You Go, Girl!

My oldest daughter passed her driver's permit test today and can now terrorize the road (and her parents!). She passed on the first try, ain't she a smarty?!

Congrats, Jana!

Crazyville Food Shoppe

People are sometimes amazed when I tell them that I average $125 a week for groceries/household products for my family of six - this includes shampoo, toilet paper, cleaning supplies, etc. I know that there are lots of people who do it for way less (see Money Saving Mom for an example of $40 a week - although in my defense, she has a much smaller family and access to a CVS!). But when I look at the governments numbers I'm doing pretty well: The USDA Thrifty Food Plan (upon which food stamp allotments are based) says that to feed my family it should cost $189.00 a week. That is the food stamp amount, if I went with the "moderate" plan, it should cost me $240.20 a week - and that is just food, not household supplies. So, though I have a long way to go to be among the truly frugal people, I'm feeling ok. And I know I'm doing better than a lot of my friends, because they told me I am!

How to keep food prices low? You have heard a lot of the stuff before: stay away from prepared foods and make stuff from scratch, pay attention to unit pricing, buy in bulk if it makes sense, eat some vegetarian meals, use store brands, use coupons. I do all of these things and know they work to keep the budget low, but my secret is shopping from my basement. Whenever I need an ingredient for my favorite recipe, I go to my basement store and get what I need - and it is always at the lowest price I can find it!

No, I don't have a grocery store in the basement, I have my food storage, what most people would call a pantry. Our church stresses the importance of having a supply of non-perishable food on hand in case of job loss, emergency, natural disaster, or whatever. So, I have an awful lot. It can cost a lot of money to buy a lot of food at once, but I have a strategy.

My strategy is this: when I find something on sale, a really, really good sale, a won't-be-this-low-again-for-awhile sale, I buy lots of whatever it is. For instance, if I find spaghetti sauce for 69 cents a can, I'll buy 10 of them (or more, depending on what amount I already have on hand). Once I have those 10, I won't buy spaghetti sauce until I can get it at 69 cents a can again. I have kept a price book for a long time and am pretty aware of what a "good" price is in my area. I have limits of what I'll spend on certain things and I won't go over. But I very rarely have to because I have a stash of stuff in my basement and I can wait until it goes on sale again (I'm having to adjust my "limits" on stuff due to the rising food prices, sigh). By doing this, I can always make spaghetti with 69 cent spaghetti sauce instead of deciding "Hmm, I think we'll have spaghetti this week" then put it on the grocery list, then buy it for $1.79 a can. I just go shopping in the basement.

(Mind you, the ambiance isn't beautiful - please remember this is my basement!!) I do the same thing with chili, tuna, canned soups, canned beans, canned tomatoes, and lots of other stuff. Some stuff I buy in large quantities at Costco and store them in big white 5 gallon buckets:Of course, you want to use food-grade buckets and not the ones your paint came in! I use the ones my strawberries come in every year and then I have bought a few. Things like rice, lentils, and giant bags of chocolate chips get stored in here (Because, really, what is life without chocolate?). With a few exceptions I keep anything not in a can or jar in a plastic bin -you know, those under-the-bed type boxes? We had a mouse problem years ago and now I'm a little compulsive about it. I also have my home-canned stuff down here: It is getting kind of low because it is June and I will start canning for this year in July and August. I try to only can about a years worth that way it doesn't sit around for a long time and lose quality. I don't always get the numbers quite right, but I try! I also have the most important stuff stored:Can't live without it (does anyone know of a local chapter of Diet Soda Anonymous? Never mind, I haven't reached rock bottom yet and I'm not ready!) But the same strategy holds here, I won't pay over $2.50 for a 12 pack. When it goes on sale for that amount or less, I buy a lot. I keep the important stuff for my kids too:
I love going "shopping in my basement." Hope you enjoyed this tour of Jill's Crazy World Food Shoppe, come by again soon!

