How I Use A Large Ground Beef Purchase

I had bought a 5 lb bag of Ground Beef last week at Maine Source and it was incorporated into last week's meals and my meal plan for this coming week grew organically from this purchase.

Of course this meant having a plethora of ground beef meals but while we are heavy on beef meals now, when I buy a large quantity of chicken or fish our menu will be heavy with those proteins instead.

This is how I used that bag o' beef....

Last Wednesday we each had a hamburger for dinner(Hubs had 2).
I had a hamburger for my lunch 3 times last week(Wed-Fri) and Hubs and I each had a burger last Saturday.  I guess I was just in a burger craving mode. 8-)
8 Burgers used up half the ground beef.

Then on Sunday I took most of what was left of the beef and made a big pot of sauce, also using up some fresh mushrooms I didn't use in the Bourguignon.  We had ravioli in this sauce for Sunday's Then we had the leftover ravioli on Thursday night, using more of the pasta sauce.
The rest of the sauce leftover will be the basis for a Rigatoni and Sauce dinner either this weekend or next week.

The rest of the ground beef was mixed with 1 lb. of ground turkey on Tuesday and made into Sloppy Joe meat using my homemade low-salt sauce recipe.  The rest of Sloppy Joe meat will be another 2 meals(either lunches or dinners).  I might keep this Sloppy Joe meat or have 1 more meal of SJ and then add more spices and turn this SJ into Taco filling for the last meal using this beef.

So that 5 lbs. of beef made all this.......

* 1 Burger Dinner for 2(3 burgers consumed)
* 4 Burger Lunches(5 burgers consumed)
* 2 Ravioli Dinners for 2(with beef sauce)
* 1 Pasta Dinner for 2(in the future with beef sauce)
* 3 Sloppy Joe Meals for 2(1 done, 2 in the future)

19 total meals consumed(or will be consumed when all is said and done).
I could have made meatballs or thrown beef into a casserole, make beef enchiladas, etc. depending on what we had a hankering for dinner.  This is how I chose to use up this purchase.

So what do you do with ground beef when/if you buy that food?
Anyone have any good recipes using ground beef to share?

Sluggy

Please Start Saving for Retirement Now

I read a statistic from the US Government Accountability Office that says that about 50% of those age 65 or older, who are retired, rely mainly on Social Security benefits to survive.

Social Security is only designed to replace about 40% of our pre-retirement income(for average wage earners).  Go HERE to read this.  It is an actual quote from the Social Security Adminstration.  (You can also access a Retirement Estimator from that page to see what your Social Security Benefits would look like using current information.)

Social Security is only a part of the proverbial 3-legged stool of retirement.
Pensions(or Defined Benefits Plan or 401Ks)are another part, and savings and investments are the last part of that 3 sided retirement income instrument.

Even if you have yet to put anything away into a retirement account it is never too late to start, no matter your age.  The younger you are when you start saving the better, but even into your 60's there is time to put away something so that you aren't living in a cardboard box or raiding dumpster for dinner when you get old.

The average Social Security check last year was $1,340 a month or $16,080 a year.
But that amount is before Medicare benefit payments are deducted(which you are enrolled in at age 65). At the very least Medicare Part B premiums are $104.90 a month and Part C and/or D plans add to that cost(depending on the plan).  So the average check is now down to $1,235.10 and probably lower due to paying for supplemental Part C/D plans.
Could you live on $1,235.10 a month/$14,821.20 a year?

The answer is probably no for most of us without having to forego many everyday luxuries we are use to, like a car, a nice place to live, eating 3 healthy meals a day, having heat, etc.

Even living in the paid for house I do, once I deduct the taxes, sewage and garbage fees, if I only had this average Social Security check coming in I'd be down to having $10,002.72 to live off of per year.

The car costs, utilities, water and phone costs would take another $6,868.71 out and leave $3,134.00 of that check to cover all food and toiletry costs for the year.  Plus if we needed dental or vision care(which aren't included in Medicare)or a surprise car repair/replacement that would also have to come out of that $3K leftover for food/toiletries.   Seeing as I spent over $4K last year on food/toiletries, and I keep a very tight food budget compared to the average American consumer, we'd be over budget and in the red and having to put expenses on credit cards(which we wouldn't be able to pay off ever).
Forget about traveling, eating out, entertainment that wasn't free or giving our children gifts or donating to charity.  It just wouldn't fit into this budget.
Thankfully for us, we won't have to live on that average Social Security benefits check alone, as we have saved for many years for our retirement.

Please no matter your age start saving something for retirement now.  I beg you!
Even if you think you'll work until you die so you don't think you have to save.  Life never works out the way you want it to/think it will.  Working until you drop dead is a great plan unless of course you get sick and can't work.  And at some point in this journey called life we will all get sick and it might incapacitate you well before you plan on not working and force you to stop earning an income.  You could be disabled for many years before you leave this Earth and then what happens when you try to survive on a Social Security and/or Disability check that just isn't enough?

