economy

good afternoon and how are you? i am much better today. not feeling nearly as bad as i was yesterday. while i don't have a car to go places due to the hubbs needing it for work nor do i have a phone due to not being able to afford it this month, i am doing well. God blesses us all the time! so to start this post out I give ALL glory to God!

now, we all know that the economy has been very bad for a while. I only expect this to continue. with very few jobs out there and the housing market taking the hit it took, everything else has continued to rise in price. we can't let that get us down. at one time we were a 2 car family, home owning, house phone, internet, cable having cell phone carrying family. now we are a one car, internet only, one cell phone, renting family. it would appear that this is a bad spot, but I counter you on that. this is exactly where God wants us to be right now. while i took some time off of work, I am now a work at home mom. I am not in a get rich quick scheme, but I love what I do and the little I have made so far is more than we had when I wasn't working at all. ryan is still in steel decking construction. while he doesn't like to have to be away so much and work those long hours, he does it because he loves us and wants to provide the best he can for us.

so with his economy, it even makes buying groceries seem hard for a lot of families, and since we had rain all of last week, ryan's paycheck wasn't as good as we would have liked, so we are trying something new... i still have plenty of chicken and fish in the freezer, rice in the cupboard etc. so, when i post this list, keep in mind it is in addition to what we already have in the pantry. we are a little short on money this week, so we are going with the bare bones approach to our meals. while this may sound hard, it really isn't that bad. in fact, once a month we try to do this to clear out left overs and frozen meals. we also do this in order to prepare for the following week to buy a large amount of meat.

so here's my grocery list for the week:

baking powder (because i'm out)

eggs

whatever fruit is on sale at the best price

hamburger

milk

potatoes

vegetables (again what's on sale at the best price)

tuna (2 cans)

bullion cubes (again, i am out of these)

onions

shortening (this is only used for baking biscuits/tortillas etc)

nutmeg (this is a maybe, have to check the pantry, not sure if i have it on hand or not)

and tomatoes (diced canned will work fine if they are on sale)

*in the vegetables, i have to get peas and corn for sure

now, with all that said, i have a little menu that we will tweak when ryan gets home. i'm only listing our dinners because breakfast and lunch are easy... our dinners for the week include:

shepherds pie

tuna and pea wiggle

burger night (we will have burgers)

scalloped potatoes and veggies

scalloped potato and tuna casserole (made from left overs from night before)

veggie soup with rice

baked potato with veggies

*we will be adding in some chicken and fish i just have to see the nights that ryan wants to do that.

note that a lot of these recipes dont' have meat in the name. well that's because they are vegetarian recipes. meat is very expensive, so when we have to we eat without the meat. we will add meat as needed for ryan as he is the meat eater in this house. the girls and i can't wait to have that tuna wiggle! we love tuna!

and just for fun here are our breakfast plans:

eggs in a biscuit

pancakes

tortilla's with eggs and veggies

donut muffins

potato pancakes

a couple of those we like so much we don't mind having them 2 days out of the week.

for the most part we will use left overs for lunches.

and we will keep our shopping down to around 20 dollars for a family of four for the entire week! and some of these things will go for a lot longer than just the one week such as he baking powder.

i will post my final shopping after i get home from doing it this evening. and will post the recipes this week on the nights we use them.

i do pray that your weekend is a great one!