Two Frugal Cats

This week we did a great job of tackling some odds and ends in the freezer that needed using. I did not have a formal meal plan at the start of the week, but we did well throughout the week making sure we were making dinners that would result in lunch leftovers, or pulling from some pre-made meals. This was a nice ease back into the meal prepping mind-set, and I hope we can keep it up in the weeks to come! On Thursday, I plan to share a meal plan and prep post for the current week. What We Ate Breakfasts Bagels with Cream Cheese or Sausage and Cheese Protein Granola Bars Bagel Breakfast Sandwich Lunches Leftover Pizza & Salad Chicken Rice Soup Salad with  Buffalo Chicken  Creamy Beef & Shells, Broccoli Steak, Rice, & Spinach Manwich Sandwiches Sides of Homemade Apple Sauce & Grapes Dinners Steak, Fish, Rice, Salad, Rolls Maple Mustard Chicken , Roasted Potatoes, Spinach Creamy Beef & Shells , Steamed Broccoli, Rolls Pesto Chicken, Steamed Car...

  A Long Absence... The Spring and Summer of 2022 were filled with outdoor fun, hours of gardening, disc golf playing, family time, car repairs, travel, and not a whole lot of meal planning.... I found myself in a rut this Spring, uninspired, tired, bored. Our work days and after-work schedules were fuller, leaving less time for meal prep, and more often than not, Friday morning menu-plan & prep aspirations went largely ignored over the weekend. We spent a little more on groceries, a little more on eating out, and this was perfectly OK.  I did not take many food photos this summer, so I have included a few photos from our recent travels for you to enjoy as you read along. The Wild Horses of Corolla, NC As we've begun to transition out of the fast paced summer months, the garden bounty has (mostly) been preserved, I've begun to notice a new burgeoning issue....our pantry and freezer. Despite rising food prices, I still managed to snag many deals over the last six months, an...

Kitchen Happenings More Freezer Adventures Recently I finally got around to doing a full inventory of our chest freezer. While I typically do a full re-arrange twice a year, this is the first time I've written down every item it contained. I'd have preferred to have done this before the days started to get warmer so that I could have done a full defrost, but the freezer was actually much less frosty than I expected, so I gentle scraping and wipe out was sufficient.  I've always tried to make a point to rotate the items in my freezer on first-in first-out methodology, but it can be tricky with chest freezers as they become full. We use a mix of milk crates and plastic baskets to organize the freezer, which helps, but often items get slid down the front or sides of the baskets, making it hard to put items back where they came from. A sampling of what my inventory sheet looks like This time when we inventoried the freezer, I tried to group items not only by type and age, but a...

  Menu Planning This week we are keeping things pretty simple in the meal planning department. I find every three or four weeks or so that I plan a little more loosely, just to keep from getting to burned out. This week was a great week to lay back a little and press the easy button by eating up leftovers and leaning on quick and easy dinners. Like every week, this week's meal plan is primarily based around items that need to be used up - mainly vegetables and leftovers, supplemented by the pantry, freezer, and fresh bought items. Here are my main "use it up" candidates this week: four very wrinkly green peppers stale french bread heavy cream buttermilk leftover chicken w/ pesto head of cauliflower head of broccoli six small zucchini cereal applesauce a tiny bit of a few condiments like pesto and pizza sauce ...and still more lettuce What's on the Menu? How menu plans tend to work for us is that some ideas get assigned to specific nights, other tend to float so that w...

  Menu Planning March has arrived! Winter will still be with us for a while longer, but I am really enjoying the longer daylight hours, hearing the birds chip in the morning, and the thought of starting our garden seedlings soon! Last week we successfully worked through most of our "what needs to be used up" list, which was helped by hosting a dinner for six - that's six people I was able to feed lettuce to! This week we are back to our standard weeknight commitments after a week off due to schools being out for February vacation, which means making sure we plan ahead for lunches and busy nights. We also received a last minute invite to go out to dinner on Sunday night, so you'll see where I've spread some meal prep throughout the week on an as-needed basis. Otherwise, this weeks meal plan is primarily based around items that need to be used up, whether from the fridge, pantry, or freezer. green peppers roma tomatoes diced onions and peppers french bread heavy cre...

Menu Planning If you made it through my Pantry Challenge posts, you know that we are not quite done yet with whittling down our pantry to a more manageable and purposeful selection of items. Going into this week, I wanted to keep the spirit of the Pantry Challenge alive by shopping the items in my freezer and pantry that had been ruminating the longest and turning them into something delicious. Truth be told, if you have a well stocked pantry like we do, you are always working on a loose first-in-first-out mindset of rotating goods that were bought on sale in the past with new sale items, in the hopes of rarely having to pay full price for items you use often. Instead of going into this week with a set idea of what I wanted to make, I went down to the chest freezer to see what items were in the most need of being used up. Our chest freezer needs a bit of a re-shuffling, but for the most part the older items are near the top.  I pulled out: steak tips, stew beef, a pre-marinated por...

