I'm back

I'm back from my honeymoon and things are starting to get back to normal. I haven't really been grocery shopping recently, but I'm getting back to it now, so more posts will be coming. I went shopping this morning, and got an excellent deal on hamburger. My dad taught me to go to the store first thing in the morning to find the best marked-down stuff. I bought about 25 lbs of "yesterday's grind" super-lean 93/7 hamburger for $2.19 /lb. It's regularly about $3.89 /lb. Before the economy tanked, I could get it for $1.99 or sometimes $1.69 /lb, but you take what you can get. I separated all of it into 1/2 lb packages to use later. Since our family is small, I usually only use a 1/2 lb of meat per meal, depending on the recipe.

Speaking of which, I like to save money on meals by cutting the amount of meat in the recipe in half and sometimes replacing it with something else. Take tacos, for instance. The packets of taco seasoning call for 1 lb of hamburger, but I use 1/2 lb and black beans - either 1 can of beans or one package of cooked and frozen beans. The only canned beans I really buy are dark red kidney beans because I like the color they add to soup, or garbanzo beans. I started cooking and freezing dry beans because, for one thing, it saves a little money, and two, I needed to find a way to use up all the beans I got from WIC!

So, one pound of beans....

...makes four sandwich bags of cooked beans. Freeze, thaw and use in place of 1 can of beans!