Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

How I Shop and Budget for Our Large Family

by 4 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

Everyone’s family needs and shopping options are different. Here’s how I shop and budget for our large family.

Who We’re Feeding

Here’s one of our latest family pictures, taken at our Boy #2’s wedding last summer. Our two oldest sons are married and on their own now. Boy #3 is a college senior and lives at home while he finishes his last semester. Boy #4 is a high school senior – and just about the time we thought we’d be empty nesters, God started to grow our family through foster care and adoption. The six littles in the picture are either adopted or will be soon. What a journey! You can read more about our family here.

Suddenly that picture is outdated as we welcomed another baby boy into our home early this year. :)

When you take a look at our large family’s overall grocery budget for the month, you might choke on your coffee. It’s large and possibly overwhelming to some. Here’s how we save in other areas so that we afford to buy all these groceries. And here’s a quick breakdown of our eating habits:

  • We feed 4 adults, 3 school-aged kids, and 3 toddlers – a total of 10 people – three meals every day. (Several days each week, one of our former foster sons comes over too.)
  • We very rarely eat out (approximately once every three months if we are on the road somewhere).
  • Our school kids pack a lunch to take to school; the rest of us eat lunch at home.
  • We feed a lot of guests – anywhere from 5-20 extra people per week.

How I Grocery Shop and Budget for Our Large Family

We live in a small town without a lot of grocery store options. So here’s what works for me when it comes to grocery purchases.

1. I hit Costco and Sam’s once per month to stock up on bulk items.

Costco and Sam’s are an hour away from us, so I make a plan for all the kids for the day, then I go stock up once each month. Read here about what I like to buy at Costco and Sam’s. You’ll see that I splurge on a few convenience items like frozen pizza and chicken nuggets. These purchases give me a night off from cooking without making us pay restaurant prices. It’s a perfect compromise!

2. Walmart Pick-Up

In our town, we have two local grocery stores that are rather pricey, plus Walmart. Two to three times each month, I place a Walmart pickup order to fill in gaps for our fresh produce and dairy needs until I can get back to Costco or Sam’s. Here’s a look at typical Wal-mart pick-up orders for our family.

3. Azure Standard

I get a few items every month or two from Azure Standard, and I like ordering items from them that I have a hard time finding other places. Here are some of the items I like to buy from Azure.

4. Local Farm Eggs and Milk

We are blessed to have friends with a farm a few miles away. They supply us with our milk each week. Our eggs come all the way from across the street where our neighbors enjoy raising chickens!

Our Family Eats Well for an Average of $4/person/day.

That’s how I shop, but how about how we eat?

All totaled, we average about $1,200/month for groceries. The great big budget number seems large, but it divides into just $4/person/day (less than that, actually, because we also feed guests from our regular budget). This includes all meals and snacks plus features many high-quality fruits and vegetables. I feel very good about this, especially since this budget number includes packed school lunches and ways we splurge at home instead of eating out. (UPDATE: I am currently working to see if I can keep our budget at this number or if I need to increase it. Stay tuned.)

Here are some examples of meals we eat at our house:

I made this simple Baked Chicken Leg meal for just $0.99/plate. It was a feast with chicken, baked potatoes, steamed broccoli, and fresh watermelon.

After a Costco trip, we often have Chicken Salad on croissants with spinach. We had this with fresh strawberries, raspberries, and carrots. The croissants are a splurge, but this is still an inexpensive meal!

Here’s one of our favorite meals: Smoked marinated chicken thighs – so easy and so delicious. On this particular day, we ate this with steamed green beans, buttered corn, baked potatoes, and grapes.

Breakfast for dinner is always a hit. This French toast meal served with eggs, sausage, and fruit is a favorite. The toast and eggs were flying off the plate and skillet faster than I could keep up!

I watch for mark-downs on meat and buy pork roasts when I can get them for less than $3.00/pound. I like to cook roasts overnight on Saturday to enjoy a meal like this on Sunday after church.

We’ve found that eating a lot of fruits and vegetables actually saves us money! Crazy but true!

More ways we save money:

But wait? You NEVER eat out??

Can you imagine taking this many babies into a restaurant? Here’s what we do instead. <— This post might give you some fun ideas for your family if you’re trying to eat out less. :)

High grocery store prices won’t get us down. What ways are you finding to save at the store?

Coming up next: Do I still buy organic food??

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

February 2023 Groceries and Meals We Ate (Big Family Food!)

by 6 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

Here’s a look at our February 2023 groceries and meals we ate that month!

February 2023 Groceries

We’ll start with a look at my grocery shopping trips this month. First, on the first Sunday of the month our entire family was able to worship together in Lincoln (where Asa, Justus, and their wives go to church). It was wonderful to be together, and we headed to Costco after church so we could eat lunch and shop. There are 16 of us now (including wives and a girlfriend) so lunch at Costco was slightly nuts. But cheap. How else can we feed 15 people for $32? (Baby opted for his bottle instead of a hotdog.)

