Paolo works for the State.

He has for over thirty years…..,,,,,,,,or maybe it’s forty by now.

It’s been for a long time, whichever it is…

He gets paid one time per month.

A lot of our friends think that would be difficult to manage…………….food-shopping-wise, bills, stuff like that…

Maybe it is…………………but I’ve been doing it for a very long time…

I do a hit on three different food sources at the beginning of each month.

First———-Dollar Tree, for the obvious bargains………..then…

Second———-WalMart…

Then lastly, Winn-Dixie for anything that the other two didn’t have on their shelves that we needed for the month…

What’s hard about this routine is the volume that’s necessary…

Multiple carts…

Large volume purchases…

Heavy weight cans and bags…

Economy-sized everything…

Lots of stuff at one time…

……….I figure that if I buy all of the food at the beginning of each month……….then I know that we will eat all month long..

It’s worked.

But I do have to say that during the last week of a thirty-one day month my meal planning can get quite unique and creative………………….but tasty…………and fairly nutritious.

My daughters just reminded me of packed lunches at school that had peanut butter tortillas in them………………what can I say?…

Creative………………………….and nutritious…………….for the open-minded.

………and being open-minded is good………….

………at our home…if you’re not open-minded…you can be hungry…

There’s just so much you can do starting with a simple roux sauce……………….and hidden left-overs……………..I believe that covering things with a cream sauce makes left-overs NOT be left-overs anymore…

I believe in lard, butter and refined sugar………………..they make the world go ’round…………….well, that and duct tape…….(but that’s for another post).

But, back to my monthly shopping binge…

My younger daughter and I just got back from the #2 Step of our shopping sojourn.

We left Walmart with three shopping carts filled with groceries………….and an impending storm.

……………..and then the well-timed, thunder-boomer decided to sweep through as we were trying to sling bags in and load up our truck.

I’m here to say that wet, plastic shopping bags don’t stay on their intended grocery items…………….they kept slipping off and spewing the canned goods and pasta boxes everywhere before they were deposited in the truck.

Keep in mind the back seat of my truck normally looks like a mobile tack room………….so, wet groceries and sweat-dried bridles and saddles that were immediately re-hydrated with the rain storm———it all made for a steamy, smelly trip back home.

Not too bad once we mud-bogged through the front driveway.

I got as close to the garage door as possible.

It was good though because all four of our family were home, so the wet, slippery un-loading and un-packing wasn’t too much of a headache…

………..and………..here’s a plus………..

We eat for another month!