but no membership then consider setting aside some more money BUT instead of spending it on stuff when you go w/mom have her purchase a Costco cash card for you. as a member she can purchase one-as a non member you can turn around and use it despite not having a membership, just show it at the door, enter and shop.

 

[stayhomemom77]

Really? Interesting. I may consider doing that...although half the fun of going to Costco with my mom is that I'm going to Costco with MY MOM!!

 

[scrapquitler]

Now that I'm back from Disney, I'm on board to start. Since my stockpile $10 a week is going to the food bank, I went with one of the food bank's current requests: quick bread mixes to put in the holiday baskets that will be distributed next week. The Pillsbury Quick Bread mixes were on sale $2.00 each, so I bought 5 cranberry orange ones and put them in the donation bin. I also picked up three for at home, since I bakes something simple at least once a week for snacks, and my son loves the quick breads.

 

[holycow]

This is AWESOME! I'm so excited to read all of the pages! Thank you for posting your efforts!

 

[stayhomemom77]

This is AWESOME! I'm so excited to read all of the pages! Thank you for posting your efforts!

Welcome! Glad you are so excited.

 

[stayhomemom77]

Picture time folks!

I have no before pictures...but just imagine all these shelves nearly empty and the freezer completely so. On September 6th, that was the status of my food storage areas and now...well now I have STUFF!

I got my son to help shift the junk from the fourth shelf over the weekend so I could reposition all my goodies. One negative side effect is that the chocolate chips are less hidden. Ah, the risks we take to complete our goals! The fam is still none the wiser though (at least for now) and I'm very pleased with the outcome.

Okay...freezer first! From totally empty to this:

This is about half full at the moment. I've been working on filling this up using the regular grocery budget, so things are rotated quite regularly. For the first three months of the challenge, I decided to focus on the shelf stable items with my TEN BUCKS but after the 27th, I may use the money to stock up on freezer stuff also. I'd like to see this thing pretty much full by the end of January.

Now the TEN BUCKS food storage. This shelving unit is in my basement, has all the stuff I posted on this thread plus a few extras that I bought outside of the weekly allotment and tossed downstairs. This stuff is untouchable for another couple of weeks and then I can start rotating them with the upstairs pantry stuff. I kept this stuff completely separate so I could get a head start on going from nothing to something. After the 27th, that restriction will be removed...maybe. I may start using a second shelving unit and doing the same three month program over again...I haven't decided yet. I'm starting to think...why mess with a good thing?

LOL, you can see that the bottom shelf still has a bunch of electronics and cr@p that DH needs to do something with. I have an empty rubbermaid container on standby in the crawlspace that will be the new home for this junk if he doesn't vamoose it by the time I need the shelf.

After DS and I cleared space on the fourth shelf, I spaced things out better so that there would be room behind to continue adding the purchases. Here is a diagonal view so you can see a little better how much I actually have. The full on view can be a bit misleading.

 

[stayhomemom77]

I also took pics of my kitchen pantry and storage...just for fun. They were also fairly empty at the beginning of September but they don't look that way anymore. Here's the stuff at the top of the microwave stand...most of this was already there...but I've added a few things.

It's pretty well organized, but I'd like to streamline it a bit more. This is mostly spices, baking ingredients and opened packages of pasta.

Not everything food related fits into the pantry...so I also have the cupboards above the toaster filled with goodies.

As you can see...the bottom shelf houses the open PB, the butter and then our medications and such. It's not considered food storage at all. The middle shelf is flour and packaged goods, so it half counts (the hamburger helper and lipton noodles especially) and the top shelf has all the upstairs canned goods and jars, so all of it count. These aren't as full as I'd like to see them but since the top shelf used to be empty...I'm pretty happy.

Now for the pantry...

Top shelves--we are getting dangerously low on cereal. I'm waiting for a good sale so I can really stock up. We still have lots of stuffing and granola bars. I'm working on figuring out what I can to do work with another level on this second shelf so I can tidy it up a bit. It's mostly beans, quinoa, KD, oatmeal etc..some open, some not and then on the other side, gravy, pasta sauce, condiments etc. I can't really stack them as is...but with an insert of some kind, I could fill this area up much further.

Middle shelves--a lot of this stuff is open. These are the shelves the kids can reach, so the open boxes of cereal, the granola bars and such are on these. Not a ton of food storage, but we used to have more unopened boxes of crackers back there. Now the box of oranges is taking up the empty space. I'm waiting for a good sale on crackers also, so I can stock up again. That green basket houses all their leftover halloween candy and such. It's time to clean that thing out again, methinks to make more room for the good stuff! And there's some baking stuff in the back that really should be moved to the other cupboard.

And the messy floor! LOL Rice, apples and DH's pop. There's usually potatoes down here also but we are out just now. Hmm...guess I didn't realize just how much of the kitchen pantry contained opened items. Going to do a little cleaning and reorganizing to streamline this and prepare these shelves for more food storage! Woot!!

 

[bcwife76]

My pantry is very similar to yours - mine is wider but has less shelves. I HATE the wire shelves, as my small bottles (say, extracts, etc) keep falling on their sides/falling over. I saw an infomercial once that converted the shelves and made it look like they were actual shelves, not looking like racks (if that makes sense) but I have yet to find anything in stores that fits the bill. DH says to just put cardboard down across the shelves but I think that would look 'messy.' Ugh, the things that keep me up at night

 

[hmwinter85]

So I'm a little late posting but last Friday I got the following for my $10

5 bottles of vegetable oil - $1.75 each
1 bottle of shampoo for husband $2.00

 

[stayhomemom77]

My pantry is very similar to yours - mine is wider but has less shelves. I HATE the wire shelves, as my small bottles (say, extracts, etc) keep falling on their sides/falling over. I saw an infomercial once that converted the shelves and made it look like they were actual shelves, not looking like racks (if that makes sense) but I have yet to find anything in stores that fits the bill. DH says to just put cardboard down across the shelves but I think that would look 'messy.' Ugh, the things that keep me up at night

Me too. I do have some cardboard boxes but it is a bit ugly. Still function over fashion, I say!

 

[stayhomemom77]

Well...so far, the flyers this week have been rather uninspiring.

I have to wait until tomorrow to get a preview of the rest of them, but if there are no particularly amazing deals available I think I may stock up on some fruit.