Jill

Menu Plan Monday

Menu Plan Monday is being hosted at Heavenly Homemakers this week. Check it out for tons of menu ideas,

This week I am attempting to, once again, limit my food budget (with the exception of Friday because we are going to get together with my sister and her family for 4th of July and party!!). I'm limiting my food budget because I want to be able to splurge next week when we go on vacation. So this week, I'm eating a lot out of the pantry/food storage and mostly getting fruits and veggies from the store. So this is what we are eating this week:

Breakfasts:

• French toast (I will make extras to freeze so these will last at least two days, maybe three)
• bagels
• granola
• homemade bread toast with homemade jam

Lunches:

• mac and cheese (probably from a box but I might get energetic and make my own)
• leftovers
• pbj's
  
• mini-pizza (english muffins with toppings)
  

Dinners:

• Spanish Tortilla ( basically a potato frittata with caramelized onions, potatoes and eggs), veggies with ranch dip, home-canned pears with cheese
  
• Hawaiian Haystacks
  
• Broccoli Cheese soup (freezer meal), bread or maybe biscuits
• Taco-stuffed shells, mexican rice, tortilla chips, fruit
• Restaurant-Style Chinese Chicken from Saving Dinner, rice, steamed veggies
• 4th of July - hoagie sandwiches, fruit salad, chips, cookies,
  

Snacks:

no-bake cookies (it has been hot here!)
coffee cake/snack cake
veggies with ranch
apple-oatmeal bars (recipe with pictures tomorrow!)

Notes:

• You will notice that I don't have days assigned to meals (except for the 4th), that is because I decide the night before or the morning of, what I feel like based on how busy my day is, what the weather is like, or what needs to be used up. I like the flexibility of not being tied to a specific meal.
• There are a lot of egg-heavy dishes/snacks (french toast, spanish tortilla, cake, etc). Because we have chickens in our backyard and therefore a continuous supply of eggs, I consider eggs a "pantry" item and also very cheap for us!
  

What are you eating this week?

Jill

Book Review - Cheap. Fast. Good.

In my endless quest to find the perfect cookbook I check out tons of them from the library. I love it when I find one that seems to have been written with me in mind. Such is the case with Cheap. Fast. Good! by Beverly Mills and Alicia Ross. When I buy a cookbook I go through it page by page and put post-it notes on the recipes I would like to try. As you can see from the picture, there were lots in this book! However, the recipes aren't the only reason to buy this book. It is filled with tips and ideas for how to cut your food budget. There is a section in the back where the authors describe their experience trying to feed their families for under $100 a week. The post the actual menus they used and notes on their experiences. Now, for us, ahem, seasoned homemakers (read: old), some of the advice might seem like stuff we learned already. For a beginning cook the advice is invaluable. In fact, this book is my standard wedding shower gift - I've probably bought eight copies in the last two years to give to new brides at church.

However, with the rising cost of food, I find myself turning to this book and the ideas and tips more and more. It is good for even us "seasoned" cooks to be reminded of all those basics. Some of the informational sections include such topics as "How to use up a big hunk of ham," "Making school lunches reasonable," "Super potato toppers (different things to put on top of baked potatoes)," "Making your own convenience items," and a look at "what keeps you out of the kitchen" and how to overcome it!

But really, you buy a cook book for the recipes, and this book is full of good ones. Especially if you have children in your home, these are winners. My favorite recipe is "Good Ol' Beans and Rice" on pg. 173. This page is splattered and stained, a testament to how often it is used (I actually almost have it memorized). Others that I love are Mu-Shu Pork at Home, Mindless Meatball Minestrone, Onion Chopped Steak with Easy Gravy, and Winter Roasted Carrots.

I really like this cookbook and would recommend it to anyone who is trying to feed a family and keep their food budget under control.

Winter Roasted Carrots (Jill's Reader's Digest Condensed version - the the actual cookbook for a much more detailed and, I'm sure, better worded version!)

Preheat oven to 475 degrees. Spray a 9x13-inch pan with cooking spray. Peel and cut 1 lb of carrots into pieces approximately 2 to 3 inches long, 1/2" wide and 1/2" thick.

Place them in the pan. Peel two small or one large onion and quarters, then cut the quarters in half crosswise and add them to the pan.

Peel several cloves of garlic and add the whole cloves to the pan.

Drizzle 1 Tbs. olive oil over the vegetables and then sprinkle them with 1/2 tsp dried thyme an 1/4 tsp salt. Stir and toss the vegetables until they are coated.

