Tag Archives: frugal cooking

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!

Menu Plan Monday & Grocery Round Up – 10/25-10/31

We really tried to keep our grocery costs to a minimum this week. As we approach the end of the month, it’s looking like we’re going to be a bit over budget, mostly due to some meals out when we were traveling the first weekend in October. We tried to minimize the overage by keeping costs low this final week in the month.

Overall we did really well. Our total was about $56, but then the cashier informed me that I had earned enough rewards points to take an additional $5 off my total. I don’t completely understand their rewards program yet, but $5 off sounded great to me, especially this week. So our actual total was $51. That should help us stick closer to our budget.

And now for this week’s menu plan. We’re craving hearty fall foods since the weather has finally cooled off.

Sunday: Chicken and dumplings
Monday: Spinach pesto & angel hair pasta (We’re just going to serve the pesto over pasta instead of serving it over chicken as the recipe suggests)
Tuesday: Sandwiches/leftovers
Wednesday: Three-bean vegetarian chili
Thursday: Baked potatoes with broccoli and cheese
Friday: Homemade pizza

We can’t wait to try out our new knives tonight when we’re chopping all the veggies for the chicken and dumplings!

Check out more menu plans at OrgJunkie!

Menu Plan Monday & Grocery Round up: 10/18-10/24

This week was not so great on the grocery budget. We ended up at the high side of our budget limit at $60.

We had to stock up on some monthly necessities. We’re also out of chicken stock just as soup season has begun, which means we need to roast a whole chicken this week to make some stock.

We ended up picking up two whole chickens at Costco essentially for the price of one. We’ll use one for dinner and chicken stock tonight, and freeze the other for later. Buying two drove up our costs for this week, but it was ultimately a better buy. We cook a lot of soup in the colder months. Next time we need stock, we won’t have to buy another chicken.

Another reason for our high grocery costs? We finally picked up some reusable shopping bags. They were on sale for 99 cents each, and I really liked the size and stability of these bags. I’ve been keeping an eye out for affordable, good quality reusable bags for some time now.

We’ve tried to reuse the plastic bags, but our cabinet has become overrun with them at this point. They’re too flimsy to make it through more than a couple shopping trips, and other household uses just don’t use them up quickly enough. We’re just not using them as quickly as they’re accumulating. Overall, this is better for the environment and it’ll cut down our kitchen clutter.

Here’s a picture:

Aren’t they cute? They hold an amazing amount of food. One of these cloth bags holds about as much as three or four plastic bags, which makes it much easier to juggle our groceries when we carry them inside.

Obviously, they’re capable of holding much more weight than plastic bags, too. We bought five, but really could have fit everything this week into three. It’s good to have a couple extra, though, for bigger shopping weeks.

The soft cloth handles also make it much more comfortable to carry our groceries up three flights of stairs. Those plastic bags can be so painful when they cut into your hands, and I’m always terrified they’re going to rip!

We’ve seen similar reusable bags at the other grocery store where we shop, but they have the store’s logo plastered all over them. I didn’t like the idea of becoming a walking advertisement for the store. I liked that these have a generic logo.

Obviously I highly recommend that you go out and buy yourself some bags like these. Honestly, I bought them because I wanted to cut down our clutter and plastic waste, but they ended up making it so much easier to carry our groceries. Not only that, but we feel really good about the environmental benefits of reusable bags.

They’re now tucked away in the trunk of our car so we’ll have them on hand for the next shopping trip. Yay!

And now on to our menu plan for the week:

Sunday: Oven roasted chicken and potatoes
Monday: Chicken noodle soup
Tuesday: Leftovers/sandwiches
Wednesday: Chicken quesadillas
Thursday: Spaghetti with meatless marinara
Friday: Homemade pizza

Check out OrgJunkie for more menu plans!

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Feeling down? Don’t let it tempt you to overspend (or overeat)

It’s just been one of those weeks. Everything is just … blah. Nothing in particular, really. Maybe it’s because it’s my first full week back after a short vacation. Maybe it’s because I’m feeling deprived of fall in the 85-degree heat. Most likely I’m just more than a little homesick for the beautiful Midwestern fall weather and for my friends and family back home.

At any rate, I’ve been feeling down in the dumps.

Usually when I’m down, the first thing I reach for is something extremely bad for me to eat. Chocolate. French fries. Pizza. Whatever. But I’m watching what I eat now, so that’s not really an option.

Instead, I was craving seared tuna. A downtown restaurant makes a delicious seared tuna that I found myself thinking about as the afternoon wore on. It seemed like the perfect comfort food. I was so tempted to call my husband after work and tell him to forget about the meal we’d planned (roasted chicken breasts) and take me out to dinner.

But we’re already cutting it close with our grocery budget for the month. And honestly, overspending or overeating never really make me feel better when I’m down. Sure, it’s great temporarily, but when the meal is over and the bill arrives, I feel sick — not just because I’ve probably eaten too much and wrecked a week of dieting, but also because it’s extra money we shouldn’t have spent.

It never fails. I feel worse than I did before the meal.

Instead, I called my husband and asked him to start thinking about how we might recreate the seared tuna recipe. On my way home, he gave me a very short grocery list. Basically tuna and rice. We had the rest of the ingredients on hand.

For about $10, we made our own seared tuna at home. It was absolutely delicious and completely satisfied the craving. The chicken breast that we defrosted in the refrigerator last night will be just as good for another meal early next week.

The money we spent will fit easily in our entertainment budget for which we allow about $12.50 a week. No big deal this weekend since we’re going to a work-related picnic Saturday that won’t cost us a dime.

After a healthful, delicious meal I’m feeling better, and I didn’t have to break my diet or my budget.