Keep Your Produce Fresh for Weeks! And Other Money-Saving Grocery Hacks | Amy of The Cross Legacy

welcome back to the simple Farmhouse Life podcast today I'm having on Amy cross from the cross Legacy she is an expert on keeping produce fresh on budgeting and meal planning and basically using up everything that you bring into your house that you don't spend a million bajillion dollars on healthy food and then come to find out that you just waste it all that is not what we want to happen and Amy has really figured out how to teach people in a very effective way she actually had something go viral when she first started her online business of educating people on this very simple hack that helps you to keep produce fresh for a month like strawberries fresh for I think she says three weeks anyways she has lots of good tips so let's dive into this interview my name is Lisa mother of seven and creator of the blog and YouTube channel farmhouse on Boom join me as I share with you my love for creating a handmade home from scratch cooking and a little mom and entrepreneur Life along the way [Music] well thank you so much Amy for joining me I have seen your strawberries we'll get into that for everybody who's like wait what strawberries around the internet so let's start off with introductions tell us about you and your blog your YouTube Instagram whatever you want to share oh my name is Amy cross and I started the cross Legacy um which started as an Instagram and a Blog because of you so I'm like super excited to be here because you have literally changed my life but I started a Blog and it has went viral and I Am Changing Lives all around the world so I've had a TED talk because of strawberries with with this post going viral so yeah crazy yeah yeah that's awesome so let's just get that out of the way tell us about your viral strawberries in a jar hack and what what that is and this is the time of the year because it's about to be strawberry season um right and like July 2021 right in the middle of the pandemic I was bored and we were in the middle of a kitchen remodel and my business was closed and like everything was shut down and I started answering questions on other people's social media sites when they were asking like I want to go to the grocery store but I'm scared to or my blueberries are only lasting four days and I'm like what are you talking about like my blueberries in the fridge are over a month old and it like blew up on the Shelf cooking site Jordan Page's site and she messaged me and she's like something here you need to like start an Instagram you need to do something so that last weekend in June I started the Instagram called the cross Legacy which is our family our family our last name was cross but the cross Legacy is like yeah our family Otto and um so I started in the Instagram and then that first weekend of July my husband had tore down everything in our kitchen and we were down to the studs and so I literally sat in the office that whole fourth of July weekend and listened to you and your videos over and over on the um create your own Vlog course and I started the blog that weekend so July 3rd 2021 I put up strawberries in a jar just something I had in my fridge something I knew about I was just literally trying to learn how to make a blog like I don't even think anybody would care about my strawberries and so I wrote out all the instructions for it and then I put it on Instagram and a couple weeks later it went absolutely viral because my strawberries last three weeks okay yeah so yes it went viral did you say like 18 million people or something like that have seen it was shared 18 million times like just in a couple days and now it gets shared over and multiple times that's super wait what'd you say now it's been it it gets shared over a million times every month now oh my word okay so my sister and I were just talking about this yesterday for people to understand like how viral that is I've never had okay in all of my career because I you know I do YouTube I do Instagram I do reels and I have I have stuff on Tick Tock I've only had one piece of content ever exceed one million ever and I mean like lifetime I thought I probably would have had more than that but I was actually looking at my YouTube um just last night because my sister and I were talking about like our most popular videos just out of curiosity and I do have one video on YouTube that got well over a million but all of my Instagram reels all of my tick tocks nothing's gotten over a million so like wow that is super viral so tell us about what what it even is what is the strawberry in a jar trick so when you when you watched your produce when you bring it home I used five percent distilled white vinegar it's killing off the mold spores E coli listeria and any other harmful pathogens but over the years I've developed a technique to do it so they don't get all mushy or fermented so other people that have tried to con copy me over the last year and a half like they're telling people to soak their berries for 15 minutes that will destroy them so you can just soak them for two minutes in a bowl and set a timer because we're moms we get distracted right yes um set set a timer it's a quarter cup of distilled white vinegar and a large bowl of water for two minutes and then you rinse them off because the water is so dirty you will want the rinse stuff you will see if you wash berries for the first time and then you lay them out on the counter to dry and it takes about three to four hours for your produce to dry and then you put it in a glass jar with a paper towel at the bottom in a lid and they will sell okay for three weeks so blackberries and raspberries stay fresh for like two and a half to three weeks strawberries stay fresh right around that three week Mark grapes will stay fresh for four to six weeks and blueberries stay fresh for six to eight weeks okay so this works for pretty much all fruits have you tried this with different vegetables too we actually have a book that has 50 of the top produce items and how to get them to like stay fresh for a whole month so my lettuce stay fresh for a month parsley six to eight weeks um and then we have other tips like in the summer book of I bought it now what I've had to like reduce fruit flies that are coming into your house so like the worst things to bring into your house for fruit flies and if you can wash the crown part of the pineapple the pineapple upside down in a large like stock pot of water first that will kill off any fruit flies that you're bringing into your house okay interesting so where did you learn about how to take care of produce this has become your Niche probably pretty much by accident it sounds like like what were you what were you planning to blog about and then also like where did you learn all of these tricks