Stewardship in Our Shopping

As a follower on the "Southern Savers" website, I found a post from a few days ago that I found really helpful in determining how much money you actually save buying in bulk. In our efforts to imitate the Proverbs 31 woman, it is wise to consider frugality and stewardship of our money--no matter how much of it we have. It just so happens that right now our family has no choice: faithful use of our resources is a necessity! Here's the article and the accompanying chart which really helped to visualize money spent vs. money saved.

Note: The prices listed for warehouse stores (BJ's, Sam's Club, Costco) do not take coupons into account since BJ's is the only bulk store that accepts manufacturer's coupons... it's worth noting that in some cases, it looks like it's still cheaper to buy from the grocery store than to use coupons at a place like BJ's.

Reposted from Southern Savers:

I get asked a lot: “What about warehouse clubs?” I fight the urge to answer back with a quick “you aren’t saving anything”. Personally I haven’t found much that makes the cost of a membership worth it. The biggest reason being that you can’t use coupons at most warehouse clubs (BJ’s being the one exception).

In an effort to put numbers behind my personal feelings, I went recently to my local warehouse club and got the price of 30 items from all over the store. In case you are wondering, I compared prices for the same product and brand in each category.

Here are the prices broken down by price per size.

Item	Regular Store w/ coupons	Sam’s Club
Boneless Chicken Breasts	$1.99 /lb	$1.97 /lb
Split Chicken Breasts	99¢ /lb	$1.78 /lb
Bacon	$3 /lb	$2.96 /lb
Canned Tuna, 5 oz	50¢ per can	78¢ per can
Ketchup	1.6¢ /oz	5¢ /oz
Mayonnaise	3¢ /oz	9¢ /oz
Mustard	Free	8¢ /oz
Salad Dressing	3.7¢ /oz	12.6¢ /oz
Popcorn (microwave)	60¢ ea.	$1.31 ea.
Soups, 15 oz	40-60¢ per can	$1.31 per can
Soft Drinks, 12 oz can	18¢ per can	27¢ per can
Iced Tea Bags, family size	3¢ per bag	19¢ per bag
Butter	$1.80 /lb	$1.06 /lb
Cheese	$2.50 /lb	$2.66 /lb
Eggs	$1.19 per dozen	$1.44 per dozen
Milk	$3.19 per gallon	$3.32 per gallon
Sour Cream	Free-1.8¢ /oz	8.9¢ /oz
Spaghetti Sauce	3-4¢ /oz	63.7¢ /oz
Spaghetti Pasta	Free	96¢ /lb
Brownie Mix, 18-20 oz	40¢	$1.86
Cake Mix, 18-20 oz	Free-50¢	$2.40
Cereal, 18-24 oz	$1.25 or less	$3.49
Sugar	32¢ /lb	69¢ /lb
Baby Diapers	9-15¢ per diaper	20.8¢ per diaper
Foil	1¢ /sq. feet	9¢ /sq. feet
Freezer Bags	4.5-6.7¢ ea.	4.8¢ ea.
Paper Towels, roll	43¢ ea.	$1.62 ea.
Sandwich Bags	.9¢ ea.	1.7¢ ea.
Toilet Paper, roll	Free-29¢ ea.	55¢ ea.
Trash Bags	10-13¢ ea.	11.1¢ ea.
Dishwasher Detergent	Free – .8¢ /oz	13¢ /oz
Glass Cleaner	4¢ /oz	9¢ /oz

A few things that stand out to me:

• I remember at one point getting a membership just for paper goods, thinking that I had to be saving money getting a 40 roll paper towel pack. The cost difference on paper goods was the most striking though! Using store sales and coupons (normally in the drugstores) we are saving a ton over the “bulk price”!
• The second reason folks get memberships… diapers. Yep, not saving there either.
• Dairy was the one department that did show savings. I don’t know if you can eat enough butter and cheese to make it worth the savings and extra trip, but their prices were lower than the grocery stores.

