No No No November Already? Got Preps?

Wow I cannot believe that it is already November 2011. UNBELIEVABLE how quickly the year has gone buy. It is going to be a mere 3 weeks until Turkey Day. As I did my slide show and recap for the month of October I realized I was so busy I didn't do as much as I usually do. I basically had it in my head that for the months of November and December I was going to kick it into high gear. For the last 11 months I have maintained a minimum of 50lbs of food a week in preps. 50 lbs is a regular week - 100 lbs is a more normal week and 400lbs is a fantastic week.

Some people ask how do I calculate what I need. I have a very basic formula - 1lb of food per person per meal. That is a REALLY high estimate and it assumes waste (there won't be waste) So let's say that it is Mr.Man and Me...for 3 meals that would be 6 lbs. Out of the 6 lbs you have to figure out bread - it takes about 1.5lbs of flour to make 2 good sized loaves and that would be 2 days worth or maybe not in an emergency. So lets say breakfast is oatmeal with nuts with milk and fruit. Morning snack is maybe a half sandwich. Lunch is a bean and veggie salad, and some tacos, afternoon snack is homemade trail mix or crackers and cheese, dinner is some form of stew with bread or rice. Truth be told a lot of these meals extend into secondary meals and I could make 4lbs of food work, but I calculate the 6 because if we start to do a LOT of physical labor we will also be more hungry. It is the easiest formula I could figure out.

Some of the more intensive folks do caloric content, fat content and all that. I'm not into all that because I can do a menu and make something out of whatever we've got. I personally don't think it's fair to tell people to learn yet another thing (caloric intake values) on top of all the other stuff they are trying to learn. I think 1lb per person per meal per day - and just make sure that you have veggies/fruits, protein, grains, cereals, fats. Follow the stupid FDA triangle just change their position. You can't go wrong with the formula. In fact you'll have extra.

So here we go - I had a good head start yesterday for November preps:

3 types of nails - 1/2-3/4 full over 10lbs of nails - only $5 per case. yeah you heard me. Those bostich nails alone are worth well over 50 bucks b/c they sell those about $1 per strip.

I love you Ace Hardware!














8 cases pints $10 each
1 case half pints (straight side) $7.50 ea

sugar at Wally world is still $13.48 a bag.

I went ahead and got a bag it's not getting cheaper that's for dang sure - in fact the price of it seems to be going up everywhere else.




I stopped at target for Halloween Candy and found these notebooks on clearance for 62 cents - I just picked a dozen of the prints I liked - that should keep me in notebooks for a few semesters. yaaay ME.









I found this Mitre box for Mr. Man...I thought 2 bucks sounded good. I don't know much about these things.











I've been wanting egg timers for awhile but they are always so dang expensive - Lucky me I found these last 2 for $3 each. Now I can tell myself onion is for canner, garlic is for oven. I left the bellpepper one. haha.








The staple gun seemed handy mine is just a plastic job. The staples were only $1. Seemed like a good price to me.











I found this at Ace hardware too - I'm just gonna throw it in my backpack...You never know right!











You can see a weird bowl in my photos of eggshells and veggie trimmings - that's my compost stuff from the kitchen lol.

You cannot imagine how happy I was to find this kitchen compost pail for only $7. Supposedly they are upwards of $50. All I know is 7 bucks sounded good to me haha.






I know how gross. i don't care - We like them and they were on sale this week for 99 cents - I had Wally World price match Fresh and Easy - I picked all the ones that expire dec 23 2011 and I'm still gonna freeze them.

I bought 20 pkgs - 10 for my house and 10 for my sisters house. I figure that's enough.




Got some new hair lotion for Mr. Man...2 containers of buttermilk (over $3) not on sale and a 4 pack of the pint jars the fancy ones I like for butter. I don't know why I like the butter in the odd looking containers.

jar lids - 99 cents price match

It was so weird they only had these 4 boxes of lids left in that whole store - super strange.


Pineapple was still 97 cents - so I picked up another 7. That should make at least 15 more pints. That should be good - it will bring our total amount of canned pineapple to 2.5 cases.











Finally I picked up ground lean (93%) for $2.49 a lb that is still expensive to me 5 wks ago ground lean was only $1.69. I also found this Italian Sausage 5for5 but it had an instant $2 off coupon - so 24 oz of Italian sausage for only $3 pretty good. The pork chops are a request from a friend who did us a favor so I'll be making his favorite dish - Pork Adobo!

That's it - that's my kick start - Everyone please go out and do something - do anything. Prices are going up 20-40% every single time I go to the store and I don't care if I do have the money I do not wanna waste it. Vitamins and basic body lotions are horrendously expensive. Please look around and see the silent anger and mortification in peoples faces with only 3-4 things in their cart because they simply cannot afford the things they once ate. Sad.

ps) I have been watching this one dude make excuses why he can't do as many preps as other people because he doesn't have the money and blah blah blah - M****f**** please. I'm just sayin - if you've been doing this for almost 2 years why have your preps decreased? We're on a very tight budget and we make it. Goodness gracious - if you don't have the stomach to be a winner just lay down and take it from the powers that be - HAHA.