I'm a foster mom those are two questions yeah I'm a foster mom and so when I started blogging I just had a calling on my heart for generational change and to help other young moms go through different seasons of their lives I never thought that it would be my fridge that I'd be talking about every single day and it was just so happy to put it you're right yeah it's like calling all those kind of things so when I first started the everything I just thought I just had a calling on my heart to want to reach out to other moms and help them through hard times so I ironically have not talked at all about being a foster mom on my blog or anything um about that it's all been about produce but I grew up on a 200 Acre Farm um like a fifth generational farm so I grew up thinking harvest season to harvest season and then we're you know we have a we live in a town but we have a backyard garden and chickens and I can and different things so I'm always thinking about how long something will last and when the next harvesting is going to be and our big thing is the average family throws away 61 of the food that they're buying what according to the world yeah 61 the world people if that's true you need to do better than that that is just ridiculous I feel like I throw away next to nothing next to nothing right yeah so the average family for the average for a while has been said that it was 30 to 40 percent and then the world economic Forum came out in April last year since it was 61 globally for household food waste so if we're spending a thousand dollars on groceries a month people are throwing away 600 of the groceries that they're bringing home yeah that that's just crazy if I like my kids well I get them all a glass of milk and like if they leave this much milk I throw that into my meatloaf or something you know I'm just like what could I throw this in you know it's not going to be the sink so I can see how where you're positioned here with this knowledge is so timely the pandemic especially but then I think it's opened a lot of our eyes to a lot of things cooking healthy gardening that's all something that is majorly On The Rise so yeah it makes sense that this would be something that people are really seeking and there you wear with your strawberry trick that I've never heard before so yeah so you learned as a kid because of gardening is this something your mom figured out like put a little bit of vinegar what's the science point it kills off some of the bacteria that keeps or that makes the strawberry deteriorate yeah so it's killing off the mold spores E coli listeria other harmful pathogens that are on it um I buy organic or grow organic so I don't worry about pesticides on it as much but um I learned it mostly from our neighbor lady growing up so she was 102 um and she had been like lifetime friends with my grandpa and I would consider her like almost a grandma in my life so a lot of the things that I learned about harvesting and preparing things were from Mrs Cooper of Cooper's Corner and so that was really special and then my grandma was a canner and preserved food and then growing up on the farm yeah so my mom was actually a lager so oh wow and she didn't spend as much time in the kitchen she was out in the woods with my dad oh that's cool want to take a break from this episode to tell you about one of our awesome sponsors toopes and Co that's t-o-u-p-s and Co I've had a few questions about that lately like what are you saying again all of the sponsors will be linked down in the show notes as well as on simple farmhouselivepodcast.com but Toops and Co is an organic skin care company that I couldn't speak more highly of I actually just did my makeup because I like to do my makeup before I come out and record no matter what kind of day it's been I have the tubes and Co Foundation the mascara trying to remember what else I have I have several of their things and I absolutely love it it's really hard to find a foundation especially that is both quality and good for you I've struggled with that for years I even dabbled in making my own for a while it was really greasy sort of worked out but definitely did not have the quality of tube Cinco 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foundation and I do a different shade from winter to summer so I'm in that transition phase of like I almost need a slight shade darker which is a good time to get a new Foundation but I know that you are going to absolutely love it again tubesinco.com use the code farmhouse so have you branched into a lot of canning and freezing and freeze drying or are you I mean I think that there'd be a focus on all of it like how to keep stuff fresher longer but then also how to put it away for a longer term so you can't see behind me but um behind me is all of our canned items then we have in the room of canned items I I thought I'd be talking more about canning and preserving things for long term but mostly I'm just talking to the average Mom that's trying to buy groceries for their family and have groceries in their house recently we started working on this hope project it's home a pantry education project with our local food bank and so we're spending a lot of time trying to teach them when they bring things home how to keep it fresh longer so they're able to use it and be able to feed their families more so I batch cook meals I have reflective sympathetic dystrophy so I don't always have good days and I batch cook meals often and then put them in the freezer and then we have like a longer term storage but most of what I'm talking about is the everyday grocery shopping to help moms or families you know yeah yeah so what are some of your other tricks like you said your you keep greens for how long did you say so lettuce will normally stay fresh for about a month and then slotted German parsley will stay fresh for around six to eight weeks so carrots and celery about six weeks okay so what are the tricks for that because if you just put it in the fridge in the plastic that it came in it's not going to stay good that long right for celery and I keep saying celery for cilantro and parsley you want to wash it when you bring it home in the vinegar water and you trim off the ends and then you put it in your filtered water I have the Berkey because of you I put it in filtered water in the fridge in a jar so it looks like you have flowers in the fridge and then around every 10 days I just trim the ends again and then I add more filtered water to it so you can do the same thing with asparagus and broccoli also and they will stay fresh for around a month so you just want to check the ends around 10 days which open up the vascular system of the plant okay so they're essentially Staying Alive like you're putting it in water like a bouquet of flowers and it's keeping them alive for a lot longer yeah