Category Archives: Cooking

Fresh turkey for next to nothing next year

If you’re like me, then you found yourself staring longingly at the fresh turkeys this year, convinced that they must taste better. After all, they’re fresh.

OK, so I’m not convinced that they do taste better. My husband swears by it, though. I’ll admit, the idea of skipping the thawing process with a huge turkey taking up half my fridge for a week before Thanksgiving is appealing to me. But there’s no way I’m ever going to spend $1+ a pound for fresh turkey when the frozen ones are on sale for 49 cents a pound.

I was kicking myself yesterday, though. You see, this year Tony and I went to a potluck for Thanksgiving Day and cooked our own Thanksgiving meal yesterday. We ran out to the store for a few last minute items yesterday and discovered that fresh turkeys were deeply discounted. They were actually about 40 cents a pound.

“Why didn’t we think of that?” my husband asked.

He’s right. We’ve known since before we bought our turkey that we would be cooking on Friday. It makes perfect sense that fresh turkeys would be dirt cheap the day after the holiday. What else are they going to do with a bunch of fresh turkeys with a sell-by date a week away?

Next year we’ll try a fresh turkey, and we’ll only pay 40 cents a pound. I don’t mind cooking a day late if it’s just us again.

Menu Plan & Grocery Round Up – 11/22-11/28

Watch out! After wrapping and shipping Christmas gifts for my niece and nephew in Seattle this morning and picking up the final things on my Thanksgiving menu, my holiday spirit has arrived. My husband probably won’t find his holiday cheer until next weekend when we put up the tree. He doesn’t appreciate the pre-Thanksgiving Christmas music so much. He’ll get over it. :)

Our grand total for groceries this week was $56. Not too bad for the week of Thanksgiving. In the past, I’ve waited until the last minute to buy everything I needed for our Thanksgiving meal and ended up with a $100+ grocery bill. This time, I split up my list throughout the month of November to reduce the burden. All we picked up this week was some produce and random last minute items.

Some friends invited us to a potluck Thanksgiving dinner Thursday. We’re happy to spend the holiday with friends, but my husband doesn’t want to miss out on roasting his own turkey. So we’ll be making our Thanksgiving dinner on Friday. That means two Thanksgiving dinners for us. Fine by me. :)

Here’s our holiday menu plan:

Sunday: Strip steaks, green beans, and baked potatoes
Monday: Chicken and dumplings
Tuesday: Chicken tacos
Wednesday: Homemade pizza
Thursday: Potluck Thanksgiving with friends (We’re bringing homemade green bean casserole.)
Friday: Thanksgiving dinner
Saturday: Leftovers, because there’s no way we’re going to eat all the food we make on Friday. :)

Now head over to OrgJunkie for more menu plans. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

TGIF Link Round Up: Countdown to Thanksgiving Edition

Photo by dongkwan

Thanksgiving dinnerLess than a week until Turkey Day! I can’t tell you how excited I am for four days of cooking, eating and relaxing. I absolutely love Thanksgiving.

We have pretty much everything we need for our no-stress frugal Thanksgiving for two. We bought it all in advance. We might have to pick up a thing or two at the grocery store this weekend, but for the most part all that’s left to do is cook and eat! Yum!

For those of you who haven’t finished menu planning and shopping for the holiday, I wanted to share some Thanksgiving recipes/ideas from my Reader this week:

Happy Friday! Yay for a three-day week next week!

Homemade hot cocoa

Photo by kevinmarsh

homemade hot cocoaTonight is the first genuinely cold night of the season. I’ve spent the evening bundled up in multiple layers under a big comforter on the couch. And you know what goes best with a cold night? Hot cocoa.

When I told Tony I was craving it, he offered to run up to Starbucks with the gift card we’ve had since the wedding. I didn’t want to go out in the cold, though, and I knew he didn’t either. No, I said. We’ll make it at home.

A quick look in the refrigerator, and I realized we were running low on milk. If we made hot cocoa tonight, we might not have enough for cereal in the morning, which would mean a trip to the grocery store tonight.

I started rummaging around in the cupboards to see if I could find something else to satisfy my sweet tooth. Nothing. But I did find some powdered milk that I bought a little while back for homemade bread.

Tony found this recipe for homemade hot cocoa mix. Amazingly, we had everything on hand — just barely. The recipe pretty much tapped out our supply of cocoa, powdered sugar, and powdered milk. (Note: We didn’t have any cayenne pepper, so we left it out. Instead, we used cinnamon. Ours turned out delicious, but if we had cayenne we definitely would have used it!)