I tried to capture a pic of all of us walking into Costco. Grown-up kids, little kids, Daddy – everyone holding a baby or a little hand…

I spend a solid $731 that day and got home with a great big haul of groceries. Sausage, chips, shredded cheese, frozen fruit and corn, maple syrup, honey, fresh greens and spinach, butter, rice, yogurt, cinnamon bread, creamer…

Coffee, applesauce pouches, yogurt pouches, peach cups, yogurt cups, half and half, cream, sour cream…

Chicken nuggets, carrots, apples, coconut oil, mozzarella, salad mix, frozen tilapia, cantaloupe, granola bites…

Many of the snack-sized items I got to help supplement our school kids’ lunches (even the splurges cost less than paying for a school lunch).

Four of our foster kids qualify for WIC benefits, which is a huge perk as it provides us with a small amount of fruits, vegetables, cheese, eggs, milk, cereal, juice beans, bread, and formula each month at no cost to us. I snapped this picture of the groceries I’d gotten with two of our WIC cards and wasn’t able to take pictures at home because all the babies wanted to be held at once since I’d been out. ;)

Mid-February we were in Grand Island for Malachi’s soccer games. I ran into Sam’s to get “just a few things” which for us means that I only filled one cart. :) :) :)

I spent $161 on food that day.

At the end of the month, I had a chance to go to Costco and Aldi. I came home with this after spending $304 on food. How did I get away with all these groceries for so little? Just before I went to Costco that day, I received an email that included my Costco Reward Certificate. It covered almost all my needs that day. SO THANKFUL!

At Aldi, I got strawberries, blueberries, clementines, bagels, pretzels, ketchup, sausage, grass-fed beef (on sale!), brown sugar, cottage cheese, and cases of:

  • Chicken broth
  • Salsa (2 cases!)
  • Pears in 100% juice
  • Peaches in 100% juice
  • Corn
  • Cream Cheese
  • Mac and Cheese ($0.50/box – a great convenience at a low price)

Since I stocked up so much at Aldi, I only needed one cartful at Costco. I got shredded cheese, applesauce, yogurt pouches and cups (on sale!), chicken (x3), butter, sour cream, broccoli, apples, greens, chicken nuggets, pizza, blackberries, guacamole cups, avocado cups, white queso, mandarin orange cups, half and half, red grapes, green grapes, caesar salad mix, and croissants.

After a Costco trip, the boxes are the best!

We are settling in with a new baby, I’ve had extra foster care meetings and appointments this month, and overall, we are pretty tired. Happy, healthy, joyful, thankful, and tired. So I decided this month to simply buy what we needed without overthinking and then get back to sticking to a budget later when I’m more rested and able to think/plan more frugally. :) These days sure are sweet though.

Keith loves his baby brother…

So. About that grocery budget.

I am realizing that I will soon need to increase our grocery budget.

I am having to rely on some convenience foods right now, and eventually, I can cook more from scratch and save more money. But even with that, I’m realizing that my budget may need to increase soon. Had it not been for our Costco Reward money, I would have gone FAR over budget this month. And there’s not much I feel I can do about it. The kids are only going to eat more as they continue to grow. Plus, for goodness sake, I am feeding 10 people three meals every day.

Stay tuned for an update on that once I have time to sit down and figure out what makes sense for our family. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what you feel is reasonable to spend per person per month on food. :)

Meals We Ate in February

Ready for the fun part?! Here’s a look at some of the meals we ate in February!

Someone gave us some Italian Bread loaves so I used them that night to make Pizza Boats. I served them with fruit and fresh spinach. (Some of my kids dip their spinach in ranch, some just eat it plain, and one of them dips it in ketchup, ha. Whatever gets the spinach down, I say.)

I hadn’t made this Cheeseburger Mac in a long time and it really hit the spot! I made it on a day when we were having trouble with our kitchen sinks draining properly. So I served our dinner on these disposable trays we had accumulated somehow.

What does our kitchen look like when our sink drains are messed up and I can’t wash dishes??

The sippies and other bowls and cups you see above are actually clean. I had taken them upstairs to our bathtub and washed them because running out of clean sippy cups isn’t an option. Matt worked all afternoon and solved the drain problem. It’s always good to be reminded to be thankful for the opportunity to wash dishes!

There was a box of free zucchini when I went to a WIC appointment for our girls, so I brought some home and made a double batch of this Whole Wheat Zucchini Bread. I shared two of the loaves with a family going through intense health issues. The other two loaves got eaten in two days at our house.

Here’s a little peek at our 2-year-old and 1-year-old sitting at a little table that we’ve had since our big boys were little. They were eating a breakfast of banana, yogurt, and zucchini bread bites.

I had a roast in the freezer so I slow-cooked it one day with potatoes and carrots.

I made 6 pounds of meatballs one day (recipe coming soon). I froze 4 pounds of them and baked 2 pounds for dinner that night with mac and cheese and steamed broccoli.

