Friday, September 23, 2011

This week in food!

We have our first subscriber!  Thank you Jesica!  I'm sure this really ups your chances of winning when we have giveaways.  ;)  Maybe we'll have to get after my husband to subscribe too.

Ah, with the advent of fall my mouth starts to water in anticipation.  I love the berries and fresh fruits and vegetables summertime farmer's market, but I get really excited about fall cooking.  It's all about cinnamon and comfort food and pumpkin everything.  I'm finishing up my last week working a newspaper route (read: sleeplessness) and I'm hoping to blog at least once a week after that.  I figure 3 meals a day x 7 days a week, and all I have to do is blog about one of those.  Doable.

I already bought pumpkin spice egg nog.  Delish.  Then we got the pumpkin cinnamon swirl bread from Great Harvest Bread Company.  Love it.  Hope Jesse gets a slice before I eat it all.  Boaz (my one year old son) even liked it.  I'm not embarrassed to say, I dropped some on the floor, but I picked it up, blew it off, and ate it anyway.  Still alive.

I love fall cooking because it gets cold, and I like to save money.  I figure, if it's a little chilly, I can turn up the thermostat, OR I can cook something.  Double duty heating.

Well, the Potter house is now on a budget.  I mean, now I'm adhering to the one we have.  Jesse was good about it.  And I would go to the Good Food Store and come back with all the things I didn't know existed but now needed.  And that, my friends, is why I'm waiting 'til next month to go buy the cardamon I've been wanting.  I'm trying to stretch that dollar for our food budget (or even go a little underbudget, if possible) whilst still having fun cooking and enjoying what I'm eating.  Here are a few things I'm doing to help that along:

1.  Put my grocery money in an envelope-when it's gone, I'm done shopping for the month.  So far:  major fail.  But it's the first month, so it's ok.

2.  Shop the sales.  I'm checking the ads.  About every two weeks, Rosauers has some crazy good sale for one day only.  You can combine manufacturer coupons with store coupons with sales to improve savings.  Albertson's has a coupon roundup this week.  So your 25 cent coupons are actually worth something now!

3.  Eat seasonally.  If I don't finish the produce I have, I freeze it.  In Montana, people literally try to get rid of excess zucchini.  So I'm chopping, grating, and freezing for this winter.

4.  BE HAPPY WITH WHAT I HAVE!  This means realizing that God has provided for us and I need to just steward it well and not covet what I don't have.  I'm getting a little more creative and using stuff that's been shoved to the back of the pantry.  And you know what?  Jesse has loved eating mac n' cheese with cut up hotdogs.  This should be my number one on this list, but at least this way, it will be the last thought I leave you with.  Ps. 23 v. 1 in Spanish literally says, "The Lord is my shepherd, and nothing is lacking from me.  =)

2 comments:

  1. Oh gosh I need to work on #4 especially. Especially when it comes to grocery shopping. I want to buy pumpkin spice EVERYTHING even if it's super expensive. :P

    Love your blog, Stacy! It's Beth M., by the way. :)

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  2. We totally got creative (by we I mean Eric) the other day and made Chili Mac (1 can of chili +1 box of Mac n' Cheese= Chili Mac) and it was actually really good! Thanks for inspiring me to go on a budget... it's refreshing :)

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