Taking Inventory

Today is Wednesday -- only two days until grocery day! I'm a little nervous because now I feel like I'm accountable to all of you for how good/bad I do on our budget! I'm also very excited. (I could barely get to sleep last night because I was so busy thinking of things for my grocery list, menu planning, and ideas for the blog!)

So, step one to staying on budget is taking inventory. As it turns out, that wasn't very difficult this week. Our cupboards are beginning to look a little bare! Now, that might make me nervous except for the facts that we grow a big garden every summer and put up a lot of produce through canning and freezing. I already know that in the chest freezer that we share with my parents (who live next door and share their stand-alone garage and cellar with us) we have deer meat and more deer meat. There's also shredded summer squash. That's about it right now, but it's a start.

In the cellar, we have canned pumpkin, tomatoes, green beans, and a basket of potatoes. In the storage room above the cellar, I have Smart Taste pasta that I grabbed from Kroger's a few weeks ago for .49 a box! Score! I think there's a couple boxes of rotini, a box of spaghetti, and a package of whole wheat yolk-free egg noodles. Obviously some pasta dishes are going on the menu list!

Just from that little bit of inventory (we haven't even gotten to inside my house yet) I already have two family-favorite meals going through my head. I make a squash casserole with squash, stuffing mix, cream soups, and a bit of other stuff that escapes me. It ends up tasting kind of like a pot pie and it's wonderful. My husband loves it and it's very cheap to make. It can be a side dish or you can add some shredded chicken and it's a meal. (If anyone wants the recipe, I will post it when I look it up later today or tomorrow.)

The other meal going through my head is venison stroganoff. I already have the deer meat and egg noodles. The only things I'm lacking are a jar of beef gravy and a small tub of sour cream. That will be a cheap meal and we all love it -- Kylie included! Throw a jar of green beans on the table with it, some bread, and you're set!

Next, it's time to take inventory inside the house. As I said, this didn't take long. I even took pictures!

As you can see from the picture, I have several boxes of Hamburger Helper that I got on sale months ago. I think I got them for around .50 per box after I used coupons. When I catch stuff that cheap, I stock up. I try not to feed us convenience food too often, but on those days that Kylie is being a terror or we're on the run, you can't beat it! I also add so much stuff to my Hamburger Helper that it barely resembles the original product!

I have Potatoes Stroganoff, Ranch Burger, Philly Cheesesteak, Double Cheesy Quesadilla, and Four Cheese Lasagna. I also have two boxes of macaroni and cheese that I wasn't too crazy about, so we'll save those for making my mom's macaroni salad, which calls for a package of macaroni and cheese made according to directions. Hopefully we'll get a pretty day to fire up the grill in the next two weeks!

Next comes my freezer, which is also pretty bare.

It's a little bit of a mess, so you can't really tell what you're looking at, I know. We have one package of pork loin chops, several packages of deer meat, a few chicken breast tenders (for nights that we have meals Kylie can't eat -- such as super spicy mexican), my last two precious packages of our garden green peppers, and enough weiners for two meals at least (we buy in bulk and freeze batches). Other than Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches, which I bought at Sam's much cheaper than at grocery stores, and frozen chicken stock, that's about it. (I made the chicken stock a month or so ago from the bones and skin of chicken breasts which we got for .99/lb. My husband processed them into boneless skinless breasts for us, we froze them, and I threw all the "leftovers" into the crock pot with a little water and made chicken stock! I froze the stock in ice cube trays for a later use.

That pretty much takes care of my inventory. I usually have more on hand, but it's almost garden season again, so we're out of green peppers and almost out of potatoes. We usually have more meat, but my husband opted to spend most of his time last hunting season with our daughter, so we didn't get any turkey this year! (It was a wonderful trade, though, I think! I'll give up wild turkey any day to see Jas and Ky wrestling in the floor or having a tea party!)

My final inventory list looks like this:

Deer Meat (plenty)

Pork chops x 1

Green peppers x 2

Hamburger Helper (HH) Potatoes Stroganoff

HH Ranch Burger

HH Philly Cheesesteak

HH Double Cheesy Quesadilla

HH Four Cheese Lasagna

Mac n cheese x 2

Can corn x 1

Cans mushrooms x ? (at least 2 and possibly some more in the cellar)

Now that I've taken inventory of what we have, it's on to the sales papers to see what great deals they might have! I'll post more on that later!