I know for some of you looking at the price per ounce, you are thinking “that’s only 5¢ more and I don’t have to use coupons”. Remember that’s 5¢ per ounce and really in the end will make the product twice the cost over using a coupon and catching the sale in the grocery store.

Okay all this said, there are some that love to buy in bulk versus watching sales and clipping coupons. You are saving money over the full retail price in a grocery store, so I’m not trying to rock your boat. I want you to see how much you could save though if you put a little time into figuring out the whole coupon “thing”.
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I hope this helps!

A Drippy Faucet

We Christian wives and mothers have a difficult task before us. Ours is a heavy burden filled with failures, disappointments, grievances, and complaints. Our job sometimes seems thankless, tedious, and well... lonely. Since when is the last time your 11 month old thanked you for the most recent diaper change? We have been given such great responsibility as women, and with that comes a fantastic ability to ruin the lives of those around us.

In our marriages, God has called us to be a blessing to our husbands. Ironically enough, in my obsessive browsing of Pinterest this morning, I  found a "pin" of the saying, "Don't talk bad about your husband to anyone. Ever." No wife is exempt from this criticism that, ironically, comes straight from Scripture. Proverbs 14:1 says, "Every wise woman buildeth her house, but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands." You can replace the use of hands with mouth and the command is the same. Wives have the distinct honor and privilege to either destroy their homes or build them, and the constant disguise of "venting" a wife's frustrations about her husband to her friend is a surefire way to destroy the God given relationship between men and women. It's quite humbling to imagine how transformed the church could be if we only followed this Biblical principle.

In our roles as mothers, we have a responsibility to demonstrate what it means to respect our husbands. Our sons and daughters need to see that Scriptural principle played out in their homes first--no movie, youth minister, teacher, or pastor should be a child's first and only real glimpse of respecting a husband. Christian sons will one day pursue marriage and Christian mothers should graciously show their sons what kind of woman to wed (she will be your daughter-in-law, after all!) And the application for Christian daughters is obvious--in a culture that spurns authority and submission, it's our young Christian women who will need to reclaim true respect in a marriage and they'll either learn to love it or hate it as it is practiced in the home.

Do men share responsibilities in marriage and fatherhood? Of course. Theirs is a different monster with entirely different struggles and concerns. God has graciously created us as unique people who were meant to complement one another; unfortunately it's far too easy to capitalize on our differences as an excuse to be discontent, self-consumed wives and mothers.

My prayer for myself and for my fellow Christian women is that we will learn what Godly marriage looks like and choose to imitate that to our children. They, in turn, will hopefully do a better job than we have done, and their children will do a better job than our children, and so on. In a commentary written by Charles Bridges, he says (re: Proverbs), "Many are the miseries of a man's life; but none like that which cometh from one who should be the stay of his life."

180movie.com

May God have mercy on our nation. Please watch and pass along.

Topsy Turvy

One day last week the local news reported a story about a dog attacked by a wolf. In said story, we were told the dog owners have paid $4,000 in medical bills to treat the dog. Also in the recent past, Michael and I have watched, aghast, numerous dog food commercials, one in particular in which we're told you can now find *highly overpriced* but health-conscious dog food in the frozen food aisle of your grocery store (well, maybe not right beside the Edy's ice cream, but you know what I mean).

Clearly something's off here. Since when are animals elevated to human status? Since when did we become more concerned about trees than unborn children? This trend in modernity is indicative that the God-given course of human nature, the divine hierarchy has been utterly reversed in our culture today. The things that we need value are minimized, and the things that need be understood in their proper place are exalted.

