Meijer shopping cart Feb. 28
I thought Sunday morning would be a good time to shop at Meijer since I’ve been so rushed on other errands during the past couple of weeks.
It turns out other people had the same idea. The checkout lines were pretty long.
But if you looked at the sales flier this morning, you might understand why.
I paid $48.38 and gave the clerk seven coupons for this cartload of groceries: 4 Snicker bars, 2 cans corn, 1 jar applesauce, 1 gallon milk, 1 package American cheese slices, 1 silver polish can, 2 cans pineapple, 1 four-pack of yogurt, 2 boxes of oatmeal, 2 cans crescent rolls, 3 12-packs of can beverages and 3 bottles of laundry soap.
No. This is not the typical “weekly shopping” trip. I don’t buy my groceries that way any more. I buy a box or two every month from Angel Food Ministries and fill in the rest of our grocery needs with whatever is on sale at the supermarkets.
My freezer is currently full of meat and bread. I have enough cleaning supplies except we really did need that silver cleaner for a specific item. We have plenty of pasta, cereal, tortillas and soup in the house. Today I just planned to buy what we specifically needed, and pick up a few deals.
Now, why would I buy three bottles laundry soap when I had two bottles of Tide at home? Reason: that $15 worth of laundry soap will last my husband and I six months. Yes, that’s worth spending money now to save money later.
I also normally cook oatmeal in a can, but haven’t found the right DIY recipe for maple flavored oatmeal. So I still buy that flavor in packets, but make my own version of the raisin or apple oatmeal.
Continue reading Meijer shopping cart Feb. 28 …
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Paneer and Whey Drink
Steps In Making Cheese
Paneer was my next step in cheese making. Paneer is like a pressed ricotta cheese. If you’re new to cheese making, as I am, it is best to start small and work your way up.
I started with yogurt cheese made in a crock pot. If yogurt sounds intimidating, try this reader tip to get you started:
“Simply boil a cup of milk, and then let cool to room temperature. Stir in a tablespoon of yogurt, let sit (don’t move the cup) and voila, the next morning you have yogurt!”
After yogurt, I moved to ricotta cheese, which involves heating the milk, then adding something like vinegar to curdle the cheese.
So now it is time for paneer, which is like ricotta, but it is pressed, which gives me practice for the hard cheeses.
Instructions:
1) Heat a half gallon or gallon of milk to a low boil
2) Add 3 tablespoons of vinegar, lemon juice or lime juice per half gallon. (I used lime juice.)
3) When you see the milk curds, separating from yellowish liquid, the whey, take it off the heat.
4) Line a colander with a cheesecloth or thin fabric. Put it in something like a pot to collect the whey.
4a) Optional: add in spices. I added some cajun seasoning and an Italian spice blend. Paneer is from India, so I am all over the place with this cheese.
5) Set up a press, wrap cheese in cloth and press until firm, about two hours. It won’t be firm like a block of cheddar, but it will be more firm than cream cheese.
There are lots of ways to make a press, but for the one pound of cheese I made, I found two plates to be just right. Next time, I may put the bottom plate upside down and put it in a pan to catch any excess whey. I might have gone overboard with the books, but I wanted to be sure.
My cheese cracked because I kept playing with it during the pressing stage. I’ll know better next time!
Paneer is a cheese that doesn’t melt, like ricotta. We’ve used it on quesadillas, in place of the cream cheese, broken up in our eggs, like an omelet, and smushed on plain tortillas. It is not something we will have to have on hand all the time, but I think it will have a place in our menu from time to time.
Whey Drink
Saving the whey and using is effectively is what makes or breaks the future of cheese making for me. One gallon of milk makes one pound of cheese… and three quarts of whey. Some of that whey can be used in lacto-fermenting, but if I’m going to be making most of our cheese, we are going to have more whey than I know what to do with. Paneer whey isn’t bitter like yogurt whey, and I read somewhere that the whey of hard cheeses is almost sweet.
So, I made whey limeade. I used lime juice as the medium to make the milk curdle. To make limeaid, I added more lime juice and some stevia and chilled the drink. It has most of the nutritional value of milk and is loaded with protein. It tastes like limeade. I think there are probably a lot of drinks that could be made with whey and I’ll let you know which we like best.
Next up: making mozzarella!
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Kroger shopping cart Jan. 30
It’s been awhile since I went on a bargain-picking supermarket shopping trip. I did one today at Kroger in Monroe, Mich.
