Friday Feb 13, 2009 Near and Dear to my HEART: Angel Food Ministries

I wanted to tell you all today about a great ministry out there, in some states it might be called different things (there are different "ministries" that do this, one I can thing of is SHARE) but here it is called Angel Food Ministries (http://www.angelfoodministries.com/) it is countrywide, but it depends on individual churches setting up distribution centers -and keeping them going- to grow the ministry.

We found AFM a few years ago, and I can't tell you what it has done for our family! The first month, we got 1 box, just to try and see what we thought of the food. I tell ya, we were hooked! Overall the food is great! restaurant quality meats for the most part, the veggies are almost always frozen, now they have "shelf stable milk" we always get eggs now, the desserts can be a bit on the odd side, but hey, the kids will usually eat them or we give them away to neighbors! LOL

Here is how our family utilizes this wonderful resource: we are a family of 5. The "main box" feeds a "typical family of 4 for a week" for $30. With that in mind I spend $150 and get 5 boxes (one for each of us) because they send their meats (fresh meats) in servings of 4, so I have to have at least 2 servings to make enough for one dinner for us. Now, there are other things you can add to your order (Senior convenience meals, additional "special boxes" at different prices), but this is just how it works best for MY family. I find that this $150 is enough meat for the entire month. I will add weekly maybe an additional $10 worth of "markdown meat" to the freezer the first few months just so we have some variety, but after that, your freezer will be full with tons of stuff.

The rest of the food in the box, to us, is just "icing on the cake". Meaning- We now have 5 dozen eggs, 5 boxes of shelf stable milk for thickening sauces and gravies or making chocolate milk, a breakfast item (add water pancake mix, muffin mix or cereal type thing), rice or beans, frozen veggies, etc. My pantry gets full fast. That frees up the rest of my "grocery money" for the month for the stuff you always struggle to get- laundry soap, shampoo, toilet paper, etc. You know what I am talking about. That's where I take my coupons and go to http://www.grocerygame.com/ and spend my "extra" money to stock up and save that way. I will talk more about Grocery Game tomorrow.

I wanted to talk about AFM today because, at least at MY site at MY location, we have until Sunday to turn in our orders (yes, they do take food stamps too!), and different areas of the country have different order turn in dates, so please please look it up and get moving on it! I would LOVE to know how many of you start ordering it, and if you like it or not!