that makes sense what about mixed greens you know package that you get from Aldi or Walmart so I don't often buy um already cut lettuce when it gets recalled all of the time all of the time that's very very true yes so when you're bringing it home ahead of her remain or whatever lettuce that you're using and you're washing it and cutting it you're protecting your family for one and to save you money it will save you money to just go ahead and buy the whole head and use it and so I watched that when I bring it home I lay it out to dry I always say when I'm going to put it away in the glass container that I make sure that it looks like an umbrella with the stem at the top of it because it'll continue to release moisture as it's drying and not like a boat so when you're laying those leaves into your container you don't want it to look like a boat where that moisture that does get released you know in the next couple weeks it'll sit down in the that stem part of it and it will churn Brown um so I normally do that and then lettuce will stay fresh for a month if you wash them and put it in your fridge so which is important because we only go to the grocery store once every three weeks okay so we have a grocery budget of 135 per person and we only go to the grocery store once every three weeks so I know exactly like I haven't been to the store in three weeks and I still have fresh this this and this in my fridge that I can make meals with okay so let's talk a bit about that the budget the meal plan this is something especially new moms and new cooks struggle with figuring out I think that's probably where most of this comes from when you say people throw away 60 of their food it's probably not necessarily that things are going bad on them as they just bought the wrong amount maybe they didn't think about what it would actually go in and so it just sat in there too long I mean it definitely helps to extend it for sure but also they may maybe didn't have a plan for what they were going to use it in so let's talk about that like budget and meal plan you said you have a very specific budget so where do we start with that what what are your favorite sources for groceries well if it's summer time I go to like the farmer's market more often um but but since I'm talking to like a worldwide audience and I want them to be able to go shopping like I do I I shop mostly at Costco first and then I go to our local Fred Meyers which is probably Kroger in your area yeah those are the two main grocery stores that I go to um I think you asked me like four different questions so I know well I was I was introducing the broader topic of meal planning and budging then I'm like hmm where do we even start with this because how to get into how exactly you do things that you know like where do I even begin to ask you do you mean information here okay yes yes I'll just give you a whole bunch of information perfect sounds great and not worry about actually answering the questions yeah that sounds really good thank you so one of the things that used to take us to the grocery store all of the time was needing avocados because avocados like seem like they go bad in just a couple days so over the years I've learned that if you buy organic avocados and organic bananas even if you don't care about pesticides and anything else for those two items they're going to save you money because conventional items they are sprayed and with ethylene when they they come from the ship you know they get sprayed in the warehouse they get put on the trucks and all of a sudden you have perfect avocados or bananas when you get to the store and then like three days later they seem like they're black and they're horrible and you don't know what happened right so those two items if you buy them organic they're not sprayed and they just naturally ripen like they're supposed to so for no other reason spend a little bit of extra money and buy those two items organic but I have learned over the years because I just like the way that they looked in the refrigerator that I found like a magic trick when you put lemons and avocados together in the crisper drawer they will actually stay fresh for over a month wow they're produce buddies and they stay fresher longer so when I learned that trick and I learned that my avocados were staying fresher longer then I was able to spread out my grocery shopping trips so first it went from like oh honey every day was stopping at the store to like right go a whole week without going to the grocery store and at the time we had a whole house full little so getting through a whole week without going to the grocery store seemed like a big deal and then over the last couple years we've pushed it out because I can keep all the produce fresh we've pushed it out to where we only go grocery shopping once every three weeks and we can keep our fridge full of fresh produce we keep things rotated but it was learning that secret you know magic trick of the avocados that ended up being able to let us go to the grocery store less often but how often do you go into the grocery store to get something as simple as avocado and you walk out pushing a cart full and you don't really have a plan for it you don't know what happened and you have hungry kids with you they're grabbing stuff for husbands but are grabbing extra things so yeah for what we normally buy we're an allergy family so I normally stock organic single ingredient items for most everything that we buy because we have so many allergies um in the household and I want to make sure that I have the best quality of things that we do I was laughing this time because we posted a picture the other day of me going grocery shopping and we had Cocoa Pebbles um on the pitcher and I was just like I don't know if we want to show that but I think it's a good thing to do too because my husband went grocery shopping with me he hasn't been to the store with me in four months like that was his special treat and something that he wanted and it's not something that we buy all the time like literally once every four months I can buy a box of whatever cereal you want right in it oh yeah yeah and so that balance between this being you know I have to have everything organic it has to be all these things and meet all of our allergy and health requirements too this is especially in the budget yeah in the budget and he's only getting this once every few months like it's fine with me you know yes yes just learning what that balance is in your life too helps yeah to what extent are you meal planning before going to the grocery store do you have just a handful of your favorites or are you more of a rigid like this is what we're having for the next you know three weeks breakfast lunch dinner how does that look for you so that you don't have any food waste I honestly hate meal