Shopping again

I ran to Aldi and got a few things, spent around $21.00 and can't find my receipt to itemize it for you.
broccoli
cauliflower
mushrooms
yogurt
almond milk
dry pinto beans (going to try to make refried beans from scratch-share your recipe if you have one)
several loaves of high fiber bread for my guys (they were cheap)
Stolen (clearance & impulse buy!)
fancy cookies (clearance & impulse buy!)

Food sure does add up even when you are at Aldi!! $72.09 for the month so far on groceries for a family of 3, with me being gluten free/dairy free and now on low sodium. YES!! Saving money can be done even on a special diet.

I start my wonderful upper/lower scope prep today, drinking that wonderful drink that sends you to the bathroom time and again (I know TMI). I drink 1/2 of it today and 1/2 of it tomorrow. I would appreciate prayers for my scopes tomorrow, that all goes well and that the doctor sees what he needs to see so that he can fix the issues.

Hebrews 13:5b
"and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee."

Moe

What we have been eating.

We have found some goodies in the freezer.
Beef roast in crockpot with Italian seasoning (beef sandwiches)
Pastrami lunch meat (frozen)
Beef soup for lunch (frozen)
Pork chops with seasonings on them (freezer)
Chocolate chip pancakes (freezer)
GF/CF cupcakes (freezer)
Lentil soup for lunch (canned) added a can of corn and sprinkled a bit of cheese on top for color
Corn (pantry)
Greenbeans (pantry)
Fruit cocktail (pantry)
Homemade cocoa mix (top of the fridge)
More partial bags of cold cereal (top of fridge)

Pork Chops & Oven Roasted Veggies
I made pork chops again this week. I cooked them in a skillet with olive oil and some seasonings on med/high for about 20 min or until brown on each side, then I add about 1/2 cup of water and then cover (you could use broth or creamed soup if you are not doing low sodium/gluten free/dairy free like me) and cook for about 45-60 min until they are the desired tenderness, I like them falling apart) add more liquid if they are not done, so you don't burn them.

Then in the oven I made cut up roasted veggies with skins left on, I had a yam, white potatoes, celery, mushrooms, zucchinis, onions and I tossed all those in a bag with lemon juice, garlic and olive oil. Baked first 3 items for around 30 min at 450, then added the rest in and baked another 30 min at 375 until done. I did stir them a few times and check potatoes for doneness. Our 11yr old asked why the potatoes turned orange in the oven, he had never had a sweet potato before. He loved them and so did DH. I actually liked them myself, in years past I had had baked ones that were stringy and nasty, so I just assumed that they were all like that. Well I have a new veggie that I like!! Yams or sweet potatoes (same thing right? correct me if I am wrong please).

What have you been eating?
Moe

Beef & Noodles from the pantry challenge

I found a packet of Italian Beef seasoning hidden in the cabinet. Got a beef roast out of the freezer and put it in the crockpot with about 6 cups of water. Left it on for 10 hours on low (1st hour on high), then I used up some noodles from the cabinet, cooked them part way on the stove, drained and then added them to the beef in the crockpot. I stirred it up and left if on for another 5 hours on low. YUM!! Ate that with some leftover veggies and tonight we are having it over baguettes (found those on the day old bread rack for $1.29.)

What are you feasting on from the pantry?

Moe

What have we been eating?

Well let me see, we have had some very warm weather here so we did campfire school (homeschooling around the campfire), I found 2 packages of hotdogs in the freezer and some hard marshmallows in the back of the pantry that someone had failed to close up with a twist tie.
Note to self: marshmallows burn very easily when they are dried out. We did not have any hotdog buns or chocolate to make smores, but that was OK! We had fun anyway and saved some carbs :O)

I almost fired up the grill, but I thought, ya know we are going to be out here doing school for the day, so why not just roast 2 hotdogs at a time until both packages are cooked. So we had grilled hotdogs for a few lunches last week.

We had some extra eggs to use up, it's amazing how the chickens can lay a GAZILLION eggs one week and then almost nothing the next week! Or the week that we really need eggs, the dear child forgets to collect them (I refuse to use eggs that have been sitting in the nesting boxes too long, I know they are suppose to be fine, but I am sort of a freak about these things.) So anyway we had a gazillion eggs this week, so I made up a large batch of french toast and we had that for several breakfasts, and guess what? When you don't have hotdog buns, a hotdog on french toast bread is pretty good (minus the syrup!). Guess you would call it A Pig In A French Toast (or maybe A Pig In A French Afgan? lol) Anyway it was good.

I found some BLSL chicken breast in the freezer and made this yummy recipe (same recipe that I used at Christmas time with a turkey, but made it with chicken this time.)

