Stretching Bulk Ground Turkey

Budgeting food means that you stretch your food further than you normally would. Its simple things like buying in bulk that allows me to budget for our family and to easily meal prep. Prior to our lifestyle change we were buying bulk ground beef (check out that post here). Nowadays it’s very rare for us to have ground beef in our home as we no longer eat it. We’ve switched gears and it’s all for the best! We don’t really notice the difference, so we’re definitely not missing our ground beef days.  I no longer buy our ground turkey at Costco as it is a little more expensive than if I buy it at my local Smiths (or Kroger’s). At Costco a 4 pack of 1lb of turkey averages at $20.00 vs Smith’s 3lbs of Jennie O’s Ground Lean turkey is $7.99. I can buy 3 packs at Smith’s to almost equal 1 Costco pack. Granted, I have to do a little work with repackaging but that’s a steal! Here is a little glimpse of how we stretch our ground turkey.

DIRECTIONS

1. Divide your ground turkey by eyeballing it into thirds.
   
   
   
   
2. Taking your food scale, weigh your ground turkey to roughly 1lb each. (Some will weigh more than the others.)
   
3. Once turkey is measured out to 1lb individually wrap your portions. (I double wrap mine with saran wrap.)
   
4. Place in your freezer laying the portions flat so that they stay flat when frozen.
5. Thaw out when ready to use.  
   

I love prepacking our meats so that they’re readily available for me during meal prep days or for dinners. You can easily measure your portions to be 2lbs if you needed. 1lb of ground turkey fits our family well and I never want to make more food if I don’t have.

Costco Healthy Shopping Haul

Shout out to Costco to having so many great healthy food options from beverages to produce. A lot of what we buy from Costco is now organic. We don’t intentionally purchase all organic (with exception to apples because that film is just gross) but I’m so glad that Costco is allowing us to see better food options for a fair price. I try to always buy in bulk as I only shop for our family twice a month and it allows us to keep things fresh. Eating clean for us means that we eat a lot more fresh food (that doesn’t typically have a long shelf life because it’s fresh). Understanding fresh and clean food really puts your food choices into perspective. I’m finding that I’m becoming more aware of what we’re eating as a family.

Our staple Costco Healthy finds (prices are rounded)

Chicken Breasts -20.00
Chicken Sausage - 13.00
Whole Wheat Bread - 4.00

Strawberries – 5.00

Organic Gala Apples 11.00
Organic Plain Yogurt (Rory) - 7.00

2% Milk - 6.00
Unsweetened Almond Milk Case - 8.00
Romaine Lettuce - 5.00
Cuties Oranges - 9.00 

Organic Broccoli 5.00
Greek Yogurt - 7.00
Turkey Bacon - 12.00  
Sweet Potatoes - 11.00 
Quinoa and Brown Rice - 11.00   

Spinach -4.00

Dole Bananas- 2.00

Hillshire Farms Natural Turkey Lunch Meat 11.00

Eggs (5 Dozen)  6.00

Haidyn's favorites ( Not Clean)

Veggie Straws - 6.00
Edamame Chips - 7.00
Luke's BBQ Chips - 6.00

Freezing to Stretch your Dollar

I’m all about penny pinching when I can. It doesn’t get better than being on a $100-$150 budget for a family of 3 for two weeks! Yes, you read that right. It’s taken me time to get to this point, but it’s worth it.  This right here is my biggest tip saving time and money. Meal prepping is literally saving me money and time when I go to the store. Don’t get me wrong, I do miss walking through the grocery store aimlessly but my wallet couldn’t take that kind of pressure. I’m the type of shopper that will buy food if it just looks interesting. Now, going into grocery stores I’ve always got a list and my game face on. I’ve meal prepped for a while now so I know what to buy and what can be stored in the freezer so that I can stretch it a little further than usual.

I find that a lot of people forget that produce CAN BE FROZEN! As I tell you this I feel like I’m Drew Barrymore in the Santa Clarita Diet. (If you haven’t watched that gem on Netflix, go now!)  Flash frozen is my best friend. We have a freezer and fridge combo in the kitchen and a mini freezer chest that makes our lives so much easier. We can buy in bulk without wasting anything. Obvious freezer items are bulk meats, but you can go further than that. Check out how we freeze our produce, here .

Here are some of our staple DIY frozen items

Grapes ( Frozen grapes are so good btw)

Bananas

Strawberries/ Blueberries / Raspberries (any berry)

Peaches

Pineapples

Mangoes

Pumpkin (Pureed or chunked)

Spinach

Corn

Broccoli

Cauliflower

Carrots

Peppers

Green beans

Bread

Muffins

Pancakes / Waffles