planning I hate it I hate it like I I don't know what I want to wear tomorrow I don't know if it's gonna be 80 degrees or 40 degrees I have reflective sympathetic dystrophy which is a like a pain and Joint issue so some days I have really good days and I don't mind standing in the kitchen and other days I need something I can pull out of the freezer and it can be done with in a few minutes so to plan out what we're eating for three weeks is it never will be something that I will do yeah I'm really honest about that we're like laughing because we're we're building building a meal planner but at the same time it's teaching people not how to meal plan but to have the food in your house so you but I normally have the same ingredients in the house like I know that we buy our Meats once a year so I know what I have for me in our house you know it's in the freezer I know what I can pull out but we always have the same basic you know Pantry items and then seasonally we have different produce but I know those basic ingredients that I keep stocked in the house and then seasonally we have some different things but being able to meal plan first by looking what's in your refrigerator that needs to be raised at what's in the freezer I can pull from and then you know then thinking about what I can add to go to the grocery store so I hear all the time like oh I have 55 to get me to Payday or I have 85 and I knew that to make 10 meals well what do you have in your house that you can make meals already like you know do you have pasta do you only need to grab sauce do you you know like what do you already have do you have eggs do you have flour can you make pancakes you know and like people don't even think about what they have in their house right now that they can be using up it's just what can they get at the grocery store and just switching that mindset yeah you have to look in there and you have to think about a little bit because you don't have something that would fit into a nice recipe you have a lot of random things that you have to come up with something for and I'm sure by the end of your three weeks you have a lot of stuff that probably doesn't make like any meal that would ever be on any recipe so how at the end of that like what are your meals looking like what are some go-to's at the end of your three weeks yeah our our meals don't change very much they really really aren't saying the whole way through um I planned when we're you know buying our produce that I know things that are going to last towards the end so normally like asparagus broccoli cauliflower those are items that last for sure for three weeks sometimes I've already went to the grocery store again and I'm using up last times you know items okay and then you know having the fresh meat and being able to use it different ways you know the other day we wanted hamburgers and we were planning on making hamburgers and then all of a sudden it started raining and it was like okay well I can make those into sloppy joes so we can still have you know the same meal that you know this we use the same protein and kind of had the same meal and because of weather you know changed our mind of right yeah we're doing so we do get milk delivery here straight to our house so that does come every Tuesday oh that's cool so we yeah there's a local Dairy here that my grandpa actually was part of that Dairy Circle like 80 years ago and so he melts for those anyways part of my family history but that is so cool that the milk gets delivered here every two weeks um which helps so when we didn't have that then we would yeah have milk from the store for like two weeks and then I would supplement with like almond milk and different things that were shelf stable to get us through that the third yeah yeah actually I was just interviewing somebody recently who she actually freezes milk and I should have gotten into asking her how exactly she does that but she used to grocery shop once a month and she just would freeze milk I think she said she freezes it you know if you're if it's store-bought right in the plastic jugs yeah the plastic jugs are made to go straight into the freezer so that's why there's that little indent on the side of it so the Cardinals yeah yeah they're made to I know this freezer yeah if you get them in the plastic we get them in the cartons um yeah yeah you can totally freeze your mouth if you have room in your freezer I I don't have extra room in my freezer for milk I do freeze cheese often okay now did you do that shredded or just like blocks I buy block cheese um because there's more additives in the shredded cheese side like black cheese if you're sure if you're freezing medium cheddar it does a lot better defrosting and not being crumbly than a sharp cheddar does and then most the other ones you can throw there but the medium cheddar versus the sharp cheddar but then I freeze like mozzarella and different things too so we always have cheese and butter and stuff extra in the freezer that I get when it's on sale yeah yeah those are Staples okay so what tips do you have for seasonal spring cleaning and freezer rotation to help save money on groceries you know without completely emptying your freezer that's the thing I feel like I sometimes I just want to completely empty everything so that way I know everything is fresh and we do that to an extent every once in a while but there's always going to be things in there so yeah what are your tips on that so three times a year I normally do it in the springtime around this time and then in January and also right when school's getting back in session I do like a big inventory of the house so the January inventory I'm literally going through every single item and trying to see what I can use up and I keep a list and then I just kind of Mark it off over the year but that spring and the fall one I'm really checking the freezers um and for that to help like save families money like people don't think about oh well right now like we had one day that was 80 degrees and another day that was 40 like back to back you know like right we still have days that we want to use the oven but in another month we won't want to use the oven as much you know so what are those batch cook meals that are in the freezer that you know lasagna is the different things that I've made that need to go into the oven that I can use up right now during the springtime and then it's not sitting there until next October and getting freezer burned and stuff so you know during this March April early May is really when I'm trying to use up any of those oven kind of items that I have stocked in the freezer and then the same thing in the um we have like September to October even in October we still have some nice days where it's not raining sometimes our September is better than our July here in the Seattle