Heat oven to 350
3 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 c light mayo (not Miracle Whip)
2 tsp (or more) thyme
2 tsp (or more) rosemary
2 tsp (or more) pepper
2 tsp (or more) oregano
1/4 cup melted butter or margarine (I used unsalted)
mix all the ingredients together and spoon over chicken. Cover with foil and bake 45 min or until chicken is done.

I found the recipe for the mayonnaise roasted turkey at the blog SheWearsManyHats.com, click on the link and it will take you to the recipe for the turkey.

I served the chicken with Jasmine rice from the pantry, I used my rice cooker (you use whatever type of rice you have in the pantry & can make this recipe on the stove top too)
While the rice was cooking I added
2 T olive oil
1/2 T chili powder
1/2T curry powder
I would have added some cumin, but I was out and it was too pricey for my pantry challenge ;-) I had some carrots to use up so I tossed those through my Salad Shooter on 'shred' and it added some fiber and color to the dish. You might want to add a dash of salt (remember the doctor put me on a low sodium diet last week, so I am learning to taste my food and not taste salt BAH HUMBUG!!

Dessert Scotcharoos

Had some peanut butter in the pantry so I made peanut butter rice crispy treats.
1 cup light corn syrup
1 cup peanut butter (we like creamy)
1 cup white sugar (wonder what brown sugar would taste like?)
2 tsp vanilla (GF)
5-6 cups rice crisp cereal (GF)
put everything in the saucepan except cereal, melt and stir together. Then add cereal and mix, pour into 9x13 pan and start eating.......lol.
then if you need it even sweeter add the topping (sometimes we just eat it!)
1 cup chocolate chips (GF/CF)
1 cup butterscotch chips (GF/CF)
melt in a pan very carefully so they don't burn or microwave until melted. Stir well and pour over Scotcharoos, let harden and eat. YUMMM!!

We have also been eating cereal from the top of the fridge, lots of partial boxes up there and one morning I made a suprise breakfast of rice crispy treats........LOL. Oh, well they would have put sugar on the rice cereal anyway, so why not serve them up a nice hot breakfast of melted marshmellows in cereal??

The guys found a few Hot Pockets in the bottom of the freezer and I found some Rice Dream Ice Cream, had a slight layer of ice on the top, but still good....lol.

What have you been eating this week?

Enjoy the saving that you are getting out of eating from the pantry.
Moe

Food Cravings ~ Challenge Day 14

I sent hubby out to the grocery store, he is a real winner in the area of shopping!! Give him a list and that is ALL that he will buy. Give me a list and I come out with a cart full.

2% milk $2.15 1/2 gallon (YIKES!! I remember when a gallon of milk was just $1.99 at Aldi!!)
high fiber wheat bread $4.19 on sale for $3.49
2# bag of rice crisp cereal $3.59
golden rasins $3.29 flour
$2.19 Mrs. Dash $2.99 (could have done without this, but the doctor wants me on a low-sodium diet as of last week.....I'm falling apart and I caved in and bought something for ME!!).

So this week I spent a grand total of $17.78 + $33.31 from last week = $51.09 for the month.
I do know that I am going to spend some $$ this coming week since boneless pork loins are on sale for $1.99 lb (whole or sliced for free) and I plan on getting a few of those for the freezer otherwise I think we are good to go shopping from the pantry and the freezer some more.

Come on and share what you have bought for you this week during the pantry challenge.

Have a wonderful week!
Moe

Soup recipe for you

Come on over to one of my favorite blogs "The Gluten-Free Homemaker" she has a wonderful recipe for beef vegetable soup slow cooker just click on the link and make a big crockpot full of this yummy goodness!

If you are not gluten free, just use regular flour in this recipe.

While the crockpot is cooking away, relax with  good book and your kids snuggled up around you and make some memories.
Enjoy!
Moe

Soup Supper anyone?

This is day 11 in my own pantry challenge and I found some soups hidden away in the cabinet. Soup suppers can be a very frugal way to feed your family. Think ahead in the day and get the bread machine out too. Make some sort of yummy bread, that always makes a meal seem special, or swing by the grocery store and pick up a loaf of crusty french bread if you are not gluten free. Pop a pan of brownies in the oven too. It's little things like that, that keep my husband from saying "Were only having soup?"

Also you might think about adding to your soup or mixing flavors, sometimes I will mix the Chunky soups or Progresso ones. Such as 2 different types of beef soups or 2 different types of potato soups and add some extra corn, green beans, peas, carrots, canned potatoes, whatever your family likes, this way it sort of bulks up the soup, as my guys don't care much for runny soups. Sometimes I add a bit of cornstarch (1/2 cup cold water to 1 tablespoon corn starch, stir it up well and add to boiling soup, stir until thickened, about 3 minutes).

