My Simple Wyoming Life

So my daughter has had her first week & second week in an American school, she was so excited that she did not have to wear a school inform! I am excited that she is so far liking school, which is great because I hated school and I swear if my daughter gets bullied I am turning into a Karen (minus the hair cut). Yes I am worried about my daughter getting bullied as she does have some delays along with speech and language issues, I think most parents in cases like mine are normally worried about their child and school. But as I said she is loving school so far and I hope that continues and I hope she keeps trying the food at school as all kids get free breakfast and lunch at this school which is amazing! But I would be more then willing to pay for her school lunches specially if it was something she was willing to eat or at least try!

Now as I said in a previous post I have put in a large Azure Standard order or haul as some say and this is also my first time buying with Azure Standard. I do watch a few different youtubers and those that do buy from Azure Standard do also recommened them, so I thought what the heck let me compare some items. So some of the pricing is pretty good on a few items it was quite a bit cheaper then say walmart when shipping is not figured in. Now yes there was a fee to ship which it was 8.5% of the total cost of my order, now I feel that I did offset that by using a discount code. My total cost before discount code is as follows: Items $367.95 & shipping $31.28 for a total of $399.23. Now the discount code I found was for 15% off my whole order so I saved a total of $55.19 thus making my new total only $344.04. Now I was always going to buy all these item regardless of the discount code (but the code really did help!) plus I did want to give it a fair try with items I would normally buy elsewhere, plus they were cheaper for 5lbs of white sesame seeds (even with a shipping fee) which I do like to put on my challah bread and they had cranberries and I thought what the heck I’ll make my own cranberry juice and jelly!

Now from my understanding with Azure Standard is there is a chance that when your order cut off time hits and they start processing your order onto the truck there is a chance that something you ordered has sold out well before they got to your order. But you are not charge for items that are missing from your order i.e sold out so your total will update before final shipment with the new cost and what was not fullfilled for your order along with the day and time of your drop off. Now as stated I ordered a bit of stuffed and here is what I ordered.

• Azure Market Organics Cornmeal. 25lbs. $19.95.
• Azure Market Sea Salt. 50lbs. $30.95.
• Azure Market Hulled White Sesame Seeds. 5lbs. $14.17.
• Azure Market Frozen Raspberrie Peices. 5lbs. $12.65.
• Azure Market Frozen Natural Whole Blueberries.5lbs $13.12 .
• Azure Market Raw Berry/Wildflower Honey. 3lbs. $12.89.
• Azure Market Hulled Millet. 5lbs.$6.58.
• Azure Market Poppy Seeds. 1lb. $4.81.
• Azure Market Organics Heirloom Pastry Flour (Organic). 25lbs. $22.60
• Azure Market Organics Hulled Barley (Organic). 25lbs $15.05.
• Plastic Bucket Without Lid. 5 Gallon. 3×5 gallon buckets. $20.55 x2. Total of 6×5 gallon buckets
• Gamma Seal Lid For 5 Gallon Bucket. 3x1ct (so 3 lids). $24.00 x2. Total of 6 gamma lids.
• Azure Market Frozen Natural Whole Blackberries. 5lbs. $16.82.
• Azure Market Organics Flaxseeds (Organic) 5lbs. $8.66.
• Azure Market Frozen Natural Whole Cranberries. 5lbs. $15.57
• Azure Market Organics Coconut Cream Powder (Organic). 3lb. $25.54.
• Azure Market Organics Sunflower Honey. 1.5lbs. $7.98.
• Azure Hearthstone Molasses Crinkle Cookie Dough. 24oz.$8.95
• Azure Market Organics Blackstrap Molasses.1gal. $21.75.
• Azure Market Organics Buttermilk Powder (Non Instant Organic).16oz. $9.43. Clearance 10% of honey spilled on bag
• Azure Market White Sesame Seeds. 1lb. $2.19. Clearance 50% off bbd 8/14/24
• Azure Husbandry Frozen Fresh Pear Juice. 1gal. $4.98.On Sale 50% off
• Azure Market Organics Dark Wheat Bran.4lb. $4.12. On Sale 20% off

So I ordered a lot of food stuff that I know will last me a bit but I may order a few more of some items for either Sept or Oct before bad weather hits but I will need to double check with the person who over sees the drop location to see if they will meet the minium order for a drop in either of those months.

So 2 days before my order cut off I originally had 18lbs of cherries for only around $21 on sale at that time (that was only like $1.17 per pound which was cheap!), sadly those sold out before my order was processed and I missed out on them so I removed them from my order and added other stuff! I also originally had a 5lb box of organic frozen whole cranberries on my order but I knew the organic cranberries were more then likely going to sell out before my order was processed as they were about a dollar cheaper than the natural ones so I added the non organic cranberries and just removed the organic as I did want some cranberries still. Now I was originally going to spend a total of $294 with shipping however I did find a few deals on a few items I wanted to try so I went ahead and had a much larger order. *below are some of the items in my order what is not shown is the gallon of pear juice, the gallon of molasses and the cookie dough is not shown but I did bake some and there is a photo of them baked*

Now before I went to pick up my order on a Tuesday, I also got a new chest freezer (parents got it for us as they just wanted me to focus on buying food so I am very thankful for that) as it would of course give me lots of room for any of the frozen food I got from there and any place else which this came in handy. The chest freezer is a 7cu.ft chest freezer and I believe it was on sale for $198 with taxes I believe it was $210 and we got it at walmart, which thankfully it was light so I was able to gently slide and lift it down the stairs into my basement hobbit hole by myself. I have had to re-arrange pretty much my whole kitchen/dinning and livingroom/my bedroom in order to get my own freezer in my space (parents have a few freezers down here to) but I am quite happy with how things have worked out! I am also quite happy with how much I have managed to save in order to place a large order from Azure Standard, again most of the products were either a little cheaper or only just a tad pricer then say non organic equivalant and the discount code off set my shipping plus a little bit more so to me it was well worth it for at least my first order and I am thrilled!

