Food Pantry End of Week Report 4/15

Here is what we did with the items from this week's food pantry haul.


Sunday: Was a bit under the weather today from overdoing it yesterday. Ate some of the saltines as a part of dinner. Had Minute Rice {previous Food Pantry item} with lunch.

Monday: Chicken Sausages for lunch, along with hot dog buns {from the previous week's box}. Made the broccoli and carrots to go along with for veggies. Dinner was leftover sausages for my daughter, and I had fish {non pantry item}. We both had Alfredo to go with {non pantry items} and canned veggies {previous pantry item}.

Tuesday:Potato soup, using part of the potatoes we got. I would say it probably used about 4lbs of potatoes. Served with bread from a previous visit & butter.

Wednesday: Bread from previous pantry haul. Leftover potato soup. Wednesday night was a bit of a wreck here - we had a massive hail storm that knocked out 3 windows and damaged our roof. So meals were a bit off.

Thursday: Bread from previous pantry haul {made french toast}. Daughter had the can of Chef Boyardee Mini Ravoli for dinner, and I had the last of the potato soup.

Friday:

Saturday: Tried to have one of the Protein shakes for breakfast, but discovered they had gone bad {expired December 2015}. Daughter had a couple of the burritos for dinner.


The unsweetened applesauce will be made into apple butter at the start of next month. We all love apple butter on toast so it's a great way to use that up, but it works best when we have more mouths to eat it all before it spoils, so I try to do that on months when my daughter's friends are here. The half & half I don't tend to use, so instead we attempted to make it into homemade butter which we love. Unfortunately it didn't end up working well, so now I know for next time. I didn't have anything to lose by trying though, as it was on edge anyways.

Daughter has eaten all the Rice Krispies treats, the pork rinds and drank the bottle of Pepsi. She has also eaten several of the yogurts for breakfasts and snacks.

The spinach went into the compost pile. It wasn't salvageable. As soon as we get chickens, items like this will become chicken feed. The coffee is also being held for when we have chickens - coffee mixed with compost attracts a particular type of grub that chicken LOVE. Since I can't really drink coffee, I'll soak the grounds and put them into a separate bin with compost to make food for the chickens.

Everything with an * that we can't use is being held for another week or two while I fill up bags to trade, as previously discussed.

Food Pantry Haul 4/9

Today was the second Saturday of the month, and that means heading to place #2 - we'll call it Family. Family gives out every second and fourth Saturday like clockwork. Today was also their annual blessings event, so they were giving out more food than usual in addition to having clothing and furniture. We passed on the furniture as it is too hard to haul on the bus, but I did get two pieces of clothing for my daughter. They also were allowing one other item from a selection of donated items - I ended up getting a back of aspen pet bedding in hopes of being able to use it in the chicken nesting box when we get them.

Here is the food pantry portion of what we got {Items with a * will be passed on due to allergies}

13 lbs of potatoes
1 head of cabbage
1 bunch of spinach - this was in pretty bad shape after being brought home on the bus, so it will be headed for the compost pile in our garden
1/2 gallon milk
1 qt half & half
12 individual yogurts
1 24oz bag of salad
1 12oz bag of broccoli and carrots
*1 59oz Odwalla Smoothie
1 6ct English Muffins
1 Small bag of Pork rinds
1 small bag of cheese curls
10 lbs leg quarters
6 ct burritos
8oz Chicken Chorizo
* 8oz Pork Chorizo
1 lb Chicken Sausages
*2 6ct Nature Valley Sweet & Salty Nut Bars
104 oz can of Unsweetened Applesauce
4 ct Skinny Cow Iced Coffee
4 ct 52e Protein Shakes
1 OK Fruit Tamarind 16oz Drink
5 MiFruit Pineapple Concentrate {Each makes 2 liters}
* 2 MiFruit Melon Concentrate
* 7 MiFruit Mango Concentrate
20 Rice Krispies Bars
32oz Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix
1 Box of Saltines
11 oz Bag of Hazelnut Coffee
* 5 ct Kelloggs FiberPlus Bars in Chocolate Peanut Butter
2 Liter of Pepsi
2 Liter of Peach Soda
* 2lbs Pinto Beans
1 Can Chef Boyardee Mini Ravioli
2 80ct Boxes of Splenda with Fiber
3 cans of Sliced Carrots
2 cans of Campbells Steak and Potato soup
2lbs Flour {I think Whole Wheat}
2lbs Rice
10 lbs Onions

Food Pantry Haul End of Week Report 4/8

Here is our end of the week report on how we used items received from the Food Pantry, to give an idea of how I work them into our meals. This week we used less items than we normally do, as I've felt under the weather which means quick fix meals like canned goods or frozen pizzas.

