Guest Monday Message!

This Monday Message is a guest blog post from the wonderful Coupon Sahm I Am. Thanks for taking the time to inspire us to build up food storage and lead a more provident life!

Hello, I am known as Coupon Sahm I Am and I love to save money… Ok not really, what I do love is to save money so I can buy other things like art supplies for my Art addiction but I do sleep better at night knowing that I have a nice savings account for those rainy days, and for art.

If you are new to my blog come check me out at www.couponSahmIAm.blogspot.com I am here as guest post because I have successfully got a good 6 month food storage from a normal month’s budget. (it started with a $300 food budget) with a family of three, now I spend about $600 a month on a family of 5- 3 growing kids. Did I mention the GROWING KIDS part?

When you have a budget and to live within your means, means no extra money spent and you have $300 to spend on the month… you figure out what you want to spend your money on very quickly. I was at that time staying at home with our 9 month old daughter, and “needed” a hobby that saved us money.

While saving money and spending all my energy on what I could spend our grocery money on.  I realized that although couponing can be a great way to “save” money there is a system to saving money. It came unexpectedly and I found that having a year's supply of food storage to be the way to save money Let me explain:

I know that every year in August peanut butter is at it’s rock bottom price, it will not be that cheap until next august. So a portion of my grocery budget for the month of August goes to PB. I decided that we go through about 1 jar a week (we love PB) so I buy about 45 jars of PB every August. I know it’s a good baking day when I go through 2 jars of PB. Since I can justify spending just a $1 on pb I don’t mind using it for lots of baking recipes.

Sale Cycles are what helps me save the most and helps me work on my food storage!  Go here if you want see the Grocery Cycle that I have came up with to save you money on basic pantry items that each month there should be a significant savings by buying groceries at their rock bottom prices. When it comes to groceries there is a season for everything!

Once you get what a I call a stock-pile (food storage) because the deals are out there once you use the Grocery Sale Cycle. Use what you got:

I know that if I have a food storage (stockpile) I am less tempted to go “out to eat” because we have so much food at home… Using what you have usually means that you try new ways of baking, or cooking chicken or for me I am always looking for those frugal recipes ( you know the ones in the old church and community cookbooks) to see what works for your family. I use what I got, sometimes items so basic can be used for multiple uses, for example one of my favorite things to stock up is Spaghetti Sauce.

Here is a blog post that has great ideas to do with Pasta Sauce When it’s on sale at it’s cheapest (march) I know that I can do so much more with it… I could simmer it down and make it into a pizza sauce, or my favorite thing to do is to make a tomato soup with it. Same thing with cake mixes, there are even cookbooks that are devoted to cake mixes and what you can do with it. Instant pudding and cereal are some other ones… lots of ideas and way to use up some basic pantry items that fit your family’s taste.  

Still not sure if this is the way you want to try to get a food storage started or to keep up, I have also integrated this system, that can work out well: I call it my top 10 recipe stockpile:

It’s as simple as listing your favorite 10 recipes that your family loves… You know the ones they could eat every other day if needed. Once you get that list, you list out your ingredients you need to have on hand and you get 4x that much, so you now have 40 meals ready to go…

It’s about a month worth of food storage right? You get the idea!

My top 5 recipes: Chilli,  cheese burger mac and cheese, spaghetti or lasagna, Chicken pot pie/ or something like that, and pork roast and veggies. I love to bake, I always have ingredients to make a chocolate cake, and scotcharoos. I love this way of food storage because it can be as individual and you can switch up meals along the way… If chili isn’t working any more substitute that for a new dish you made that was easy and economic right? I also go by seasons for this, and if it’s too expensive I wait until the ingredients go on sale. I know a lot of people like this method because it’s not so intense!

One last thing: take full advantage of when your grocer discounts meat… Yes, what seems like tuesday morning our local Hy-Vee always has meat for ¼ of the cost because the sell by date is about up.I just got some nice Salmon for ¼ of the cost!  I either cook it and freeze it or get it ready to cook and freeze it (seasoning it and getting it ready for the oven or crock pot or my Sous Vide.) I go specifically to the grocery store on any given tuesday Morning hoping to find some good discount on meat and do the dirty work of getting the meat prepped for 4-8 dinners that I can freeze. (does that make sense?)

I would love to know what other skills you use to help build a food storage within a budget, leave a comment or come visit my blog and leave me a comment on one of my many posts about how I have saved money! (don’t be surprised if there is artwork on my blog, that is my driving force to saving money!)

Thank you for letting me have this opportunity to post on Frugal Measures, enjoy the savings and building up your food storage!

Lisa Christensen

www.couponsahmiam.blogspot.com