We also managed to snag a few yellow sticker deals on more 1lb packs of ground turkey from both the Kroger store brand and jenny-o brand and at $2.19 for Kroger brand and $3.49 I believe for jenny-o brand.We also went back to the same stores where we got the first lot of yellow sticker ground turkery and we got a great deal again on jenny-o brand at only $2.49 per 1lb pack so I bought up that lot as well my parents found some that were a bit more at $2.95 per 1lb pack and they got the last 4 packs. There were also sales on for both 5oz cans of starkist light chunk tuna for $0.99 (max 10 cans) and 2.5 oz pouches of bumble bee tuna for $0.99 as well, I got both as the pouches I feel would be easier to carry in a bag of some sort and I see those being used more in homemade MRE’s which I am trying to figure out the best way to do those for my family! We also found some great clearance deals on little girl toys I found rainbow high dolls and outfits for a low as $2 and as high as $10. I found the same $10 doll set (it was the rainbow high dream & design fashion studio playset with doll) it’s like $30+ online on some sites!

I also had some money put away and I did put in a few orders on temu, yes a lot of people do not like temu and I get why specially artists and I do report those listing with the artists instagram and/or facebook name explaining they are counterfit items etc. Now I want to make it clear most things we buy in the stores anymore like clothes, home goods etc are made in China, India etc and there is a good chance those items are made in the same factories as the items sold on temu. So either way you are buying items made by underpaid people the only difference is stores make more money off those items more often then not vs those sold straight on temu. Like for example those meat chopper things are $4+ at walmart and only $1-$1.99 on temu, there are many examples and this long blog would be way longer if I listed everything I found cheaper on temu. If you don’t like temu I understand and I support you decision not to buy with them and ask for the same courtesy in return for my descision. Now I did make a few purchases and those should be here some time like Sept 10th so I will be showing what all I got and the price, again I did make a large purchase over all with smaller orders if you will with temu. A biggest bonus too is that from the day you order you have 30 days to request a price adjustment for your orders so if you buy a hello kitty plush and it was $12 and it went on sale for $8 they will give you the $4 differance back in temu credit which never expires or so they claim which is great so you can hold on to that credit refund to go towards a large order or you can get it taken off on your next one. If you do want to keep all your temu credit for one large purchase you will need to make sure that you adjust the credit option at the purchase stage as they do automatically put it on. With that said I have gotten back around $50 at least in temu credit which I will be saving to do a large purchase in the future. I have bought quite a bit of stuff for Hanukkah, Christmas and the kids birthdays as well as some stuff for myself and for my mother. Which I’ll have a post just for this temu order and no I have no links to temu I am not getting anything from them for anything I say maybe I should but I don’t.

Now for my last bit I touched on making my own MREs if you will, well I bought a case of 10 Humanitarian daily ration packs aka HDRs for $30.50 making each full pack only $3.05 per pack. I did end up opening all of them up as I decided after opening my first one that I would use these as a base to make my own. Now there is no promise of variety in any of these packs and that was very apparent in my case of 10. Now before I get into all that I must say that these type of MREs or HDRs as they are called are vegan/vegetarian and most likely kosher and halal safe. Each pack comes with 2 mains a few sides a toaster pastry a cookie or 2 along with peanut butter, jam, spoon to eat with as well as salt, pepper, napkin and matches. Each pack should provide roughly 2,200 caloires per day per pack per person give or take. Now in my case of 10 all 10 packs had lentil stew as one of the mains the other mains were (5 of each of the following) beans and rice in tomatoe sauce and pasta with tomatoes in sauce so no real variety what so ever! However I did try the lentil stew and it tasted like something I ate a lot of as a kid but I could not put my finger on what it reminded me of so I asked my mother, the original bush beans before they screwed around with the recipe! Each pack contains 2 packs of plain crackers (1 of the packs only had one though so have no clue what happend),1 toaster pastry (mine are poptart brand) with no frosting I believe this is because the frosting uses gelatin from pork, 1 shortbread cookie (3 packs actually did not have one instead I got a extra fig bar), fig bar, peanut butter, strawberry jam, spoon,salt & pepper, wet wipe/napkin and a pack of matches. Now one pack I did open had a clear grease smelly grease on a few pouches and I washed it off as best as I could all the pouches in that pack will be kept together just in case something is off. *see below for idea of what you chould get and how they look before being broken open. side note keep a pair os scissors or a knife handy and they are a bit hard to open*

Now I was also sick the last week or is it two? with a stomach bug and then more recently sinus issues so I have had painkillers etc on board so there is a 50/50 chance that I am all over the place then normal and there maybe a few spelling mistakes so I applogize for that if that is the case.