Daughter has eaten both boxes of the cracker sandwiches as well as the Sweetarts candy, and I've eaten a little of the cheesecake trimmings even though I shouldn't on my diet. Managed to get daughter to try cheesecake for the first time - she will eat it but isn't crazy about it, and as she can only have the New York Style bits due to allergies, I see this box lasting quite a while. We've eaten about 2 boxes of the Skinny Cow bars - I was craving chocolate. The Hamburger buns will be used for tonight's dinner of Burgers & fries, as well as the planned leftovers for tomorrow.

Delightfuls, Gatorade powder, Chocolate covered blueberries and the remainder of the Skinny Cow bars are all being held for next month when daughter's friends are here, as those are foods in high demand with 3 tweens around. The Peanut butter cups will become part of a birthday gift for a friend - I'm going to make her a candy bouquet from them as they are her favorites.

Two loaves of bread have been eaten, the rest is in the deep freeze for use as needed. Given that I often get 2-5 loaves a week from the pantry, I foresee needing to pass bread on to others at some point. I do try to score artisan bread when possible, as it tends to get eaten much faster than regular white / wheat bread. I may do a breakfast dinner and make french toast with turkey bacon this coming week as well, since that uses about half a loaf of bread. Thankfully right now we have the eggs to be able to do that with, since I stocked up with some good egg sales around Easter. Soon hopefully we will have eggs from our chickens to supplement with as well, so that will mean more egg dishes.

I bagged up items we couldn't use due to allergies {so from this week's batch that included the taco meat, Guac, and Cheeze-it crunched}, and posted them onto a local giveaway group, asking for a gallon of milk in return. I normally can get someone willing to trade milk, since a lot of people with small children tend to have more milk than they can use. I was lucky again this time, and ended up trading 3 bags of food pantry items we couldn't use for a gallon of whole milk which we needed. Yay for not having to buy milk! At $3 a gallon it does add up. I normally do this once or twice a month, depending on how much stuff we get that we can't eat. It helps me on fridge and freezer space, and helps out another family that might need it.

Learning to Let Go of Things....

Here at the Make Do Mansion, I have a tendency to hold onto to everything, in case it ends up being useful in the future. Normally that means boxing up things like unwanted household objects and outgrown clothing for garage sales or trading on Yerdle for items we can use. But when it doesn't sell, and it doesn't trade, it tends to stack up. Sometimes I repurpose things into new uses, like stained outgrown clothing into baby wipes / homemade kleenex.

But there comes a point where you just need to let things GO. And today I hit that point. I scheduled a Goodwill truck to come pick things up next week, and I'm going to spend the next week doing a deep decluttering of the entire house. I created a staging area in part of the living room where all the boxed / bagged items will wait for truck day to arrive. I'm hopeful to gain back my storage room, and my office as well. After all I do have plans to hopefully turn the storage room into a nursery eventually for the baby I have been wanting to TTC for some time now.

Some of the bigger pieces that I want to hold onto {like our cat tower than I plan on repurposing in our soon to be made chicken coop}, are going to make their way out into the shed for storage. Our shed isn't at all air tight, so once things make their way out to the shed they normally aren't allowed back into the house due to issues. But for some things it works, like the big stack of empty totes and the cat tower. That will help a lot to empty out the house and make it much less cluttered.

And Before you think I'm getting rid of everything at once - I'm not. I'm keeping the totes of very gently used plus size clothing {I've lost weight and these are too big}, as I hope to take those to the flea market to sell soon. I'm keeping the several totes of fabric, though I have sorted out 2 totes worth of fabric to try to sell after this declutter binge is over. I'm also keeping the spare twin size bed that used to be my daughters {she replaced it with a loft bed}, as I'm sure at some point she'll want to swap back to that bed when she outgrows the loft bed. And I'm of course keeping anything that might sell on ebay or other venues.