Here’s a look at six of our littles around the table eating meatballs. :) :) :)

When Baby#11 was born, someone gifted us an amazing pizza gift card. We took advantage of this one night when the pizza place was offering a special! That was a great night off of cooking for me!

I had picked up some Uncured Beef Smokies from Costco, and the kids were super excited. I poured barbecue sauce on them and slow-cooked them all afternoon. They were…so-so. :) It was a nice, convenient dinner but none of us gobbled these right up.

The day I made those smokies, the kids had the day off of school. One of our daughters-in-law was at our house helping for the day so we made a huge batch of Cream Cheese Cut-Out Cookies for Valentine’s Day.

One day in February it got up to 60 degrees, which is crazy for us in Nebraska! I took advantage of the weather and smoked a bunch of brats and hotdogs for dinner.

We took some to share with another family who had just had a loss in their family, then we enjoyed these with baked beans and carrot sticks.

One night I made a big batch of Cheeseburger Soup, but added noodles instead of potatoes. We ate our fill that night, then I added sour cream and cheese to the leftovers to create a casserole to eat another night.

For our school kids’ Valentine’s Day lunch, I made and packed them a heart-shaped quesadilla. :)

For dinner on Valentine’s night, I made Chicken Pizza Bake and took a few minutes to cut the pepperoni into hearts. :)

Here’s a look at a Saturday morning breakfast for all the littles that they enjoyed after watching a show (so I could wake up slowly with our baby). Sausage links, apple slices with peanut butter, yogurt, pumpkin muffins, and cinnamon toast.

I don’t remember what we ate for our main dish this meal, but I snapped a picture of Brayden and Keith eating pear slices and spinach with ranch while they waited on the rest of their meal. This is often how I feed the kids: give them their fruit and veggie to eat first before filling up on the rest of the meal. We have fewer food fights this way.

I put White Chicken Chili in the crock pot one morning and we enjoyed it that evening with Applesauce Bread. If you haven’t tried this easy chili recipe before, you must. It’s delicious, and it also takes no effort to make!

On another day, I made regular chili. We didn’t eat it, but instead, I filled two gallon-sized freezer bags with it and froze them both. I had browned several pounds of ground beef so it made sense to create something with the cooked meat before stashing it away. Chili it was! Now we have two meals ready to thaw and eat at any time! OR, I can use some to make this amazing Chili Cheese Dip.

Lunchtime each day can be a bit of a “thing” for our 4-3-2-and 1-year olds. They are all so little, and lunchtime is almost naptime, so we’re all a little bit tired at this point in the day. So, I’ve taken a break from giving them leftovers (Matt, Elias, Malachi, and I eat those up at lunchtime though!) and I’ve started giving them more “snacky” items. Here’s an example of a day I fixed their plates with pepperoni, cheese cubes, avocado cups, crackers, and applesauce. It was a hit!

After my final Costco run of the month, we enjoyed their croissants with chicken salad, grapes, and strawberries.

The older boys weren’t home for lunch that day so we actually had leftovers. I turned them into Chicken Salad Melts with cheese and ranch, which we baked the next day after church and ate with tomato soup, smoothies, and chips and salsa.

Here’s a peek at a marker board I moved into the kitchen. I’ve been writing down meals as I plan them for each day so that our 7 and 9-year-olds can read it instead of asking me over and over what we’re eating. It’s served as an added blessing that Matt knows what I’m planning and starts helping with prep without asking what needs to be done. :)

Completely unrelated to food, but worth sharing is the picture of our silverware drawer after our four year old cleaned out that part of the dishwasher. We are starting to get our 4-7-9 year-olds more involved with household needs and he is very capable of this task. Who cares that the silverware is all messy in the drawer? Not me!

We made breakfast for dinner that included biscuits, sausage/cheese eggs, pears, and blackberries. It was simple and the kids loved it!

I made three lasagnas one afternoon, freezing two and saving one to eat during the week. You’ll see that meal in March!! :)

How’s your budget looking? Care to share how much you spend per person per month? (I’m currently at $120/person/month but need to consider increasing and would love some input!)

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

December Groceries and Meals We Ate

by 7 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

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!!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

How I Make a Grocery List (Without Making a Grocery List)

by 2 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

This is how I make a grocery list without making a grocery list. It’s kind of like taking my kitchen to the store with me…

Have you ever been at the grocery store and wished you had looked in your fridge first to check on your bottle of ketchup? Do you see a sale on pickles but can’t remember if you are already stocked up for the next three years worth of picnics?

The most recent time I was heading out of town to do a great big Sam’s run, I started to write down everything I wanted to be sure to pick up. But with babies underfoot I really didn’t have an opportunity, so I decided to try this instead…

How I Make a Grocery List (Without Making a Grocery List)

I took quick pictures on my phone.

I know what goes where on my shelves. I know what a full pantry and freezer are supposed to look like for our family. So instead of taking pen and paper into the store, I had these pictures to reference! Then I could see what was missing on my shelves.

