Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
there is enough food in the larder and the freezer to last several months...at least!
Yep, me too! My freezer has boneless chicken breasts, a roast, pork chops, two pot pies, a ham, some small steaks, and some other items. I won't starve.
We've been enjoying restaurant week (it's more like 2 weeks) in Los Angeles and Newport Beach. However, we've been cooking at home a lot more over the last month as our food spending got a little out of control over the holidays.
I've been make a lot of the following:
Breakfast:
"Kaya" toast - using toasted hawaiian bread rolls, coconut spread, sugar, & salt, with a peppered fried egg with Maggi soy sauce.
Rolled oats - oats, cinnamon, brown sugar, and diced fuji or honey crisp apples.
Shirred eggs - eggs, heavy cream, cheese, garlic chips, crisp onions, & pepper with toast.
Poached egg - 4.5 min poached eggs with sriracha sauce and salt, with spinach & minced garlic, and toast.
Nespresso espresso/cappuccino/latte
Pour over coffee with condensed milk
french pressed coffee
fresh squeezed grapefruit juice or orange juice
Lunch:
leftovers or a simple salad
Ahi poke with tortilla chips
roasted diced sweet potato with garam marsala, sugar, pepper, salt, and coconut oil
Dinner:
Moroccan eggplant tomato stew with Naan or rustic bread
Shrimp/chicken pad thai
Chicken pho soup
Seared ahi, rice, with garlic pea sprouts
Roasted cauliflower with orzo and tahini sauce
Guinness beef stew
Chicken/tofu curry with paneer and spinach
Homemade pasta with marinara and cheese
Garlic noodles with grilled salmon and spinach
I'm a econo-tarian, buying about 80% of my groceries on sale while figuring out how to incorporate the ingredients into a decent meal. I don't mind splurging every now and again for dinner guests, but our days of fine dining will be saved for special occasions. As long as our monthly restaurant bill is below $400 and our grocery bill is under $200, I'm happy. If we had to hunker down, I would cancel our $2K/yr wine subscriptions and dine out far less, but we are happy with our Cakebread, Gloria Ferrer, and Kunin wines.
What have you stocked up on? Is a week away from payday going to be tough for you?
I have lots of canned tomatoes, canned beans, canned corn, spaghetti sauce, ketchup, mustard, mayo and evaporated milk and broth. I have dried beans, lentils, rice and split peas and pasta and flour and cornbread mix. I have cheese, frozen chicken, frozen peas, broccoli, and fish. I have fresh tortillas and naan, yogurt, butter and bacon, 3 dozen eggs, and a few potatoes. I have about 2 pounds of cheese and a lot of that powdered Parmesan. The chicken and eggs and evaporated milk would be my main source of protein. Enough bulk tea for a week. I might not make it on sugar. I may not have what I want to have, but we would do OK on an emergency menu for a week from payday..
Plenty of food here. Might risk running out of fresh fruit, but then we'll just have frozen fruit smoothies instead.
Your week also looks pretty good.
Breakfast tacos with eggs and potatoes and a little bacon. Can add sauce, salsa, or ketchup if you like.
Lots of makings for chili or soup.
You have makings for a pasta dish.
quiche
cheesy chicken and broccoli rice
beans and rice
You have the flu and you are eating pizza? Yuck, I can barely keep water down and it is not pleasant coming back up when I have the flu, there is no way I could or would eat pizza.
Just achy and stuffed up, rumbly chest - that kind of flu so far. Or a cold? Froze the leftover pizza slices in baggies, so now I can just heat up a slice when I want one. Had the energy to make soup today. Yeah, pizza was kind of heavy, but it was easy :-)
Everything tastes like the Dayquil and Theraflu I've been taking right now anyway LOL.
I have two beef roasts, four packs of boneless beef ribs, five packages of chicken tenders, six pounds of hamburger meat, three turkeys, 8 packs of boneless chicken breast, 5 steamable bags of mixed veggies, 5 steamable bags of corn, 3 broccoli, 5 lbs frozen stir fry veggies, 5 lbs frozen fries. I have several kinds of rice, cans of refried beans, pinto beans, kidney beans and flavored beans, 6 cans of soup, two jars spaghetti sauce, 10 lg cans tomato sauce, 6 cans ro-tel tomatoes, 6 cans tomato paste, several cans of peas, canned pumpkin, cherry pie filling. 15 lbs flour, two bags flour tortilla mix, 4 lbs cornmeal, 10 lbs of pasta noodles, extra ketchup, mustard, mayo, 4 lbs cheddar, 3 lbs mozzarella, several dozen eggs, 2 lbs butter, 3 blocks of cream cheese. One of those big packs of precooked bacon that's more than half full. Cake mixes, brownie mixes, brown sugar, white sugar, turbinado sugar, honey. Half a jar of yeast in the fridge and another pound of yeast in the pantry. Lots of instant potatoes, stuffing mix, etc. A big box of powdered milk, half full. Two bags of protein powder. I have 5 or 6 pies in the freezer and I also have some cooked shredded chicken and several dozen pork tamales. I've got 16 Greek yogurts in the fridge, along with 3 lbs sour cream. I have 10 lbs dry pinto beans and several packs of frozen bacon...in a real pinch, I'd cook up a crock pot of beans and serve it with cornbread, then the next day I'd use the rest of the beans for bean tacos...if you make homemade tortillas, it tastes so good you don't even notice if you don't have cheese to go with it.
