June is an abundant month for fruit in the garden. This month, we’ll harvest Mission figs, Green Gage plums, Royal apricots, Dorsett Golden apples, white alpine (vesca) strawberries, and blackberries.
I’ll pick tomatoes and cut herbs, green onions, and Swiss chard from the garden. If my zucchini plants decide to have open male and female flowers on the same day, I’ll hand-pollinate them and hopefully, we’ll have some zucchini too (so far I haven’t harvested any).
I’ll cut larkspur, lilies, and roses from the garden for arrangements.
I’m keeping the budget at $250 for the month, as we are continuing to pay off medical bills.
In the next couple of days, temperatures should reach 111ºF/43ºC. We’ll be wanting lots of cold meals. I’ve already been making popsicles and pasta salad several times a week, and I will continue to do so. I’ll make lots of yogurt and granola. I’ll make white bean dip and pita bread. I’ll make rosemary fig gelato and mint chocolate frog ice cream. I’ll can some apricot vanilla jam with our apricots and plum sauce with our plums. l’ll make more lemonade and hibiscus tea, and perhaps try some cold mint tea, all from produce from the garden. We’ll enjoy fresh fruit from the garden.
Sam’s Club:
POM toilet paper
milk
eggs
baking soda
vinegar
feta cheese
mozzarella cheese
Smith’s:
Ice cream (this should be on sale)
Costco:
Balsamic vinegar
Tomato Sauce
Baby wipes
Winco:
Great Northern Beans (a 25 pound bag)
Old-Fashioned Oats (a 25 pound bag)
Salsa
Whipping Cream
Milk
Potatoes
I’ve noticed that egg and milk prices have come down even more in our area; Winco just had a dozen eggs for $0.99, and Sam’s Club is listing the 5 dozen box of eggs at $4.38. Milk is $2.31 at Sam’s Club and $2.26 at Winco. I’ll pick up milk at both places, depending on which store I’m at.
In addition to these items, I’ll keep an eye out for good sales on toiletries.
Check out my summer menu for more ideas!
I was able to pick up Butter for $1.98 a pound and Grill Mates seasoning packets for 10 cents each yesterday at our local Winco.
we had a mishap, our freezer was not operating properly, so we put ou frozen stuff in my brother in law’s freezer and guess what??????it went out. a squirrel got in the transformer and shorted it out. do they not know that those things are deadly? so i now have to shop for meats, fruit, vegetables this month. such luck. i will be sewing this month. making some one piece rompers for my granddaughter. making shorts , skirts and pants. she starts to school this fall. hope everyone is doing fine. i loved the picture of octavius, and the other two. i need to write all the names down. can’t keep them straight. god bless each and everyone of you.
Our family has a very large medical bill that we have to pay off too. My daughter was rushed to ICU due to an irregular heart beat. Wow, after only 4 days we were home. The doctor was able to fix it. So, our shopping trips will consist of restocking the pantry holes. At the beginning of the school year we purchased 2 cases of peanut butter for one daughter that loves it everyday for lunch! She made it through the school year and we just ran out! They were only a dollar a jar! Eggs here are only 75 cents a dozen so we have stocked up and have been enjoying many things with eggs like salads, tuna salad, and just a boiled egg for snack or breakfast. Fast and easy. The garden is growing and blooming. Tomatoes will be ready as soon as we can blink an eye. We always plant cherry as they produce many and very fast. This always keeps the summer grocery bill down. I looked at the adds today and there is a great sale on many meat items to fill up the freezer and many basics put in the pantry. Happy spring:)
Our local store has eggs for .65 doz this week, there are only 3 of us but I still plan on buying at least 5 dozen. I’ll also be able to pick up salsa for .69 a jar and I usually buy 2 cases at that price.
I was able to get a few pounds of sweet potatoes of 69 cents a pound! Never seen them at that low in my area. I have zero storage in my one bedroom apartment so I only got a few pounds. (but as compared to the usual $2.99 a pound it did make a difference in my grocery bill) 🙂
You can collect male pollen on paint brushes and hand pollinate females when they finally bloom. Just a thought so you can get some zucchini going.
That’s an excellent idea!
I’m trying some new varieties this year. So far they have been really odd–only putting out female flowers! Normally male flowers are first. I hope this means they will be really productive once they get larger. Only one plant is flowering so far of the 6 I have planted, and it flowered all month last month. Now it’s over 102º, and they usually stop flowering completely when it gets this hot.
Meijer’s has 18oz jars store brand on on sale 10/$10…get 11th free. (There are other items) Through this Sat.
We have finally eaten through all of the food that was stuffed in coolers from the old fridge (except for the 5 mustards, of course:) and other condiments. I had my husband go over and pull some hamburger from our freezers that are stored at his moms, and also some jam. This morning, I had to pack Patsy a lunch for her field trip and had to use berry syrup instead of jam on her peanut butter sandwich!! I’m still adjusting to living in the camper, and think it’s going to take quite a while.
