Keeping the Home
Listing our home
20/01/10 13:07
http://www.cjbrown.com/RLNet/Listings/ListingDetails.aspx?ListingId=1248223&List=Y
Here is a link to our house, now for sale. Bittersweet in some ways. Don's company moving to North Carolina is a real plus to our family. We love the mountains and the beach, which are on either side of Raleigh. We love homeschooling there, although Louisiana has the free college thing going for them.
We think we've already found a church in the area, one that has a homeschool group and lots of potential for our children. I am looking forward to serving and being involved again. You know, Madison and I were talking today about friendships, and I realized how stunted we've been since moving here. This move will be great for us all.
Anyway, the house is now listed after much painting and boxing and moving and cleaning. I have learned even from this opportunity. De-cluttering is a great thing. Every once in a while, you need to go through your junk and get some stuff out. I think I like things to be as put away as possible. It makes it simple to dust and sweep when things are free of clutter. Don said he likes the house this way, somewhat impersonal, but yet clean. We will personalize it with some cool paint and pictures when we move into our new forever home.
What I feel the most sad about is leaving my almond tree. Noah and I planted it last spring and it was so small. It has doubled in size and will probably have a few almonds next fall. Oh well. Hopefully, we'll be able to plant another one at our new home. I already have plans for gardening wherever and whenever we head out.
Here is a link to our house, now for sale. Bittersweet in some ways. Don's company moving to North Carolina is a real plus to our family. We love the mountains and the beach, which are on either side of Raleigh. We love homeschooling there, although Louisiana has the free college thing going for them.
We think we've already found a church in the area, one that has a homeschool group and lots of potential for our children. I am looking forward to serving and being involved again. You know, Madison and I were talking today about friendships, and I realized how stunted we've been since moving here. This move will be great for us all.
Anyway, the house is now listed after much painting and boxing and moving and cleaning. I have learned even from this opportunity. De-cluttering is a great thing. Every once in a while, you need to go through your junk and get some stuff out. I think I like things to be as put away as possible. It makes it simple to dust and sweep when things are free of clutter. Don said he likes the house this way, somewhat impersonal, but yet clean. We will personalize it with some cool paint and pictures when we move into our new forever home.
What I feel the most sad about is leaving my almond tree. Noah and I planted it last spring and it was so small. It has doubled in size and will probably have a few almonds next fall. Oh well. Hopefully, we'll be able to plant another one at our new home. I already have plans for gardening wherever and whenever we head out.
Buying In Bulk: 15 Lessons I Learned
02/02/09 16:29
- Loss Leaders may be cheaper than warehouse clubs: For example, 80% hamburger was for sale at Sam’s Club for $2.19 per pound in a bulk pack. I found it at Albertson’s on sale for 85% lean and $1.99 a pound. Just because it is for sale at a “discount store” does not mean it is the cheapest price. Caveat Emptor.
- If you are military, take advantage of the commissary. They have great prices, and wonderful sales. You can go to the military commissary website and download a list of their current sales: http://www.commissaries.com/log_in/html/savings_aisle.cfm is the place to go to learn what’s on sale. We are too far from our commissary to go much, but when I was closer, I would download the sale list and make my meal list for the month based on the sales. The commissary also has case lot sales which are super cheap if you can wait in line for that long!
- Start a Price Book! Do it now! Use a piece of paper or notebook, or notes on your phone. Make a list of items you buy on a regular basis, such as paper goods, milk, selections of meats, dry goods, etc. List the price and size of the item, and what store it’s from. It is also a good idea to write down the price per ounce. This helps when you calculate 12 ounces from Wal-Mart with 1,000 ounces from Sam’s Club. Keep the paper or pad in your purse so that if you happen to be out and see a sale, you can verify that it is a “real deal” and not just a sucker drawer.
- Get good books for recipes and advice on bulk cooking. 2 books I recommend and use on a regular basis are Make-A-Mix and Don’t Panic: Dinner’s in the Freezer. These books not only have great recipes, they have sections giving you advice on bulk shopping and cooking.
- Bulk cook with someone! Find a friend or family member to bulk cook with. You might swap duties and trade cooking nights or get together for bulk packaging. It makes the time pass faster and certainly makes it more fun. Let’s face it: bulk cooking days are long, difficult and tiring. You could even enlist your spouse or children to help out. My DS helps me package meat by holding and labeling bags. My DD helps by measuring ingredients into bowls.
- Be charitable and give some away. If you mix up a bulk mix, make some muffins for a neighbor. If you make a batch of casseroles, use one to give to a shut-in or needy family. Many churches have a distribution list of people in the church who could use a meal or a break from the kitchen. Surprise a friend with a nice warm present when they are sick and don’t feel like cooking.
