Some Things Just Don't Go as Planned . . . but They Can Often Be Salvaged

So, I set 2 eggs to boil this morning, then went about my daily routine. At one point, I thought I smelled a faint burning odor. I just figured someone had burnt their toast earlier and thought nothing further of it. I hopped into the shower, still not thinking anything of the odor. It was when I got out and began to dry off that I suddenly remembered the eggs in a pot of water left to come to a boil. Grabbing my robe, I ran down the hall to the kitchen. I quickly dumped some water from the tea kettle into the dry pan, then put the whole thing under cold, running water. After getting myself dressed, I came out to the kitchen to see if any parts of the eggs could be salvaged.

after peeling, the burnt side of an egg

It turns out that, yes, you can burn the daylights out of about half of an egg and still have something edible left.

after peeling, the not-so-burnt side of an egg

After peeling the eggs, and discarding any portions that looked obviously burnt, I chopped what remained and made egg salad. I lost about half of one egg and about 2/3 of the other.

what was left after peeling both eggs & removing any burnt parts

So I was able to salvage more than the equivalent of 1 whole egg.

And do you know what? It tastes good. I think the ranch-style dressing that I used to turn it into egg salad has a lot to do with that.

Fortunately, the pot is fine, maybe a little scorched but otherwise okay. It's an old, heavy-bottomed pot that we generally use for making popcorn on the stove, so I'm not sure if the scorching is from this egg-mishap or from making popcorn all of these years.

So, I've scraped burnt toast, scraped the bottoms of burnt cookies, peeled off the top of burnt casseroles, used the top 2/3 of a pot of rice that burned to the bottom of pot, and now a new one -- peeled off burnt parts on boiled eggs. You would think that I don't know how to cook! But I do know how to salvage, which, as a skill, is important for avoiding wastefulness.

Has anybody else, here, ever boiled a pot of eggs dry?
I bet that my folly made a few of you smile, and that is worth a million dollars!

Quick Depletion of the April Grocery Budget

It's only the 2nd of April and I've already spent $106.50 of my $126.87 for the month. That must sound awful, right? However, I've done most of my shopping for the month. I've been to WinCo for the bulk bin items and some bananas, Cash & Carry for some institution-sized packaged foods (including cheese!), and now this morning I took advantage of the Senior Discount Day at our Kroger affiliate (Fred Meyer) buying milk, butter, orange juice, peanut butter, hot dogs, and instant coffee. Interestingly, the instant decaf coffee is cheaper at Walmart and the instant regular coffee is less expensive at Fred Meyer. I'll make a stop at Walmart later in the month, picking up more bananas while I'm getting my other items.

We did get one big jar of peanut butter for the month. So, I don't think anyone suffered too badly, here, with not having peanut butter for 4 weeks. I am still making the bean spreads, though, mostly because the spreads give us more variety, and variety defies feelings of deprivation. The other item that my family was very happy about was the purchase of not 1 but 2 pounds of butter. I had 1 pound leftover from the last month, so now we have almost 3 whole pounds of butter. There was the risk that I would just be getting one more pound. However, I had figured that if I found milk on markdown, there would be a little extra money in the budget. Fortune was with me at Fred Meyer today. I found half-gallons of 1% milk on markdown for 89 cents each. I saved 37 cents a gallon over what I was prepared to pay at the regular price. The marked down milk combined with finding pinto beans for $1 less than I'd planned for a 25-lb bag left me with enough extra money for that second pound of butter.

I now have $20.37 remaining in the grocery budget for April. This should cover a 10-lb bag of chicken leg quarters, 5 dozen eggs, a jar of instant decaf, a canister of shortening for making pie crusts, and a couple of bunches of bananas, all from Walmart. I plan on putting off the Walmart trip as long as I can to see if maybe we don't need one or more of these items, and I can maybe put the extra money toward more eggs (if I find a great sale).

