meal plan

Hydrangea (pre-deer attack)

The resident fisherman was out doing what he does yesterday (fishing) and I had a rare fit of organization come over me.

After reading the post and  comments from Annabel's inspiring and encouraging blog, I donned my winter gloves and headed to the basement to inventory the freezer.

I set up a few card tables and pulled everything out.   I put all the things in categories: 

Meats

Grains

Fruits

Vegetables

Main Course

Dairy

Bakery

Other

Then within each category, I listed what we had:

Turkey Breast

Ground turkey

Brats

Chicken Breast

Sausage links  

(Apparently we are in crisis mode now as there was NO BEEF ANYWHERE TO BE FOUND IN THE FREEZER.  No worries,  since this is Labor Day weekend, there will surely be sales on Beef - ground and otherwise.)

Then as I put each item back, I tallied.

I am too lazy to take a picture of it, but it looked roughly like this:

MEAT

Turkey breast     O

Ground Turkey    OOO

Brats OOOOO

Chicken breast O

Sausage links )

FRUIT

Mixed O

Cranberries OOOO

Strawberries OO

Rhubarb OO

And so on...... 

Obviously, we are light on beef.  The ads come out tomorrow and I will rectify the situation immediately.

Buoyed by the sight of a nice, neat freezer, I came upstairs and tackled the fridge freezer.  Same system.  Different piece of paper.

Earlier this year I had already done the pantry, the lazy susan and the food stores we keep in the basement.  I would say 95% of our groceries were bought on sale.

I looked over my inventory sheets and roughly calculated the servings in each package of meat and some of the main dish type things like some homemade chili I have packaged up and frozen.

I came up with (roughly) 63 servings.  Just from our 2 freezers.  That would feed the resident fisherman and I for a while.  I did not count the other areas of food storage we have or the fridge.  I have 16 cans of canned soup alone  that would provide us with another 32 servings (2 per can).

Why am I mentioning this?   As of this writing, Houston is being inundated by Hurricane Harvey.  People are being flooded out of their homes.  Other people, sheltering in place, will be unable to find an open grocery store or restaurant for a little while yet.

Having a decent stockpile of food, means that (unless you are flooded out of course) you can shelter in place and feed yourself.  If we lost power, I could pressure can the meat and veggies and water bath can the fruits (gas stove).

If we had to evacuate our house (we are much more at risk for a forest fire than a flood here), I would grab a change or two of clothing, family documents and pictures, blankets, camping stuff and fill the rest of the car with food.

Hopefully, we will never have to do that.  But we are ready for other kinds of storms.  We have a rather large expense coming up in October.  Because of our deep pantry, we can divert money we would otherwise use for groceries in the next two months for that bill (which if paid in advance saves us 5%).

So, I save 25-50% on my grocery bills (I calculate my savings after every major shopping trip).  I 'snowball' that money into paying other bills advance when it is to my advantage to do so.

What do you do?  Do you have a deep enough pantry to get you through a rough patch?  A bout of flu?  An unexpected bill or job loss?  Or unexpected company?

I would love to hear your plans!

Oh, the circles after each item in each category?  When I use up, say, a bag of cranberries, I color in one circle to denote that it is gone.  If I buy more cranberries, I simply make another circle for each bag.  Every once or twice a year, I re-inventory.  You see, according to my previous inventory, we still had 4 pounds of ground beef in the downstairs freezer.  Someone forgot to color in his circles.  :)

The system works best if it is used properly.