- Get to know the meat manager at your local grocer. This can be so awesome! Some will cut up bulk items and repackage them for you, if you are lucky! If you catch them on the right days, they might have a super sale on something you could use. I asked my meat guy if he had any chicken scraps, and ended up with food grade chicken thighs for dirt cheap. Don’t forget to take him or her one of your bulk frozen meals occasionally to show your gratitude!
- Check your phone book or Google for bulk processors in your area. These are companies that sell in bulk to restaurants. In Baton Rouge, I go to Choctaw Provision Company. Look under grocers: wholesale or Restaurants: Equipment and Wholesale. Some only sell to restaurants, so call first. Ask them their prices on what you want. And take cash; most don’t take checks from non-businesses unless they know you, and don’t do credit cards because of the surcharge. You can also ask at restaurants or restaurant supply places where they get their products. Be aware that prices change depending on the economy. Also, have a need for what you buy and ask how items are packaged. I once got a great deal on 40lbs of boneless skinless chicken breasts, only to come home and find out they were in 10lb frozen hunks and some were freezer burnt. It was not worth the work or savings.
- Talk to others and read online about other bulk food adventures. There’s always something you can glean. Of course, don’t try to start up a conversation with someone at the market about how silly it is to buy 18 eggs for $2.49 when you can buy 12 eggs for $.99 when they have the 18-pack in their hand. They will look at you as if you need mental help, this I speak from experience. Now if you see someone like me in the store, cart filled with 50 cans of Tomato Soup and 20 boxes of on sale cereal...by all means! And not all people buying in bulk at warehouse clubs are really bulk shoppers; some do it for convenience or for their business.
- Invest in a good freezer. If you can afford it, or save up for it, get an upright, frost-free freezer in the biggest capacity you can buy or fit in your space. You WILL fill it up, and fast!
- Do what works for you. Some people shop, cook and package all in one day. Some divide it up into several days. It is hard work and you’ll be tired, but one or two days of tired makes up for blessed evenings of not having to do as much preparation or dishes. I get tired easily, so I break up my cooking into manageable chunks. I only cook or package what has to go into the freezer because I have no room on the first day, then work from there.
- Think about a back-up power supply. We now live in a hurricane prone area and we will be investing in a generator in the next couple of months. Until now, we have had a motor home with a propane fridge and we could move things aroound. Now, we need a generator. When the power is already out, it is too late to think about a generator.
- Be sure to use what you have. It would be a waste to let meat become freezer burned and unusable. Put dates on all your items. I put package dates on freezer items, and expiration dates on mixes in my pantry. Do a quick inventory before you head to the store to buy more stuff. Use the older stuff first.
- Be organized. Make a list of meals you cook on a regular basis and the page numbers, if needed, of the cookbook they are in. Refer to it as you make a meal plan for your specified number of days. I do 30-45 days at a time. I have a numbered sheet and I fill in each day with a dinner plan. Inventory what you have in your freezer. We keep a dry erase board on the freezer that tells us the contents. Organize your pantry where you can easily read the labels and see how many of what item you have.
- If you are bulk cooking to save money, add in some fun or “junky” meals once in a while. Everyone loves pizza, why not put it on your list so you can have Friday night movie night with pizza and popcorn, just like if you went out? Have some fun!
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Bulk Cooking
30/01/09 14:47
Not much homeschooling going on the last 2 days. I have been preparing my pantry by bulk cooking. 15 pounds of ground beef, 5 pounds of meatballs, separating portions of sausage and chicken and freezing them all. My freezer is so full! My pantry, too. A normal month for me goes like this: shop at Wal-Mart for groceries, shop local grocers for loss leaders and coupons, and hit Sam’s Club for bulk paper goods. Up until 8 months ago, I would shop at the military commissary for most of my needs, and then go to Wal-Mart for the rest. Since at almost every base we lived at for the last 20 years, I was 30-40 minutes away, I tried to shop for a month at a time. I don’t really like going to the grocery store. It takes forever and then you have all that unpacking to do at home and then dinner to make on top of it all. So, by going only once a month, and I could usually squeeze it to 45 days, I have less work.
I haven’t had the opportunity to really do any bulk cooking because I never had a stand alone freezer. I made a list over the years for things I would like in my “final resting place” or dream home, as some call it. My actual dream home would be within the sound of the ocean, but I call this house a final resting place in jest because we are going to be here for a long time. Being military, we always moved each 2-3 years, so if we stay here over 3 years, it might as well be forever to me. LOL! I do have a book called Don’t Panic, Dinner’s in the Freezer. It is awesome and the recipes are wonderful! I would occasionally make some bulk marinated meats and casseroles, but I had such limited space.