You will not find on my blog detailed coupon scenarios that show how much product one can get for free, or 10 items of the same product for which multiple transactions were involved. What I show you are the groceries I buy and use in my own home, using the tricks I explain in the Grocery Shopping on a Budget sidebar.
This is my shopping cart. I paid $31.89 and submitted nine coupons at checkout. You will notice that some items are from the 10 Mega sale, others are store brand, others were couponable products, others were just the sale of the week.
That’s how you do it, shoppers. You don’t rely on just one money-saving trick at the supermarket. You use as many as possible.
A couple of points to make:
- We were completely out of cereal as of this morning. We normally don’t go through it as fast as we have been; but cereal has been a quick breakfast and sometimes quick lunch during what has been a more hectic few weeks than usual. But I bought only two boxes of Special K strawberry today. It was the best choice out of what my husband and I like and I could get a good price on. This will do for now. There was no need to pay full price today for additional varieties. After all, the grocery sales turn over on Sunday and Monday in the Monroe area.
- I was extremely flexible today with my shopping list. I made my decisions based on what I could get good prices on, what I knew I had at home, and what we would eat. The refried beans and salsa can go with chicken, beef, tortillas and cheese that I already have in the freezer.
- The granola bars, and candy bars you don’t see, are for my husband and I to take to work. You may think it’s pricey to buy snacks at the supermarket, and it can be. But are you going to the vending machines instead when you are at work or on the road? Stop that. Be your own vending machine.
- Fresh fruit prices do vary throughout the year, and I liked the prices I found on bananas and grapes. Buying fresh looked like an even better decision today once I saw what the canned and frozen fruit prices were posted at.
Continue reading Kroger shopping cart Jan. 30 …
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Live A Lot
Every once in a while, I get comments like, “Don’t you want to live a little?” and “What about the value of your time?” These comments make me sad. Without getting into the topic of cost/time analysis, I’d like to address this attitude.
I can’t imagine “living” more than kneading bread with my son, or finding a new favorite book at the library, or counting as my boys take turns tumbling the wonderwash. Whether or not my time makes me money or saves me money is irrelevant to this point. Quality of life has little to do with money. Once basic needs are met, it’s about relationships and pursuing dreams.
I get to spend all day every day with my family. I make money writing one blog post per day. Then, I have the rest of my time to do whatever I please. If I didn’t find writing that blog post enriching, I wouldn’t do it. The rest of the day I read, I sew, I snuggle with my kids, I roll my own tortillas, and I discuss religion and politics with the smartest guy I know. These are quality of life items for me. Buying new throw pillows and more shoes, not so much.
The idea that I am frugal because I have to be is a little silly. I know how to make money without putting my kids in daycare, and I knew how to do it before I started this blog. I choose to be frugal so that I can dream, teach my children to dream, and be a strength to my husband as he steps towards his dreams. That is living.
(This was going to be my FAQ Friday post, but I got a fun question that I wanted to address for tomorrow. This bumped nicely into my Family Time Thursday slot. I feel like I am getting back into the blogging rhythm. Thanks to those of you who stuck around through my absence.)
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The Imperfect Diet
Dan and I have unique health goals. We aim for a Nourishing Traditions
We have never aimed for perfection. We eat out about once a week and aren’t uptight at family gatherings and church potlucks. I will cater my meal slightly but will generally eat what’s served. My husband will usually go nuts and eat pure crap.
During the week my son was in the hospital, we all ate pure crap. It was a week marked with white flour pasta and cookies. I could have put in some effort and made more food myself, but I didn’t. There was no lacto-fermented salsa or soaked grain tortillas for a whole week.
We don’t consider this a failure. Some of it was laziness. I didn’t want to make three meals a day. Some of it was comfort food… the cookies. It wasn’t a failure, though, because it was temporary.
We undid some of the things we had been working toward. Both Dan and I noticed a marked difference in our regularity. At first, I thought it was because we were using someone else’s bathroom, but then I remembered the cookies. Rest assured, we have been doubling up on out lacto-fermented foods, and things are coming back to normal in the bathroom.
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Walmart and Slavery
I know that one of the biggest beef people have with Walmart is that products sold there are made by kids in factories in China or India. This brings up a whole other debate of whether or not we should support those kids in China or India. If we boycott the products they make, their wages may drop lower. If we continue to buy them, aren’t we endorsing this practice?
It is not only Walmart that sells products made through unfair trade practices, though. If you buy the same toy made in China for $3 more at Target, you are supporting the same unfair practices. And if you buy it used from a yard sale or thrift store, it was still assembled by a child in China. Walmart is not the problem.
