I don't know how to eat from my pantry/trim my food budget.

[eurobin]

This sounds dumb, but I need your best tips. Let me give you the back story first so you can see where I'm coming from.

Years back, when I was first starting out after graduating from college, my (now-ex) h made plenty of money and I made a bit more so we could afford to eat out whenever the mood struck. I like to cook, and sometimes I did, but I'd generally have to make a trip to the store to get ingredients for a meal because I didn't really keep an appropriately stocked pantry/freezer/etc. Plus it was just the two of us and it seemed like produce and meat would go bad quickly so I didn't mind the trips to the store anyway.

Fast forward to now... I'm now a single mama to 2.5 year old. I work full-time, she's in daycare full-time, and she's with me about 5 nights a week (with her dad the other nights). Finances are A LOT tighter now but I was getting by just by renting a small place, cutting cable, etc. I am realizing that I need to do more and my food budget is in need of the biggest overhaul.

My DD's daycare provides breakfast, lunch, and 2 snacks. My weekday schedule works out so that I have to eat breakfast and lunch at work. I do have access to a fridge and a microwave (although I prefer to avoid the microwave as much as possible since it's nasty). I have been buying food from the work cafeteria wayyyyyy too much just for convenience sake, but it's gotta stop. But here's where I get stuck.

During the week, DD and I get home around 6 pm. We tend to move up to bed around 9 pm (she sleeps with me and I end up falling asleep early a lot). So I have 3 hours of "free time" to play with her, feed her, bathe her, prepare and clean-up from dinner, pack breakfast/lunch/snacks for tomorrow, AND grocery shop. This is after being up since 5:30 am myself... so I'm tired too. So I fall back on the "oh I'll just get something out and grab something from the cafeteria tomorrow" plan. It's gotta stop.

How do I begin? Here are my big hang-ups... can you give me any tips on getting over them?
- how often to hit the grocery store?
- what should I have on hand all the time to make food prep easier?
- how to make sure that perishables like meat/milk/produce get eaten before they go bad (I'm ashamed of how much food I waste)
- what to eat for dinner when you're feeding just yourself and a picky toddler?
- what to pack for breakfast/lunch when you're not a big fan of cereal/milk or sandwiches?
- how to speed up the packing for breakfast/lunch process (is it possible to prepare a week's worth of breakfasts/lunches on Sunday, etc?)
- what meals are healthy and economical for 1.5 people? I'll eat leftovers but still, most recipes feed 4-6. I get seriously bored after I've had it once myself and once as leftovers.

Other relevant info:
- I have a chest freezer for storage
- I have very, very little pantry space in the kitchen and a small house with a damp basement so I can't store a ton
- We have no food restrictions aside from normal toddler pickiness.
- I am starting a garden to grow veggies this year... hopefully that will help a bit since they won't go bad if they are still growing!

Seriously, I need a complete overhaul in this department. I know I'm being wasteful and whiny and I need to get my butt in gear. I just don't even know how to begin.

[LilyGrace]

I do not have the most economical food budget, but this is what we do.

- how often to hit the grocery store?
We go weekly right now. We plan out meals at the beginning of the week, look to see what ingredients we need, and shop for that.

- what should I have on hand all the time to make food prep easier?
It depends on what you eat. We've learned to keep tomato sauce (the small cans), water chestnuts, enchilada sauce, and canned soup on hand always. Chinese and mexican foods are cheap and quick to make so on a busy day that's for dinner.

- how to make sure that perishables like meat/milk/produce get eaten before they go bad (I'm ashamed of how much food I waste)
Buy less?
Seriously, just plan meals. Later in the week meat gets put in the freezer temporarily, we buy a mixture of highly perishable and more hardy produce, and milk consumption is cut down, but yogurt and cheese is slightly higher. Use your leftovers and freeze bits here and there for later - half an onion diced and frozen is great for stews, sauces and casseroles. Same with grated cheese.