Gardening report - aka how to garden for little to no cost!

As part of our grocery stretching campaign, I've started a garden. It's been a very long process - we started with making compost a year ago, and I've only recently begun to plant things. I'll briefly outline what we've done so far:

• Composted any and all compostable items over the last year. First we started with a trash can compster which worked well, but it was hard to turn the compost so I switched to a layer system in the bed. It is amazing how much it breaks down - I can have the bin full, and in just a month or two it has broken down into barely any at all. 
• Our garden beds are a mix of things, all gleaned from bulk pickup. Our main bed was originally a twin size bed frame that the neighbors across the street tossed out 2 years ago. Since it was built as a platform bed style, it works perfectly as a 6ft by 3ft garden bed. Currently this is our main compost bin as we try to fill it with compost for planting. Right now it is stuffed to the gills with lawn clippings from when we finally mowed our back lawn a month ago. 
• Also in the garden bed lineup are 10 tires of assorted sizes, also gleaned from bulk pickup this year. They range from a tractor tire {soon to become dd's garden bed} to standard car and truck tires, which we stack for potato planters. I have seed potatoes ready to plant in these this week as a late crop. These are all lined up on one end of our patio, so that as they grow they will also provide shade for the patio this summer. 
• One large planter {the type used for trees in nurseries}. Currently this has my volunteer potatoes in it - I had potatoes that came up in the compost bin from soft potatoes I had chunked up for compost, so I picked out the best 4 plants and planted them in this bin in a mix of hay {dried cut lawn grass} and decomposed hay / soil. So far 3 are growing very nicely!
• One Chinese plum tree that a friend brought me. Right now it's about a foot tall, so I'm not expecting fruit anytime soon. 

I'm hoping to buy a couple bags of compost at the store soon, so that I can layer it on top of the big bed to go ahead and plant this month. I've also saved several cardboard egg cartons, to use as seed starters with a small amount of compost for the other crops I plan to grow in the big bed this summer. I'll hopefully be starting on that this week as well, if I can find my seeds in my storage room.

A new feature on the Make Do Mansion - Living on a Food Pantry Diet

I'm introducing a new feature here on the Make Do Mansion - a chronicle of life on a food pantry diet. I'm hoping to bring attention to the fact that most of the foods given out by food pantries are less than healthy and give a better picture of just how hard it can be to survive on what a food pantry gives out. So look for weekly posts, normally on Saturdays, of our Food Pantry hauls and end of week recaps, normally on Fridays of what we did with those items to supplement our diet over the week.

We've had to resort to using a food pantry often over the last few months. With the rising prices of groceries, a change in store policies meaning clearance items are now donated instead of being discounted, and a gap in SNAP benefits, it's become a persistent need over the last few months. I've settled into a routine with it - most of my weekly food pantry visits are on Saturday mornings, so it's easy to leave the child at home {she is 9 now, and old enough to stay home unsupervised for a few hours with me reachable by skype, as our buses have free wifi and I have a freedompop smartphone}. I head to the bus with my trusty stroller in tow - yes I have found that a discarded baby stroller works FAR better for hauling food pantry fare than those small personal grocery carts sold at stores {the wheels often break on those, normally at the WORST time possible}. After paying my fare, it's a short 15 -20 minute ride to the two closest pantries, which luckily alternate Saturdays so I can plan for weekly visits for the first 4 Saturdays of the month. Occasionally I hit up a 2nd pantry that is farther away but has the same saturday distribution schedule, but they give out much needed cat food. If we had access to a car, I'd do both on a regular basis but without one it is often impossible to do both due to limitations on how much we can haul on the bus. In addition to this schedule, I have periodic visits to other pantries - one I can use monthly, the other every 60 days. I'm always on the lookout for new pantries - sometimes you can find better ones than where you are currently using. Anyways, I'm rambling.

