Article and Photo Courtesy of Organized Christmas
The secret to a streamlined kitchen during the holiday season? A
well-stocked, organized freezer!
Holding made-ahead entrees, side dishes, cookies and desserts, the
freezer is a hard-working Santa's Elf for an organized Christmas.
Christmas cookie trays or gift baskets are easy to assemble from frozen
assets, while stockpiled family dinners cut out straight to the "what's
for dinner" chase during December's busy nights.
Today's the day to clean out the freezer in anticipation of holiday
goodies and freezer meals to come.
A frugal bonus: eating from the freezer this week makes room in the
food budget to stock up on low-priced holiday nonperishables.
To Do Today
Print freezer inventory list
Clean out the freezer
Time to turn to the place where you store your frozen assets! Today, do
a quick freezer clean-out, tossing expired foods, mystery packages, and the
whiskered remains of last summer's popsicle bars.
Organize the survivors, and group them to make space for holiday baked
goods and freezer entrees.
Finally, inventory freezer contents, and record the result on the
freezer inventory form. The inventory will remind you of what's stored inside
the freezer; add entries as you add holiday foods.
Plan to eat from the freezer this week, making room for holiday meals
and holiday goodies. Use food budget savings to stock up on holiday staples.
To Read Today
Even the most die-hard non-cooks will find themselves shopping for food
this week, as American Thanksgiving approaches.
Watch out, wallet! How do you feed the family a lavish holiday meal
without going broke?
Supermarket spending jumps this week--but it doesn't have to break the
bank. Get behind the minds of the "Grocery Guys" to play the shopping
game and save.
Catch some holiday bargains!
Save Money: Beat the Holiday
Grocery Game
During the holiday season, department stores, catalog retailers and
online sellers aren't the only businesses anxiously queuing up for a slice of
the fourth-quarter pie, i.e. your holiday wallet. Been grocery shopping lately?
What a difference a few days makes! By November, Halloween's candy
displays have given way to a maze of buy-me buy-me holiday foodstuffs.
No more straight shots down the aisle. Even in the dog food section,
shoppers must dodge flimsy cardboard displays of holiday this-n-that. Formerly
well-mannered spices abandon their tidy shelves and tower in unsteady stacks at
odd corners. Holiday paper goods, holiday turkey pans, holiday stuffing mix,
even holiday toilet tissue force shopping carts into desperate evasive
maneuvers.
It's those grocery guys. They want your money. If you shop wisely, you
can fund your family's holiday meals for less than you think--and for lots less
than the grocery guys want you to spend!
How? By understanding how to play the Grocery Game. You must get inside
the heads of those very same grocery guys to save money during the holiday
season.
The grocery guys know that you and just about everyone else in our
culture are poised to drop a bundle on holiday foods, holiday entertaining,
holiday decorating--even color-coordinated holiday garbage can liners--over the
next six or seven weeks.
What they really, really want is for you to do all your bundle-dropping
in their very own store. The way to get you to do this, they believe, is to
give you super bargains, called loss-leaders in the trade, right here, right
now, this week.
These specials get you in the door. Once you're there, the savvy
grocery guys are going to raise prices from now until December 26th, hoping
that you're in the habit of shopping their store.
This is just a generalization. It doesn't account for the Great Turkey
War which will break out, according to my calculations, on November 17th at
precisely 6:37 a.m., Eastern time.
The Great Turkey War is a little stare-down game played by competing
grocery chains. Each will advertise that they'll "meet or beat!"
everybody else's price on basic frozen turkey--but nobody commits to amount.
Finally, somebody blinks, and advertises a 59-cents-a-pound bird. Food
ads fly fast and furious Thursday through Sunday, and by Monday morning every
single supermarket will advertise 59-cents-a-pound frozen turkey. You have to
wonder if all the turkeys are confined to the frozen meat bin.
Beat the grocery guys at their own game! Take these steps for maximum
savings on holiday foodstuffs:
Hold a Freezer Clean-Out
For the next week or so, eat from your freezer and pantry. Pretend
you're snowed in and can't make it out for more supplies.
For most of us, this'll mean lots of Last Chance Lasagna. Take whatever
frozen hunks of meat you've got, thaw, cut in chunks and toss into the whirling
blades of a food processor. Brown what emerges in a bit of oil, add canned
spaghetti sauce if you've nothing better, then build the lasagna with noodles
and grated cheese. Last Chance Lasagna hides anything!