Roast, uncovered, for 45 minutes, stirring every 10 to 15 minutes. Remove pan from the oven and drizzle 1 tsp balsamic vinegar over the vegetables and toss. Serve immediately.

Notes:

• We add washed, chopped red, russet and/or sweet potatoes to this dish.
  
• We have also added red peppers, broccoli, and lots of other things. Basically this recipe is a basic recipe for roasted vegetables and you can add anything that seems like it might be good roasted!
• Don't leave off the balsamic vinegar. At first it sounded weired to me but it adds an amazing tangy flavor without overwhelming it with vinegar flavor.
  
• We add more salt - it just seems to need more salt. Probably not as healthy, but it sure tastes good.
  
• We love to mash the roasted garlic cloves and use the "garlic paste" to flavor the rest of the veggies. My kids fight over who gets the garlic so I put LOTS of garlic cloves in there.
  

Enjoy!

Jill

Quick and Easy Lentil Stew

I decided the other night that I wanted to have lentil soup for dinner. I had some polska kielbasa in the fridge and was in the mood for something rich, hearty and satisfying. I had planned on searching the web for some fabulous recipe that everyone raved about, but ended up too dang lazy to even do that, so I improvised. What I came up with was a hit with the whole family and even with my daughter's friend who happened to be dining with us. Here's what I did:

Lentil Soup on the Fly

Sauté in a big pot (make sure it is big, I ended up switching to a bigger pot half way through):

Olive oil (about 2 TBS?)
chopped onion
chopped carrot
(I would have added chopped celery if I'd had any but we were out)

When the onion is translucent and the carrots are looking slightly cooked, add:

8 c. chicken stock (I used water and chicken bullion, don't judge me)
1 can chopped tomatoes
1/2 c. pearl barley
1 c. lentils

Bring to a boil and cook for about 40 minutes or until the barley and lentils are tender. You could go do something else, or chop some lettuce for salad, or mix up a batch of biscuits or cornbread, or whatever. When the lentils are tender add:

chopped up sausage, ham or whatever you have on hand. You could add the meat earlier but I have a vegetarian and I took out a bowl for her before I added the meat (she will eat chicken so the broth was ok). We served this with breadsticks and fruit.

Notes:

• I used polska kielbasa and it was fabulous. I get it at Costco and repackage it into meal-sized packages and freeze it. We like polska kielbasa in our red beans and rice and a few other things so I try to keep some in the freezer and Costco is cheap.
  
• This was even better the second day as leftovers. Yum!
• You can adjust the amount of water to feed a bigger family (or smaller)
• I was going to add some shredded cabbage but forgot. It would probably be a good addition.
  
• The one thing I would for sure do different next time is I would blend the can of tomatoes in my Magic Bullet. My son doesn't like tomatoes and whined about having to pick them out. The soup needs the flavor, though. Next time I'd just puree it and add it to the soup, then little boy wouldn't complain!
  

Enjoy!

Jill

Freezer Jam

I love the idea of feeding my kids homemade bread with homemade jam for snacks. But I really don't like making jam the old fashioned way - cook it until it doesn't actually taste like fruit anymore, ladle it into sterilized jars, boil the canning lids, attach the lids and screw bands, boil it in the water bath canner. Ugh! A lot of work and cooked jam doesn't taste as fresh as I would like it to.

Then I discovered freezer jam. Not only is the preparation quick and easy, but the final product tastes like fresh berries, yum! It does take up space in your freezer, but it is absolutely worth it. It is so easy to make that I recently made four batches of strawberry freezer jam in about two hours. Let take you through it step by step.

Here is my big secret recipe for freezer jam:
Yes, you can see that correctly, it is the instructions from a package of Sure-Jell pectin! Really what I do is buy the pectin and follow the instructions inside. Pretty much all pectin will include a recipe for freezer jam in addition to instructions for cooked jam. Be sure to follow the instructions because each kind has you do it differently. In fact, this time I did two batches of regular Sure-Jell and two batches of low sugar Sure-Jell. Same brand, two different ways of making it. In general, though, the steps are pretty similar. First you mash your berries. Oh, be sure to wash and hull them first, duh. Then you mash them, I use my food processor but you have to be careful because you don't want a puree, you just want them mashed up (the instructions tell you that "jam has bits of fruit in it" as opposed to jelly which doesn't). Then you add the pectin and sugar. Sometimes you add the sugar to the berries and let it macerate (which is just a fancy way of saying the sugar will draw the liquid out of the berries causing it to break down which is good for the whole jam-making thing). Sometimes you add the sugar to the pectin with some water and boil it for a minute or so. After you have added to dissolved pectin and sugar to the berries you usually have to stir for a bit to make everything (especially the sugar) dissolve - you don't want grainy jam!

