Groceries

 I'm 100% sure none of you care what I spend on groceries but MAYBE some day, someone will see this who needs to see it. I'm also 100% sure I'm not the best at stretching the food dollar but, with all the complaining I see about grocery costs and SNAP benefits, and what can be purchased and cannot be purchased with SNAP, I feel like there are a LOT of people who need to learn to do better - not just those on SNAP and maybe most on SNAP are doing ok with what they get and it's just a handful making a lot of noise about it.

So, if you aren't interested in these posts, skip over them. Won't hurt my feelings at all.

One of the things I've been committed to for a while is that I don't buy things I can make at home. Great . . first report and I've broken my rule. I have a cake mix on today's grocery order because I'm making a pumpkin dump cake for  our Thanksgiving dessert. Yes, I could make a spice cake from scratch but with Thanksgiving, I want to make things as quickly as possible. It's one of those things we'll probably each eat one piece and I'll send it all home with Chad and Nicole if they like it. And, yes, I could make whipped cream to go on top but . . it's Thanksgiving and I need quick and easy and Addie loves that stuff and she can take the can home with her.

We've stopped buying cookies. I can make those but you know what? I rarely do. If we buy cookies, it's so easy to grab one or a handful. I can't tell you how many days I plan to make cookies and never end up doing it so we don't eat as many cookies. We've stopped buying potato chips which I love. I've been making crackers with sourdough discard and I can put all kinds of herbs or cheese in those, make them very thin and, while they aren't totally healthy, they're so much better than chips and I know exactly what's in the crackers.

We eat a bit differently from many folks because unless we're not at home (on the road or out of town), we eat all our meals at home. We eat two meals most days - breakfast around 10 and dinner around 3. I wouldn't say we grow a lot of our food but we do grow some. We buy a whole pig once a year and a whole cow every other year. Both are wrapped/vacuum sealed and frozen when we get them so I do not buy pork or beef from the grocery store unless it's something like bacon, brisket, pork butt . . because not enough of those come with one pig or cow. I buy eggs from various people in the neighborhood. I make all of our bread - sandwich bread, buns and rolls, focaccia, Naan, tortillas, etc. I buy whole milk, pasteurized but not homogenized, from Natural Grocer. I buy grains (for flour), rice, herbs, spices, etc. from Azure Standard. I'll share those lists here too.

Today I placed a delivery order from Walmart. This is the last order I will place until after Thanksgiving. Here's what I ordered.

Those items, along with what's canned and in the freezer should be all we need to make everything we need for about three weeks. I will have to buy milk and, depending how well our greens in the garden last through the cold, I may have to buy greens. I plan to cut a lot of them before the hard freeze and they may make it in the fridge for three weeks.

Here's my explanation on everything I ordered today:

• Heavy Cream - Vince uses that in his coffee and I use it when making some soups, mashed potatoes, etc.
• Celery - That's a staple I keep. We eat it as a snack too. I have a couple of bags of celery already but for Thanksgiving, I use a lot in the dressing.
• Yellow Potatoes - I have potatoes that I grew but I'm making clam chowder this week and I like yellow potatoes for that.
• Clam juice and clams - For making clam chowder. There will be some leftovers that I can freeze for probably the week after Thanksgiving.
• Cake Mix - For our Pumpkin Dump Cake on Thanksgiving.
• Reddi Whip - For the cake on Thanksgiving.
• Cream Cheese - We use that a lot. It goes in mashed potatoes and the green bean tart I will make for Thanksgiving.
• French Cut Beans - No Salt Added - 3 cans for Thanksgiving; 2 cans for the pantry. I like the No Salt Added variety because I use Cajun seasoning on this and can add a better quality salt (better than what goes into those cans), if needed.

Last night I put a pork butt on to smoke so today we'll have pork butt, potato salad and baked beans.

This afternoon I'm going to start a vegetable beef soup and we'll have that at least one day this week and I'll freeze the rest.

I will share what we have each day to give you an idea of how we use what we have.