The last week of January was busier than normal for us, but we were still able to work towards the goals we set to help trim our pantry to a more manageable size. We still have a long way to go in getting through some excess items, so I anticipate we will continue on with similar goals for the next few months. My Pantry Challenge Goals Update Reduce Dry Pantry Goods   This week I ended up picking up a few boxes of crisp rice cereal, one on clearance, one at full price, with intention of making some Rice Krispy treats for a neighbor with a family member who eats gluten free. These mostly filled back in the progress I'd made in clearing out the folding bookshelf, but I hope to get those made in the near future. As for the items residing on top of our kitchen cabinets, we were able to use up a box of granola bars and Trader Joes Shortbread Star Cookies. We still have a long way to go to clear off those top cabinets completely, but this challenge has forced me to focus more on those it...

The third week of January has already come and gone, and I'm excited to share with you the progress we've made on our Pantry Challenge Goals over the past week! My Pantry Challenge Goals Update Reduce Dry Pantry Goods   I'm starting to finally see some gaps emerge on the folding bookshelf where boxes of cereal previously resided. I am trying to resist the urge to shuffle items around just yet, as I want to see the progress in the individual spaces of focus before condensing them completely. I mentioned previously that I'd like to clear off all the items from on top of our kitchen cabinets. My hope is that once we have worked through enough boxes of cereal and taco shells, the rest will be able to come down from the cabinet tops and live on the bookshelf. I do think I'll continue to keep my extra tea and bags of chips up there (typically just one or two). The white skinny shelf is my working shelf, so I do not anticipate that much more will be used up, but it did gre...

Hello! Welcome back! I'm excited to start back on the blogging venture by bringing you a pantry challenge for the month of January. It seems like every blogger, YouTuber, and frugal-conscious person are embarking on January pantry challenges this year, so why not join in? Everyone has their own motivation, expectations, and goals for their pantry challenge, so I thought I'd share with you my take on the concept, how it relates to my current pantry strategy, and of course, what progress looks like. January Pantry Challenge What is a Pantry Challenge? To start off, let's define what a "pantry challenge" is. In the simplest form, it means to eat the food you currently have at home, making only minimal grocery purchases to complete meals driven by those items you already have in your pantry. Some resolve to spend nothing to supplement, getting creative with what they already have to see how long they can really go without grocery shopping. The end goal for most is the...

This past week's meal plan and prep was pretty simple. I've been focusing on using up a few miscellaneous or overstocked pantry items, along with consuming as many green beans as humanly possible it seems. This week I also tried to keep the containers from meal prep as minimal as possible, as my fridge was stuffed with sale veggies and bacon (more on that in my WWS & WWA post to follow). I love my Pyrex and Corning small casserole dishes for this, as they have flat plastic covers that snap on securely, making it easy to stack them in the fridge. Meal Plan & Prep Meal Plan (Monday - Friday) Last week I shared with you my meal planning mind map - a compilation of fresh and pantry items that need to be used, and then making a list of dishes that I could use those items in. This week's list wasn't very legible handwriting-wise, but here is the gist:     Perishable Items: carrots, celery, zucchini, pizza sauce, mozzarella, blueberries, yogurt cups, old      ...

This past week's grocery sales yielded some great treats, pantry staples, and clearance items. I was especially happy to find real parmesan on clearance, which I froze for later use in sauces, pizza, etc. Sales have also continued for fresh produce like green beans and grapes, so we've been taking advantage, especially since our garden won't start producing until early July. What We Spent   Market Basket 3 Garlic Bulbs - $1.20 1/2lb. Red Grapes - $0.80 2lbs Green Beans - $2.11 Curly Leaf Parsley - $0.99 1/2 Gallon 1% Milk - $1.88 2 Bags Mini Frozen Ravioli - $1.98 French Bread Loaf - $0.99 Oatmeal Bread - $2.00 4 Boxes Microwave Popcorn - $4.00 Krusteaz Chocolate Chip Muffin Mix - $2.29 Tea Bags - $1.49 Knox Gelatin - $0.50 (clearance) Ding-Dongs - $0.50 (clearance) Corn Flakes - $0.99 (clearance) Tax & Bottle Deposit: $0.08      Total: $21.80 Papa's Produce Multi-Colored Tomatoes - $1.50 Blueberries - $1.00      Total: $2.50 Dollar Tree 3 Cans Bla...