area for not having rain um but to be able to barbecue so I'm really trying before the weather changes in the fall to use up any like hot dog buns or different things that I had bought just to put on the barbecue you know those summer kind of items that you really don't want in December but to really go through your freezer and look and see what you could be using up and it not sitting for another six months I don't think a lot of people think that way yeah they just get tired of it and like oh well it's almost summer and I'm I'm super excited for all these summer things they're not thinking about let's using up those you know those winter items that we have put away yeah I like the idea of that so are you skipping a grocery shopping trip whenever you're doing these like big clearing out everything kind of cooking through what you have no I very rarely skip the shopping tip but sometimes I'll buy other things that I wouldn't always buy so if I'm if I'm trying to use up things that I had in the freezer I might be stocking up on buying almonds or nuts or different things just last shopping trip I was stocking up buying cheeses so I hadn't bought cheese in a while and I had extra money in the budget right now it's just my husband and I home and so we base it on 135 dollars per person to to buy for the groceries and we keep that money in a safe separate account that's only for groceries for the whole entire year and then whatever's left over because I don't spend it all when I go grocery shopping then I put that extra money aside for like our larger meat purchases or during harvest season when I'm wanting to can and buying stuff so that money is always put in on paydays and it's there you know so it's I think a grocery shopping at any time but when we had a whole household we had four under seven for a while here and then we have college age kids too so when they they're coming home like our family size can vary all the time yeah as a foster family yeah as a foster family so we would max out at a thousand dollars a month but that seventy five dollars that I would set aside for meat that would still be the same 75 that I was set aside into a savings account and then once a year I do our meat purchase so there's enough money in there okay so you are including in your 135 you're including the meat and the milk as well yeah meat meat milk I I would say like it's normally the items that families can buy on food stamps that because that's what I'm trying to help other families with I do because we buy paper towels once a year I do have that on the list too but my makeup and different things those are personal care items those that's on a different budget so groceries and food yeah they're really the only things besides groceries and food are garbage sacks and paper else but again like I buy a thing of paper towels once a year so it's not that big of a deal yeah right right yeah you need all those for your strawberry in a jar it actually doesn't take very much like because we don't use paper towels for anything else we just put them in the jars right I literally only use like 10 paper towels a month like not yeah to not waste the strawberries yeah 100 worth it so and you can put cloth at the bottom if you don't want to use paper towels or napkins but sometimes like raspberries will stain the cloth and I'd rather not use bleach and not have it stained you know right right taking a break from this episode to tell you about today's sponsor Carly Jean Los Angeles Carly Jean is a mother of four she has a small 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just hear what people want to hear us talk about so the first topic is snacks snacks can get really expensive but they're also hard to find the time to make I know your kids ages and the number varies a lot what are some of your easy healthy snacks uh favorites so for the strawberries I've always washed the strawberries like even since my kids are little I've always swatched them it wasn't until we had the foster kids in our house um I called them the littles and we had four under seven here for three years that I started putting things in glass jars and it really was like do you want this or do you want this and showing them two different jars like because they didn't have the words for what they wanted for produce items even though when I would give it to them they would like it they just they didn't grow up with having produce in their house and so to be able to open up my fridge and it'd be beautiful and all of these things jars and they can see it like it changed everything because all they knew was packaged snacks and then they came into a house told that we have allergies and we have very few things that are processed and in packages ever um now that my girls are away we don't have as many allergies here in the house as we did when they were all home but first first thing for snacks for us is we open the fridge snacks come from the fridge in our household we teach them to eat a rainbow every single day we try to give them options between different fruits and vegetables and have them help us in the prepping and the washing and then they're more excited about it too or the growing of it then they're really excited about it so most most of our you know household snacks or snacks coming from the fridge and then you know depending on age and stuff we eat a lot of like nuts and pepperoni and those kind of things but I'm diabetic so we don't have a lot of processed things um right yeah I always joke that I never stock anything that that if a teenager was like on a rampage on a weekend could eat a whole bunch of or and I don't stock things like if I had TMS I had to go searching for so right if I wanted to make cookies I could make cookies you know yeah yes yeah those are some of our favorites too we do the kids will grab carrot sticks we do a lot of yogurt cheese dairies like a big thing for us right now especially because we're we have a cow of milk so we're kind of like you gotta eat yogurt for all of your snacks but that's one of our top favorites as well okay so let's talk about sourcing the first question has to do with grocery delivery this can be like a hot topic for some reason so people are like really against it so do you think grocery delivery saves you money despite the fees it sounds like you're not a grocery delivery type of person but so I started delivering last year for instacart um interesting that's a good way to research exactly getting ready for the Ted Talk I really wanted to like do research and know what people were really buying and then people like I would drop it off at their house and they're like having strawberries you're the strawberry lady oh my goodness oh yeah like that's awesome in my town like you know me as a strawberry Lady it's really funny but yeah so I I delivered for