- what to eat for dinner when you're feeding just yourself and a picky toddler?
Mini pizzas. You can use whatever leftover veggies in the fridge, the toddler can have plain cheese. And the other half of the dough can be slightly baked and frozen for pizza when you don't have time.
Spaghetti and meatballs.
Cook up a chicken breast or one porkchop along with veggies and rice, saving the others in single serving packages for later.

- what to pack for breakfast/lunch when you're not a big fan of cereal/milk or sandwiches?
Lunch this week here is pasta salad with a homemade vinegrette, olives, cucumbers, onions, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, feta and mozzerella cheese. I made up a big batch of it today and it'll work for lunches for the rest of the week alternated with leftovers.

I'm not a fan of cereal, either, but I do like a piece of fruit and yogurt for breakfast, or a hardboiled egg and toast. Eggs you can boil ahead of time and just grab one on your way out the door. Dates or figs and nuts are yummy, too.

Dh is making fruit salad tonight for his lunches. He's more traditional with the whole sandwich thing, but I'll make up extra batches of dinner in the little corningware dishes for him to take, too.

- how to speed up the packing for breakfast/lunch process (is it possible to prepare a week's worth of breakfasts/lunches on Sunday, etc?)
I don't know, but you can do at least close to a week. Tonight we'll have several little rubbermaid containers in the fridge ready for dh to take to work this week. Leftovers are really nice because you just put some in a container and leave it in the fridge till morning.

- what meals are healthy and economical for 1.5 people? I'll eat leftovers but still, most recipes feed 4-6. I get seriously bored after I've had it once myself and once as leftovers.
If you go to allrecipes.com you can usually cut down a recipe to fit just one or two people. If you have some you love but make too much, put it in the freezer and take it out two weeks later. You don't have to eat leftovers right away, and you don't have to eat them the same way each time - add leftover chicken to white beans and make chili, use taco fixings to stuff biscuits with, add bbq sauce to that pork roast and have pulled pork sandwiches.

[lolar2]

Sometimes I'll make something like a big batch of lasagna and freeze meal-sized portions of it in those Gladware containers. Since you have more freezer space than pantry space, that might work for you.

Other things I make and freeze include meatloaf, cooked chopped ground beef, pancakes, beans and rice with sausage (or ham or hot dogs) cut up, and cut-up cooked chicken.

Most people I know who have any kind of pantry whatsoever, include:

noodles/ pasta
tomato sauce
soy sauce
salt
pepper
rice
oatmeal or other cereal
vegetable oil
crackers (can substitute for bread!)
peanut butter
canned beans
flour
baking powder
baking soda
yeast
sugar


You'd be better off with frozen vegetables rather than canned, in your case. I also keep a bag of shredded cheese in my freezer.

Anything you can freeze rather than put in the refrigerator-- do that. That's my #1 tip for keeping things from going bad. However, some things just will go bad. There's no avoiding it.

As an intermediate step, it's not as good as homemade of course, but it's still cheaper to heat your own Lean Cuisine (or whatever) frozen dinner at work, than to buy at the company cafeteria.

[SuzyLee]

I would try to do 90% of your cooking on the weekend. Go grocery shopping on the weekend, with a plan of what you are going to make. Cook 3 big batches of stuff- like a double batch of lasagna, a big pot of soup, and cook a bunch of chicken breasts and roasted veggies, or something like that. Also cook a big pot of oatmeal or a quiche or soemthing for your breakfasts for the week. You could even make a big batch of pancakes.

Then divide some of the food up into tupperwares for your lunches. Save the rest to eat for dinner during the week.

GL! I think changing food habits is one of the hardest things to do. You don't have to rush into it either- Just make one small change a week. One week stop buying snacks and pack them instead. The next week make your breakfast at lest 3 days, etc.

[1growingsprout]

How about using your weekend time to grocery shop and cook for the week. After work isnt a good time for most people and a tired toddler to be stopping at the store and thinking about cooking.