I have said before that I am in the top 15% of the wealthiest people in the world. Often, slaves are associated with wealth. In almost every other time, if someone were as wealthy as I am, they would have a number or slaves. But I don’t have slaves, do I?
No, I hand wash our clothes and dishes. I hand roll our tortillas and pasta. There is no one doing these things for me. These are tasks traditionally associated with slaves. But slaves are doing a lot for me, whether I want them to or not.
The fact is, there are more slaves today than in any other time. Slave trade is a hot market and one that I, personally am benefitting from. You probably are, too.
Low prices on consumer goods are low because somewhere in their production, someone was not being paid properly, or at all. Even higher priced goods are often the result of someone not being paid properly.
People often blanketly blame this on Walmart. Walmart has a superior business model where they use superior buying power to offer superior prices. Other companies have copied their business model, but no one has been as successful.
Walmart did not invent greed. They did not pioneer bad treatment of laborers. They benefit from greed and bad treatment of laborers, but so do I.
I love Walmart, and have loved them long before my husband worked there. They provide low prices that allow me to have an even higher quality of life. I like that they employ the elderly and disabled as door greeters, a position they made up as a way to employ elderly and disabled people. I like their green initiatives, because they can do more to pioneer green causes than most who are pioneering green causes, because they are not on the fringe of society.
So many people attack Walmart as though they invented sin. Well, they didn’t. They benefit (financially) from it’s existence, just like the rest of us do. Find me a successful company that doesn’t and I’ll think some of this Walmart hate is maybe justified.
You cannot buy a product that is not tainted with sin. I am not saying it is not noble to try. There are a bunch of products that I will not buy for ethical reasons. I pick and choose what my money goes to, knowing that we can’t fund every cause, but we can help with some causes. I am also not delusional in thinking that my money is only ever used for the good of mankind.
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Calzones or Hot Pockets – $2.23
Yes, hot pockets. I had never tried hot pockets until we were married. They certainly lived up to my expectation of them, but my husband loved them. I used to get them for him as an occasional lunch treat. But they are around $2 for two small pockets, so there is no way I am going to buy them now. So, I made them.
I started with my tortilla recipe.
2 cups whole white wheat flour – $0.32
3/4 teaspoons salt – $0.03, if that
1/4 cup shortening – $0.25
1/2 cups water – $0
Mix all of the ingredients together. I divided this into four, as I wanted the crust a little thicker than a tortilla. I rolled each into a circle. Then I smeared them with tomato sauce, making sure I left space around the edges.
12 oz can GV tomato paste – $0.75
12 oz can filled with water – $0
1 tablespoon chopped garlic – $0.09
1 tablespoon oregano – $0.06
1/4 teaspoon stevia – $0.04
4 oz peppers and onions – $0.25
But I didn’t use the whole batch, I used about a half of the recipe, $0.60, saving the rest in the fridge for convenient future use.
I fried up a half pound of my homemade sausage, $0.53, and divided that onto half of the tortillas. I added an ounce of cheese to each one as well, $0.50
Then, I folded the tortilla over and scrunched the edges together.
Four of these took an hour in the crock pot on high, so they would take maybe twenty minutes in the oven at 350. I had to stack my cake pans, just as I did in crock pot dehydration. I would call these calzones, but for my husband, they are hot pockets, because that makes him happy.
I am thinking they will replace red hot dog night on our menu rotation. I was stuffed after one, as was my husband. The kiddos split one. That leaves one for my husband’s lunch. They could also be made in advance and frozen.
(To see the color versions of these photos, click on them.)
Continue reading Calzones or Hot Pockets – $2.23 …
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Calzones or Hot Pockets – $2.23
Yes, hot pockets. I had never tried hot pockets until we were married. They certainly lived up to my expectation of them, but my husband loved them. I used to get them for him as an occasional lunch treat. But they are around $2 for two small pockets, so there is no way I am going to buy them now. So, I made them.
I started with my tortilla recipe.
2 cups whole white wheat flour – $0.32
3/4 teaspoons salt – $0.03, if that
1/4 cup shortening – $0.25
1/2 cups water – $0
Mix all of the ingredients together. I divided this into four, as I wanted the crust a little thicker than a tortilla. I rolled each into a circle. Then I smeared them with tomato sauce, making sure I left space around the edges.
12 oz can GV tomato paste – $0.75
12 oz can filled with water – $0
1 tablespoon chopped garlic – $0.09
1 tablespoon oregano – $0.06
1/4 teaspoon stevia – $0.04
4 oz peppers and onions – $0.25
But I didn’t use the whole batch, I used about a half of the recipe, $0.60, saving the rest in the fridge for convenient future use.
