Feeding a family of 4 on pennies.

We're poor folk. Feeding my family well has always been a struggle. I have definite beliefs about the proper way to feed a family (yes, I am anal). Recently, I have decided that even with high prices, almost $500 a month is way too much for my family. I started making some changes.

1.) We eat far less meat. We're only eating meat once or twice a week now. We eat a lot more beans and lentils. We try to do a breakfast night and eat eggs that night.

2.) Death! Death, I say to convenience meals. They're crap for us anyway. Patrick can't have soy, High Fructose Corn Syrup is closely related to Satan, they don't taste all the great, and I can't enforce control. I like to enforce control.

3.) Cook one, eat twice. Or three times. One of the easiest ways I do this is with chicken. I buy a whole chicken large enough for us to get 2 meals out of. I usually get them at Aldi, but occasionally Giant Eagle has a good sale. I roast the chicken with veggies in the pot for the first meal. For the second, I pull off any and all meat I can and freeze it. Then I make a pot pie, chicken and dumplings, or barbequed chicken out of it. I can tell you that Graig is going to be a happy camper when he has barbequed chicken aromatically welcoming him home from work on Monday. Shh, don't tell.
3a.) The freezer is your friend. I need another friend! I double or even triple recipes. This helps for a night when I don't want to prepare anything. It also helps when money is low a couple days before payday. I want to buy a chest freezer to stock up. My freezer is now full. A windfall of some free organically fed, local beef has added to that but I can't freeze any whole meals right now. I do have stew meat, lentil stew (it will go over rice), leftover chicken (for the aformentioned bbq chicken) and chicken noodle soup in there now. There is also some tomato juice that will be used for...something. Another thing this does is prevent us from wasting leftovers. We've been good at that.

4.) Fear not the Hillbilly. www.hillbillyhousewife.com is a lifesaver.

5.) Pizza from home is better than pizza from your grocer's freezer or that pizza joint. OK, so this is only sometimes true. But my pizza is better than most. And it's not $15! I don't pay a lot for extra toppings, I get more control over my toppings and I can better control the fat and grease. I can stuff teh crust, flavor the crust and make it as thin or thick as I like. It's great. It's hot when I need it to be. I can freeze it as well.

All of this makes me feel really good. My husband works and I stay home. I feel like his job is to make the money and mmy job is to make it last. I am looking for a part time job that but after Christmas that will go to paying of debt (mostly medical).

Christmas is another story for another time!