We filled a huge Mason jar with the homemade mix, so we’ll have hot cocoa to last us all through winter. Just add water! Every bit as delicious as any hot cocoa I’ve ever had, but so much cheaper than regular milk (and definitely cheaper than Starbucks)!

Why pay more for lean ground beef?

Tony and I don’t eat a lot of red meat. Occasionally we’ll grill a nice lean steak, but we eat more chicken than beef. It’s mostly because when we do buy ground beef, we like to buy very lean beef, usually about 90-94% lean. Have you seen the prices for lean beef? It rarely falls below $4 a pound. We’d just as soon cook with chicken, which is healthier and only $2 a pound.

This week, Tony had a craving for Shepherd’s pie. We were picking up our Thanksgiving turkey and some steaks on sale. We needed beef for the pie, but I wanted to save some money. I decided for this week that the extra 10% fat in the $2 a pound ground beef wouldn’t kill me.

I was shocked at how much extra fat cooked out in the pan. We’ve been cooking with lean beef for so long that I’ve gotten used to seeing very little fat in the pan.

We cooked all of the fat out, drained it completely, and patted it down with paper towels to remove the excess fat. And you know what? It was basically the same. Obviously, I can’t say for sure that it was just as lean as the 90%, but it sure seemed like it once it was drained well.

I know, this one seems like a no-brainer, but it’s a revelation for me. I’ll never pay $4 a pound for ground beef again. That works for me!

Menu Plan & Grocery Round Up – 11/15-11/21

Our total for the week was $62, which is $2 over our maximum budget. I’m not complaining, though. We walked out with a TON of food.

We shopped this week at the pricier store in our area, because they were offering turkeys for 49 cents a pound with the purchase of $25 in groceries.

We were originally going to buy just a turkey breast, but I haven’t seen them on sale this year for under $1.60 a pound. I couldn’t resist 49 cents a pound for turkey, especially since there’s only a week and a half until Thanksgiving. We also picked up potatoes for Thanksgiving as well as whipped cream for our pumpkin pie.

We also got four New York strip steaks, which we’ll freeze and use for dinners later. We split one steak between us, so we’ll stretch those steaks out to four meals.

This store takes some of the discounts off after everything is completely rang up. I was expecting to go over our budget since our cart was so full. I cringed when the total came to $90. But then she took off the discount for the steaks and the turkey, as well as a 5% discount since my husband is a student. We saved almost $30!

For our menu plan this week, we’re raiding our pantry and freezer to make the most of what we have since some of our grocery budget this week went toward our Thanksgiving meal. Most of our meals are coming from a whole chicken that’s been in our freezer for a couple weeks. Here’s what we have planned:

Saturday: Film festival dinner party (We got free tickets! Woo hoo!)
Sunday: Roasted chicken and potatoes (We need to make stock this week, so it was time for a chicken.)
Monday: Chicken fajita tortilla soup
Tuesday: Leftovers/sandwiches
Wednesday: Chicken quesadillas
Thursday: Shepherd’s pie
Friday: Homemade pizza

Now head over to OrgJunkie for more menu plans!

Menu Plan Monday & Grocery Round Up – 11/8-11/14

greenmpm

This week, we shopped at two different stores to get the best deal. It worked out well. Our grand total was $58, including two Porterhouse steaks on sale for $4.99 a pound as well as some ingredients for our Thanksgiving feast.

We also picked up the ingredients for our Thanksgiving pumpkin pie. Still no sale on turkey, but we’re keeping an eye out at both of our local grocery stores to wait for the best deal on a whole turkey breast.

We were on the high side of our budget this week, but we’ve tentatively planned out next week’s menu to maximize items on hand and drastically reduce our food cost for the week. You’ll have to come back next week to see how we do!

Here’s the plan for this week:

Saturday: Grilled Porterhouse steak (we split one) and baked potatoes
Sunday: Chicken noodle soup
Monday: Bacon wrapped chicken with blue cheese crumbles and roasted potatoes (we’re omitting the pecans and the cream sauce)
Tuesday: Leftovers/sandwiches
Wednesday: Pasta with meatless marinara
Thursday: BLTs with oven fries
Friday: Homemade pizza

For breakfasts we have cold cereal and oatmeal. For lunches, I bring leftovers from the night before or salad.

Now go check out more menu plans at OrgJunkie!

