We’ve consolidated the freezers y’all! What a huge project done. I didn’t inventory everything though. But we were able to combine 3 freezers–1 upright freezer that we share with the fishing lodge, 1 freezer over the fridge, and 1 small chest freezer–into 2 freezers. And boy do we have a LOT of food! This will help us cut down on our grocery bill over the next several months. Everything in the first pic is ours with the exception of the next to last shelf. We will have to clean a lot of this food out before the fishing season starts because we share this freezer with the fishing lodge.
But our small chest freezer is completely empty! So there will be room for the pig and cow we will order in the spring. I promised an update on that. A couple of years ago we ordered a whole pig since we eat a lot of pork (and chicken, but I’ve yet to find a good source of pasture chicken within our price range. And because of that we might end up raising our own meat chickens this year, but that’s still undecided). Anyway, we ordered a quarter pig last year, which was quite expensive, and also 30 pounds of ground beef. Did I tell you that the Mister would go to the store and buy ground beef because he didn’t want to ‘use the good stuff’?!?! We had a discussion about why we ordered the ground beef and I think we’re both on the same page now. And during that conversation we started discussing ordering our meat for the year. We normally combine orders with other people so we get a better deal. But once we started thinking about it, and talking about it, we wondered why we stopped going to the place we were going before. I’ve known the lady who owns the farm for years. It just didn’t make sense why I stopped going. So we decided to go back. We paid her a visit a couple of weeks ago and bought some meat to try, just to make sure that we really liked the meat. Turns out we love the meat and the prices are really, really good. So we will combine our order for a pig and some ground beef (her minimum requirements for $4 per pound for ground beef are considerably less than the place we went last year). I really like this farm. They really cater to locals and have a good finished product for reasonable prices.
I also inventoried the pantry and spice cabinet. I didn’t get a pic of the spice cabinet, but I did put everything into mason jars with labels. But the pantry. I’ve certainly had bigger pantries, but again, since we share the space the shelf above is all I have room for. But with some creative storage I am able to fit a lot into the space. And I labeled everything so I can get to it pretty quickly and easily. My goal is to eat from our food stores and only go to the grocery for fresh items such as dairy products and any baking supplies I need. Although I would like to find a good source for buying those things in bulk, the baking supplies. Did I tell you that I found a local farm that sells raw milk for just $5 per gallon? The farm is about 45 minutes from me, in the opposite direction of where I normally travel, but I really want to start drinking raw milk and supporting this local farm. So that really leaves just butter and cheese that I need to buy at the store. And I mainly shop at Aldi’s which has really good prices on organic products. So all in all I think we’re off to a good start on our food stores.
And before I forget to mention it, we had a roast duck last week and then made the leftovers into a shepherd’s pie and then made stock! That duck, that we bought at the grocery store, turned into 2 meals, plus will contribute to at least 7 others (since we got 7 pints of stock from the carcass). That is a pretty good return on money well spent, albeit a little frivolously.
I’ve set a budget of just $50 for groceries every two weeks, but that might need to be adjusted. It’s a starting point. But I think we can keep it pretty simple with only buying the necessities and shopping at Aldi’s. I’ll keep you posted.
Oh! And one of my favorite bloggers, Milkweed & Teasel, is blogging again! I’m sooo excited. Go check her out. She lives the life I only dream about and only wish I had the resourcefulness that she does.