Saturday Pantry Suggestions

What a beautiful loaf of bread!

Just time for the quickest of Pantry Posts today.  I shared with my CTB&Me friends on Facebook that this has been an incredibly busy week.  Just when I thought it would wind down, we had to prepare for Isaac to come our way.

That meant doing all the weekend errands on Friday as well as getting the deck and property hunkered down for possible winds with heavy rain.  Right now it looks like Isaac is weakening enough that all we will have is heavy rain, which we need!

This past week I saw how the Pantry Lifestyle can really save on the budget if we are looking for good buys.  I stopped by two grocery stores for their sales, one had chicken thighs for 99 cents a pound but their deboned chicken breasts were $7.00 (oh, my... those must be good chickens).

I went to the Kroger just across the road and they had deboned chicken breasts for $1.69 a pound.  Just think how much can be saved by the chicken crossing the road.  Pretend you didn't read that.

The store brand of stewed tomatoes were at a great price at the first store so I stocked up on them.  Perhaps the funniest stock up (at least if judged by the stares I got at the checkout line) was when I bought twenty packages of my favorite frozen steam-in-the-bag brown rice and brown rice mixed with veggies.

They are far too expensive normally, even though they are perfect for just the two of us and very quick to heat up on the nights I'm not feeling well.  However, I always walk down the frozen veggies aisle to see what is on sale and they were $10 for 10!  Hallelujah... and on my week I buy groceries for the month.  Most of them went into the deep freeze.

Kroger is also the place where they mark down packaged salad ingredients and other packaged veggies when they are close to the "sell by" date.  I bought two packages of chopped peppers (various colors) on clearance.   Checking that aisle is my first stop each time I shop there.

I have talked about how I always pray before I shop and I had one of those God Wink moments yesterday.  I hadn't planned on stopping by Goodwill but I couldn't get it out of my mind.  Since I had to go to the nearby grocery store, anyway, I went in and browsed the aisle. 

While I was there, they brought out the exact kind of folding table I wanted for my new room and at a great price.  So guess what?  Come on, can't you guess?  I am sitting here typing away with the room now mostly finished.  At least until I get rid of Christopher's bookshelf and talk my sister, Bonnie, into giving me her Hoosier cabinet.  ;)

I've had a few people mention about lard in the comments.  Yes, the lard has to be the old fashioned kind and not what you buy in the refrigerated section of the grocery store.  Any suggestions on where one can purchase it?

Also, I use coconut oil and have been pleased with the results.  I know some vegans use it in place of an animal product like lard to make their pie crusts, too.  There are a lot of recipes online using coconut oil.