Hi Frugal friends! I hope everyone had a great holiday season! My family and I sure did. If you’re like me though, during the holiday season, I tend to get off track. That is my household schedule gets off track, my menu planning and grocery shopping gets off track and of course my eating gets off track. 

Now that the holidays are over, I’m ready to get back on track. There’s something about looking ahead to the new year that makes us want to get everything from the pantry to our finances to our health back in order. 

My focus is the pantry and freezer. I always shop for deals. I purchase things when they are on sale and stock up. I also can my summer garden vegetables to use in the winter. I can spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce and salsa just to name a few. We also are fortunate enough to be able to have our own pastured beef butchered. My husband also hunts so we also have deer meat. So needless to say we have quite a bit of food on hand.

My goal over the next few months is to use mostly only what we have on hand to make our meals and only purchase items we need to complete the meals. (Note: I will still buy things that are a great deal to add to my stock.) I call this method of using up whats on hand Pantry & Freezer Shopping.

I first look through my pantry. Here’s a look. 

My kids call me a food hoarder 🙂  I prefer to think of myself as well prepared. Lol! Although I will admit it is a hot mess.  

Then I look in my freezers. We have 2 deep freezers. One is a chest freezer. I have a love/hate relationship with it. It’s an awesome freezer that holds a lot of food, but when it’s pretty full it’s almost impossible to get something out of the bottom. It’s really hard to keep organized.  I’ve tried plastic bins and cardboard boxes, but nothing works great. If y’all have any ideas just leave them in the comments below.

Here’s the upright freezer. I will always choose an upright freezer. It’s definitely my favorite. This is pretty messy too. But you get the idea.

Then I make a list of meals for the week. Sounds pretty simple doesn’t it.  

After my pantry & freezer shopping, I came up with the following meals. 

Baked Ziti (but I’m using shells because that’s what I have) with garlic bread

Smokey Hot Dogs and homemade French fries in the airfryer

Creamed tomatoes and Homemade Freezer Biscuits

Crockpot Beef and Broccoli over rice

Beef Manhattan (using canned deer meat)

Taco Salad

A pretty good menu for the week if I say so myself. I can honestly say the only items I need to buy to make everything on this menu is a package of hotdog buns and a bag of Doritos. It kind of surprised me that I didn’t need more.  Maybe I really am a food hoarder LOL.

I’m going to follow this plan for the next 2 – 3 months. The list of items I need to purchase will grow as I use up some of our stock.

Give pantry & freezer shopping a try and you might be surprised how many meals you can whip up with what you have on hand.

Thanks so much for stopping by today! Come back soon!

Missy