At the moment, with both Compostman and I still operating at much less than full capacity, shopping is a bit "ad hoc" and rather a chore - we are both finding it hard to drive far and neither of us has much energy or inclination to slave over a hot stove - just standing up has been a bit of a problem sometimes recently!
So we are really pleased to have lots of meals and easy to prepare food in the freezers, as well as a good store of food in the cupboards.
Living where we do ( a fair few miles from the nearest shop) we tend to keep a good stock of food in, and even though we have had a pretty disasterous harvest this year we still have a good supple of home grown veg to chose from and there are lots of potatoes and onions in the veg store. We are also lucky to have large freezers well stocked with good quality sausages, chops and a selection of home grown, prepared veg open frozen for easy use ( as well as oven chips, pizzas and suchlike :-) ).
There are also lots of home made cake portions in the freezer - Compostman makes several tray bakes and we portion them up, usually so Compostgirl can have a sweet treat, but the fruit/chocolate slices make VERY acceptable puddings with cream or custard :-)
Add in a plentiful supply of eggs from the feathery ladies, flour, cereals, dried
fruit and home made wine, cider and fruit juices, home made bread etc ,
and we are managing just fine without as many trips to the shops as
normal.
I am so glad we do this as trying to get to the shops as normal would have been a bit of a struggle, tbh.
So, we have been eating into our stores in October and spending less than normal as a result.
The powers of the pantry and storage cupboard cannot be underestimated. It's gone out of fashion as many people just pop to shops whenever they like but it's really vital if you can't do that all the time. I'm fully stocked here, and glad of it!
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