I’ve decided to put $50 in an envelope and only use that, hopefully less, each week, and pull food from the boxes and bins and freezers that are stored in the unit, or in relatives’ garages. I’m also getting lettuce, spinich, cilantro and parsley from the garden that my sister and I planted. What a great view from my camper window!!!
I have definitely taken too many things with me into the camper, so hope to pare it down and put some of them into storage. I plan to buy things to fill in the gaps, or that I cannot find.
The recipes all sound delicious
The rosemary fig gelato sounds and looks delicious! I hope we’ll get to try that this summer. On Memorial Day, we made fresh mint ice cream. We really enjoy the fresh mint tea too. It takes a bit of work to get all the leaves off the stems, but thankfully you have several helpers. I initially tried making it with the leaves on the stems, but it was too weak. Covering just the leaves with water made a lovely and stronger tasting iced tea. Best of luck on your zucchini!
Becky, you make me think of that poster from the 70’s….
WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS–MAKE LEMONADE!
Sometimes the things I replenish in my pantry aren’t the ones I planned on, but unexpected “bonuses”! I just need to make sure that they are things that we will use!
For example- this week, my Krogers had marked down a good brand of olive oil from $19.99/ 33.8 oz bottle to $2/bottle! Not because it was past it’s expiration date (October, 2019!) but because they were discontinuing that brand and size on their shelves! I bought 10 bottles, saving $180!!! We will use this and won’t have to buy olive oil again for 2 years!!
A friend told me that her Krogers (10 minutes from me) had overbought blackberries and reduced the price to 2 containers for $1! I bought 2 boxes (24 containers) for $12. and made 12 pints of blackberry jam with supplies I already had in my storage! $1/jar for 16 oz of blackberry jam is pretty good, I think! I haven’t made jam in a couple years and our supply is getting lower! This was also a low sugar recipe (75% less than typical recipe!) using my clear gel! Couldn’t have been easier!! Think I’ll go back and get more this morning to give as gifts!
Corn over the holiday weekend- 10 ears for $1 meant I bought 8 dozen ears ($9.60) which became 35 bags (24 oz each) of frozen corn kernels in my freezer so we won’t need to buy any for the year!
Sometimes the best additions to my “buy list” are those things that just happen to be in the store as long as they are part of my regular food storage items!
Pantry:
Sugar, salt (including pickling salt), garbanzo and pinto beans, tomato sauce (I’m about out but our garden tomatoes won’t be ready for 2 months yet), popcorn and buttermilk powder, baking powder and soda + more canning jars are needed. We also will be watching the meat sales closely since that stock is getting low.
Critters:
Restock the dogs food (hubby had a lean couple months and we went thru our supply), a big bag of cat food and a case of canned + keep building the litter stock pile when it goes on sale. I also need to restock our poultry’s food supply since we went thru that stock as well.
Garden:
We will be chipping the huge piles of branches and brush that my daughter just pruned and using that in the garden but I am sure I will need to buy some bagged mulch as well to get all of the pathways mulched to keep the weeds down and make it look nice (It is very visible to the neighbors). We also need to mulch the entire front of the house so we don’t lose the new plants we put in yesterday to the heat and dryness (the dirt is all pure sand – even after being amended with manure – and gets sun almost the entire day which bakes whatever we plant there) We will also need to purchase a few more heat tolerant plants for the other side of the front porch so both sides match. Somehow, we need to remove the old shrubs on that side but with roots that go down many feet and out even further, it is going to be a huge undertaking w/o a tractor!
House:
Purchase paint to redo our house’s main bathroom, look into getting the tub re-glazed (it’s avocado green!), redo the flooring and look into moving and replacing the toilet which will involve moving plumbing – it is one of the most poorly designed bathrooms I have ever seen! and replace the water damaged vanity. I think that will take care of the budget for home renovation for the month 🙂
Did you see that Albertsons has whole chickens for .57 a pound? I love to cook a whole chicken in the crockpot during the hot summer.
Business – Costco in San Diego – had some great deals – on ground beef & b/s chicken breasts – You have to buy larger quantity but I split with with Mom or friends or you can pressure can it. They also had great prices on eggs.
I make my own salsa & save РReal easy recipe use the whole canned tomatoes from Costco & canned jalapenos, add cumin, black pepper, salt, garlic powder, dry oregano, onion powder, a little Knorr chicken bullion to taste blend it in blender & voila. Use abt. 3 jalape̱os with seeds or more according to how much heat you want. Use abt. 10-12 of the whole tomatoes play around with the recipe. And Voila!
Oops forgot that the salsa recipe also uses fresh cilantro to taste – Try It & comment on how you enjoyed it! Yum!
Wow, I wish I could find blackberries for that price, Gardenpat! So envious of your delicious jam. Those are great buy’s on the oil and corn as well. What a blessing for you!
Brandy, check the wipes at Sam’s Club. Mine recently started carrying very large boxes of them at a comparable price to Costco and I like them better. (They seem to stick together less frequently). I do not have a current price comparison because Costco is an hour away now.