When we bought the house we are in now, my first purchase was an upright freezer. I LOVE it! And it is totally full right now. DH says I am going to break the shelves in it. I spent a little more to get the upright, frost-free version, but I feel it is worth it. I had to defrost my fridge in the motor home, which was small, and it was a super pain.
I’m not sure if it was a motivator or if it is a crutch, but I have a story to tell that influenced my bulk cooking adventure over and above saving money. In September, we experienced a major hurricane: Gustov. It hit Baton Rouge really hard, knocking out most of our power and many people were without water as well. We were living in our motor home at the time. We took shelter during the storm and then came back to the coach afterwards. It was fine, and we were fortunate to have stocked up on groceries and gas before the storm. We had a generator to run the fridge and a/c. We were lucky. There were long gas lines and shortages of food for weeks. I didn’t even venture to the grocery store for a week because I saw the line outside. I started running low on supplies, so I drove 40 miles north of town to a Wal-Mart, and to do laundry. There were a lot of cars parked outside and I had to park far away, which I do anyway to keep from being hit by lazy people’s runaway carts they leave all over the lot. But when I walked in, I have never seen anything so unnerving as seeing Wal-Mart empty. There was almost nothing left. No isle of diapers, no isle of soda and chips, no isle of meat carefully stacked up to the ceiling. Plenty of flour and sugar as no one had electricity to bake. I stood in an isle and cried. Really. I called DH to get him to calm me down. It was so very scary to see no food in the big store. You always know when you go to WM that they will be full and ready for you. Not this time and it was so unsettling. I did manage to get some canned ravioli and Vienna sausages.
I have weathered 4 hurricanes in the past. During the first one, the eye went right over us. The second one we slept in the car along the interstate (scary). The third one was fun because my DH got me a PS2 and a generator so I would be able to keep playing! LOL! The fourth one my DH left me to move planes to safety as I moved and cared for a puppy and a 4-year-old while I was tossing cookies from being 2 months pregnant. Not fun. SO, I have been through hurricanes. I think they are scary, but in a lot of ways beautiful. We can see the mighty power of a storm and think of how God could just think to calm it and it would subside. How awesome is He? But this time, I was scared because there was no food and I did not like the feeling. Now my pantry is full, and the freezer is stuffed, and I wonder if it also has something to do with the fear I felt that day. Does it matter? IDK.
So, enough digression. I thought I would shop for a month at the commissary that is 90 miles away in New Orleans, but it is very tiny and you have to go over a huge bridge to get to it. I have some bridge issues, too, but that is another long story. I shopped there once, but felt I could get close to the same prices, minus gas cost, by bulk shopping, price comparison and loss leaders. I needed to stock up on a lot of bulk things, and I had a storage problem: not enough big containers. I decided to go to the restaurant supply store here and get some containers. It was a fair price, not a steal, but I like what I have.
I did the pick-and-pull at Sam’s Club for bulk items like flour, spices, rice,etc. It was super easy to pick up! Wow! Then last night, DD and I made bulk mixes such as muffin mix, roll mix, pancake mix, etc., from a book called Make-A-Mix.
My edition is the 1995 edition, and this one is a 2007 update. Probably pretty good. I have used the book to make several things and I think they are wonderful! The recipes are pretty easy and tasty. I would recommend it to anyone thinking about doing bulk cooking. I must confess, until today, I never made muffins from scratch. Not even sure I knew you could! LOL! But we made the mix and this morning, I made peach muffins. Very nice. Tonight we are having Teriyaki Stir Fry.
My DD helped out. She is 9 and she said the most wonderful thing to me. “Mommy, I hope one of the things God has me doing when I grow up is cooking! It is fun!” Of course 5 minutes later when we had to clean up, she went to go play with her friends outside. But today, she made 3 batches of meatballs and my 12-year-old helped me to package all the chicken and other meat I got. I happened to be at the meat counter at Albertson’s when the manager was putting things out. I told him that I feed my German Shepherd a raw diet consisting of, gasp, chicken bones. After he lectured me about bones and bacteria from a conference he just got back from he said, “Well, it’s your dog and I am sure you take care of it well. I have a ton of stuff in the back for you.” I ended up with 35 pounds of chicken thighs for $.28 a pound. WOW! The thighs are good enough to eat as well.
Anyway, I cooked up 12 packages of hamburger and 3 packs of meatballs. Now my coffee break is over and I need to go wash up in the kitchen. Almost done! Nothing is more relieving to me than to not have to cook hamburger when it is dinner time. I hate doing it and I hate the clean-up. So, now I clean up once and I have 12 meals from it. I guess I have plenty of time now to go rub my husband’s feet! ROTFL!
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