Seeing as a few members have expressed a desire to be able to use what's in their pantry better, I am debating on having a Skool call-type live event on a weekly basis. In this live call, members would be able to submit a list of ingredients they have in their pantries and get ideas for dishes to make with said ingredients... Rather than brainstorming, It would be a mealstorming session... Would this be something you'd like to participate in? Drop any suggestions or questions in the comments!

Just a quick Cherry Pie tossed together. Almost lost it pulling it from the oven though.. the pie plate folded a bit and it almost hit the floor!

$17.52, that's what we saved on our shopping trip JUST on chicken and sausages. That's not counting the savings we had from other items and promotions. A little bit here, a little bit there. It all makes a difference. What could you do with an extra $17.52? Hit me up in the comments with your answers!

The text portion of The Geurilla Guide to Taming Your Food Budget version 1 is going live. This course is still a work in progress. The video portions will be added as they are filmed and ready. There will be updates posted when new video content goes live. Recipes and meal plans will come after the video content. As for other community updates... Live sessions will be added to the calendar and will start on February 20th. Keep an eye out for those. There are loads of big things coming to The Pennywise Pantry, and we're excited to get them going!

In speaking with member @Abigail Ringger she mentioned that she wanted some tips to better manage her freezer and pantry. Rather than run the risk of a crazy long post covering both at once, I'll do quick Freezer tips in this post and will follow up with some video as soon as possible. After some thought, I've decided to share these three freezer tips... Quick Tip #1 - Whenever possible, avoid freezing items in packaging that has excess air space in it. The short explanation to this is simply that excess air space contributes to freezer burn. Freezer burn is the main cause of frozen food waste. I'll be doing a quick video on this after we do our weekly shop to show how you can do this if you don't have a vacuum sealer. Quick Tip #2 - If you aren't already doing this, use a permanent marker to write either the purchased date or the freeze date on your packages. Doing this will help with implementing what I call a FIFO system. FIFO is short for First IN, first OUT. This means the first items you froze should be the first items you use. This will help rotate your freezer stock so it doesn't sit long enough to freezer burn in the event you can't repackage it to have less airspace. Quick Tip #3 - If it's possible, separate your freezer space by item type. We use cardboard boxes. Chicken goes into one, Beef in another, Pork in yet another. Doing this will help find items based on the date you wrote on the package more easily. If you want porkchops, for example, look in the pork box and take the porkchops with the oldest date on them to thaw for your meal. We have multiple freezers here so this is not something we currently do, but have in the recent past. I hope these quick tips are helpful. You may be using one or all of them. If you have any questions or other tips you think may be helpful, I'd love to hear about them in the comments! Oh, and as a little extra, I've included a PDF of a freezer list that we use here at home for those times when we have a lot of freezer items.