After shopping at each store, I went through my lists again and refigured the amounts of the desired items. This kept me accountable, allowed me to rethink my budget allotments, and I think will help me come as close to the budgeted amount as possible without going over. It can be a bit like a game for me. I keep the lists in Word documents and save with each new adjustment. I personally find it interesting to see how my lists morph over the course of the month. And just in case you're concerned that we're not getting enough to eat, I'm keeping a log of our dinner meals, again. I'll post that later this week. (But thank you for being concerned. I know your thoughts come from your hearts.) We are eating well! The first month was challenging, but I can see that food variety is improving.

I hope your week is going well!

How I Compare the Price Per Serving for Fresh, Dried, and Juiced Fruits

I mentioned comparing the price per serving for fresh fruit and juice last week in the comments. I had previously developed my own calculations to help me assess whether or not using juice or dried fruit would be as cost-effective per serving as some of the fresh fruit that's within my price range. So, here are my thoughts and how I've determined what will work for my small budget. This may only be entertainment for most of you. However, I've received a few emails and read a couple of comments which suggest that I am not the only one trying to make a small grocery budget work. Therefore, some of my own thoughts may help those of you who fall into this same group.

I've set a current price per pound for what I'm willing to spend on fresh fruit at about 50 cents. This low price per pound limits our choices to bananas and maybe apples or oranges. It's not enough to have the price per pound limit, but I also need to get as many servings per pound to meet a price per serving target.

So, with small bananas, there are about 3 bananas (or servings) per pound. At 42 cents/lb (what I pay at Walmart and WinCo), then each banana costs about 13 cents each. A small banana has about 90 calories.

With medium oranges averaging 4.6 ounces each, there are about 3.5 medium oranges per pound. At 50 cents/lb, each orange would cost 14 cents and contain about 62 calories.

With medium apples, there are about 3 per pound. At 50 cents per pound, each medium apple costs 16 cents, and contains about 80 calories.

Using this information, for my family's budget, I've determined that a single serving of fruit should contain between 65 and 90 calories and should cost between 13 and 17 cents.so my calorie range for a serving of fruit is about 65 to 90 calories, and my price range per serving is about 13 to 17 cents each.

This is pretty straight forward. If I find medium apples or oranges priced at or below 50 cents per pound, then my cost per serving lines up with my budget goals.

So, what about dried fruit or 100% fruit juice?

The least expensive purchased dried fruit in my area is raisins. When comparing raisins, I can't do a straight across comparison, as the water content of raisins has mostly been removed. So, I decided to base my calculations on calorie content, looking for a serving of raisins that provides about 90 calories. (That would be about 3 tablespoons.) I went with the high end of my calorie range as grapes/raisins are naturally high in sugar, and anything smaller than 3 tablespoons would be unrealistic as a serving.

16 ounces of raisins contains about 1360 calories. There are about 15  90-calorie portions of raisins in a pound. So, if raisins are priced between $1.95 and $2.55 per pound, then each 90-calorie portion falls between my price per serving range of 13 and 17 cents. In my area, my cheapest price for raisins is at Cash & Carry, with a 4-lb bag of raisins for $9.37, or $2.34 per pound, or not quite 16 cents per serving.

The other form of fruit that we're using is 100% fruit juice made from frozen concentrate. The US government uses 6 ounces of juice as a portion size. With orange juice made from concentrate, there are 82 calories in a 6-oz serving of orange juice when made according to the package directions, falling within my calorie range for a serving of fruit. One 12-oz can of orange juice concentrate makes 8 82-calorie portions. So a 12-oz can  of concentrate would have to cost between $1.04 and $1.36 to fall within my own guidelines for price. However, the 16-oz can of concentrate is often less expensive per ounce than the 12-oz can. Using my Senior Discount at Fred Meyer, I can buy the 16-oz cans of orange juice concentrate for $1.61 each (which is the equivalent of $1.20 for a 12-oz can). I get 10.66 fruit servings from the 16-oz can of concentrate, so my price per serving is about 15 cents, which is within my range.

The price per serving for 100% apple juice is also based on a 6-oz portion of juice, made up according to package direction. A 12-oz can of the frozen concentrate has about 700 calories. One 12-oz can makes about 48 ounces of fluid. In a 48-oz pitcher, there are 8  6-ounce portions of apple juice, each having 87 calories. I bought a 12-oz can of concentrate at WinCo for 99 cents, so each  87-calorie serving costs 12 cents, which is actually below my price range.