Did I need canned beans in any form? No I did not. But was my fruit shelf almost empty? Indeed. Was I almost out of corn and olives? Yep. Did I have to question these things when walking down the canned food aisles? Nope. There’s the picture I took that morning!

Freezer number one shows that I have pasta on the top shelf (yes, I keep it in the freezer because we have mice issues if I don’t store things well.) I’m good on pasta. The second shelf shows that we are getting low on frozen pizza but I prefer buying those at Costco, and today I am going to Sam’s. We’ll make do, ha. The third shelf shows just one package of chicken thighs and a package of chicken legs. That’s not enough to get us by until the next time I have a chance to stock up. Get chicken…check!

There’s a frozen turkey someone gifted us with and some bags of whole wheat flour…

In the other freezer, I can see meat from our local farmers, meat I’ve bought from mark-downs, frozen veggies and fruit, and some meatballs from Costco. Overall, that freezer is looking pretty good!

This is the inside of my second refrigerator, which is out in our storage room. We keep extra milk out there, and usually, it is full of extra cold food that doesn’t fit in our kitchen fridge. Yikes, it’s almost bear! So at Sam’s I will stock up!

My Sam’s Trip with my “Grocery List”

We were completely out of fresh produce, plus we were getting ready to head to Montana for Justus’ wedding: a 12-hour road trip. Snacks for littles (and bigs) were very necessary. So I bought packaged food I don’t normally buy in an effort to help our long drive be a little more fun. :)

The pictures I’d taken on my phone were super helpful so that I could reference what I already had and what I still needed to pick up. I’m telling you though, they just don’t make carts big enough for our monthly grocery shopping needs, ha!!

I barely made it out of the store without spilling this mountain of food. :)

It might be hard to tell the difference, but here’s our shelf once I got our canned foods restocked.

From here on out, I will definitely be taking pictures on my phone to the grocery store so that I can use this as my list. Technology at its finest!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Meal Plan First? Or Shop First Then Plan?

by 8 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

Someone recently asked: Do you make a meal plan first and then shop? Or do you shop for food and plan your meals around what you have? What saves the most time and money?

I certainly can’t speak for everyone as to what saves the most time and money. And you know I highly recommend that you subscribe to receive our Simple Meals plans so that you don’t have to think as hard and work as hard. :)

What I have found to work best for me right now is this:

  1. Shop. Buy all the food. Buy more food. We need so much food.
  2. Try to stay organized. Have an entire grocery store inside my house if possible.
  3. Each morning, consider what the day holds. Meetings, appointments, court for the kids, Matt’s schedule, kids’ events, and so on. Once I think through what the evening will look like, I plan our evening meal accordingly.
  4. Along with that, I work with what we have on hand. I look through our fridge, freezers, and pantry. Then I decide on an evening meal that works!

This shelf sits in my kitchen, so I can look and get ideas with a quick glance. Pizza sauce and olives? I have crusts in the freezer so I could make pizza tonight. However, that is a meal I like to make on a night we have games or other outings. So I nix that idea and decide to make a burrito bar since I have plenty of tortillas and all the fixings on hand.

My meal planning decision is also dependent on how many people we’ll be feeding that night. Will it just be Matt, me, with the six littles? Or will all the bigs be home too? With their gals join us? Any other friends? We feed anywhere from 8 to 18 depending on the night. So I always get a feel for who will be around for dinner as I’m making our nightly plan.

Isn’t it harder this way?

This current method means that I’m coming up with a meal plan every single morning. But because of our very full house and so many coming and going, I am finding that planning day by day works so much better than planning ahead for the week and then reshuffling it because of what each weekday holds.

What saves the most money?

Again, I can’t speak for everyone. But for me, right now, I believe that shopping first and meal planning later is saving me more money.

When I’m shopping, I can pick up meat that has been marked down – then I make meals based on the discounted meat I’ve found. I can take advantage of sale items, then make meals based on the deals I’ve found. I can pick up staples to keep on hand so that I can always make basic, easy meals with no effort.

This works well for me and saves money too!

What is working best for you right now as you plan meals?

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Big Family Food: Have Grocery Prices Gone Up at Sam’s?

by 4 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

There’s so much talk about high grocery costs! So have grocery prices gone up at Sam’s also?

I had just made a run to our local grocery store – the one I try to support if at all possible. But they aren’t a chain so their prices are often higher than most other stores. Their sales are good though, and I like to support them since they are local, so I go there when I can. (Read here to get some great tips and recipes to help keep food costs down!)

One particular day recently though, I came home so discouraged. It seemed that everything everyone had been saying about grocery prices going up was very true. Everything I needed at the store that day seemed to have doubled in price. Ouch, that can really add up. And because we go through so much food at our house, I just couldn’t justify putting many “convenience foods” (Like bagels, hashbrowns, frozen fruit, yogurt…) into my cart.

