How is everyone? I am still stocking up my food supply and it feels good to have so much in stock and like a grocery store, I can 'shop' for ingredients I want or need without the hassle of making a trip to the store.
Recently, I have taken advantage of Costco, Instacart. That has worked out fantastic! I can order early in the morning and set a time for delivery. Within a two-hour window, I am getting delivery! My Costco is about 15 miles away which isn't a long distance, but it saves me tons of time for the round trip and shopping. So worth it! Costco doesn't have everything the regular grocery store does but the regular grocery stores don't have what Costo offers either! The produce is awesome!
I have been watching a lot of Youtube videos on homesteading and self-sufficiency. This one young woman in particular, like me, hates to run out of anything! She makes sure her pantry is full of everyday things so when she is ready to make recipes, she has everything she needs. She has a large garden and cans everything she can get her hands on. She makes up at times, 21 freezer meals in one afternoon. The chickens she has provide lots of eggs. When possible, she buys organic meat and sometimes half a cow for the freezer. every so often she finds milk on sale and freezes the whole gallons without any issues.
Personally, I don't know how she does it all making dinners, breads, desserts from scratch, tending to a giant garden, chickens, making tutorial Youtube vids, and working a full time job outside the home.
Oh, and I learned a new resource that she uses and many other homestead people use too. It is called Azure Standard. It is a pretty amazing thing. You shop online for mostly organic food items and the items are trucked to a drop off point in your area on a certain date. You meet at the spot with others waiting for their delivery too. People buy just about everything from this place. You can buy flour in 50lb sacks, chicken food, dog food, jams, beans, veggies, fruits, cleaning products, meats (frozen), spices, sugar, baking soda. You name it they probably have it. I think most of the items are organic and the people who demonstrate their 'Azure Standard Hauls' on Youtube are extremely happy with the prices. No one seems to mind driving to the drop off spot. It seems very organized and is in a safe place. One mentioned a church parking lot. Not all items are in 50 lb sacks, you may have size choices and can buy a few items or a case at a time. I may buy some stuff from Azure but don't plan on getting carried away. I don't cook many bean meals so that is kind of out for me. There is so much offered though I could spend a lot!
Mr. Roadrunner is the inventory control manager when we stock up. He has done a great job organizing the freezers and the cabinets in the garage. Much better than me and is very aware of expiration dates. To the point that I have to remind him that stuff doesn't automatically rot the minute the expiration or best date occurs!
Oh, and one of my most recent purchases is a French fry maker! It is really a little beast and works great! It is metal and the size FF it makes is 1/4 inch. There is a smaller size cutter like fast food size but I prefer the size a little bigger. I can also buy an attachment for the machine to cut wedge style potatoes which I am thinking of buying. The machine with the 1/4" cutter was around $57 and to buy the wedge style cutter is around $30 and fits on the machine. The machine is all manual with a long lever to push the taters thru the cutter. It supposedly can be wall mounted but mine has suction cups for using on the counter. I guess the suction cups can be removed for wall mount usage. I am excited about this purchase because I can get super nice taters from Costco at a low price and make a boat load of FF in no time. The one drawback is that you have to blanch the cut taters for about 2 minutes in boiling water. So, it is a bit of a job to cut, blanch, dry the FF then freeze in freezer bags. But it really doesn't take a lot of time and is kind of fun! In no time I will make my money back on the machine by making my own FF and not buying store bought frozen ones. The only other thing that I can say negative about the FF machine is that I like crinkle cut FF and this machine doesn't have that capability. I will live with it!
32 oz bag of Frozen FF at the store is $4.19 (times 5 bags = 10 lbs) = $20.95
10 lb bag of Gold taters at Costco $6.19
$14.76 savings per 10 lbs using Costco Gold taters
FF Machine $57.99 (new) on ebay. Free shipping.
I thought maybe I could cut diced onions in the FF maker. That did not work out at all. Tried to push a whole onion thru and it kind of got stuck. Didn't want to ruin the cutter so stopped doing that. I may try carrots and celery sometime but also it seems sweet potatoes might not work either due to them being kind of hard. Someone mentioned microwaving them a little. Not sure if I will go there. I don't eat that many sweet taters anyway.
If anyone is interested in buying a FF machine, do your homework. There are some plastic ones out there and those people whom I saw demo some of them were not all that pleased. I kept going back and forth asking myself did I really need this machine. One day yes, the next day no. Well, I finally bought one and love it!