Category Archives: Shopping

Feeding the Crew

Keian and cantelopeWelcome back to 10 Days of Large Family Homeschooling
Start at the Beginning of the Series

One thing I have found to be challenging as a large family homeschool mom is feeding 3 meals a day plus snacks day in and day out to a rather large and diverse group of people.  At any given time, I have teenagers, toddlers, and babies – all with different palates and needs.

Many of you already know breakfast is not my forte.  I like to eat it, I hate to cook it.  I’ve never been real awake in the mornings.  I can remember as a youngster never feeling as if I had fully awakened until about 10:30 am.  I always wondered why teachers thought math needed to be taught first thing in the morning when I was so very tired.  I am most on top of my game starting late morning and again at about 4:00 pm.  I try to have things on hand that can easily become breakfast, but rare is the occasion that I actually cook a hot breakfast.

*GASP*  Now, you know my secret!

So, now that you know, here’s a list of breakfast ideas – Roberts family style!

  • cereal
  • fruit
  • toast with peanut butter
  • hard boiled eggs
  • muffins
  • breakfast cookies
  • yogurt
  • baked oatmeal
  • pancakes with real maple syrup
  • fried eggs

Next is lunch.  By this point, we have been going strong with school and I almost hate to stop for nourishment!  Lunch happens here between 12 and 1 pm – or whenever there is a natural lull in our school day.  Occasionally, Daddy joins us, but most often, it is me and the 6 children.  We typically have a light lunch rather than something heavy for two reasons:

  1. Our big meal is at night.
  2. It is better and simpler to make something that takes less preparation when in the middle of a school day.

Here are some of our favorite lunch ideas:

After we’ve cleaned up from lunch, we head back into our school day.  If I were pregnant, this would be Rest Time, but as it stands right now, only the 18 month old is taking a nap right after lunch.

Our school day is usually finished around 2:30, but this is not a good time to go outside since our road becomes quite busy at that time of day due to the high school down the road.  So, at about 3:00 pm we have a snack and then head outside.

Snack ideas:

  • cheese & crackers
  • fruit
  • foldover peanut butter sandwich
  • veggie sticks
  • smoothies
  • cookies – yes, cookies ;)

After we have played outside for a while, I head inside (usually with a helper) to prepare for supper/dinner.

Mommy cooking with Garin in Mei Tai

We eat supper between 6 and 7 pm due to Daddy’s schedule.  This is typically our biggest meal of the day since Daddy is home.  This is also the meal I am most creative with.  I like to go through cookbooks and my index box full of recipes I’ve been collecting for over half my life and pull interesting recipes I would like to try or family favorites.

Some recent meals have been:

Now, we all know you can’t feed your crew without either buying or growing your own food (or a mix of both), so here are a few of my favorite shopping posts:

Once a Month Shopping Series (how we shop once a month and save!)

One Store Shopping Method

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The Frugal Advantage of One Store Shopping

groceries

{Disclaimer:  The above photo is NOT a one-store shopping trip and NOT a typical week’s worth of shopping for us.  It is simply a photo of groceries on my kitchen table.}

Recently, we decided we needed to cut our grocery bill down considerably.  We had stopped shopping once a month due to life circumstances, but the shopping weekly was killing our budget.

We started by shopping our pantry, but you still have to go shopping, and I needed a way to cut the bill once I was in the store.

That’s when I decided the best place for us to start was in shopping one store and one store only.

shopping at Walmart

Shopping takes a lot of brain power for me!

I alternate between shopping at WalMart and shopping at ALDI depending on any non-food extras I might need that week that cannot be purchased at ALDI.  When I shop at ALDI, I cut our grocery bill in half of what it was.  When I shop WalMart, I have to be much more careful.  Alas, sometimes a trip to WalMart cannot be helped.

Here’s how I do my One Store Shopping:

1.  Shop your pantry first.  This method will ALWAYS save you money.  Grab a piece of paper and a pen and write down every meal you can make from your pantry, keeping track of any extras you need to purchase to make that meal.

2.  Look at the weekly ads for your store.  We don’t get the newspaper, so I look at these online:
ALDI ads
WalMart ads

3.  Put together meals from the on-sale items in the ad.  As you work your way through the ad, consider what meals you can make from their on-sale items and then fill in the blanks with the extra groceries you need to complete that meal.

4.  Write our your final meal list and grocery list. You can use this handy monthly meal planner or just use a piece of paper.  I keep my meal list on the side of the refrigerator and my grocery list on the counter until I’m ready to go shopping.

5.  Stick to the list.  Stick to the list.  Stick to the list.  If you are really wanting to save money, you will need to follow this rule even when the extra goodies in the store call your name!  Your budget will thank you!

I have been very pleased with the results and it is making the fact that we have to shop weekly less painful.

Now it’s your turn!  Do you shop one store?  Do you shop those store’s sales?  Do you shop weekly or not?