I stuck to the very basics, came home with very few groceries, and tried to think creatively about how I could stay within our grocery budget while still recognizing that my cooking/baking time is very, very limited.

(Ha, “came home with very few groceries” was still a cart full. I had planned to get much more for our family that day, that’s all.) ;)

A few days later, I was able to head out of town to Sam’s to try to really stock up on items we needed. I took our 6-year-old with me for a much-needed one-on-one outing. She was BEAMING the entire time we were out! (And chatting. And chatting, and chatting. I’m learning that girls are different than boys, ha!)

Have Grocery Prices Gone Up at Sam’s?

My fear was that Sam’s grocery prices were going to be just as hiked up as they had been at our small grocery store.

I was getting low on just about all of our staples, plus I always need fresh produce. So I decided not to hold back while shopping that day. I was hoping to get enough food to last us at least two weeks. Maybe?? But I was also hoping to avoid going broke.

The only carts available that day were the flats, which I knew I would need. But I also don’t like how difficult it is to get everything onto a flat without stuff falling out. So I took the advice left by JJ on this post, and I grabbed boxes at the front of the store. Instead of just putting items onto the flat, I loaded them into the big boxes that sat on the flat. Worked like a charm!!!

After check out, the boxes filled the back of our Transit, but they sure did stack up nicely!

Then, of course, unloading it and putting it all away once we got home was the fun challenge.

What I got:

  • Big bag of apples
  • Big bag of pears
  • Big bag of nectarines
  • Bananas
  • 1 container of mixed greens
  • 2 containers of spinach
  • Container of blueberries
  • Container of strawberries
  • Container of kiwi
  • Asparagus
  • Big bag of petite baby carrots
  • 2 large bags of Fritos
  • 2 large bags of tortilla chips
  • Case of peaches
  • Case of mandarine oranges
  • Case of Rotel
  • Case of refried beans
  • Box of beef hotdogs
  • Box of orange chicken
  • Box of cheese curds
  • Bag of chicken nuggets
  • Pack of lime juice bottles
  • Coffee creamer
  • 1/2 & 1/2
  • Big bag of tator tots
  • Turkey lunch meat
  • Ham lunch meat
  • White queso
  • Sliced colby jack cheese
  • Shredded colby jack cheese
  • Box of avocado mash cups
  • Double bag of plain bagels
  • 2 large bags of frozen fruit
  • A few clothing items we needed

Total for food: $367

I was AMAZED and grateful that I got so much food for less than $400!

While grocery prices have gone up here and there, I didn’t find that the prices at Sam’s were shocking by any means.

Are Sam’s and Costco still going to save us money?

Absolutely.

Yes, prices have gone up somewhat because that’s what’s happening right now. But the savings I experienced at Sam’s that day was significant compared to what I’d found at a regular grocery store. Plus, overall prices were still extremely reasonable at Sam’s.

Next time I go to Costco I’ll do a similar comparison to see if the savings are still there. :)

What have you experienced with grocery prices where you shop? Are they going up?

P.S. Read this post to get great tips and recipes for help in keeping food costs down!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Big Family Food: My Recent Walmart Pick-up Orders

by 9 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

To supplement my once-a-month Costco or Sam’s trips, I put in Wal-Mart pick-up orders every ten days or so. Here are a couple of pictures from recent orders!

Sometimes when I talk about how much I enjoy taking advantage of Walmart Pick-Up, I hear how some of your experiences with it have been less than positive. Shucks, I’m sorry! For me, it has been a lifesaver. Like, I think it has actually saved my life. Or at least it has saved hours and hours of my life and much of my sanity (which is actually already gone, doggonit).

Apparently our local Wal-Mart rocks in the Walmart Pick-Up department. On the flip side, ours has gone to almost entirely self-checkout which I reallllly struggle to do when I have a huge full cart and babies with me. Thus, my Walmart Pick-Up life-saving claim.

My Recent Walmart Pick-up Orders

I love that I can add all my needed groceries into my online cart in just a few minutes. Then I select a time to pick up that works for me. I take a kid or two with me for an outing when I go pick up, or I send a friend or one of my older boys. And then boom, my groceries walk themselves out to my van (with a little help from an awesome associate), put themselves into the back, TELL ME THANK YOU, and I go home. This is beautiful.

Here’s what I got from this particular pick-up order:

  • 4 pounds strawberries
  • 2 pounds spring mix
  • 5 ounces fresh spinach
  • 6 ounce raspberries (x4)
  • 4 crowns broccoli
  • 8 bananas
  • 2 pounds grapes
  • 18 ounces blueberries
  • bag of avocados
  • 2 packages hot dog buns
  • family size caesar salad kit
  • 5 pounds frozen tator tots
  • 4 pounds frozen hashbrowns
  • 3 pounds frozen strawberries/bananas
  • 4 pounds frozen fruit mix
  • wheat germ
  • cocoa powder

Total cost for all this: $99.

I know grocery prices are on the rise, but truly when I see all I got for a hundred bucks, I’m very thankful.