So, this is what we've found that will work within our small budget for the current few months: fresh fruit priced below 50 cents/lb and between 13 and 17 cents per piece, raisins when priced between $1.95 and $2.55 per pound, and 100% frozen fruit juice concentrate when priced between 99 cents and $1.36 for the 12-oz can, or $1.81 for the 16-oz can.

I'm not policing portion sizes or even how many servings of fruit a person consumes in a day. I figure that our bodies will consume however many calories and portions of fruit that they require.

My price per pound on fruit will have to change when melon season begins. Melons contain more water than apples or bananas, so I will use calorie content when considering the cost per serving. Our garden produces almost all of the fruit that we consume in summer, providing rhubarb (technically a vegetable but we eat it as a fruit), strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, huckleberries, cranberries, apples, plums, pears, cherries, grapes, figs, and crabapples. I also buy peaches and nectarines in summer, which I know won't fall below 50 cents per pound, but hopefully our budget will allow a higher price per pound for fresh fruit, then.

I hope that this has all made sense. Basically, calories seemed like the best way to determine a price per serving of fruit that could cover fresh, juiced, and dried fruit.

The Importance of Taking Advantage of Special Deals when the Grocery Budget is Small

A lot of grocery stores are adding service features to attract busy customers. One of the more recent additions to my local Fred Meyer (a Kroger affiliate) is a pick-up service. The customer places their order online, choosing the items, registering a form of payment, loading any e-coupons, and selecting a pick-up time window. Normally, there is a service fee for this shopping option. At Fred Meyer, it's $4.95 per shopping pick-up. When the time window opens, the customer shows up in the parking lot of the store, parking in a special section of stalls, follows the instructions to phone in their arrival, then waits until the attendant brings the groceries to their car. The customer gets a moment to review the order and prices charged (ensuring that e-coupons were applied) and hand-delivers any paper coupons to the attendant. If all is well, the groceries are loaded into the car and the customer drives off.

For an introductory period, Fred Meyer is waiving the $4.95 service fee for a customer's first 3 pick-ups, and offering exclusive grocery coupons for Pick-up orders only. I had seen these coupons in the digital coupon list on Fred Meyer's site, but mostly ignored them, as I like to browse the store for the non-advertised markdowns. However, this month, I stumbled across a coupon that I couldn't pass up. It was for 4-lbs of sugar at 99 cents each, limit of 5. This is half the price that I had planned on paying using the Senior Discount, and the volume of sugar sounds like enough to stretch through 3 months of scratch cooking and baking for my household. I thought about how I could arrange my errands so that this would not be out of the way or use additional gas for the car. It sounded like it would be doable. So, I proceeded with the online order. You need to understand that I don't like trying new things, especially when any sort of technology might be involved. But I did this anyway. Unless I come across another great coupon, this may be the least expensive sugar that I buy any time in the near future.

There were several other good-sounding e-coupons on Fred Meyer's website that I could have used in this Pick-up order. Just nothing else that fit my needs for this moment. To give you an ida of what else FM is offering in these exclusive Pick-up order coupons, boneless, skinless chicken breasts @ $1.49/lb (limit 5 packages, each package about 5 lbs), 24 oz packages of individual string cheese @ $3.99 -- that's $2.66/lb for individually-wrapped string cheese (limit 5), and 32 oz. bags of frozen potato products, like tater tots, and shoestring fries, @ 99 cents (limit 5). For my budget, if there had been more room for meat purchases this month, I would have jumped on the chicken breasts. The other items just wouldn't be in my small budget. However, the sugar is a staple, something that is on my list, and at a price that won't be easily found soon. If it hadn't been for this deal, I would have bought 2 4-lb bags and had to work to make them stretch.