I fried up a half pound of my homemade sausage, $0.53, and divided that onto half of the tortillas. I added an ounce of cheese to each one as well, $0.50
Then, I folded the tortilla over and scrunched the edges together.
Four of these took an hour in the crock pot on high, so they would take maybe twenty minutes in the oven at 350. I had to stack my cake pans, just as I did in crock pot dehydration. I would call these calzones, but for my husband, they are hot pockets, because that makes him happy.
I am thinking they will replace red hot dog night on our menu rotation. I was stuffed after one, as was my husband. The kiddos split one. That leaves one for my husband’s lunch. They could also be made in advance and frozen.
(To see the color versions of these photos, click on them.)
Continue reading Calzones or Hot Pockets – $2.23 …
From Under $1000 Per Month.
Calzones or Hot Pockets – $2.23
Yes, hot pockets. I had never tried hot pockets until we were married. They certainly lived up to my expectation of them, but my husband loved them. I used to get them for him as an occasional lunch treat. But they are around $2 for two small pockets, so there is no way I am going to buy them now. So, I made them.
I started with my tortilla recipe.
2 cups whole white wheat flour – $0.32
3/4 teaspoons salt – $0.03, if that
1/4 cup shortening – $0.25
1/2 cups water – $0
Mix all of the ingredients together. I divided this into four, as I wanted the crust a little thicker than a tortilla. I rolled each into a circle. Then I smeared them with tomato sauce, making sure I left space around the edges.
12 oz can GV tomato paste – $0.75
12 oz can filled with water – $0
1 tablespoon chopped garlic – $0.09
1 tablespoon oregano – $0.06
1/4 teaspoon stevia – $0.04
4 oz peppers and onions – $0.25
But I didn’t use the whole batch, I used about a half of the recipe, $0.60, saving the rest in the fridge for convenient future use.
I fried up a half pound of my homemade sausage, $0.53, and divided that onto half of the tortillas. I added an ounce of cheese to each one as well, $0.50
Then, I folded the tortilla over and scrunched the edges together.
Four of these took an hour in the crock pot on high, so they would take maybe twenty minutes in the oven at 350. I had to stack my cake pans, just as I did in crock pot dehydration. I would call these calzones, but for my husband, they are hot pockets, because that makes him happy.
I am thinking they will replace red hot dog night on our menu rotation. I was stuffed after one, as was my husband. The kiddos split one. That leaves one for my husband’s lunch. They could also be made in advance and frozen.
(To see the color versions of these photos, click on them.)
Continue reading Calzones or Hot Pockets – $2.23 …
From Under $1000 Per Month.
Calzones or Hot Pockets – $2.23
Yes, hot pockets. I had never tried hot pockets until we were married. They certainly lived up to my expectation of them, but my husband loved them. I used to get them for him as an occasional lunch treat. But they are around $2 for two small pockets, so there is no way I am going to buy them now. So, I made them.
I started with my tortilla recipe.
2 cups whole white wheat flour – $0.32
3/4 teaspoons salt – $0.03, if that
1/4 cup shortening – $0.25
1/2 cups water – $0
Mix all of the ingredients together. I divided this into four, as I wanted the crust a little thicker than a tortilla. I rolled each into a circle. Then I smeared them with tomato sauce, making sure I left space around the edges.
12 oz can GV tomato paste – $0.75
12 oz can filled with water – $0
1 tablespoon chopped garlic – $0.09
1 tablespoon oregano – $0.06
1/4 teaspoon stevia – $0.04
4 oz peppers and onions – $0.25
But I didn’t use the whole batch, I used about a half of the recipe, $0.60, saving the rest in the fridge for convenient future use.
I fried up a half pound of my homemade sausage, $0.53, and divided that onto half of the tortillas. I added an ounce of cheese to each one as well, $0.50
Then, I folded the tortilla over and scrunched the edges together.
Four of these took an hour in the crock pot on high, so they would take maybe twenty minutes in the oven at 350. I had to stack my cake pans, just as I did in crock pot dehydration. I would call these calzones, but for my husband, they are hot pockets, because that makes him happy.
I am thinking they will replace red hot dog night on our menu rotation. I was stuffed after one, as was my husband. The kiddos split one. That leaves one for my husband’s lunch. They could also be made in advance and frozen.
(To see the color versions of these photos, click on them.)
Continue reading Calzones or Hot Pockets – $2.23 …
From Under $1000 Per Month.