Putting the Plan Into Action...

So I have officially started with my plan to get  3 month supply. I decided to start out with 7 meals that we eat on a regular basis.

• Chicken Enchiladas
• Sante Fe Croc Pot Chicken
• Beef Strognoff
• Been & Cheese Quesadillas
• Spaghetti with Bacon & Cherry Tomatoes
• Lemon Pasta
• Taco Salad

All of these meals are fairly inexpensive. I am also looking for meals that don't require meat. Meat can be pricy. Anyway to have a 3 month supply that is 12 weeks worth of meals. That means I will need 7 meals a week for 12 weeks. That is 12 of every ingredient for every recipe. I tried to pick meals that require a lot of canned goods. I am also doing some research on freezing food. I also want to go about this in a way that it doesn't dip into my weekly grocery budget. Since Aaron has been home I have been diligent about preparing a meal everyday and making sure that it is tasty. Tasty meals sometimes require more expensive ingredients. So my plan to balance out buying extra food is to cut back on cooking more expensive meals. Like my yummy jalepeno baked chicken with jalepeno ranch dipping sauce, so good but a little pricey! So instead of buying enough food to prepare 7 meals a week I will only being buying 4-5 meals a week. Looking forward to more grilled cheese or mac and cheese more often. I also get coupons. I go through phases of using them very effectively and other times not so much. I think they have their value when a useful one comes along. So many coupons are for gross processed products that I don't buy. So I use coupons when they fit what I need.

My plan to attain a 3 month supply starts next week technically and my goal end date is July 14th give or take depending on our budget. That is a 14 month window. Each week I will buy the ingredients required for one meal that will last 6 weeks. Then the next week I will buy the next 6 week's worth of indgredients. I am also thinking about adding 7 new meals to break up the menu, but thats for later. I figured that along with my normal grocery shopping every week I will add my food storage. For example today when I went shopping I picked up my normal groceries and then I looked at the list from my food storage. Today's meal was Chicken Enchiladas so I needed:

• 6 cans of cream of chicken soup
• corn tortillas (I bought 80 for 2.24 and divided 6 times which was 6 bags of 12 and 1 bag of 8 and froze them, the should keep for 6 months according to the company website)
• 12 cups of cheese
• 6 cans of chicken
• 6 cans of green chilis
• 6 packs of sour cream (I ended up not getting 6 packs because sour cream doesn't freeze well, I got 4 that are best used by June. I want to look into freeze dried sour cream)

I used coupons on the soup and bought Walmart brand green chilis, they seem to hold up in storage and taste. I am always looking out for cheese to be on sale, but it wasn't today. Bummer for me. Each bag comes with 2 cups of cheese. To buy 12 cups worth it was 13 something, but I bought the bags that hold 4 cups becuase it was a dollar fifty cheaper. I separted them into freezer bags according to my needs and froze them.

Tip: You can use a straw to suck out the air in your freezer ziplock bags. I tried it and it worked pretty good.

I don't know if this is the perfect plan, but I feel good for making an effort. I know that it might not work out every week that I can get all the food I should to reach my goal, but thats life. I figure on the weeks where I can't buy all the extra ingredients I should pick one item and buy a small supply of it. For example I can buy a few cans of peaches or an extra bag of cheese or a bag of popping corn.