Today was the 1st Saturday of the month, and that means visiting Pantry #1 - we'll call it Hope. Hope gives out every 1st and 3rd Saturday - normally. But in practice, I've learned to call first, as often they aren't open for some small reason {last month they were closed both days, one due to remodeling and the other due to a church event}. The people at Hope are friendly, and greet regulars by name, asking how they have been over the past 2 weeks. Sometimes their pantry runs fast - I can get in and out in less than an hour. Other times it runs slow, like this week where I took nearly 2 hours to get through a short line. As usual with a food pantry, you never know what you will get. This church doesn't do client choice, so I'm handed bags / boxes without knowing what is in them normally {though you get a feel for what they have that day by looking at other boxes being carried out while you are in line}.

Here was our haul for today:

2lbs ground Venison - a real treat!
4lbs chicken thighs
2lbs Taco meat in sauce - this will be passed on to another family as there are no ingredients listed, making it iffy for allergy safety for my daughter.
2 loaves of bread
2 packs of hamburger buns
2 packs of hot dog buns
1 giant box of Cheesecake trimmings - Rasberry, New York and Turtle.
1 case of Peanut Butter Cups - these will be passed on due to peanut allergies
6 packs of premade Guacamole - will be passed on due to allergies
1 box Bacon Cheddar sandwich crackers - will be eaten by daughter due to my pork allergy
1 box Pumpkin Cheesecake sandwich crackers
1 giant can of Gatorade powder mix - this will be great this summer when it's so hot
1 case of Skinny Cow Candy Bars
1 case of Nestle Delightfuls filled chocolate chips
3 bags of Cheeze-it Crunched, spicy flavor - these will be passed on to another family due to dd's oat allergy
1 loaf of Whole Wheat and Honey bread
3 bags of Dove chocolate cover blueberries
1 family size bag of pretzel sticks - a great treat
6 bags of assorted Sweetarts candies

I passed up the case each of Grape fanta and toasted coconut, as it would have been just too hard to get those home on the bus.

As you can see, not a very balanced haul today. Sometimes this pantry has fresh produce and milk, but today was not one of them. Today it ran very high to carbs and sweets, for which I'm grateful to have a deep freeze so I can stretch out things like bread to use over time rather than having to use all at once before spoiling.

Sweepstakes Wins & a Home Update

On today's Make Do Mansion, we're talking about Sweepstakes. Yes, Sweepstakes. I know, I know - nobody ever wins those things, right? Wrong. People do win - quite a bit! Depending on the type of sweepstakes entered, prize, and the duration - sometimes folks can win quite a bit. Just yesterday I won a $15 digital debit card - which paid our electric bill balance for this month! Just in time too, as my facebook sales haven't been that great the past week due to the holidays & the bill was due on the 2nd. Last month I won a $25 digital debit card, which went towards gifts. The biggest gift I've ever won was a $500 gift card to Petsupplies.com, which was wonderful as we had just adopted a kitten.
Personally myself, I like instant win sweepstakes. It's great to be able to find out you won right away - and normally the prize comes pretty quickly too. The amount of prizes you win has a lot to do with how many sweeps you enter - the more time you spend, the more chances you have to win. I spend anywhere from two to four hours a day entering sweeps - mostly either early in the morning or late at night while watching TV. I can multi-task thanks to my laptop & wireless internet, entering while my daughter does her schoolwork or while I am watching a movie.
Most of my sweepstakes I find via Slickdeals.net in their forums - they have a whole section devoted just to sweepstakes, and I just sort by date posted to find the new ones each day. On things that are a daily entry, I bookmark them when I enter the first time into two folders on my laptop - Instant Win {IWG} and Daily Entry. Then I can just quickly enter those daily while working on other tasks.

In other news here at the Make Do Mansion, we are working on a total house cleaning in prep for starting to renovate in 2015. I've finally shifted my office out of my bedroom & into what was our library room - now it is my office & ebay room, complete with an actual closet to hang ebay items in. Still need to finish cleaning in there before New Years though, and rig up a photo spot. January's room of the month for renovation I think will be my bedroom - now that the office isn't in it taking up a ton of space, I have room to actually make it into a true bedroom. And I have time to spackle all the tiny holes the previous owners left in the wall {and a few not so tiny ones}, and maybe even paint, if I can find a color I like. I will be sure to post pictures of before & after for all my readers, along with a budget report of how much the room ended up costing.