I took a few pictures of our December groceries and meals we ate to share with you!
I didn’t go grocery shopping in December until part-way through the month, so we had run out of almost all of our staples and then some! :) Therefore, my shopping day in Lincoln that month was a big one!
I loaded my extra large cart so full at Sam’s I could hardly push it. Silly me, I should have gone through check-out, unloaded, then started over.
See those Corn Dogs? That was Malachi’s birthday meal request, haha.
This particular shopping day, I also picked up several cases of fun items for the kids to put together gifts to hand out to friends at church. Since Christmas was on a Sunday this year, we wanted to be sure all the people at church who didn’t have family in town felt loved and cared for. Here, I snuck in a couple of pictures of the kids working on this project plus a picture of our wagon full of gifts to share at church Christmas morning.
Now back to my shopping day:
After Sam’s, I loaded two carts at Costco. My second cart looked like this after I filled it with produce, then it got buried by frozen food. Note to Self: Shop the other way around next time so that the produce doesn’t get smashed and bruised. Silly girl.
Next stop: Aldi.
I hadn’t been to Aldi for a few months, and now I’m regretting that I don’t shop there more often. I found so many good prices there and got several flats of canned fruit, beans, salsa, and corn. I got an entire case of cream cheese because the price there is the best. I got bagels, butter, applesauce, raisins, and all kinds of odds and ends. So much fun and such great savings!
Total cost for groceries that day was $1,125. Our van was completely full, and that’s saying something because our van is very big. :)
When I got home, everyone helped unload the van, even most of our littles. Our house was covered in groceries and it was pretty much chaos for about an hour and a half as we tried to get food put away.
The day after my huge shopping trip, here are some of the meals we ate:
I slow cooked a pork roast for us to eat after church on a Sunday. I served it with Crock Pot Party Potatoes, green beans, corn, pumpkin bread, and cookies.
We fed 6 adults and 6 kids that day and still had this much meat leftover. Hopefully you’ve already signed up to join us for our 30 Days of Dollar Dinners series so you can learn how to stretch one pork roast into 5 meals!
Malachi is in our local homeschool melodrama this winter, and parents get to send “snacks” for the kids after rehearsals. I say “snacks” because as it turns out, these kids are starving teens and eat heartily after a three-hour rehearsal! When it was my turn to send food in December, I sent a crock pot full of chip dip loosely based off this burrito filling mixture, chips, fruit, pickles, olives, and rice krispie treats.
One day I made a double batch of White Chicken Chili. We ate half one day and reheated leftovers another day. I love getting a two-for-one on my meal prep!
One evening, I used some of the leftover shredded pork roast to make this Creamy Salsa Enchiliada recipe. It was super good!
I found some pork loins marked down to $3.75 each when I hit our local grocery store so I baked one and served it with Honey’d Carrots, Baked Beans, fresh spinach, and Pumpkin Muffins. We all got full since I’d made so many side dishes, but all of us wished there was a second pork loin that night because it was so good!
We celebrated Malachi’s 18th birthday in December. I decided to be normal that day and NOT put spinach in his birthday cake. You’re welcome, Malachi.
After that, I kind of fell apart when it came to taking pictures of our meals. All six of our littles somehow got head lice just a few days before Christmas. UGH. So we spent hours of our days working on heads and doing about a thousand loads of laundry trying to knock out the problem. It was kind of awful, ha, even while we tried to keep a healthy perspective on the situation.
Somehow we survived. :) :) :) I took exactly one picture of our food on Christmas day, our breakfast of Easy Breakfast Casserole and Pumpkin French Toast Casserole.
After Christmas, I found myself playing catch-up on everything I had to put on hold during our lice debacle. Hopefully, I’ll get more pictures of our meals during the month of January!!
Oh, goodness! I had lice as a kiddo. It does mean their hair is clean, but I imagine that wouldn’t have been consolation at the time.
One summer I worked as a camp director at a bible camp for inner city kids. It was rural, no running water or electricity for 5 days at a time. No way to bathe either except in a cold lake, or a river full of mosquitoes (no thanks). A fellow camp director told me she got lice every year. I said ‘not this year’ and only washed my hair on weekends at home, with tea tree oil (lice cannot stick to oily hair). Sure enough, neither of us got lice that year.
One of the camp counsellors had a lice scare (a couple of the kids needed treatment) and spent most weekends with her hair coated in vaseline. She said she does that every time she has or might have lice. The vaseline suffocates the lice (any oil would do the same). So if lice ever comes back to your household, perhaps slathering heads with goop for two or three days (cover with a bag or towel) would get the job done a bit more easily.
I’m so sorry about the lice experience! That sounds terrible. :(
I wanted to ask how you use all of that cream cheese before it spoils? I’ve always wondered if it works to freeze it but have never tried it. What are your thoughts?
And thank you for all you share here. It’s such a helpful encouragement to me. :)
Yes
You can successfully freeze cream cheese.
We have found that frozen cream cheese works well in baked goods, cream cheese mousse, several of Laura’s soups and other things where the texture is not a main component. If you want to smear it on celery for ants on a log or something similar it is better not to use previously frozen cream cheese.
I, too, have successfully frozen cream cheese. One way to help bring the proper texture back-for those ants on a log- is to beat up the cream cheese with a mixer till it’s combined again. Freezing it tends to make it separate and get crumbly, mixing it brings it back together.
I am a long time follower and have always loved when you shared your meal plans with us. Thank you!