Anything you can put away for your tomorrow is a bonus.  Do you really "need" that coffee beverage before work or that third cocktail at Happy Hour?  Do you need to buy yet another sweater or go out to lunch instead of brown bagging it to work?
Take that $2, $4, $8 or $20 instead and start tucking it away into a savings account.
Score a savings at the grocery store?  Why not take that amount you "saved" and actually put it into the bank and once you have enough roll that account into an investment instrument?

Be good to yourself by looking out for your tomorrows.
Start saving for your "tomorrow you".
One day your "tomorrow you" will thank you.

Sluggy

Shopping This Week....A Swimming Good Deal!

I went up to Weis(PMITA)Markets yesterday and bought a few things.

Unlike most of my grocery shopping trips I didn't only buy items that were on sale....shocking, right? lolz

Sometimes the things you need(like the largest head of cabbage known to man and a 1/2 gallon of milk)just aren't on sale.
But I did find a killer Deal on Salmon so check it out........

I know I've been trying to eat down the freezers and haven't been looking for frozen food stock-up opportunities but I just had to bring that salmon home at that price......wouldn't you?

I spent $35.07 but I saved $46.17 on $81.24 worth of food or 56% over regular retail overall.

I'll take that any ol' day.  :-)

Sluggy

Advice Needed on Pricing

Since this weekend will be nice(finally!)I am getting things ready to list on my local F/B tag sale site.

Among what I want to sell are all these diaper packs..........

I was going to keep these until one of my kids needed them but that doesn't look like it's going to happen any time soon.
Plus we now need to make room around here due to events happening later this Summer so they have to go.

Mostly I have size 3(with some 2, 4 & 5 also).
I haven't had a kid in diapers since about 1999 so what should I charge for a pack of these?
I know I'll be charging less than they sell for in the store but I can't go by what Rite-Aid regularly charges for these, which is an insane $12.49 per package.
So I need to know from you moms out there who buy diapers now, what do you pay for a package this size?

I was thinking $5 a package.....or should I go $6?  Thoughts?

I will also be offering some toiletries on the tag sale page too but I have a good handle on what to charge for those other items as I have sold them before.

Thanks in advance to anyone who offers a suggestion. 8-)

Sluggy

Reducing Sodium in Your Sloppy Joe Sauce

Manwich and other brands of Sloppy Joe Sauce contain the equivalent of 430 mg of sodium per 1/4 cup(which is about how much you'd consume eating 2 Sloppy Joe sauced sandwiches).  That's equivalent to 18% of the recommended sodium consumption per day for a healthy adult.

The American Heart Association recommends we all take in 1 teaspoon of sodium or less per day. That's about 1,500 mg for the entire day's sodium consumption.

If you make your own Sloppy Joe Sauce you can lower how much sodium is in your sauce.
There are many sites with lower sodium SJ Sauce recipes.  Most of the lower-salt recipes use ketchup or tomato sauce but those ingredients contain sodium.  I found this one using tomato paste instead and liked it.  I found this recipe 3 years ago and don't recall where, so as to give credit, sorry.
.

Lower Sodium Sloppy Joe Sauce

1 6oz. can tomato paste(100mg)
1 6oz of water(use empty paste can to measure)
1 tsp. garlic, minced
4 TB. brown sugar
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce(167mg)(or use reduced sodium version-65mg)
1/2 tsp. mustard powder
1/2 tsp. celery seed
1 tsp. cumin(you can substitute fresh cilantro but double the amount)

Brown your meat and onions and/or other veggies you put in your meat mixture. (I use red or yellow bell peppers and sometimes grated carrot.)
Add all ingredients above and mix well.
Wait 5 minutes until hot and serve.

This sauce can be made up double or triple batches and frozen for later use.

This recipe comes in at about 267mg per 1/4 cup(or 165 w/LS Worcestershire Sauce) so saves you about 50% off the sodium in the canned sauce.

To lower the sodium in this recipe even more you could make your own Worcestershire Sauce too.  I don't take that step as I find making Worcestershire Sauce too tedious.

If you aren't this concerned with lowering your sodium intake this much you could substitute ketchup for the tomato paste(but cut out the brown sugar from the recipe as ketchup has sugar in it already).

If you substitute no-salt ketchup(Heinz makes one)for regular ketchup instead of tomato paste this would save you about 160mg of sodium, as no-salt ketchup contains 5 mg while reg. ketchup contains 165 mg per serving.  But on the other hand, no-salt ketchup does contain a salt substitute(containing potassium chloride, L-Lysine Monohydrochloride).

Now making your own version with so little sodium in it might not appeal to you and your family's tastebuds at first.  If this is the case with you, I'd recommend trying the reg. ketchup ingredient version of the recipe, then when they "get use" to that version, stepping it down to the no-salt ketchup version of the recipe and then when they "get use" to that version, stepping down to the tomato paste version.

Reducing sodium intake is always good for you but some people need to gradually lower the sodium in their food intake to make it stick as a lifestyle change.

Sluggy