I recently had a question about how my family eats real meals since my shopping trips are pretty irregular. One week I may buy a lot of cheese and the next week might be a lot of rice. It doesn’t seem that what is a good deal can be pulled together to make an actual family meal. That’s because we are loading our pantries (and freezers) every week with the best deals. Then we make meals out of what we already have. In fact, most of what I buy this week- won’t be used at all this week! Here are a few examples of meals my family had recently: Chicken Enchiladas
Chicken: $1.89/lb Zaycon Foods (using about 2 lbs)
Tortillas – in freezer…think they were .80/bag
Enchilada sauce from pantry – would have been under $1 for me to buy
Cheese- $1.13/bag from B2G3 deal at Harris Teeter
Onion- from freezer Seasonings- from pantry
How Couponer’s Cook:
The point of being a stockpiler is that we make our own grocery stores in our pantries! Regardless of what I need 99% of the time- it’s in my pantry or freezer!
Want spaghetti? I’ve got all the fixings.
BBQ Chicken? Got it.
Hamburgers? Yep.
Pasta, rice, breadcrumbs, sauces, cheese, milk, spices, frozen and canned veggies and fruit- they are all staples in my house and therefore my pantry is stocked with them. Creating a main list of meals that your family eats over and over is a great way to see what items you should stockpile. Then when you want to make chicken parmesan- you have all the ingredients you need!
Freezing items that you commonly use (for my family that includes sliced onions, carrots, peppers, chicken, cheese, ground beef, shrimp) is a great way to keep all the items you use often fresh and ready to use!
For my family we usually use this formula:
Meat/Protein + Veggie Side + Grain + (optional) Fruit Side
Not every meal has all these elements but most do and a stocked pantry and freezer usually makes it easy. Pull some meat from the freezer, add canned/frozen or fresh veggies and bread or rice and a full meal is just pulled together out of the pantry!
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