Another trip I got:

  • 2 gallons milk
  • 2 packages hamburger buns
  • 2 packages hotdog buns
  • 3 pounds clementines
  • 5 pounds shredded Colby Jack cheese
  • 2 pounds shredded mozzarella cheese
  • 2 boxes lasagna noodles
  • 6 jars pasta sauce
  • 2 quarts heavy whipping cream
  • 2 quarts half&half
  • coffee creamers
  • 2 cans pears
  • 1 can peaches
  • 2 bags petite baby carrots
  • 1 pound mixed greens
  • 2 containers cottage cheese
  • 3 pounds gala apples
  • 2 pounds pink lady apples
  • 4 boxes frozen hashbrowns
  • Totinos (ha, gross right? I get these for Malachi sometimes as they are his fav.)
  • 3 bags tortilla chips
  • 4 pounds strawberries
  • large tub sour cream
  • bag of meatballs
  • 2 16-packs of beef hotdogs

Total cost: $168

Do you do Walmart Pick-Up? What has been your experience?

Stay tuned for more Big Family Food posts, where I share all about how I make food for our big family! And read here to catch up on other posts in this series you may have missed. :)

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Big Family Food: How to Use Produce Before it Goes Bad

by 2 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

Here are some suggestions for how to use produce before it goes bad!

Obviously, my biggest tip is: EAT IT.

Great post. See ya next time.

But I actually have a few other tips too, simply because I realized that as I regularly buy my big family such a large amount of fresh produce, I also have a system for how we eat it all up to avoid anything going bad. If only everything could be turned into banana bread like over-ripe bananas!

First, a look at my produce selections

I frequently buy a large quantity of fresh fruits and veggies each time I go to the store. My hauls look something like:

Typically, I load my carts with:

  • Berries
  • Apples
  • Bananas
  • Clementines
  • Pears
  • Grapes
  • Mixed Greens
  • Nectarines
  • Kiwi
  • Carrots
  • Broccoli
  • Potatoes
  • Onions
  • Cucumbers
  • Whatever is in season and for sale at a good price

How to Use Produce Before it Goes Bad

We usually go through what you see in each of those pictures in about a week or a week and a half. Here’s my system to eat it before it goes bad:

  1. We eat the berries first. These are the most sensitive and tend to go bad quickly. We try to eat all of our berries within just two days, and usually, it’s not a problem because we love berries! If they do begin to go bad, I freeze them for smoothies so that they don’t go to waste.
  2. We start on the grapes next. They’ve stayed good in the fridge while we’ve worked our way through the berries. If they begin to get squishy, I freeze them for smoothies.
  3. Mixed greens get eaten within a week, otherwise they get slimy. We go through two pounds every week by eating them in these smoothies and these. So they almost never have a chance to go bad at our house.
  4. We’ve been eating on the bananas all along, but we never feel urgency to eat them quickly because we love over-ripe bananas in smoothies and muffins. Sometimes I buy extras just so we’ll have enough to use in these recipes. ;)
  5. Clementines are also being served all throughout the week after the berries are finished off. We find that they taste best if eaten within one week, but sometimes they last longer. If they start to get hard (or mushy), I peel and freeze them for smoothies like this.
  6.  Meanwhile, the pears, kiwi, and nectarines have ripened and are ready to eat. We start slicing these to put on our plates at every meal. If we can’t get through all the nectarines before they turn mushy, I slice and freeze them for smoothies.
  7. The potatoes, broccoli, carrots, onions, and cucumbers have kept just fine, so we just use these as needed without much worry.
  8. The apples are usually just fine too, although we have found that if we haven’t eaten them in a few days, they stay crispier if we refrigerate them. If we do happen to have any grainy apples, I blend them and make Applesauce Bread.

What do we do when the produce has run out and we haven’t made it back to the store?

We open cans of fruit (in 100% juice) like pears, peaches, and pineapple. This gets us through until we can make a run to the store.

What about other veggies?

We keep frozen green beans and peas in the freezer at all times. That way, if I’m out of fresh vegetables, I can quickly steam something from the freezer.

What do you do to keep produce from going bad?

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Big Family Food Shopping Trip: I Spent HOW MUCH?!

by 22 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

If you’ve been following our Big Family Food series, you’ve only just begun to see how food works at our house right now. I am having so much fun sharing and can’t wait to keep adding to this series. Today I’m going to tell you about a big food shopping trip I had in January!

Where I shop for groceries:

First, let me detail a little bit for you where we buy food for our family.

