Buying in Bulk...

FAST FOOD FRIDAY...

"I'm too busy to cook."  "I worked all day."  "I'm Tired."  "It's way too hot out."  "I don't really want to go to the store."   Who hasn't heard or even said these words before?  Should you call for pizza?  Should you pick something up from the nearest drive through?  Nope, neither.  All you need is a little Food Fore-thought.  Fast Food Friday, a planned weekly post, isn't about running out to a local restaurant for take out or calling for delivery.  Fast Food Friday is about having something on hand for those days when cooking just seems impossible or even unappealing. 

With a little planning and preparation, fast food can come straight from our cabinets, pantries, and freezers.  What we are really talking about here is food preservation.  Food preservation can change our future days - take the guess work out of meal prep, allow for an evening of rest not stress, change your grocery bill's bottom line, and of course, nix the expense of drive-thru eatings.  Now those points do sound appealing.

So for many many Friday's to come, check back to see how I plan to never be too busy to cook, not too tired to eat well, not considering if it's too hot out, and best of all, skipping trips to the store.  For today, let's talk about...

Buying in Bulk...

Buying in bulk can be a great way to save money and have food on hand.   But, it can also be not so great if the extra food you buy just goes to waste.  You really have to have a plan in mind when buying bulk food.  You really should know where and how you're going to store it and how you intend to use it up (with out wasting).  Some things to consider are ... "Do I have enough freezer/cabinet space?", "Do I have zip lock bags for portioning", and "Is this food that I'll really use up?".  The foods I like to buy in bulk are ones that we eat on a weekly basis.  

For example, this week we made a trip to the local Sam's and picked up 1 1/2 pounds of honey ham ($7), 1 1/2 pounds of roast beef ($9),  5 pounds of mozzarella ($12), and 3 pounds of pepperoni ($8).  

Sandwiches and pizza hit the menu weekly around here.  

The lunch-meat quantities don't sound like much for a family of five, but really only two of us eat sandwiches for lunch and that's what this purchase was intended for.  Now when portioned out they make up quite a bit.  I portion out enough to make two to three sandwiches.  Each portion gets wrapped in saran wrap.  All the portions then get put into a labeled freezer zip lock bag.  I ended up with five portions of ham and five of roast beef.  For us, that's five weeks worth of lunch-meat at $16 or $1.20 a week.  If bought from the grocery store, I average spending  $6 a week and having waste.

As for the pizza ingredients, five pounds of mozzarella got portioned into 10 two cup packages and the pepperoni portioned out to 22 packages.  This twenty dollars worth of ingredients will be enough to make ten pizzas or in our case, five weeks worth.  This is a huge money saver for us.   When we order out it is usually around $25 for two pizzas.  

These savings can really add up.  On both accounts, it's easily a 75% savings.  Not to mention, there's future fast food on hand

Ready for the freezer

Remember, it's all about fore thought.  Spend a little time now when you have it and in the future when you need it, you'll have fast food on hand.  If you're wondering how this will make for fast food, I'll be sharing my recipe for frozen pizza crust next week.  Dinner will be done in 20 minutes and it will be as easy as shopping the "freezer section" right in your own kitchen.

Enjoy, and be thinking of how you can make life easier in the future.

This post is shared with Food Renegade.