Our stock-up!

The result of our "extreme couponing" so far.... Our stock-up!

It's really been fun (sometimes stressful) to learn how to save money on our grocery budget. Like most of my friends who've started doing this, I find my self shaking my head and asking why didn't I learn this sooner. Have I achieved the "extreme couponing" seen on TLC? No, but I am completely okay with that. Saving 40% to 80% off my groceries most of the time is such a HUGE blessing compared to my shopping before couponing. It's allowed us to put up a stock-pile for hard times that we feel are certainly coming and that in many ways have already arrived with climbing costs at the grocery store.

Hubby's garden is really growing and the squash are coming in like crazy. I've been dehydrating so many veggies (frozen & fresh) that I am running out of containers to store them all in! The past few weeks I've switched my stocking up skills from food items to non-food items.
          

The next few weeks I will focus on stocking up on canned meats and meals. I'm also going to try my hand at dehydrating scrambled eggs and de-seeding the gallons and gallons of blackberries we've picked to make blackberry jelly and syrup. I'm hoping to make a lot so we have some for Christmas presents! My goal is to get all that done so that when hubby's garden kicks into full gear I can focus on canning which is so much more labor intensive! I'm sure I will be running the dehydrator non-stop also. I can't say enough about my "Excalibur Dehydrator," it's been a work horse and I've had no problems with running it constantly. It's basically been running for 3 days straight now (except unloading and re-loading) dehydrating all the squash that we've had. I'm excited about having tons of zucchini dehydrated for zucchini bread later in the Autumn when it's cooler and baking starts!!! It also takes up so much less space this way and I don't have to worry about losing it in power outages. I wish beef prices would come down to affordable levels so I could try doing jerky. I may have to practice by dehydrating chicken or come other lean meats. Hubby's been on a huge jalapeno kick for awhile now and I really hope his garden produces in that area so I have a bunch to can and can stop buying them for awhile.

Well that's what we've been up too. Trying to be good stewards of all God gives us by being prepared and self sufficient = )

Sherri <><