This travesty is no more evident than in a string of articles posted on a website meant to "topple" the traditional ideals of lady magazines and women’s lifestyle content (blisstree.com). These articles in particular, entitled "Childfree By Choice: How Young Is Too Young To Choose?" and "Offspring Off Limits: The Real Reasons Doctors Won’t Sterilize Women" describe this subculture of disgruntled women who at a young age insist that they will never want children and heckle their doctors to perform the necessary sterilization procedures. One OB/GYN and author, Lissa Rankin, wrote, "I personally HATE the idea of sterilization and I try REALLY hard to talk people out of it. Why? Because life is long, and even when people say they’re certain of their decision, I know that the only thing certain in life is uncertainty."

 Ironically, many of these same doctors who hesitate to sterilize because of the "uncertainty" of the future will readily perform abortions, an equally life-altering decision in which many women spend the rest of their lives trying to forgive themselves for. As an aside, it's worth noting that Dr. Rankin currently does not perform abortions, although she did so for years and claims that she does not regret the years she spent "serving her patients" in that way.

In the first article mentioned, Childfree By Choice: How Young Is Too Young To Choose, your typical embittered, pro-choice young female vituperates about her doctor refusing to sterilize her. In her defense, she does allow for the possibility of wanting to adopt, but she refuses to admit she might want biological children of her own one day.  This is such an enigma in light of the thousands of women who want nothing more than to exercise pure femininity by bearing children.

Throughout Scripture, the barrenness experienced by Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah, and Elizabeth was seen as a sort of curse on them--in their estimation, God had punished them by not opening their wombs. Their earnest prayer in every case was that God would "grant their plea" by giving them children. The pinnacle of blessing was a child.  How tragic that what was once the greatest gift God could bestow is now a curse and what was once seen as a curse is now a blessing, a desirable, a "right" to fight tooth and nail for.

More of the Same?

Today, Vice President Joe Biden compared the Occupy Wall Street protesters to Tea Partiers saying they have "a lot in common." Here's the link to the article and the video.

 

Oh yeah, the similarities are uncanny.



However, Biden would do well to notice the similarities in another more recent public act of rioting, far more dangerous and insidious than the Tea Party Movement (doesn't the jovial "patriot" pictured above look threatening?)

London Riots, 2011

Oh, how true.

A Merrier World with Food

Food is a gift from God. At the risk of sounding cheeky, let me explain, although that might not be necessary. If you have ever sat before a dinner table adorned with the entire spectrum of foods from the Food Pyramid, you'll probably agree with me.

While it's obvious that food is necessary for our survival, we often neglect to delight in it. And just like everything else in a Christian's life, we should approach even food from a Biblical worldview. This doesn't mean we should feel obliged to pray superfluously after every bite, but it does mean we must recognize where the gift came from: the Giver.

In Genesis 2, we are given the account of "life in God's garden," a blissful Eden in which God gave lots of "yeses" and only one "no." He is a just God of many allowances. Another evidence of God's mercy to Adam and Eve in the garden was to make "every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food." And among those trees, the pair could eat anything they wanted. ANYTHING. Except, of course, from one tree.

All this to say that God blessed Adam and Eve through food--that was a gift to them. It was meant to provide a means of fellowship between each other and between them and God. And we can only assume that each tree bore a different fruit; some, tangy; others, sweet. Again we see God's favor in granting His people variety. How thankful should we be for the decision whether to make an apple, peach, blackberry, or sweet potato pie with a graham cracker, flaky, one-layer, or two-crust pie, and then whether to adorn it with whipped topping, ice cream, or both?

Having said all this, then, it behooves me to emphasize how willing we, as Christian women, should be to bestow others with the gift of food. I can probably recall what baby gifts many people gave to us before Eli was born, but I can definitely recall every meal prepared in someone else's kitchen. This gift of food is a blessing in many ways:

• It requires time. And a lot of work. Even though this isn't necessary in preparing meals for someone in need (a bucket of KFC works just fine sometimes), there is something meaningful in knowing that sweat and *sometimes* tears went into making a meal for someone other than yourself.
• It is a Biblical picture of the Proverbs 31 woman who "brings her food from afar" and "rises while it is yet night to provide food for her household and a portion for her maidservant" (Proverbs 31:14-15).
• It satisfies one of the most natural, God-given desires we experience: hunger. And in a time when cooking for yourself seems impossible (after a surgery, a death in the family, or when your world is being rocked by the sounds of a screaming newborn), there's nothing more peaceful than knowing someone else is caring for you in that way.