Brandy and readers, any good ideas on mosquito repellant? We live in the south and they are horrible this year. I have read about making paracord bracelets and soaking them in an essential oil mixture. Then wearing those when we are at parks/ball fields. I feel like I need to rework my budget just for bug spray it is so expensive!!!
LH…a couple questions. Is this a batch of salsa you would make one at a time? Like a fresh salsa? Are you using 10-12 whole tomatoes or 10-12 cans of whole tomatoes? Are you canning it? I would try it without the chicken boullion though.
Oh Christa, I hate mosquitoes! We use a lot of citronella torches and candles when we are outside and we have a couple mosquito plants (they have another name but I don’t know what it is…maybe citronella also?) around the patios. The Avon Skin so Soft original works for some people. When we need spray we buy ones that repell ticks too as we are rural and there are plenty of deer and other ticks. One of the best things to do is encourage bats. We have bat houses all over the property, like up on telephone poles, up the side of the barn etc. I read that a bat in its life time can eat a volume equal to a train car of mosquitoes. We see them zooming around at night when we sit outside.
Spring is when we buy quite large purchases of fresh foods as the garden is not producing at capacity yet and we have finished off most of the preserved foods. We’ll buy lots of lettuce, carrots, cabbage, cucumbers etc for cool salads, corn on the cob and strawberries…all these until we can pick our own. I’ve bought green beans several time so far and will until we can pick ours. We plugged our 2nd refrigerator back in for the summer to store the extra produce. We bought 30 pounds of new red potatoes at the Memorial day sales to last until we dig our own. I make a potato salad every week in the summer. We will also buy a bit more fresh fruit like apples until we pick our own and to make fruit salads. It would be nice if our new peach trees produced this year, but it is only the 2nd year. Maybe. I need to watch for peaches for canning and freezing, also sour cherries for freezing.
My son and his wife and oldest girl and her husband all share a Costco membership. We don’t have one here but they all used to live in the capitol city which has one and they visit every so often. They have a list I made for unbleached flour, coffee beans, tuna, summer sausage, minced garlic in a jar, cider vinegar, whole seed mustard, and anything else they think I’d like/use. I have never been there so not familiar. I will go along on a Sam’s club trip with a sister in law and others and I will get the usuals of cottage cheese (2 or 3 largest tubs), boxed white rice 25 lb ea, large cans of Crisco, parmesan cheese chunks, and white sugar.
I have been blessed lately with finding reduced produce cheap at our local Fred Meyer as they put “not perfect” fruit and veggies in bags that are 1.00 a piece. It’s really helping me fill out my pantry on the cheap this year and I’m totally in love with it. Today I was able to get a ton of peaches and nectarines on reduced, will cut the bruised pieces off of them tonight and can them to add to the pantry.
Since money is so tight I figure it’s going to save me money to use what I have around here to fill in some of the holes in the pantry for winter. So, part of my list this month is shopping from my own pantry to get things done.
The rest of my list for the month can be found here…
https://makedohomemaker.blogspot.com/2016/06/shopping-goals-june-2016.html
Holly Camolli 🙂
I love the olive oil deal. Glad u were able to stock up. Amazing savings!
As far as stocking up, I isualu do as you do. I just stick up what I stumble ion in a great sale and I know I will use. I just got a shower liner down from $19.99 to $.99 cents. Good quality, thick liner. I will not need it for a few months mauve longer but when I need to replace the current one, I will just shop in my closet storage. I would have saved $19 😉
Hello Brandi and all from Australia 🙂 .
Shopping which will be the later part of this month since we only shop once a month will be to keep an eye out for specials on –
– Tinned mangoes.
– Tinned lychees.
– Frozen chickens.
– Mince.
– Sensitive toothpaste.
– macadamia nuts.
– cashews and or almonds.
Needed normal price items will be the usual –
– Flour
– Sugar
– Need to top up on 2 large packets of toilet paper.
– powdered milk.
– full cream milk
– cheese.
– Body wash.
– Drinking cocoa.
– Tinned apples around 7 tins as they have not come on special, but now Aldi have them back in stock I will stock back up.
– Wheat bix and we shall now start making some wonderful granola from our pantry supplies.
– Demineralised water for the iron and car windscreen washers.
The gardens are producing well so we have all the vegetables and strawberries we need and have a good stock of beans, sweet corn, capsicum, turnips, peas, silverbeet and spinach in the freezers that we have blanched and frozen till the weather warms up. We are getting into -2 oC overnight now and the occasional frosts but I have planted all the frost sensitive plants in sheltered areas where they are not affected so they are still producing nicely. Other friends have not been so lucky and whole gardens have been hit by the frost, we are blessed to have the layout we have in the garden and not be in an area that is heavily effected by frost.
Hope your daughter is doing well. I know how scary an irregular heartbeat can be. Sounds like your pantry will be filled in no time! Great price on eggs! Hang in there.
Athanasia, I believe it is 10-12 tomatoes from the #101 size cans.
Hi Brandy,
Do you have a separate line item in your budget for all the trees and berry bushes that you buy or is it part of the food budget and you buy one or two things monthly depending on what on sale?
Thank you for all your inspiration!