Another option: Desperation Stir-Fry (same principle, only you cut the
frozen whatever into strips and soak in soy sauce, dash of sherry and some
sesame oil; stir fry with some minced garlic, and add bags of mystery frozen
veggies).
1. This tactic serves a three-fold purpose. First, it cleans out freezer
and pantry so you'll have room to stockpile holiday goodies in the coming
weeks.
2. Second, it creates a genuine sense of gratitude when you serve a real,
fresh-cooked meal on Thanksgiving Day. Families primed with a Freezer Clean-Out
are much more grateful for that gleaming Thanksgiving turkey!
3. Third, and most important, food-budget savings leave you open to buy,
at just the right time: when holiday fixings are at the lowest price of the
year.
Track Turkey Prices ... and Timing
A perennial November loss leader? The Thanksgiving turkey! Whether they
offer rock-bottom prices on frozen birds, or discount them according to your
purchase amount, it's easy to score a deal on the centerpiece for the
Thanksgiving feast ... if you're careful.
1. First, check turkey discounts carefully against the bottom line. If
you're required to spend $150 in-store to score a "free" bird, it's
not much of a bargain compared to a no-spend offer of 29 cents a pound at the
store down the street.
2. Second, time your purchase carefully. Don't jump at the first offer,
but keep a watchful eye out on supermarket advertising in the coming days. The
Great Turkey War is a very real phenomenon; grocery chains will gauge
competitors' offers carefully, often meeting or beating them by the weekend
before Thanksgiving. Stay informed ... to be open to buy when the time is
right.
3. Finally, shop once, buy two or three times. Turkey prices will rise
after Thanksgiving, so if a bird will grace your table later in the season, pick
up a second or third gobbler now. Tuck the extras into the freezer for
remaining holiday meals at the season's lowest prices.
Stock Up on Holiday Staples
Tactic Two: buy your holiday goodies now--for Thanksgiving and
Christmas and New Years' and any parties you may be giving.
I've lived in four different communities, large and small, in three
different areas of the country over the past 20 years, and I have never seen it
fail: Thanksgiving's always cheaper than Christmas.
It's those grocery guys, again. They want you in their store. This
week, next week, and right up to Thanksgiving, you'll see specials like you
won't see again until next November.
While there will still be advertised specials from now through December
25th, there won't be the shock-your-socks-off prices you'll find prior to
Thanksgiving.
Even if you never scout ads and wouldn't consider being a
"cherry-picker" (industry term for people who come into the store and
purchase only advertised specials) on a regular basis, do it anyway, if only
for the next two weeks.
The potential savings are so substantial that any worries about
what-will-that-nice-meat-man-think? should evaporate right out of your head.
Here are some items to consider buying now, in quantities sufficient
for every holiday meal from now to season's end:
- Butter (freeze extra cubes in a freezer bag)
- Cranberry sauce
- Brown and/or powdered sugar
- Baking basics: flour, sugar, baking soda, Chocolate chips
- Pans of pre-baked rolls (the disposable pan can be washed and reused?an extra bonus)
- Corn syrup
- Evaporated milk
- Sweetened condensed milk
- Marshmallows and marshmallow creme
- Dates and/or raisins
- Canned yams
- Canned pumpkin
- Tiny canned peas
- Canned onions
- Olives and tiny pickles
- Whipped cream
- Refrigerated crescent rolls
- Refrigerated cookie dough
- Eggs
- Sour cream
- Poultry seasoning
- Baking spices
- Frozen pie shells/frozen pies
- Sodas (if your household entertaining includes adult beverages, hide several bottles/six-packs of common "mixers" and you'll lower sticker shock at the liquor store, later in the month)
These are holiday staples for my household--your needs may be
different, depending on diet preferences, entertaining and family tradition.
Today's Recipe
melt and pour soap recipe
You've seen them everywhere from crafts fairs to bath boutiques: pretty
handmade gift soaps. Clear and colorful or rich with natural additives for
beautiful skin, they're a welcome holiday gift.
Best of all, they're easy to make using melt-and-pour soap. Heated in
the microwave, clear or opaque glycerin soap base is combined with colorants
and fragrances, then poured into molds to harden. When cool, soaps pop right
out of the molds, ready to use.
Follow these soap-making tips and soap starter projects to help you
master this squeaky-clean craft for holiday giving:
- Basic Instructions for Melt-and-Pour Soap
- Tips for Successful Soap-Making
- Starry Night Soap: Melt-and-Pour Soap Project
- Alphabet Soap: Melt-and-Pour Soap Project
- Confetti Creations Soap: Melt-and-Pour Soap Project