Another special deal that I came across involved answering a customer feedback survey. I had purchased 2 $5 gift cards to Dairy Queen, for my daughters' birthday, so they can go out for a treat together sometime this summer. On the receipt for the gift card purchase was a survey request, which would result in a coupon for a free ice cream bar upon completion. I answered the survey and now have a coupon to use for a free item in the next few weeks. At the same time that I picked up the DQ gift cards, I also bought 2 $5 gift cards to McDonalds, again so my daughters could go out together sometime for a treat. With this gift card purchase, I received not one survey request, but three survey requests on the various receipts. I answered these surveys and received coupon codes for 3 sandwich deals (buy 1 get 1 free). On such a tight budget, I'm not sure that we'll use the McDonald's coupons (since you have to spend to get the freebie), but the DQ coupon is valuable for a free treat for someone who needs a pick-me-up. This is an ice cream bar that would otherwise not be affordable.

These special deals are usually limited. When I saw the Fred Meyer Pick-up coupon, I knew that this was an introductory come-on to attract customer attention. For the time being, I am making every dollar count. In order to fulfill as many of my shopping list items as possible, I need to go a little bit out of my way to snag the deals. I'm probably not the ideal customer for Fred Meyer. I use the Senior Discount Day to buy only the items that are least expensive using the discount, compared to shopping any other place. I don't fill my cart with the rest of the items (at a higher price) from my overall shopping list. I won't be a loyal Pick-up service shopper once the special deals and introductory free service expires. Instead, I'll keep looking out for the next avenue toward deals, as I make my grocery budget stretch as much as possible.

How about you? Do your grocery stores offer pick-up service, and do they also have exclusive coupons for Pick-up customers, only?

Easter Table Decor Craft

Enough talk about grocery shopping.
I wanted to show you what I'm making for our Easter luncheon table. There will be one of these at each place of the table. This is a hollow, ordinary chicken egg, with an opening broken at the pointed end of the egg, then tea-stained with a strong tea solution using 2 plain tea bags and 2 cups of water. I immersed each entire hollow egg in the tea and left to sit for a couple of hours, doing 2 eggs at a time. The "stand" is one of my parents' napkin rings. (Egg cups would also work well as "stands" for the egg planters.) Just before Easter, I will fill the eggs with tiny plants, most likely violets, as they grow wild in our yard, and it looks like they will about be in bloom in time for Easter. Alternatively, I will find other small blossoms on stems in the yard and use the egg as a vase. 

I got the idea from this Michael's ad (see the eggs with bulb flowers). I immediately realized that I could do something like this using just what I have at home. The eggshells would have been composted, anyway. The tea bags were freebies from a hotel stay a while ago. The napkin rings were something I already owned. And the plants or blooms will be scavenged from my yard.



After Easter is over, the napkin rings will be returned to storage, the plants can be returned to the garden, and the eggshells can still be composted. I'll let you see how they turn out later in April.

Just so you know, I was able to shake the contents of the egg out of the shell, as the opening was so large. And I didn't need to poke a hole in the other end, as I did when blowing out eggs. This is definitely much less time-intensive of a spring craft than the painted and speckled eggs.

Grocery Plans for April

The month of March is wrapping up and my family did really well on our budget. We still have a couple of months before the income reduction takes place, but we do want to see what is possible for us, in order to judge if this is doable or if we need greater income. Here's a really good sign -- we had a super-low credit card bill this month, perhaps the lowest that it's been in a couple of years.

The Groceries

One of the issues with working with basic ingredients is the need to regularly prepare foods from scratch. With this idea in mind, I've spent some time each day preparing individual food items for ease of use, such as peeling and trimming a dozen carrots at a time, shredding a head of cabbage and making a bottle of cole slaw dressing, toasting some raw almonds for snacking, and making scratch pudding and putting into small jars for homemade snack-pack pudding cups. I estimate that I spend 1 hour per day (in addition to regular meal prep) making these easy to grab foods that are appreciated by myself and my family. So, for 7 extra hours per week, or 31 extra hours this month, I've been able to strip away about $125.00 from our grocery budget. $4.03 is not a great hourly wage, but I've been able to do these little kitchen jobs anytime that it works out for me.