If you make a potato soup you might try sprinkling some cooked bacon on top or a touch of cheese (if you can have dairy) and even some parsley. YUM!! Search the web for some very frugal potato soup recipes!!

For the homeschooling mom soup suppers can be a huge blessing!! Easy meal, no planning and you can even let the kids pick 'their own can of soup'. Or you can dump all the ingredients into the crockpot first thing in the morning, get the bread machine up and running and dinner cooks while you teach. What a blessing a soup supper can be.

Enjoy a soup meal each week and I bet you will save a few calories and $$ in the new year!

SOUP's ON!!

Moe

Pantry Challenge Day 9 How is it going?

Just checking in to see how it's going. Remember you can still buy groceries, but do your best to eat from what you have in the house, it's like FREE food!! I'm needing some raisins, but I fear stepping into the grocery store and buying more stuff! lol. If you see a great buy on something, feel free to stock up on it, but also use what you already have too.

My doctor put me on a diuretic this week and I was told to really be watching my salt. So that has made things interesting on the pantry challenge to say the least. So I got some low-salt cookbooks from the library (we love that place!), found a recipe for no salt cream soup (not great, but it was OK). I had ground beef in the freezer, rice in the pantry and celery in the fridge, also had all the ingredients for the 'cream of no sodium soup'. I used coconut milk to make that, it was the unsweetened kind, but it still had an odd sweetness to it (oh well, at least I am using it up in the pantry challenge). I made beef & rice casserole for myself (gluten free) and then I made the guys a regular one using up 2 cans of Campbell's cream soups from the pantry. I also had made some wild rice from the pantry and used that in their recipe.

For desert I made a apple buckle (some call it apple betty) using gluten free flours, apple pie filling and Rice Bran flakes to add some fiber without changing the taste or texture.

Apple Buckle with yummy coconut ice cream to go with it.

Have you been having fun with this? Make it fun, have the kids go into the pantry and make some sort of fun meal. Our meals don't have to look like Julia Childs (loved watching her as a child with my mother). Any creative meals come across your table this past week?
Moe

Pantry Challenge day 8

I found some grilled burgers in the freezer from late this summer and we had those for one dinner, then I made Salisbury steaks for the next night. I used up the rest of the hamburgers and 2 cans of beef broth mixed with some cornstarch and dried onions. I put those into a pot with a lid and put them on med/low for about 45 min minutes, I served with green beans (1 can cut & 1 can string) and packaged rice mix (all from the pantry).

Any good recipes coming your way? Share them with us.
Moe

Pantry Challenge Day 7

Had to do a bit of grocery shopping. Went to Mejiers (Chorus of Angels music.......lol) shopped the produce, I think it's the lighting in that place! I could go broke shopping the produce section in that store. It's like the Garden of Eden in there! lol. They had those huge deli trays of cut of veggies & dip on clearance for $3.50, I bought one and my guys have gobbled it up. I got a few carrots, 1 piece of cauliflower and a few pieces of broccoli. I normally don't buy those trays, but the regular price was $7.99 so I snatched one up. I also bought some apples, mushrooms, eggs (we like store bought hard boiled eggs, better than our fresh eggs from our ranch, they are very hard to peel since they are so fresh) fresh green beans, cantaloupe (threw it away, it was very sour and cost me $2.99), bananas, almond milk and regular milk, kiwis, cherries ($2.99 lbs could not pass those up!), carrots and a case of Pepsi (cheaper for me to buy it, than for Dh to get it out of a machine at work. So this week I spent $33.31 on groceries this week for 3 people. I don't think that was too bad at all.
How did you do?
Moe

Pantry Challenege Day 6

We cleaned out the refrigerator and had leftovers, along with corn from the freezer, canned fruit and veggies from the pantry. Sent hubby to work with cookies from the freezer and our large stash of fresh giant oranges from the local school band.

How are you doing? I have a large can of black beans, got any suggestions to hide those in something? We are not big bean eaters (well we like greenbeans......lol) and I bought those when I was on a 'lets get healthy kick.'  Yeah, the family really likes when mom gets on that high horse. lol

Moe

Pantry Challenge Day 5

I thought I would share some pictures of my stockpiles.......lol. I have a few.

First here is my stash of food that sits above my washer & dryer.

This is my NON gluten free stash of things that I need to use up.

My top of the refrigerator stash......ignore the dust up there! I'm too short to see it, so I don't dust if often :O)

My Lazy-Susan cabinet or better known as "The finger pinching spinner thing" to my toddler son back in the day. lol. Yes I have a ton of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce because the Amish salvage store has it for like .95¢ per bottle and the expiration date is 2013. YUM!

