Well… if anyone was wondering….
I’m doing very well on maintaining my freezer for GOOD STUFF and not just odds and ends!
See! See!!!
I snuck a couple pictures at my meat shop… I just love having this little butcher shop around the corner from me… less than 2 miles! And on my flight plan many days… I’ve been going once every two weeks…
And I’m thinking about getting rid of the ice bucket… it’s ALWAYS empty and we’re terrible about keeping it filled up. And it’s taking up valuable space.
But other than that… I am doing a very good job of keeping her stocked and neat and tidy. And still not filled. So I guess I don’t really need a chest freezer yet.
And here’s what I’ve been doing. I shop with a list. I know what I want. I don’t just guess. That REALLY helps. However… this place ALWAYS has a couple really good deals… they call it loss leaders… they are the reasons to get people in and spend money. Well, my butcher guy, I always seem to get the same super cheerful fellow, he ALWAYS tells me the good deals. And I will buy like double or triple what I would buy of the specials.
Like today…. they had big ol’ yummy looking pork chops for 69 cents each. Plain and marinated in good sauces… like sweet and sour, BBQ and butter garlic. So 3 of them, for me and the two girls, are only $2.07. That is a great deal for dinner. So I got 6 packages of them! Plain, garlic and BBQ. Two each. So now I have 6 dinners ready for the month.
They also had chicken on sale… 1.69 a pound for boneless, skinless marinated breasts! They make the marinates there at the shop and they use good quality chicken… the breasts are HUGE. And always good and fresh. It’s one of their specialities… and so I got 6 packaged of 1 full breast (2 sides) each and stashed that as well.
All in all, I only spend $38. And I got at least 15 meals out of the deal. And less than $3.25 a meal for good quality meat for my family.
Since we don’t always eat dinner (if the girls are gone to their Dad’s I usually eat light or eat leftovers) and every so often we’ll eat out… one trip to the meat market will last us easily 2 weeks or more. And I’m slowly stocking up the freezer as well!
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Keep the ice bucket until it gets really hot – you might be better at keeping it filled when the weather gets so hot that you actually want to use ice.
I read on here that you were having issues remembering to take the re-usable grocery bags in the store, and how you were thinking of leaving a note in your car. What about doing something like that here? Maybe post a note right on the fridge, as a reminder for each trip to the fridge, one should check the ice level and trays. The best way to go about it is once a day empty your ice trays into the bucket, then refill the trays for tomorrow. Not sure how much ice your family uses, but we use quiet a bit.
When the ice bin starts getting at the halfway point, crack a few trays into, refill them (put these on the bottom of the shelf, and stack the already frozen ones on top of them) and viola! Ice issue resolved, we did this for a long time in our house till we had to buy a new fridge. It came with an auto ice maker which we have a love/hate relationship with. We still have ice trays in the freezer because sometimes the ice maker jams, no one realizes it till we are out of ice. :-/