Besides the money savings, I feel that we are eating more real foods and less processed junk. It seems "cleaner," more like how we're supposed to eat. I think this is a fantastic bonus!

While I sit here and make out next month's shopping list, I have $1.87 leftover from March's grocery budget to roll over to April's. I don't feel the need to go out and buy anything else in these last couple of days with that $1.87. So, going into April, I have $126.87 for food items. In making out my list, again I had to whittle it away a bit to fit the budget. I primarily made my choices based on nutrition for the dollar spent, allowing for a couple of non-nutritive items, too, such as coffee and sugar.

This past month, my two big stock-up items were a 25-lb bag of yellow onions and 21 pounds of ground beef. I still have a lot of both of those items in stock. My two big stock-up items for April will be a 25-lb sack of dried pinto beans and a 50-lb sack of all-purpose flour. Both of those items are in amounts which should last our family several months, providing an inexpensive protein source and a basic baking ingredient for our meals and snacks. Pinto beans tend to be the least expensive dried bean in my area, with versatility to use them in several different preparations.

In addition to the beans and flour, I'll also be buying smaller amounts of dried white beans (for sandwich spread), butter, orange juice, apple juice, raisins, bananas, carrots, potatoes, frozen spinach, chicken leg quarters, hot dogs, whole wheat flour, canned tomato paste, shredded cheese, sugar, coffee, and enough milk and eggs to last the month. (One of my promises to our family at the beginning of this month was that there would always be plenty of eggs, milk, and bread. I kept that promise, ensuring family members that there would always be something from which to make a meal or snack.) I'll be shopping at Walmart, WinCo, Fred Meyer (Senior Discount Day on April 2 -- just have to be 55+ -- no special card, just tell the cashier you're over 55), and Smart Foods/Cash & Carry.

Easter is in April, but I do have a budgeted amount to spend for this holiday that is separate from the grocery budget. I've reduced this budget considerably from last year, but there is still enough to cover the cost of a ham and next years' Easter egg hunt candy. (You may recall that I buy the next year's Easter candy on clearance after the holiday and store until the following year.) So, at least there is no need to use the grocery budget for the Easter ham. We also have 2 birthdays in this month. We have a couple of gifts cards for a restaurant in our area. I offered these to our daughters for their birthday celebration, but they turned us down, wanting burgers and fries at home instead. So, we'll have a dual birthday lunch celebration in a restaurant using those gift cards. (Lunch is often less expensive than dinner, hence the lunch celebration.)

We're doing really, really well, and I'm about as surprised as anyone else! I'm still not sure if this is sustainable. Although, if there had to be an optimal time to begin this, it is now in early spring. I've begun planting the vegetable garden. I planted snow peas last week and have just this week started cool season greens from seeds, indoors. Our early spring garden has lots of watercress, sorrel, chives, kale, garlic chives, and Swiss chard to provide variety to the narrow range of veggies that I'm purchasing. Plus, our rhubarb is now up and should be ready to harvest in mid-April. And, I still have some canned and frozen vegetables in store. We're taking this just one month at a time. Life is good.

Saved $20 by Borrowing From the Garden Again

Last spring, I bought a spring color bowl (a pot that was pre-planted with spring bulbs and primroses) from the garden center, to place on a table just outside the bedroom window. It brought me a lot of joy in the early spring weeks.

I had planned on  buying another one for this year. I thought again, then decided to raid my garden. I "borrowed" some daffodils, tulips, grape hyacinths, hyacinth, and some primroses from my yard and put together my own color bowl, using a pot and soil that I already had. When my flowers are done blooming, I plan on returning the bulbs and plants to the garden and finding something else to put in these pots.

Anyway, the other day, it took me about 30 minutes to dig and pot, and it will take another 15 minutes to put all of the plants back. So, forty-five minutes of work for $20 in savings -- that's a pretty good deal. Since I had really planned on buying a color bowl this spring, this is a real savings (as opposed to a theoretical savings).