  • I try to sneak away to Lincoln (about an hour away from home) once each month for a big grocery shopping day. At the very least I hit Costco. Sometimes I’ll also go to Aldi. And I just signed up for a Sam’s membership (which I’ll talk about below).
  • I usually place 2-3 local Walmart pick-up orders each month. This fills in the gaps before I can go to Costco again, and keeps us supplied with fresh produce. As you’ll see below, WE GO THROUGH A LOT OF FRESH PRODUCE. Oy!
  • We get two gallons of fresh milk from a local farm once each week. Of course, that isn’t enough for our family, so I also grab a few gallons each month from the store too.
  • This leads me to share that we get WIC benefits for our foster babes, which is a huge blessing because it provides milk, eggs, cheese, cereal, and my favorite: FRESH PRODUCE! ;) Typically, I go pick up our WIC food items at a local grocery store that is close to our house.
  • I order several staples every couple of months from Azure Standard, which is a food co-op that delivers groceries right into town for us to pick up! My favorites from them are big bags of frozen veggies, cases of tortillas, and either fresh flour or grain to grind into flour. (Currently, I’m just buying flour because I don’t have time to grind it right now.) You can read here to learn more about the items I often buy from Azure.

The day I spent HOW MUCH?!

So now let me tell you about my great big food shopping trip day back in January. I needed to take our littlest babe to Lincoln for an appointment, so she and I headed out with cooler bags and boxes to get our groceries stocked up! It’s not often I get one-on-one time with our kids, so this was special, even if it was ridiculously cold outside that day!

Oh wait – this first!

Since I was going to be shopping by myself with a six-month-old, and I know that I usually need at least two big Costco carts, which isn’t possible with a baby in tow, I tried out a new idea and I super love it!

I sat down at my computer one day and ordered all of the dry-good staples I like to pick up at Costco. I tell you what, I am going to do this every time from now on! There’s no way all of these items plus all of the fresh and frozen items would have fit into one cart (which you’ll see below). So in just a few days after ordering, and with free shipping right to my porch, here’s my online Costco order:

I know it’s hard to see everything in these boxes, but here’s the rundown:

  • 2 Cases of applesauce pouches
  • Box of peach cups
  • Box of mandarin orange cups
  • Box of packs of nuts
  • Case of olives
  • Case of black beans
  • Case of baked beans
  • Box of quinoa and rice mix (such a wonderful convenience food to have on hand!)
  • Bag of coffee
  • Several big containers of spices we use regularly
  • Brown sugar
  • Pack of canned chicken
  • Bag of dried blueberries
  • French fried onions

January Costco Online Order $267

Then, I went into Costco with the babe and filled our cart with everything else we needed!

I’m all about grocery shopping, but one of my favorite things about Costco is the clothing they offer! I found really nice coats for three of our kids for just $7 each. Our littlest just moved up a size in clothing, so I found a few outfits and jammies for her. I grabbed a case of diapers. And what about food? Oh joy, all the good food!

  • Strawberries
  • Blueberries
  • Boneless Chicken Thighs
  • Flautas (we love these for a quick meal in our Air Fryer!)
  • Tilapia
  • Grapes
  • Mixed Greens
  • Sparkling Water (a fun treat for all the bigs at our house, including me) ;)
  • Tortilla Chips
  • French Fries
  • Chicken Nuggets
  • Pizzas
  • 2 cases of Naked (because it never gets old to say “I got Naked at Costco.”)
  • Ham
  • Turkey
  • Croissants
  • Bananas
  • Apples
  • Blackberries
  • Pears

January In-Store Costco Trip $256

Sam’s too?

Well, shucks if I didn’t get sucked into an offer for “Spend $45, get a $45 eGiftCard.” But a free Sam’s membership, just to try and see if I like it for a year? Why not?

—- > Pssst, here’s a link for you to take advantage of this also if you want!) Spend $45, get a $45 eGiftCard. Online only. <——

The biggest pull for me is that there is a Sam’s in Grand Island (45 minutes west of us) but not a Costco (which is in Lincoln, an hour to the east). So I think it will be nice to have this Sams membership when I am in GI. Plus, I wanted to compare Sam’s to Costco and see what might meet our needs better.

So after our Costco shopping was complete, Baby and I headed to Sam’s to check it out before her appointment.

I like it!

I feel like I’m going to like Costco better, but at the same time, Sam’s had some fun sales and clearance that I really appreciated! I got a couple of birthday gifts for our littles for super cheap since it was right after Christmas. Awesome fun! Plus they had some really neat food clearance items too.

I filled my cart here too, which I wasn’t expecting to do. But it doesn’t take much to fill a cart when you’re buying in bulk!

  • Frozen fruit for smoothies
  • Pepperoni
  • Rice Cake snacks (for one of our college kids to take to his apartment)
  • Clementines
  • Salad Mix
  • Cheese Slices (x2)
  • Canned Pineapple
  • Fresh Pineapple
  • Instant Oatmeal Pouches (for a special treat for the kids)
  • Box of Spaghetti Noodles
  • Tub of Whole Milk Yogurt
  • Whatever else is buried under there that I can see. I lost my receipt. :)

January Sams Food Purchase $117

Then we had to take it all in and put it all away. :/

This is a huge job, not just because of the big food shopping trip and how it filled the back of our van, but also because there are so many babies who need to be held, especially after Mommy has been gone all day! So while I juggled baby snuggles, Matt, Malachi, Brayden, and our 6yo Girlie trudged in and out bringing everything in. :)

Food piled up all over the living room and kitchen, and we slowly got it put away.

