Jamerrill Stewart - the encouraging homeschool mom/large family table

[pancakes]

Forgive me if she's been mentioned before but I tried searching and didn't come up with anything. This woman is a mom of seven who has a website called the encouraging homeschool mom (it looks like this site is being updated right now but I've been on it and there's quite a bit there). She now has a new site just for her food, grocery haul, and freezer cooking stuff which was pretty popular on her other site.

I've watched some of her youtube videos and most are about her once a month/twice a month grocery shopping at aldi and walmart. As a mom of eight I do find her 'buy huge amounts of not that many foods' approach strange and I don't feel it's very healthy although her grocery budget is less than half what mine is. To give an idea of what she buys it's 40lbs of bananas, 20 dozen eggs, 20 loaves of bread, 72 taco shells, a case of canned corn, and so on. I don't know how they don't get tired of eating so much of the same foods. She does lots of freezer cooking, even preparing dozens of peanut butter and jelly or lunch meat and cheese sandwiches at once and freezing them. 

http://thelargefamilytable.com

[JMO]

I couldn't imagine eating a defrosted sandwich.  

[Carm_88]

6 minutes ago, JMO said:

I couldn't imagine eating a defrosted sandwich.  

Wouldn't the bread be super soggy? 

[feministxtian]

4 hours ago, Carm_88 said:

Wouldn't the bread be super soggy? 

No...no soggier than a defrosted loaf of bread. When I had my tribe, I bought 30 loaves of bread per month ($0.25 each at the bread store) and took almost half of them to make pb&j sandwiches for the kids. 

I still do once a month shopping for the two of us. Hit the 99 cent store for bread, buns, pasta salad, pasta-roni, rice-a-roni and most paper goods except toilet paper, Smith's for meat (they have FANTASTIC meats reduced in price) and WinCo for everything else. I spend about 250.00 a month, and that's with stocking up against the lean times when I'm not working. I've been paycheckless since the end of November except for a couple of tutoring jobs that don't pay much, and we're still eating good! But...my stocks are starting to run low so it's time to spend an extra 50 bucks or so to start stocking up again once I start getting paid mid-February. 

[pancakes]

6 hours ago, feministxtian said:

No...no soggier than a defrosted loaf of bread. When I had my tribe, I bought 30 loaves of bread per month ($0.25 each at the bread store) and took almost half of them to make pb&j sandwiches for the kids. 

I still do once a month shopping for the two of us. Hit the 99 cent store for bread, buns, pasta salad, pasta-roni, rice-a-roni and most paper goods except toilet paper, Smith's for meat (they have FANTASTIC meats reduced in price) and WinCo for everything else. I spend about 250.00 a month, and that's with stocking up against the lean times when I'm not working. I've been paycheckless since the end of November except for a couple of tutoring jobs that don't pay much, and we're still eating good! But...my stocks are starting to run low so it's time to spend an extra 50 bucks or so to start stocking up again once I start getting paid mid-February. 

How many kids do you have that you would use 30 loaves of bread? I'm genuinely curious. Maybe this lady isn't as out there as I'm imagining her to be. There's ten of us and we use 2-3 loaves of store bought bread plus usually one homemade bread/rolls item per week. I can't imagine what she's doing with 20 loaves in just two weeks but maybe that's normal and we just don't use much bread. The eggs too. 20 dozen eggs in two weeks seems nuts to be but we don't really eat them for breakfasts, they're almost all used for baking. The milk I get, I think she's using around a gallon a day which is on par with what we go through. The yogurt in some of the videos is a huge quantity, like a couple hundred individual yogurt cups.

Some of the videos are a fridge/freezer tour (three fridges and a deep freezer). It seems like more work to grocery shop just once or twice a month and have to deal with those quantities and storing it all in extra fridges than it would be to just go to the store more often.

[feministxtian]

46 minutes ago, pancakes said:

How many kids do you have that you would use 30 loaves of bread?