6 Things to Do to Dig Out of Feelings of Deprivation and Self-Pity

Financial set-backs tend to stir up the pity pot for me. So, this go-round, I'm being as proactive as I can. Here's the list that I'm following in order to ditch those feelings of deprivation.

• make an abundance of good foods using your least expensive and abundantly-supplied ingredients, such as bar cookies, breads, yogurt, pudding, flavored popcorn, or granola. I find that if we have a lot of foods available to snack on or make quick meals with, we all tend to forget that our budget is much smaller.

• use the good stuff -- sit in the living room that is usually reserved for guests, have dinner in the formal dining room, use the good china or silver, use those towels that you save for visiting guests, light candles. Our family tends to save the "good stuff" for guests only. Honoring our guests with those nicer belongings is a hospitable thing to do, but sometimes, we need to honor our own family and indulge in using those belongings which are set aside for special occasions. Using a really soft and stain-free towel can put a smile on my face and make me feel pampered.

• this one is helpful when I am wanting "new" stuff -- refresh or refurbish some worn household or personal items, such as bleaching plastic cutting boards and white dish towels, ironing a few favorite shirts, dusting and tidying surfaces in your home, re-dyeing faded clothing, polishing leather shoes, scouring the outsides of pots and pans. We hear this a lot -- we live in a throw away society. We seem to have lost the tolerance for lived-in looking belongings. When something begins to look dingy, instead of restoring the item to its former appearance, it gets tossed into the giveaway pile and replaced with a new version. Not only is this wasteful, but it seems to change the way that I view my possessions. If a blouse looks limp, I no longer choose it to wear. If my dish towels are stained, I don't want them on display when guests are in the house. I have a faded black shirt sitting in the pile of clothing to be dyed soon. It no longer looks nice, so I've avoided wearing it this past year. It used to be a favorite shirt. Once it's re-dyed, I'm hoping it will come back into my clothing rotation. While I shouldn't base my self-esteem on the condition of my belongings, keeping my possessions in good order does make me feel better about myself.

• take advantage of freebies, such as concerts in the park, or books, dvds, and magazines from the library, or free days at museums, or free giveaways at local fast food chains. There are a lot of freebies out there. How can someone possibly feel deprived while eating a free ice cream cone?!

• set yourself up for some serious relaxation, such as a bath with essential oils, candles, and/or music, or lounge in the sun, or have a lie down with music in the background, or spend time in prayerful meditation. For me, de-stressing helps me find my way back to my purpose in this life, which in turn helps me to minimize the significance of a financial set-back.

• this one is probably the most important (but often overlooked) thing to do when self-pity kicks in -- get outside of yourself and do something for someone who could use a little TLC. Volunteering is a great way to find those who could use your kindness and friendly smile. Seeing that someone else is also struggling can put our own situations into proper perspective and give us a sense of belonging to a larger pool of people. 

Is there anything you would add to my list of proactive steps?

Edible Flowers for the Pots and Baskets this Summer

I had planned on buying some flowering annual starts for some pots and hanging baskets that I have in the yard. I have now rethought that idea and am now planning to plant edible flowers from seeds in those containers. As it is now the 3rd week of March, and I haven't started any seeds indoors, I went looking for quick-to-grow flowers. Nasturtiums came up on the list.

I know from past experience that they do grow well in my yard and we enjoy them added to cooking. The flowers, petals, and seed pods are all edible. They can be added to egg dishes, salads, used in place of lettuce on sandwiches, or sauteed with other veggies. The leaves and petals are peppery in taste.

According to WebMD, nasturtiums contain Vitamin C and may help fight bacteria, viruses, fungi, and tumors. As with all foods, they may pose health complications for some people. WebMD specifically cautions against ingestion of nasturtiums for those with kidney disease.

Nasturtiums are easy to grow, requiring with minimal care. Some say they thrive on neglect. For about $2, I can buy a packet of 20 to 25 seeds, enough that I hope will fill about 5 baskets or small pots with nasturtium plants. These should save money over buying flowering annual starts and provide some edibles for our meals. One question -- should I take the seeds out of the gardening budget or the food budget?

Anyone else grow edible flowers?