At some point it will look like this - a big bowl of very sweet strawberry soup! You ladle this into containers that are suitable for the freezer - I use margarine containers, they are cheap and it is recycling. You let the containers sit out on the counter for 24 hrs then put them in the freezer. Freezer jam is not as "solid" as cooked jam so it spreads easier but it also falls out of sandwiches easier so be careful. But the flavor is worth it. I usually do strawberry, raspberry, and blackberry every year, but the instructions have recipes for peach, blueberry/raspberry, and more. Experiment until you find your favorite. Enjoy!

Jill

Homemade Rice-A-Roni

Sometimes, eating cheap isn't very pretty. If you really want to keep your budget low, you need to give up prepared foods and cook things from scratch. Somethings are just so darn easy they are hard to give up. Rice-a-Roni is one of those things. It is just so dang easy to open that box and 20 minutes later you have a rice pilaf to put along side your chicken. But the reality is that you can make it for a whole lot less and with none of the preservatives, artificial colors, or artificial flavors. But can you do it in 20 minutes like the boxed stuff? And will my family eat it? I decided to find out.

I first started with searching for copy-cat recipes on the web, there are lots. Most were variations on the following recipe. I opted to go "minimalist" in this, you could of course add tons of herbs, spices or flavorings.

All you need to make the basic chicken flavored rice pilaf is this:


A cup of rice, an onion, some butter, some garlic, a couple of bullion cubs (or canned chicken stock), and some vermicelli. For me, finding the vermicelli was the hardest part. Most on-line recipes tell you to break spaghetti noodles into one inch pieces, what a bother! My new favorite place to find spices is the Mexican food aisle at my grocery store and while I was checking out the spices I spotted this:It is El Guapo medium vermicelli and it looks exactly like what they use in rice-a-roni! And the best part? It cost 25 cents for this package! I have enough to make about 6 batches of homemade rice-a-roni, steal-of-a-deal!

So, first I chopped up my onion. I had a huge onion so I only used a quarter of it cause I didn't want onion-a-roni. I chopped it fairly fine because I wanted it to disappear into the pilaf. Then I sautéd it in some butter, it looked like this:


Bet you've never seen sautéing onions as cook as that before, have you? Am I amazing or what? After the onion had softened up, I added 1 cup of long grain rice and about a half a cup of vermicelli. It looked like this:
You can't really tell from this picture, but this looks just like the rice-a-roni does when you are cooking it, honest. After the rice and vermicelli were starting to look toasty, I added several cloves of garlic that I pressed. This is not a very authentic addition, the boxed stuff doesn't taste very garlic-y but my family loves garlic and so I added it. After the garlic starts to really smell wonderful add the rest of your ingredients. Don't let the garlic burn or you will be starting over, trust me.

Next I added three cups of chicken broth (actually it was three cups of water and three bullion cubes, but don't tell. I know that "real" cooks never use the dried cubes of bullion but I like them cause they are shelf-stable, take up far less room than cans of chicken broth, and cost next to nothing at Costco. And my family likes the taste. Sue me.) The other thing I added was a pinch of turmeric. Why? Because the first time I made this it was very pale, sort of anemic looking. The boxed stuff is a very pretty yellow color. By adding just a pinch or two of turmeric, it turned it that lovely shade of yellow and didn't taste like turmeric at all. Then I covered it up and simmered it for 20 or so minutes, until the rice is tender and all the liquid absorbed. You may need to check it and add more liquid if needed. I haven't perfectly worked out the proportions yet.

My 14 yo said, "Mom, this is even better than the real stuff, will you make it more often?" Am I amazing, or what?

Jill