At the time I had 5 kids and a husband. School and work lunches daily took about a loaf of bread (give or take). That was per month. At the time we didn't have a second refrigerator (which would have been REALLY useful). 

I'm thinking about buying another small chest freezer now...

[Four is Enough]

We had a chest freezer when all six of us lived at home.. we stocked up on meat when we could, and definitely bought bread in bulk! Frozen bread thaws fine. I don't know if I'd make sandwiches ahead of time, though.

I have always found that buying in bulk, then staying out of the grocery store, where impulse buys add to the bill, will help save money in the long run. I'd send Mr. Four for produce and milk,etc. He's better at resisting temptation.. for some reason, my travels always went down the snack aisle..

[Granwych]

When wychling and FSIL lived here I would cook up a storm frequently and freeze quite a bit.  Then, the summer they moved out we had a hurricane and lost power for a week.  I cried at having to toss a full chest freezer of food.  We used the (unplugged) freezer for storage until last year when I began filling it up again.  Last week a local store had a promotion of 10 lbs of boneless/skinless chicken breasts for $1.29/lb.  Freezer's almost full again! 

[feministxtian]

1 hour ago, Granwych said:

When wychling and FSIL lived here I would cook up a storm frequently and freeze quite a bit.  Then, the summer they moved out we had a hurricane and lost power for a week.  I cried at having to toss a full chest freezer of food.  We used the (unplugged) freezer for storage until last year when I began filling it up again.  Last week a local store had a promotion of 10 lbs of boneless/skinless chicken breasts for $1.29/lb.  Freezer's almost full again! 

that's why I'd LOVE to have another small freezer. I cram things in our little fridge freezer...pack that puppy full. I do things like buy roasts and cut them into fajita or stew chunks, same with pork roasts. The only thing I buy already frozen/prepared in the meat department is chicken. IF I buy ground beef, I buy enough to make 2-3 meatloafs and freeze those. Its just easier that way. 

[pancakes]

We have a big upright freezer and use it all the time but mostly for bulk meat purchases. We get chicken 80lbs at a time, salmon in 30lb cases, and big 20-30lb whole sirloins that I trim and slice into steaks. I also stock up on turkeys around thanksgiving. One year I took all the kids when they had a limit of one per customer and we left with 7 huge turkeys for all of $7-8 each.

[MamaJunebug]

Slow cook rice and slow cook lasagna!

I love the fringe benefits of visiting FJ!!!

[lawfulevil]

I have a small chest freezer and there's only 2 of us most of the time. I try to make food ahead when I'm having a good/energetic day to get through the bad days, because giving in to fast food just makes me feel worse. Only one of us eats meat, but if I remember to spice/sauce and pack individual portions for the sous vide it's pretty painless to just add it onto whatever I'm making for dinner anyway (you can go direct from frozen, it just takes longer).

[acheronbeach]

Shocking. Another homeschooling mom with shitty spelling and grammar.

[emesbe]

I've been subscribed to her channel for a while, I find it fascinating and annoying at the same time. If I remember correctly, the husband is not working, their income is only from her websites. The way she speaks to her children grates on me. She's got the "sweet" fundie wife voice down pat.

[Granwych]

20 hours ago, MamaJunebug said:

Slow cook rice and slow cook lasagna!

I love the fringe benefits of visiting FJ!!!

aaaaannndddd...now I want me some red beans and rice.  And lentils, rice, and caramelized onion.  And golubki (Polish cabbage rolls.)

I could go on and on.  Thank you, MamaJuneBug!

[Gobsmacked]

I'm sat in Starbucks reading this. Somehow my salmon bagel just isn't cutting it right now. I love Golubki! My late MIL made the best. Also beetroot soup, slightly spiced. Perfect for a wintery day.

[feministxtian]

Now I'm hungry and the pantry is bare bones...hub gets his check on Wednesday but I don't get a full paycheck from school until 2/17 and I have to get my car fixed first...shit. 