For example, Sunday cook chicken have that sunday and monday, tuesday have chicken salad and weds make soup. Each night pack the left overs for lunch the next day. Add variety to the chicken by adding rice, veggies, salad etc.

You can simmer a pot of chili on saturday and freeze it in single serve containers for the next couple weeks etc.

Get to know a couple recipie websites. We like allrecipies.com, usually you can cut recipies in haf or just freeze 1/2 for next month or later on. (although you said you are working from a chest freezer, not sure what that is)

[Delicateflower]

Originally Posted by eurobin

she's with me about 5 nights a week (with her dad the other nights).

During the week, DD and I get home around 6 pm. We tend to move up to bed around 9 pm (she sleeps with me and I end up falling asleep early a lot). So I have 3 hours of "free time" to play with her, feed her, bathe her, prepare and clean-up from dinner, pack breakfast/lunch/snacks for tomorrow, AND grocery shop. This is after being up since 5:30 am myself... so I'm tired too. So I fall back on the "oh I'll just get something out and grab something from the cafeteria tomorrow" plan. It's gotta stop.

There's your answer. Cook soups, casseroles, pasta sauces and all sorts of freezable foods on those two free days and defrost them on weeknights. Things like empanadas or potstickers freeze well, too. Serve them with some peas and corn from the freezer and you're set.

Put leftovers in the freezer so you eat them later.

Take a toaster to work, and keep bread and butter in the fridge there for breakfast.

Go to the supermarket when you have run out of everything fresh.

[griffin2004]

Originally Posted by SuzyLee

I would try to do 90% of your cooking on the weekend. Go grocery shopping on the weekend, with a plan of what you are going to make. Cook 3 big batches of stuff- like a double batch of lasagna, a big pot of soup, and cook a bunch of chicken breasts and roasted veggies, or something like that. Also cook a big pot of oatmeal or a quiche or soemthing for your breakfasts for the week. You could even make a big batch of pancakes.

Then divide some of the food up into tupperwares for your lunches. Save the rest to eat for dinner during the week.

yes, yes, and double yes!

my situation is very similar to yours; cooking on a weeknight is simply not in the cards; having entrees already cooked and waiting in the fridge to be warmed up is the only way I manage

when food is nearing its due date and isn't going to be used right away, throw it in the freezer

get a crockpot and use it every week

if you like a hot item at lunch, get a thermos

[Tradd]

Easy breakfast -

Get bagels from the grocery store. The ones in the bread aisle are more expensive than the ones in the frozen section, but they taste so much better to me! Get yourself a tub of cream cheese and you're set for the week. That's what I do. I'll put the cream cheese on the bagel and pop it into a ziplock. I'll eat it at work (at my desk, but you might not be able to do this) with tea - I bring tea bags from home (work only supplies coffee).

[EFmom]

I shop once a week, based largely on what's in the sale flyers. I cook large batches of soups, stews, pasta sauces, etc. on the weekends and freeze in meal sized batches. Most nights, we eat something I pulled out of the freezer the night before. Once or twice a week I'll make pasta, fish or breakfast for dinner.

I usually bring a carton of yogurt and a couple of pieces of fruit or leftover salad for lunch. Breakfast is usually a bagel, homemade muffin or toast with pb. Sometimes I'll boil half a dozen eggs, and have a hardboiled egg for breakfast or lunch that week.

Planning ahead, shopping sales and using the freezer are the key for me to keep costs down.

[Dar]

I agree with all that... but also, if you're currently eating in the cafeteria, than buying some ready to eat frozen entrees would be a good middle step. I try to pack lunches, but I also buy a box of Costco chicken bakes to have for the days when I don't get to it, because they're better than spending $7 on cafeteria food.

Oh, and I think pancakes are a great quick breakfast - cook up a bunch on the weekends and then refrigerate or freeze, and heat them in the toaster when you want to eat them. I also do big batches of steel cut oats, and sometimes muffins.