instacart last summer as research but things that made me really sad about instacart delivery is when I go to the grocery store I don't necessarily have to have that exact brand that exact size that exact whatever like I'm picking it up and looking at the items but you know if one is a little bit bigger or a little bit smaller and it's on sale and it's a better deal then I grabbed that one instead of you know like the exact one that I might have thought I was going to walk in to get you don't get that with instacart you don't get the sale prices at the grocery store and the one that killed me like every single time that I had to do it you don't get the buy one get one free when you buy from Instagram so seeing somebody buying like a 25 roast and not getting the other 25 roast for free that they should have if they were at the store they don't get that why would they why would it not ring up like that yeah they don't you can't do it and a lot of people don't realize that the instacart drivers can't give you the receipt because what you see online is a higher percentage for every single item that I'm picking up than what you're buying so the store shelf price compared to what you're actually paying for for every single item is higher and then they charge the service fee and then they charge the tip fee or you you know pay a tip on top of that so you're actually going to charge three times for every single item that you're getting so I I had instacart delivered during the pandemic because I was scared to go to the grocery store at the beginning of it and um just knowing like wow that seems like we spent a lot for what we got and then when I started on the other end of it seeing as the driver end of it the Shopper end of it like yeah yeah I would never encourage anybody to do that but there's other stores that do free you know they grab your stuff I like to do I like to pick out my own purse so it would be hard for me to what about Walmart plus because I've heard people have told me that instacart charges and I still am in the camp of like because of just the way my life is it definitely makes more sense for me even monetarily to do it that way but I've been told that Walmart plus is not not like that like it doesn't actually charge extra is that true or do you know I don't know about Walmart yeah I did prepare instacart so I don't know but yeah again like if I was walking into the store with four kids it would be different you know I would not be able to walk out not paying extra with things that they and that's it too so yeah I think it depends on a lot of factors like yes the groceries are all each a little bit percentage higher however I the last four weeks my kids had an art class in town that it was close to the grocery store and I had to wait for them to get done like my oldest three and so I did the grocery shopping it's over now like now the that class has ended but those four weeks I went to the store because town is like you know 10 miles away and so you know it I don't normally do not that that's that far but um I normally do instacart or Walmart plus and I didn't and I had my three little boys with me during all four of those grocery shopping trips I'm like I bought not that I mean I can obviously say no to my kids but it's such a novel thing for us to go to the store that it was like really fun and we got them I let them eat time pick out popsicles and a juice box which is very rare we don't do that but we never get those things and so I'm like that probably right there was the cost savings for and it's you know there's no nutritional value out of there so it wasn't like they were any less hungry because I bought that so it really was just money lost totally fine like it was a fun thing to do but I could see how if I always did stuff like that it would definitely be cheaper to not do that yeah you just have to you know do you really really need groceries in your house and it's really important that you don't spend an extra ten dollars then you might need to go to the grocery store and do it yourself and tell your kids right or your husband know like we got cereal yeah that we didn't need yes and Goldfish crackers that I don't normally buy you know right exactly yeah you know those kind of things but you know when we're talking about having food Security in our house and not being able to afford groceries you know you really need to think about if you can get more groceries in your home if you went to the store on on your own right you know and did the shopping and be able to make those better choices or if it's better for you not to take nine kids into the grocery store and you know that's better for you that those hidden costs on the instacart and the savings that you're not getting a lot of people just don't realize that they're not getting them um and so to make people aware of that yes yeah that is something to consider yeah if you're on a very three tight grocery budget to know that that exists is very good and like you said there are certain things that you can pick out and inspect for me it's and again it has to be weighed out for me if you're I'll take whatever if you're grocery shopping for me like it's fine if you pick out those particular potatoes but in some situations like if this was me a decade ago that would have been for sure enough to deter me from doing it so I think it just depends on like where you are in your life right now and then other things you know you can have delivered to your house and it doesn't change the price of it at all so yeah um you know right order from different places and and it arrives and it's lovely and all of the things uh-huh yeah there's there's certain places to pick and choose convenience and when it makes sense to go do it yourself and then for sourcing meat we do a yearly me order so we normally order half of a a beef half a cow once a year or half of a hug once a year and then those are local farmers so um for that I suggest asking like on your local Facebook groups who is doing that who who the farmers are in your area that sell you know beef by the year you know and so normally you pay that upfront you pay a deposit and then sometimes depends on it is sometimes you have to pay a monthly payment until it's done for a year and then sometimes it's just ready and you can pick it up but asking in your local Facebook groups is normally the best way to try to figure that out or checking with your local butcher if you're looking to Source meat so some of the the page subscription boxes aren't always the best deal if you're trying to to fill up your freezer and you have room for that oh right yeah no they're they're convenient and they're nice in some cases but definitely not the cheapest way to do it have you worked out the numbers with buying half of beef versus just picking up meat at the grocery