There are many other ways for women to minister to those in her community, but I address this one because of the impact it had on me almost one year ago with Eli's arrival. When the world was literally closing in on us as we adjusted to being parents, how precious it was to benefit from someone else's work--someone who wanted to encourage us in that way.  Thanks be to God, the giver of all good things, including peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and filet mignons (no offense to all the vegetarians who read this blog).

To "put this on the ground," I'll include a recipe that a sweet friend made for us. Absolutely delicious!

Shepherd's Pie (using London Broil instead of ground beef)

Basic pot roast:
2 lbs. London broil
one box onion soup mix (Contains 2 packs use both)

Place London broil in a crock pot. Sprinkle the contents of both onion soup packs over the top of meat. Just cover meat with water. Cover and cook on high until fork tender, about 4 hours.

Pie filling:
2 Shallots finely chopped
1 lb. Carrots coarsely chopped
2 Cans of white corn (yellow and white corn mix is okay, but white corn is best)
1 Bag frozen peas
2 lbs cooked roast meat picked and shredded
All drippings from your roast
1 stick of butter
1/2 C. flour
1 box beef stock
Saute' your shallots in the largest pot you own until clear and tender. Add your roast drippings, carrots, corn, and peas. If the roast drippings do not cover the vegetables use the beef stock to just cover the vegetables. Bring to a boil and cook until carrots are tender stirring occasionally to make sure there is not any sticking. While the vegetables are cooking, in a small sauce pan make a roue by melting the butter and whisking in the flour. Make sure to stir constantly for 2 to 3 minutes (just long enough to cook flour). Remove from heat and set aside. Once your carrots are tender, transfer veggies to a bowl leaving broth in the pot. Using one spoon full at a time whisk in your roue allowing broth to come two a simmer with each addition. The roue will thicken the sauce. Continue adding roue until the sauce is a consistency slightly thicker than gravy.* Now fill your containers. You can do this one of two ways. You can either add everything back in the pot including the meat, but if your pot is not big enough then use plan B. Plan B: place some veggies and meat in desired container and pour sauce over contents until covered. Either way do not over fill containers because we still have potatoes to put on each pie filling.

Basic Mashed/Creamed Potatoes:
5 lbs. Yukon Gold Potatoes (washed, peeled, large diced)
1 stick of butter
Milk (not sure how much)
Salt

Wash, peel, and do a large dice on the potatoes. Just cover potatoes with cold water. Generously salt the water. Bring water to a boil and cook until potatoes are fork tender.** Once fork tender drain and place back in pot. Add butter and begin whisking with an electric mixer. You are trying to make thick creaming mashed potatoes that can still hold their shape. Add milk until this is accomplished. Usually no more than 2 cups. Now pipe or spread over Shepperd's pie mixtures.

Freezing Instructions for Glassware:
If using glassware and freezing, line glassware with foil first and then fill with pie contents. Place in freezer until hard. Foil and pie should then easily come out of glassware. So remove from glassware, wrap in plastic wrap and return to freezer. When thawing, remove plastic wrap, place in container that was originally used to freeze, place in fridge, and allow to thaw for several hours.

Bake Shepherd Pie at 350 45 minutes to an hour or until top is slightly brown.***

*After using the roue if the sauce is still not thick enough you can make more roue by using equal parts floor and butter.
**Fork tender: Place on a plate and mash with fork. Fork should easily pass through potato. Use this as an opportunity to taste your potatoes. If they are not quite salt enough add more salt and give them another couple minutes.
***Do not bake before you freeze.