Dar

[courtenay_e]

I was thinking quiche for breakfast one week, waffles and peanut butter with fruit the next week.

As far as lunches go, often we will roast a chicken, eat the meal for dinner (you can do it in the crock pot during the week but it would also work for sunday dinner), and then make chicken salad and chicken soup for lunch the rest of the week, depending on whether you want hot or cold. I would make a green salad to go with either/both.

Dinners...yes, make and freeze over the weekend are great, but so is crock pot cooking, breakfast for dinner, and again, making a roast in the beginning of the week and eating off of it in various forms through the week. The second choice gets old as far as meat goes through the week...however, you will make sure that you NOT have food go to waste this way!

You can for instance, make a turkey day one. That night strip the carcass and put the carcass in the crock pot overnight to make broth. Put the broth in the fridge if it's a work day, in the morning. Otherwise, when you wake up, put a soup together, back in the crock pot, to cook on low all day. When you get home have the soup, a salad, and a hunk of bread. You can have the soup for at least a few days for lunch. The next day, shred some of the leftover meat and use it either in hot sandwhiches or in tacos, or in a cold salad with noodles or in a chicken salad type salad for sandwiches.

BECAUSE you have a lot of freezer space, you might want to make the soup and then freeze it and pull something else soup-ish out of the freezer, and do the same thing with the shredded and sliced meat, so that you don't get sick of eating the same meat all week!

Eating this way saves money, and makes sure that you use all the ingredients up.

Meal planning also will take a lot of the cost out of the way you eat. I plan six weeks at a time, each day of the week has a "theme" (so monday is roast, tuesday is soup/salad/bread, wednesday is ground/shredded/international, thursday is breakfast for dinner, friday is pizza, sat is leftovers/sandwiches/vegetarian, sunday we have potluck with family or friends or have another vegetarian dinner), I plan all the mondays, then all the tuesdays, etc, so that there are no repeats in six weeks. This keeps it interesting.

In the fall I buy an eighth of a cow and a hog, as well as several roasting chickens and turkeys, and put them in the freezer. Of course we need more food than you do, but in the end, I spend five hundred fifty dollars for the year total for four people on our meat--and it's free range and organically grown. It goes in the freezer, and then I have it when I want it. I never have to go shopping for it on my way home from work, or on a busy weekend. I have it in the freezer.

I stock up on staples (flour, hot cereal like steel cut oats and Bob's GF hot cereal, etc, beans, lentils, noodles, canned tomatos, etc) every four months or so, but you might have to do so once a month if you don't have much pantry space. I would keep your flour in the freezer to avoid the dampness becoming an issue with the flour.

When your garden comes in, I would take a weekend and learn to can. Canned tomatoes are SO NICE to have all winter and spring! Canned jam, especially with home grown berries? YUM! It would be weekends and evenings of work, but you could save it to do when your little one is with daddy...and it saves us SO MUCH money. I grow strawberries up my walk, they multiply like crazy, and keep themselves going year to year. I freeze half of what I grow, and then can a quarter in jam and eat the other quarter fresh out of hand. You can blanche and freeze green beans and peas, and grow lettuce, spinach, indian spinach (it climbs and grows in the warmest part of summer...you can get it from seed savers exchange), and kale, and eat that for salads all growing season. A pack of lettuce seeds costs a buck, maybe, and it'll keep you in salad for weeks on end. Radishes are easy and quick to grow as well, and some people find carrots easy to grow as well. My ground is too rocky for carrots, but I grow everything else. I garden intensively, and grow half for eating immediately and half for preserving. You probably won't do that much the first year you have your garden, but in the end, it can be a HUGE cost saver! I have the usual 1/4 acre lot and I put in a five foot wide garden along the south side of my house along the length of it, and have enough food to keep us going during the growing season!

