Quote:
Originally Posted by Amys1st  You know who you are. You buy the 50 lb bag of flour and use it all. A quarter of a beef is too small, you buy the side (or more??). Your freezer is huge and so is your pantry area or storage area.
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{Groan}...okay, this is me. I buy my flour and grains in the largest bags I can, and I do use it all, and keep one or more bags in reserve (25# for rice flour, 10# for tapioca flour, 50# for oatmeal, 50# popcorn, rice, etc). Yes, we buy sides of beef because the quarter is too small for us. We have an extra full-size freezer and full-size fridge (both standup) in the garage, with pantry shelves in the garage, cabinets in our basement, and stuff in the closets and under the bed.
I do it for the sale prices, for the convenience, and for food security.
I'm shopping really "light" this month as we are living from pantry, but some things we use are on terrific sale and I can't pass up the opportunity to stock the pantry cheaply, including corn thins (buying 12+ cases of them), the peanut butter we prefer (4 cases to go with the 1-1/2 under the bed), margarine (1 case), and marinated tofu - a staple for my picky eater - probably four cases. I will save about 40% on all the sale items combined, which is quite significant in the quantities we use. Our maple syrup supply isn't going to be quite enough to get through until sugaring time so I will have to bite the bullet and buy another gallon of that and plan better when we buy our year's supply this spring (we have cane sugar sensitivities and only use maple) . We will need a month's worth of eggs (about 16 dozen). So that is what my month's worth of grocery shopping will look like this month. I have everything else that we need.
We live 10 miles from town and the grocery store is hardly ever "convenient." We have winter snowstorms and mud season and sometimes the conditions on our road make it impassable, so I don't want to run out of important things. I just feel generally more secure when I know I'm not relying on outside factors to make it possible for us to eat for the near future. And with DH laid off and still waiting for that first unemployment check to come through, we are now eating exclusively from our (thankfully well-stocked) pantry, with the exception of eggs and a small amount of the cheapest fresh produce (apples, cabbage, carrots.)
It took me a few years to build up my pantry and my habits to be able to manage food this way, but I am so glad I worked at it and got over the learning curve, because I find it much easier and frugaller than the old way of shopping whenever we needed something. I think if you want to do this, you must re-assess your shopping habits AND your cooking/eating habits AND your food storage habits for it to work.
Good to see that I am not alone.
Not like it goes bad or anything though, and it's only lower than $3/lb 2-4 times a year (I jump when it's $.98 or $1.78/lb).
: We will use it, the price was good, the reviews were good, the shipping was free...