Planning a frugal Thanksgiving for two

Photo by dennissylvesterhurd

Thanksgiving turkeyWith the election over (thank goodness!), we’re all turning our attention to Thanksgiving, which is now exactly three weeks away. (Where did the time go?)

I’m no exception. Tony and I won’t be traveling for Thanksgiving. We’re making a big trip to see family for Christmas, so we’ll be home in North Carolina enjoying a quiet holiday. We may invite a culinary-challenged friend or two if any of Tony’s classmates stay behind and want to join us. If not, it’ll be just the two of us.

That doesn’t mean we’re not cooking a Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings, though. My amateur chef husband wouldn’t miss roasting a turkey for the world. We had the most wonderful holiday last year. We invited a friend over for dinner and enjoyed a Thanksgiving feast. The leftovers lasted days. I’m looking forward to continuing our tradition of a low-key, no-stress Thanksgiving holiday cooking and eating good food, watching movies, and relaxing.

Last night we began preparing by putting together our Thanksgiving menu. We’ll be making all the traditional dishes, including turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry dressing, stuffing, greenbean casserole, fresh bread, and pumpkin pie. It’s a lot of food for two people, but we plan to eat nothing but leftovers all weekend. :)

Last year we didn’t roast a whole turkey. Instead, we bought a small bone-in turkey breast. I highly recommend that you do the same if your dinner party will be small.

To reduce the impact on our budget, we’ll be spreading out purchases for the menu over the next few weeks. At some point in the next week or two, I’m expecting a big sale on turkey at the grocery store. We’ll pick up our turkey then, and pick up an item or two for the meal on every shopping trip in the coming weeks.

Here’s how some of the bloggers from my reader are preparing for the holiday:

How are you preparing?

Menu Plan Monday & Grocery Round Up – 11/2-11/7

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After cutting back last week to try to stay within budget, we found that we needed to buy more this week to make up for some of the staples we left out of our last shopping trip. We ended up spending $62, and we’re not done yet. There are still a couple things we need to pick up at Costco tomorrow.

Part of the problem is that we cut our leftovers/sandwiches night out this week. Tony is on a fall break and will be home all next week, and we decided to make some special meals with pricier ingredients, including two types of meat. The result was a pricier week for groceries.

The good news is our Costco purchases will last throughout the month, so that money technically will be distributed throughout our grocery budget. Oh well. We’ll cut down to the bare minimum next week to make up for it and balance out the budget. That’s why I operate on a monthly budget instead of a weekly budget.

In other good news, I found out today that my reusable grocery bags will pay for themselves. Our cashier informed us that we earn 50 bonus rewards points each shopping trip for every reusable shopping bag we bring to the store with us. That’s on top of the rewards points we earn for our regular shopping (usually 500-1000 per week). Once we reach 5000 points, we can redeem them for $5 off our groceries.

I’m glad I know that now. I don’t think our cashier credited us with those points last week. Now that I know, I can be sure to remind our cashier to add those points.

We bring 5 reusable grocery bags for each trip, so we earn 250 bonus points a week. We paid about $5 for our reusable grocery bags, so it’ll be about 5 months before they pay for themselves in bonus points. We like that the reusable bags are better for the environment and reduce the grocery bag clutter in our kitchen. If they’ll eventually pay for themselves then that’s even better!

Last week I redeemed 5000 points on a week when we were struggling to maintain our monthly budget. I plan to save my rewards points for those weeks at the end of the month when we can really use a few bucks off our groceries to stay within budget.

On to our $60 menu plan for the week:

Saturday: Roasted pork tenderloin, mashed potatoes and baked apples
Sunday: BBQ pulled pork sandwiches (made with leftover tenderloin) and roasted potatoes
Monday: Italian grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup
Tuesday: Grilled steaks, creamed spinach, and baked potatoes
Wednesday: Chicken and broccoli stir fry with rice
Thursday: Potato soup (recipe below)
Friday: Homemade pizza

Mom’s Potato Soup recipe

3 pounds large russet potatoes, peeled and diced
½ an onion, diced
1 quart of chicken stock
1 tablespoon of butter
1/2 cup of shredded cheese
1 cup milk
Sour cream (optional)
Chopped chives (optional)
Crumpled bacon (optional)

Cover the potatoes and onion in chicken stock and boil until fork tender. Boil until stock reduces and becomes starchy (about 20 minutes).

Add butter, cheese, salt and pepper to taste. Add milk. Heat through to warm milk, but do not boil. Garnish with cheese, sour cream, chives and bacon.

Make sure you check out OrgJunkie for more menu plans!