[Black Aliss]

Making brown rice in a slow cooker--3-4 hours. Making brown rice in a rice cooker--25-30 minutes.

Making lasagna in a slow cooker--4-6 hours. Making lasagna in the oven--45 minutes.

Making yogurt in a slow cooker--11 hours. (Sounds like a great way to make your family really sick)

WTF is wrong with this woman?  Once I got to the various slow cooker recipes that required pouring some kind of bottled sauce over raw boneless, skinless chicken breasts and cooking for 3-4 hours a dish that shouldn't take more than 15-20 minutes stovetop, I got too queasy to continue.

[Howl]

anybody use a pressure cooker?  I'm thinking of getting one, mainly for cooking beans.  I don't have the patience or attention to cook for a few hours, but I could pressure cook up a storm. 

[Walking Cat Bed]

On 1/16/2017 at 11:26 AM, Black Aliss said:

Making brown rice in a slow cooker--3-4 hours. Making brown rice in a rice cooker--25-30 minutes.

Making lasagna in a slow cooker--4-6 hours. Making lasagna in the oven--45 minutes.

Making yogurt in a slow cooker--11 hours. (Sounds like a great way to make your family really sick)

WTF is wrong with this woman?  Once I got to the various slow cooker recipes that required pouring some kind of bottled sauce over raw boneless, skinless chicken breasts and cooking for 3-4 hours a dish that shouldn't take more than 15-20 minutes stovetop, I got too queasy to continue.

I do soup and other low-effort meals in the crock pot, but that's more because I can set it up and turn it on and then go do something else. Perfect for all-day study days. Plus it makes the apartment/house smell good.

 

But that's Grad Student Gourmet, not homeschooling mom domestic expert whatevering.

[SadieJane]

We (a family of five) can go thru eggs, milk and bread like it is nothing. We get bread and bulk and freeze it, and eggs we just a couple dozen from aldi every couple of days( son is autistic and has texture issues with meat, but loves eggs. Yay Protein.), but I have had a traumatic incident involving freezing milk that has resulted in me never buying that in bulk. Aldis knows me well. Anyway, you can make anything with eggs, which is why we go thru so much, and I like to think that maybe she knows this too. I am probably wrong, and giving her way too much credit, but maybe she knows the egg secrets....

[kassie]

On 16/01/2017 at 6:50 PM, Howl said:

anybody use a pressure cooker?  I'm thinking of getting one, mainly for cooking beans.  I don't have the patience or attention to cook for a few hours, but I could pressure cook up a storm. 

I'm a big gadget person.

 

I just my pressure cooker once a week, probably. To make rice, pressure cook meat, slow cook stuff, etc. It's really easy once you get the hang of it is easy.

[LadyCrow1313]

Just went down this rabbit hole, & noticed a wee error after clicking on both the once a month shopping & the weekly grocery links:

"Don't Worry, I'll Still here!"

Overall, the site doesn't seem to be that bad or over the top.

:: shrugs ::

 

[crawfishgirl]

I also like to cook in the crockpot.  It's an easy way to make soups and chilies - usually I just cut the veggies and put them in with the other ingredients, and not a lot of other activity is typically needed (some meats need to be browned first before going in).  Most recipes discourage stirring, since the heating element is on all sides except for the top and taking the lid off a crockpot lets out too much heat.  I can leave the house while it's cooking.  When the kids have after-school activities, we come home and dinner is ready.  It's a win-win for us.

[BiblebeltCath]

On 1/15/2017 at 10:03 AM, emesbe said:

She's got the "sweet" fundie wife voice down pat.

I stumbled upon her channel when I was watching a grocery haul and YouTube started her video up next. She DOES have that voice, although I've noticed that sometimes it disappears about halfway through the video! It often looks like she takes fashion and hair advice from Michelle Duggar.