a slow week

hello everyone

I didn’t mean to let a whole week go by without blogging, but I guess that’s what happened

Last week was kind of a shopping week. For me anyway, it was a lot of shopping.

  once again, here is an AFTER photo of my newly organized pantry.

Before this photo, the  canned goods were not sorted. So the first thing I did was sort and count all of the items

I was really surprised to find out we had no canned fruit of any kind except for two cans that were in the refrigerator.

And we had no refried beans. Sometimes I make homemade refried beans, but it’s nice to have them in the pantry.

these photos are not in the order of my shopping, but I’m just going to leave them in this order and y’all are smart enough to figure out what I did.

I went into Dollar tree and walked every aisle and bought the above five items.

The shelf stable cream is a new item.

The strawberry cream savers are my granddaughter’s favorite candy, they are hard to find, and she was very excited to see these. She said she had never seen them in a roll, they are usually in a bag.

This is the back of the cream container.

It does contain carrageenan.  It is an ingredient that adversely affects some people

I am a fan of shelf-stable milk.  I’ve kept it in my pantry for years.

It was so nice to have it when my grandchildren were little and liked milk in their sippy cups. if we ran out of fresh milk and I couldn’t get to the store, there was usually some shelf stable milk from Dollar tree in our pantry back then. 

I do remember one of my grandchildren suspiciously, eyeing that shelf stable box when I filled their cup. But then they tasted it and realized it tasted just like the fresh milk.

My husband went with me to Aldi

 I especially wanted to stock up on canned fruit and refried beans.

Canned foods are not as popular as they used to be. I remember when we first started shopping at Aldi, maybe a dozen years ago or so.

Back then, the canned food aisle was huge.

Now the canned foods are just part of one side of a aisle

But we did buy canned peaches and mandarin oranges and refried beans and tomato paste.  This is part of what we bought.  The perishables had already been away.  

We tried the box of Belgian butter cookies, and they were delicious!

The box only weighed 3.5 ounces and the cookies were not much thicker than a potato chip

But they are very flavorful and I do recommend them if you want a small butt yummy dessert

OK now more about some of the shopping I did over the last week.

My daughter told me about a Walmart on her side of town. She stopped there on her way to work and she said they had Christmas marked down to 90%.

I was already up and dressed, and I wasn’t busy so I drove over there.

I didn’t buy much, but I did buy these gingerbread house kits

We are hoping to have a family Valentine party and decorate gingerbread houses like a Valentine village
 I also found a few toys that were 90% off..  My grandkids are pretty much too old for all of these, but I got them thinking about putting them in the shoeboxes for next Christmas or any other need for toys that might come up

I didn’t take any photos, but I also shopped at Hobby lobby. My daughter wanted the New Year’s decorations that were marked down 90% off. 

pretty much since 2020, I have done the majority of my shopping online, I’ve done Walmart pick up. I’ve done Walmart delivery and I really enjoyed Kroger delivery. Sadly, for Oklahoma, Kroger is going to stop their delivery service for Oklahoma at the end of January

So I may have to go back to more grocery shopping in person. What I discovered during all of this shopping though was, I don’t really like shopping anymore.  

While we shopped at Aldi, I did look at their produce, and I was pleased with how nice most of it looked.

So I may go in there and get my produce once a week and then maybe do Walmart pick up for the rest of the stuff. 

I don’t know. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I have been cooking and that fridge and freezer inventory I did earlier this month have certainly been useful.

One night I made fajitas with cooked roast beef strips from the freezer

Those turned out so good! There was enough here for two meals

Another day I made goulash with some cooked hamburger from the freezer And I used up a can of tomatoes that we opened by mistake and had to be put in the fridge for a few days.

This meal also made enough for two days

That’s all the news I have 

hope you are all having a very good week 

❤️ Rhonda