Wanna know where I got that nifty mei tai baby carrier?  Here’s how I made it!

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The Blessing of a Buffalo

Ty and Blake at the buffalo hunt

 

For over a year I purchased our meat in the grocery store.  I didn’t enjoy it.

Our buffalo meat from 2 years ago had run out and we kept coming up short on finding grass-fed beef to purchase.  So, our freezer sat rather empty as we waited for the next time Ty could go buffalo hunting.

Veteran’s Day this year, that chance came!

Some of you probably know how incredibly expensive buffalo meat is.  Because of the interest in breeding buffalo in recent years, the buffalo (or American bison) is no longer an endangered species; however, they are naturally organic and we all know how very expensive organic meat is.  Hunting your own is actually a great investment because you get not only the burger, but steaks and roasts all for the same processing fee.

Additionally, buffalo meat offers us some amazing health benefits!

BBQ buffalo

BBQ Buffalo!

Buffalo beats almost every other meat hands down in the nutrition department.  Plus, as I said, it is organic because buffalo are naturally free-ranging animals that don’t like to be messed with.

The biggest benefit for me is the high iron content!  I struggle with anemia, especially in pregnancy, so eating buffalo meat (cooked in cast iron) is very good for me.

It does smell different cooking than beef and you do have to cook it low and slow because of the next to nil fat content, but those minor adjustments are well worth a freezer full of wonderful meat!

Yes, I know some people wouldn’t be okay with the buffalo head hanging on my wall (I got a lot of comments on that post about being a good woman for allowing that!) or the buffalo robe on my bed (yes, it’s called a robe and not a “rug”), but I dare you to argue with me about the meat!

So, this Christmas I am blessed to have buffalo…a whole freezer load of lovely buffalo!

Buy Less, Declutter More and Share Christmas with Us!

It’s Cyber Monday and here I am telling you to get rid of stuff! And not only am I telling you to get rid of stuff, I’m also going to tell you that you probably don’t need to replace all that stuff with more stuff!

You see, come February 1 (that’s not all that far off!), we will be moving…AGAIN. So, my admonition to you to clear the clutter and make wise buying decisions is really an admonition to myself. {and this post at The Better Mom cheered me along!}

So, I am being brutal!  I’m working through my tried and true decluttering methods (someday I’ll let you in on those, but now just isn’t the time!) and really focusing on getting rid of things!  So far, 10 (yes TEN) bags have gone to the thrift store and just about that many have hit the trash!  Even though I’ve done this before (see my Half My Stuff posts), clutter never really is conquered until you learn to not allow it in.  And even then, it still accumulates because we are not able to control what others bring into our homes.  It really is an ongoing process.

This holiday season, you won’t see a lot of posts here at Raising Arrows about the best holiday deals or buying more stuff to add to the stuff you already have.  In fact, what we will be doing is sharing our family traditions and the things we do during the holidays that have become near and dear to us.  We celebrate Christ and the family of God this season…not stuff.

So, buy less, declutter more and join us for a Raising Arrows Christmas!

 

Freebie for Subscribers – Basic Meals and Grocery List

This month I am offering something special just for my subscribers!

A FREE Basic Meals List and Basic Meals Grocery List!

This freebie will give you a rotating meal list with very simple recipes as well as the shopping list you will need to make every single meal 4x in one month.

This is a no-brainer list for the times in your life when you are too busy to think or living in a crisis and can’t devote energy to making a meal list.  You can use the list as a starting point or print it off and run to the grocery store today!

Simply fill out the form below and look for the link in the bottom of each post that comes to your inbox! {RSS for those of you who prefer feed readers can be found by clicking on the coffee cup in my right hand sidebar}

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Streamlined Meal Planning {LFO}

Today’s Large Family Organization tip is from Lisa Mather, mom of 6, from A Day in the Life of Raising 6 Munchkins (you can also find her beautiful handiwork at Six Munchkin Stitching!)

Photobucket

One thing that has helped me is to menu plan.  I will sit down on a Sunday afternoon and plan meals for the next two weeks on a calendar that I’ve printed off of the computer.

I’ll have already placed dates and events that I need to remember to better plan the meals, whether they’ll need to be a quicker meal or a day where I’ll have the availability for a meal that requires more prep.

As I am writing down my meals, I have a shopping list right next to me to write down the ingredients I’ll need that I don’t have already in the house.

If I am unsure of what I have left, my daughter becomes the gofer and will go on the hunt for me.

It has helped tremendously with impulse shopping as well as the, “What should I make for dinner?” dilemma.  It also provided flexibility for those days where you forget to defrost meat and are able to look at the menu and go, “Okay, I can make Monday’s meal today and this meal on Monday.”

Note from Amy: This perfectly compliments what we do with our Once a Month Shopping.  To learn more about it, click here: Once a Month Shopping Series.

 

Do you have a Large Family Organization tip you’d like to share? Link up and/or send it in to amy at raisingarrows.net

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