One of my goals this year is to spend even more time in the kitchen doing some cooking from scratch. While this does take time, it reaps many benefits. I can serve my family good healthy food with minimal preservatives, and for a price that we can afford.
Since I do most of the cooking for our family of five, I need to find filling meals that will stretch. The cost of food seems to be growing weekly, and the stores have more and more rules that make saving money with coupons not as easy as it used to be. To combat all of these obstacles, I pull out the stops.
I thought I would give you an example of how we feed the family frugally by taking an example dinner from the week. I chose Monday because it is the most “normal” night of the week this week. Tuesday and Wednesday nights had school and church activities that left us not eating at home together.
So on Monday, I made two larger turkey pot pies (one was for the freezer) from scratch. I used leftover turkey made earlier, along with some organic carrots and potatoes that were on sale. I purchased celery, which was inexpensive and already had the spices, onions and the chicken stock on hand. Milk and butter were available, too. I didn’t use any canned soup, most everything was from scratch.
Normally, I would make the pie crust by hand too, but sales and coupons made it cheaper to buy ready made crust. I took advantage of the pre-holiday sales and stocked up with a couple of these.
Because I have a hungry family, I heated up some brown and serve type of rolls for them to eat while dinner was in the oven. These rolls cost less than $.90 for 8 because I got them in the immediate sale section. I brushed them with melted butter. My breadmaker was occupied making dough, so having the ready made rolls was pretty convenient.
Since I was in cooking mode, I made up some homemade “hot pockets” of turkey and cheese. After baking, these went into the freezer, with the exception of one that fed my still hungry eldest son.
The turkey used in these dishes was originally gotten free with bonus points at our supermarket at Thanksgiving and kept frozen in our freezer until needed.
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