We'd be good for a month, a month and a half if we had to. I've been there before and learned to plan ahead. I'd have to buy a couple gallons of milk but I keep enough change stashed around the house for things like that...I've got a couple dollars worth of change in each of my purses on my closet shelf...the hubby doesn't think to check them all if he's looking for vending machine money, so I never run out.
Sounds like you have extra food storage. I've never really been able to justify the extra expense of an extra freezer for myself to have that much extra frozen food.
Plenty of food here. Might risk running out of fresh fruit, but then we'll just have frozen fruit smoothies instead.
Your week also looks pretty good.
Breakfast tacos with eggs and potatoes and a little bacon. Can add sauce, salsa, or ketchup if you like.
Lots of makings for chili or soup.
You have makings for a pasta dish.
quiche
cheesy chicken and broccoli rice
beans and rice
Thanks. I actually am not in need. I'm fine. It was a theoretical question, but I like where you went with it.
No. I earn the same money every month so I know exactly how much I can spend.
If you are unable to plan a few weeks ahead, how about sitting down and making a plan?
It was totally a theoretical question based on frugality. I'm not really needing advice, I'm sure I'd do just fine. I saw the question elsewhere and thought it would be an interesting conversation to hear what frugal cooks suggest they might do in their own situations. I'm fine NOW. But when I was a single working mom with 4 kids, there were times like this when I had very little and had to stretch it out till the next payday. It was very challenging.
We've been enjoying restaurant week (it's more like 2 weeks) in Los Angeles and Newport Beach. However, we've been cooking at home a lot more over the last month as our food spending got a little out of control over the holidays.
I've been make a lot of the following:
Breakfast:
"Kaya" toast - using toasted hawaiian bread rolls, coconut spread, sugar, & salt, with a peppered fried egg with Maggi soy sauce.
Rolled oats - oats, cinnamon, brown sugar, and diced fuji or honey crisp apples.
Shirred eggs - eggs, heavy cream, cheese, garlic chips, crisp onions, & pepper with toast.
Poached egg - 4.5 min poached eggs with sriracha sauce and salt, with spinach & minced garlic, and toast.
Nespresso espresso/cappuccino/latte
Pour over coffee with condensed milk
french pressed coffee
fresh squeezed grapefruit juice or orange juice
Lunch:
leftovers or a simple salad
Ahi poke with tortilla chips
roasted diced sweet potato with garam marsala, sugar, pepper, salt, and coconut oil
Dinner:
Moroccan eggplant tomato stew with Naan or rustic bread
Shrimp/chicken pad thai
Chicken pho soup
Seared ahi, rice, with garlic pea sprouts
Roasted cauliflower with orzo and tahini sauce
Guinness beef stew
Chicken/tofu curry with paneer and spinach
Homemade pasta with marinara and cheese
Garlic noodles with grilled salmon and spinach
I'm a econo-tarian, buying about 80% of my groceries on sale while figuring out how to incorporate the ingredients into a decent meal. I don't mind splurging every now and again for dinner guests, but our days of fine dining will be saved for special occasions. As long as our monthly restaurant bill is below $400 and our grocery bill is under $200, I'm happy. If we had to hunker down, I would cancel our $2K/yr wine subscriptions and dine out far less, but we are happy with our Cakebread, Gloria Ferrer, and Kunin wines.
This thread makes me think I must have come across as being very needy. Not the case. I was just trying to create a conversation around frugality and food. I'm single now, the baby birds have flown the nest....well sort of...I do have two who came back to rest....but that's not the point. I was thinking of my younger mothering days when putting food on the table was challenging. My impression from this frugal group is that that would never be an issue. But to some, frugality is necessity and less of an option and creativity is essential. For a lot of people, it's a struggle to make ends meet and get by month to month, even with a frugal lifestyle. I think, perhaps, this forum could be called the "frugal by choice but not necessity forum." And what a great thing that is.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