I grow strawberries, gooseberries (yum), blueberries, semi-dwarf apple and cherry trees, and rosa rugosa for rose hips (makes great jam and tea and is realllllly full of vitamin C). At the very least you can do the strawberries.

We have seriously cut our food budget by 2/3, mostly by getting our meat in bulk, canning and freezing from our garden, and meal planning and sticking to it.

My husband used to travel a lot when my kids were very small, and I would make a full recipe of whatever was on the menu when he was home, freeze it, and have it for dinner while he was gone. Doing that for two or three weeks at a time would keep me the entire time he was gone, and I never had to cook if I didn't want to (and often it was more a matter of not being ABLE to because the kids were SO high needs when he was gone!). The days I felt like having a hot meal, I might do a crock pot meal. I love the crock pot when the meals are made right! There is a really great series of books called "Not your mothers slow cooker cookbook" that makes yummy meals out of crock pot cooking (really). Most of the meals take SOME prep, but nothing you can't do the night before and then pop in the crock pot in the am before you leave for work.

We almost always take dinner leftovers for lunch. My husband, though, has started to grill me some meat a few times a week, which I then chop up and put on top of a salad every day for lunch. Yummy, and great for me, too!

[Pumpkin_Pie]

Single mama here who has learned a lot of the above lessons. One of the first tricks I learned from here on MDC is to cook ground beef as you buy it and freeze it in one pound baggies. It makes an almost instant addition to noodles or soups. I will cook up some pasta, drain it, throw in a baggie of microwaved cooked ground beef, open up a can of tomato sauce or add some shredded cheese and then also some frozen mixed veggies and it is a relatively decent meal that took only a few minutes and my picky toddler will eat it too. You can take the leftovers to work the next day too.

I want to second (third? fourth??) the suggestion to make pancakes to freeze and then throw them in the toaster throughout the week. They are so much yummier and cheaper than the boxed kind. You can also make up a whole bunch of bean burritoes to either take with you to work, or grab for breakfast in the morning. I put scrambled eggs/salsa/cheese in some for breakfasts and refried beans/cheese/ground beef/salsa in some for lunches. I have also made some with shredded chicken and barbeque sauce. You can put pretty much anything in a tortilla shell and wrap it up and freeze it. Zap it in the microwave for a minute or two and you have a hot lunch that is WAY cheaper than cafeteria food. Add a salad to your lunch bag and you are all set.

Good luck!!

[HydeParkB]

I don't know if it would be an option for you, but I do a lot of my grocery shopping over my lunch break. I have to be organized, but I can do it in under an hour. I usually shop from a sale, and then add other things we might need.

I think frozen entrees could be a good interim step for lunches.

For dinners, especially with a picky toddler, make them nutritious but not necessarily elaborate. I like a quiche, omlettes, or soup with veggies and protein for dinner. If it were just me, I'd love a grilled ham and cheese for dinner, but DH won't go for that.

Make sure you have the right size containers/bags for freezing. When I make breakfast burritos in bulk, I wrap them individually. I make a big batch of beans and ham in the crockpot and a big batch of rice. Then I scoop portions into individual 'lunch sized' containers. That way I can just take one a week and not get too tired of it.

Also, to avoid the cafeteria, it might help to have some food at your desk if possible. I have a few cans of soup, a box of cereal (transfered into a tin), tea bags (soda replacement), and chocolate for as long as I can keep it there.

As appropriate with your daughter, let her 'help' you cook. DD has been helping me by dumping in the ingredients. She especially likes sprinkling cheese. Today DD & I put a corned beef in the crockpot (she poured water, dumped spices and pushed the button on the crockpot) and made muffins (she dumped in a lot of the ingredients and put the muffin papers in the muffin pans).

[Purple*Lotus]

These are all fabulous suggestions, ladies I second the homemade breakfasts with a tortilla shell, scrambled eggs, some cheese and maybe some salsa. Yummy and they freeze really well.

I second the crock pot as well. You can google some yummy crockpot recipes that are really healthy too