A Simple Money Saving Tip In My Kitchen

Our lifestyle has changed a lot over the past 5 years.  Gone are the days and nights of going out to eat more than eating at home.  We gradually started cutting out the number of times we ate out to now rarely eating out, even fast food.  Now in these hard times where every dollar penny counts, we are stretching the grocery budget too.  I'd thought I'd share one of the ways I save.

I only buy my meats when they are buy one, get one free.  And even than you can search the ads and save by carefully watching the per pound price.  It's a little more work than the days of absent mindedly buying it conveniently wrapped in the per use size packages but the savings are so worth it. On my latest shopping trip I purchase one package of boneless pork chops and, one package of boneless chicken breast at the buy one, get one free price.  I also bought the hamburger in a three pound pack because it was on sale. 

I separated the hamburger into 1lb packages which will make 3 various meals.  We had hamburgers and homemade french fries last night.  One night will be spaghetti and one night will be hamburger helper, which I only buy when I can get it for $1.00 a box.  Not my favorite but it's a must because Neil likes it.

I separate the pork chops into packages of 2 each, so that gave me 7 more meals.  One package ended up with 3 chops.  You can see our favorite pork chop recipe here.

The chicken breast are so big that I usely cut one in half for my meal and a whole one for Neil.  A lot of time I grill the chicken for salads, so once it's cooked it just gets cut up to top the salad with anyway.  That gave me another 4 meals.

I use glad cling wrap because I think it does cling better than some of the others, although I'll try anything else once.  I wrap each piece of meat separately because I'm notorious for taking the meat out of the freeze at the last minute and I can easily separate the pieces for faster defrosting. 

Then each nights meat gets put inside a plastic bag, cheapest wins here.  Squeeze out the air and they're almost freezer ready.

I use a permanent marker to label each bag with the number of pieces of meat, the name of the meat and the date.  We have lots of Fed Ex sticky printing labels that we use to ship with.   They're free by the way. 

Be sure to rotate your meats as you add them to the freezer by pulling the older ones out and adding them to the top.  I stake like meats together and it makes it so easy to see exactly what I have at a glance. 

So now I'm set with 14 package meals, for 14 nights worth of dinner.   We'll see what meat's on sale next week to add to the freezer.

P.S.  Don't forget to enter my 3 giveaways listed on my right sidebar.  Just click the button.  But hurry the Purex/Jockey giveaway ends Monday night.