store and how does that compare we normally spend around 1200 a year on meat so it ends up being about a hundred dollars a month does that include processing for you guys yeah okay yeah so it's a little bit higher here I think yeah it's around twelve hundred dollars a year you know give or take how big the cow is all the things that I took my grandma to the grocery store yesterday and she bought like one little package of a hamburger and it was 23 and I was like are you sure you know like I was freaking out because it just seemed like it was so much you know and all of the things but being able to you know buy those items that we for sure are going to use and we're going to use all the way it just it makes sense for our family to do it that way yeah yeah us too for sure also just quality it's that's what I'm going for more than anything else like it could be more expensive but it would still be worth it to me to have that good high quality meat I want to take a quick break from this episode to tell you about something that I absolutely love in my kitchen and that is Redmond Real Salt up till now I use that in my cooking I use it in my ferments whenever you make foods from scratch like bone broth and sauerkraut you use a lot of salt now I'm into this cheese making thing where I also am making a brine I need a high quality salt in large quantities so I'm buying these huge buckets and bags of salt and the place that I have found to Source them from that is the least expensive but then the highest quality just that blend of both is Redmond Real Salt it's the only salt I've used in my kitchen for a while now trying to think of exactly how long definitely over a year Redmond has kindly offered simple Farmhouse life listeners a 15 off discount by using my link it'll automatically be applied after you use my link whenever you add something to your cart and you go to check out there will be 15 taken off my link is bit dot Lee forward slash Farmhouse Redmond bit.ly forward slash Farmhouse Redmond all lowercase bitly is case sensitive I've learned lately so make sure you're typing that in all lowercase to get 15 off Redmond Real Salt if you are from scratch cook like myself I highly recommend the 10 pound bag or gallon bucket I've ordered it either way but I really like buying it in bulk because I can use the discount code for a larger purchase which means that I'm getting more off again head to bit.ly forward slash Farmhouse Redmond to get Redmond Real Salt in your kitchen so what are your tips on healthy good quality protein as far as you know which which cuts and which things are you avoiding as far as budget goes well one of the kind of funny things is we have a soy allergy all of us girls in the house have a soy allergy and one of my daughters we also thought for years she had an egg allergy and we actually found out it was getting commercial eggs that were soy fed the chickens were soy fed that would transfer it into the um the byproduct the eggs and so she ironically has also been a vegetarian since she was seven years old and so we after we found this out like years into her being a vegetarian and her being able to get eggs back into our diet after we found out if we raised our own chickens she could eat them we now think that if she was willing to um try to eat meat again and it was grass-fed and not grain fed with soy it would be okay like her body was naturally telling us that she couldn't handle the soy in the grains so a lot of people don't know that that a lot of people are allergic to Soy and don't even think about grains that the you know the cows are eating or different animals are eating so knowing that if you have an allergy for something like that it could be showing up in other places so you had no idea that it was showing up in is a big thing and then yeah we prefer like me we just by the normal we don't get anything crazy well you can get some really crazy stuff when you um buy a cow so we don't do the tongue oh we don't do random weird things you know like we have just the basic things that we would use in our house yeah I was listening to I think it was a I think it was Joel saliton recently on a podcast and he was talking about how it used to be way back in the day before we were able to produce grain like we are now with all of our Modern Machinery that the expensive meat was the chicken and pork because because they couldn't just live on grass like cows can and the peasant meat was was beef which is so interesting because now I think people think of steak and you know that's like the more expensive meat I still think I still think pound per pound you can do better with beef than you can anything other things but yeah thinking about those high quality protein sources that you get the most protein fat all the things that you need without you know with the least cost is something to consider that to me in a lot of ways is a is a really smart way to look at it like calorie for calorie pound for pound protein for protein what's giving the most nutrition for my dollar those are the places that I would think about first if I was thinking about cutting really small percentages from the grocery budget so we do like whenever I make ground hamburger like ground anything for taco meat or meatloaf or anything I am trying to buy the best meat that we can so for us it's straight from the farmer but then I try to stretch out that meat as much as I can also so for like when I'm making tacos I'm adding beans and peppers and onions to that and I'm stretching out taco meat and then Takami I think it's the very first one that people don't think about to batch cook so you know cook up three to five pounds of taco meat and use what you're going to use for dinner and then divide that up and get it into the freezer and then on a busy night that's a super easy one to like I've pulled out taco meat and we're having tacos crotches or whatever but that you know three pounds I can turn into 10 dinners you know or you know whatever however big your family is at the time you know kind of thing and then whenever I'm making like meatloafs or meatballs those kind of things I'm adding like cauliflower rice to it or zucchini other things that I'm hiding in there that help stretch that meat budget out so they're still getting the high quality meat by stretching it out to more dinners yeah that makes sense what are some of your other go-to fast meals because somebody asks in the frequently asked questions what are easy cheap healthy meals that don't take a lot of time to make or prep for I think you'll agree with me um eggs because we have chickens there's always eggs that need to be used to yeah I think anybody that has chickens know that eggs could be anything for breakfast to dinner but we used to have a list of like things that we could eat and have within 30 minutes and