For some reason the server is rejecting my final picture, which is of a tiny cabinet that my Dh and Ds have munchies & snacks stored in. It's not real large, but it has Ritz Crackers, hot cocoa packets and stuff like that in it.

Feel free to share your stash photos with us. I've not even ventured to take pictures of the freezers yet.......lol. Maybe next week.

Happy frugal cooking this month.

Moe

Pantry Challenge Day 4

I used up some zucchinis, mushrooms, carrots, garlic and chicken (from freezer). I put all that in a pan with some olive oil, cooked it up and sprinkled on a tough of seasoning salt. Went over well and I cleaned out some veggies that I had on hand. I think I will make some brown rice that I have (sitting in the pantry in the far back dark corner!) and add that along with a scrambled egg to last nights leftovers to make a fried rice. YUM!

What have you made?
Moe

Pantry Challenge!!!

How about it?? Anyone game for a pantry challenge? It's easy, before you head to the grocery store, shop your freezer, refrigerator and cabinets to see what you can use up. For the first 3 weeks I try to only buy milk, butter and bread, since I usually have an abundance of canned fruits and veggies on hand. If you don't have chickens you may need to buy eggs  :-p    Make a family game out of this, let the kids pick some can goodies from the cabinet, find some meat in the freezer and go from there.

Feel free to post here and let us know how it's going for you, ask for hints and tips on how to go about doing your pantry challenge. I for one sometimes need some help using up those odd cans of black beans, pinto beans and mole sauce that I bought for some odd reason....lol.

This is a great money saver to start the new year out. I think about many of my readers that are saving to adopt and homeschool moms that are eeking out a tight budget. I hope that this post will be a blessing to your household.

What kind of weird things do you have in your cabinet, freezer or refrigerator that need used up? Use things up before they go bad. Get creative and see what interesting things you can make.

Have a wonderful week!
Moe

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

We had a wonderful time last night, I spent the evening scrapbooking with our son, he worked on his camp pictures and I worked on his 6th birthday pictures. Around 11:00pm we both decided that we were tired and so we cleaned up our area and headed off to the living room to snuggle up and read. Dad was putting in some overtime at work so he missed out on the fun. But I packed him up some goodies in his dinner, bacon wrapped green olives, deviled eggs and some special Munchies chips.

Today we vegged out, I did a bunch of cooking and our son fell asleep on the couch from 1pm-5pm lol.....so a quiet day all the way around. I spent some time going over things for the next semester, since I may be facing a major surgery, I needed to look some things over and plan ahead.

Heard an interesting thought on Christian radio this week, it talked about waiting on God and how we need to look at it as "a waiting room experience", thought that was pretty neat. So as I wait for my medical tests at the end of January, I can just sit back relax in the GREAT physicians waiting room, it really removed some stress for me.

As you take down your Christmas decorations and pack them away, don't pack away Jesus, keep Him out this year and enjoy fellowship with Him each and every day.

Thanks for spending 2011 with me as we learned about raising chickens, butchered chickens, became gluten free, waited on the Lord, learned more from the Lord, looked through the Word of God and home educated.

Moe

What is for dinner?

Frugal Beef Stew-Donna Rollison

 To get the recipe click on the title. If you look around on the site, please be mindful if you need to be GF/CF only look under the username Writermom77. If you are not gluten free then you can look all over the site for yummy recipes from other homepages.

This was really good!!! I think that the GF Worcestershire Sauce really made it tasty!!

I had some surplus canned goods too I did tweak it a bit :O)

Our local grocery had canned veggies on sale last month for .44¢ and I stocked up, so I added

2 cans of corn

2 cans of greenbeans

1 can of sliced mushrooms

1 can of rinsed Cannelli Beans (not sure how to spell those? They are by Progresso)

4 cups GF broth

Three of us ate on it for lunch, my guys loved it so much that I decided to make more right then and there. So I added 4 more cups of GF broth, another tablespoon of GF Worcestershire sauce and another batch of the above veggies & beans. So I have a HUGE pot of yummy soup instead of a stew!

This ended up being a blessing since my Dh informed me that a family from church had a need, so I plan on taking a container of this soup over there with some store bought dinner rolls.

Check out this Monthly Menu Plan file

I love this website http://heartofwisdom.com/, I do not use the homeschool materials on the site, but there is a wealth of info and free printable items on the site.
http://heartofwisdom.com/images/monthlymenuplan.pdf This menus planner is great, she has some that are filled out too. I like the blank one, I laminated it and fill it out. Planning menus really helps with the food budget.
How do you plan your meals?
Have a great week!
Moe