Hmmm. I need to show you my freezers and food storage spaces huh?! Sounds like a good upcoming post in our Big Family Food series!

Big Family Food Shopping Trip: I Spent HOW MUCH?!

Between my online Costco order, my in-store Costco purchase, and my Sams purchase, my total was $640. I was expecting it to be much more, actually. (It was more with the clothes, coats, toys, paper towels, and diapers. But I only count actual food in our food budget.)

I feel like $640 isn’t bad for a great big, once-a-month Costco and Sam’s shopping trip. But here’s something that I am both giggling at and trying to re-evaluate:

Much of this food was gone after a week and a half.

A WEEK AND A HALF!

We still have plenty of pasta, rice, beans, fries, and fruit cups left. There’s a little chicken left in the freezer plus half the flautas. We haven’t finished all of the ‘Pellegrinos, ha.

But did you see all the fresh produce in those pictures? I’m talking six pounds of grapes, eight pounds of strawberries, two tubs of blueberries, seven pounds of apples, five pounds of clementines, eight pounds of pears, two containers of greens, a tub of pineapple, and whatever else I missed. Ten days later, we were left with 3 apples and a small bowl of shriveled grapes. Whoa, baby. Where does it all go?

Truly, feeding this tribe and watching the food disappear fills me with joy!! My college-age niece, who drops by frequently, opened my fridge just after the ten days had passed since my shopping trip and was like, “Whoa, your fridge is so empty!” Hahaha, I know, Kailey. I know.

Not to worry, because we really do have plenty of food in the house at all times. It’s the fresh food that’s hard to keep up with.

I’m chewing on this:

I think it’s time to re-think our grocery budget and my shopping practices. The budget might need to increase or shift in some places. Also, I don’t know how I’d make it happen (because I have to move a few mountains to be able to go out of town for these big shopping trips), but I might need more than a once-a-month Costco or Sam’s trip.

So stay tuned to our Big Family Food series. I’ll share as I figure all of this out. I hope you’re having as much fun with this series as I am!

Where are your favorite places to grocery shop?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

P.S. I finished this post and scheduled it. Then I went back to Sam’s a few days later because I was in Lincoln for an event and there was a Sam’s a mile away. I spent another $250 on produce and meat. Yes. It’s time to take another look at our grocery budget. Oy! But hey, at least I’m getting the most out of my free Sam’s membership!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Big Family Food: What’s On Every Plate

by 2 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

I’m so glad you’re following our Big Family Food journey! (Missed the first posts? Catch them here.)

I thought it would be good to follow my Great Compromise post with a post that shares what I make sure to put on every plate, no matter what.

Like I talked about here, sometimes I have no time – or very little time – to cook. Our days are full of this:

I could go on and on with pictures of the days of our lives. It’s amazing, and did I mention full? So when it comes to food, now, instead of making sure every part of our meal is the healthiest of the healthy, here is what I focus on:

I make sure there are fruits and vegetables on every plate.

This is something I recommend for everyone, no matter your family size or what season in life you are enjoying. No matter what else is on your plate, just be sure there are fruits and vegetables there too.

It’s really quite simple. In fact, I’ve found that it’s the simplest way to put together meals!

See from the pictures how there are several fruits and veggies on each plate – no matter what I serve?

The same goes for when/if all I have time to make is Mac and Cheese, Frozen Pizza, Chicken Nuggets, or PBJ. Here are some examples of “compromise” meals I might put together:

  • Mac and Cheese with peas and grapes
  • Frozen Pizza with fresh spinach dipped in ranch and apple slices
  • Chicken Nuggets with sweet potato fries and these rockin smoothies
  • PBJ with clementines and steamed broccoli

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: Matt and I survive on these smoothies. I make a blenderful every other day and we share it. They are jam-packed with nourishment and give us WAY MORE GREENS than we could ever chew. I’ve gotten to the point that I stuff my Blendtec full of spring mix (about 1/2 pound), add some frozen fruit, pour in some milk, blend it and go. We would never eat that many greens at one time. But in this smoothie? We drink it down and love it.

So Matt and I tend to drink these smoothies even while grabbing a couple of chicken nuggets or a piece of pizza on the fly. Meanwhile, I make this version for the kids.

Great fruit and vegetable choices for your plates

To make it easy for all of us, I’ve put together a list of easy-to-serve fruit and veggie choices to serve with meals:

It truly is easy to add any of these to your meal plates! It’s one of best my Big Family Food tips: always add fruit and veggies to whatever I find time to make for my family. Even if all I do is open some cans of pineapple and a bag of baby carrots!

Read here about how to have fun filling your cart with fresh produce your family will love!

Stay tuned for more Big Family Food posts, where I share all about how I make food for our big family!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!