it's changed a little bit since our kids have moved and I'm diabetic so like pasta isn't on the list anymore like it used to be but oh yeah that's too fast I know like quesadillas are always like something that's super easy that we have I do a Mexican quinoa like one pot dish that's on the blog and that's really great it's a vegetarian and I can freeze extra of it which is great I love anything that I can freeze ahead of time but I do a lot of one night a week I try to make something that I can put in the freezer so I have it for dinner that night and I can have you know two to four other nights and then at least like two times a week we're rotating just straight meals out of the freezer that I'm not cooking that night which helps a lot it saves money yeah that is nice to have that for go-to what are some of your tricks for using up eggs we've been trying to come up with a lot lately and I'll tell you one of mine my daughter's been making this custard because we also have a lot of milk and so we put a dozen egg yolks in it and we've been making marshmallows with the egg whites but then I got really sick of them like I've had too many of those like I'm done with those and we learned that that you can make an angel food cake with a low amount of sugar and flour and a dozen egg whites so I'm like there's that's how we can get all like and then of course meals like quiches and we do breakfast tacos for any meal of the day so what do you have any egg tricks there's a lemon bar recipe on our blog also that takes like a dozen eggs which is nice oh so you all have to check that out even it takes a dozen eggs I'm like tell me more that's really high protein even if it's a dessert yeah yeah so and that one's allergy friendly and diabetic friendly also because of what we need for our family but um yeah so what's this I have to look it up what's the sweetener in it uh monk fruit probably it's been a year since fruit is something you use most of the time here but yeah so okay if everybody is home we are well I'm diabetic and then with my reflective sympathetic dystrophy we have any additives or preservatives flare me up um and then normally it's not that day it's like three days later like oh I went out to eat and now Wednesday I don't feel good you know or whatever right but um soy glued in Dairy raw sugar cane have been our allergies that we've been dealing with for years oh wow and then the one vegetarian in the house so I I really do know how to cook with you know all these different things but yeah so the lemon bars is a good one for eggs I went random on you and came back but the lemon bars for eggs is a good one and then I normally make like egg bites like Starbucks you know egg bites now and put them in the freezer so then on mornings when I don't want to cook they're easy to defrost and then warm them back up so we use a lot of those in the spring and summer um and then I freeze them for the rest of the year when we don't have as many eggs so that's a good idea so do you have that recipe on the blog as well I don't because I just kind of throw in whatever I'm using yeah understandable that is one like a little sort of like a miniature egg casserole yeah yeah so you can do them I use them in the super cubes like silicone things occasionally too which hold it to like one cut which is like a perfect portion for me for breakfast but yeah so whenever I'm trying to use up Peppers or onions or I have breakfast sausage yeah spinach I just strained those all together and then cooking them up and then putting them in the freezer okay that's a good idea I kind of forgot about egg casseroles like that's something that I used to do a lot of and then I you know how it is like you you do things a lot and then all of a sudden somehow it gets out of your habit and you completely forget that it exists I do that all the time yeah that's what I keep um all of the meals that I'm I make in like one little notebook and so then it's nice to be able to flip back and like oh last May I really wanted ribs or whatever it was and to be able to look back um even like in March I remember like oh I had ruins last year in March you know so then it was nice to be able to see that yeah yeah seasonally how things change and sound good and and when you're thinking of mellow ideas it's nice to know your own family is wanting to eat and having a list of those uh-huh it is nice I I Rely heavily on my blog and YouTube channel as that record for me I'm like what was I cooking last April or last May I'm looking at that helps to refresh my memory okay so tell us where we can best find you what resources you you have you've mentioned a few different books and your blog so where do you want to send people who would like to know more would like to learn more about budgeting and meal planning and then keeping the food fresh that you have so that you actually use it all so we post something brand new every single day on the cross Legacy Instagram page so I always joke I have a Milling list but I always joke that's my mailing list like if anything new is happening exciting anything's you know going on it's going to happen on the Instagram page and then it gets you know forwarded out everywhere from there but everywhere on all social media platforms I'm the cross Legacy and then the crosslegacy.com and we have a book called I bought it now what which you can buy on the cross Legacy or it's an Amazon bestseller which is kind of cool and then oh that's awesome yeah and then we have a grocery course also that it teaches you how I take inventory and rotate food and how I buy things how I keep to the budget and that is available on the cross Legacy also and that's a virtual class that you can join anytime like I joined your blog course awesome so many great resources and I think you know they're also helpful for people because we do not want to be part of the statistic of throwing away 60 of our food right that's the worst that's if anything's bad for the grocery budget that's the one yeah and then I have over 280 videos on YouTube also so um we normally put a new video up on YouTube every week but Instagram is like my baby is what I say yeah this is where yeah everything branches out from there yeah we'll also leave down in the show notes or the description box any of the links that you talked about on here so thank you so much for joining us this has just been so exciting like you literally have changed my life and it's just so neat to be able to talk to you thank you I really appreciate it all right well thank you so much for listening to this episode and I will see you in the next one [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Simple Farmhouse Life

Views: 91,902

Keywords: simplefarmhouselife

Id: eCewh1lHJiE

Length: 59min 46sec (3586 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 01 2023