Comparing the Cost of Egg Salad to Peanut Butter

While peanut butter is a less expensive alternative to luncheon meat for a sandwich filling, there may be even cheaper options. I knew this going into March. When I began making up my grocery list, I became aware that I would have to cut a few items. So, I began brainstorming alternatives for many items on my list. At about $1.40/ 16 ounces for the cheapest peanut butter available, this was one of those items. I have mentioned that we've been using homemade bean spread this month. When using canned beans, bean spread is quick and easy to make and costs about 65 to 75 cents per pint.

Another alternative to peanut butter is egg salad. I think most of us know that egg salad is a frugal sandwich filling. Are you interested in knowing just how frugal it may or may not be? Of course, your cost per pint will be different from mine, as the prices for ingredients vary by region. However, you can use my calculations for your own comparison of peanut butter to egg salad.

I'll use large eggs in this calculation, because this is the size that is often advertised on sale this time of year, and the size which is mentioned in most egg salad recipes. The USDA has sized eggs according to weight, with a large egg weighing in at about 2 ounces. Within a carton of eggs, each weighs slightly less or more than 2 ounces, but a carton of a dozen large eggs must weigh at least 24 ounces, not including the packaging. FYI, the egg weight also includes the shell. Each large egg contains about 3.25 tablespoons of edible content, or 1.625 liquid ounces, or 50 grams boiled and peeled* (about 1.76 ounces). If you use 7 large eggs to make a batch of egg salad, the egg content of the batch would weigh about 12.32 ounces. The ingredients that are added to the chopped, boiled eggs will bring the weight of a batch of egg salad up to just over 17 ounces.

I buy mayonnaise in 1-gallon containers at Cash & Carry, an institutional supply chain that also sells to the public. I pay about $1.79 per quart. A quick Walmart search for my area says that a 30-oz jar of Great Value mayonnaise sells for $2.48. In a large batch of egg salad that uses about 7 or 8 eggs, most recipes call for 4 ounces (about 1/2 cup) of mayonnaise. My Cash & Carry price for the mayo, then, is about 22 cents. The same amount of the Walmart mayo would be about 33 cents. Many recipes also call for pickle relish, prepared mustard, chopped green olives, and/or pimento. The average amount of these ingredients in a 7 or 8 egg batch of egg salad is about 3/4 to 1 ounce (1  1/2 to 2 tablespoons). The cost of these ingredients is variable. If you go with a thrifty version and use Walmart Great Value pickle relish (24-oz jar for $1.98) as your added ingredient, the cost is between 6 and 8 cents for 3/4 to 1 ounce of relish. (I make my own each summer with my vegetable garden rejects, so I estimate my cost for relish is about 2 cents.) It may be obvious that adding chopped green olives or pimentos will increase the final cost in comparison to using sweet pickle relish. (At Walmart, pimentos are 31 cents/ounce and green olives are about 20 cents/ounce.)

The 7 boiled eggs, once peeled, weigh about 12.32 ounces, the mayonnaise weighs about 4 ounces, and the extra ingredients weigh about 3/4 to 1 ounce, bringing the batch of egg salad up to 17.32 ounces.

I recently bought a 5 dozen box of large eggs at Walmart for $4.75. The cost for 7 of those eggs was 55 cents. If I add Cash & Carry mayonnaise, my cost per batch rises to 77 cents. However, this month I was out of mayonnaise. So I substituted homemade, plain yogurt blended with a bit of mustard, vegetable oil, salt, and curry powder. I estimate that my homemade blend for this batch of egg salad was about 13 cents. I also added about 2 tablespoons of homemade relish, at a cost of about 2 cents. My cost for a batch of egg salad was about 70 cents. (If I had mayonnaise, my cost per batch would still only be about 79 cents.) So, 65 to 73 cents for 16 ounces of egg salad, compared to $1.40 for 16 ounces of peanut butter. Egg salad was nearly half the cost of peanut butter, making peanut butter an easy target for the axe from my shopping list.

For someone without access to an institutional supply store and without homemade pickle relish or yogurt, instead shopping at Walmart for all of the ingredients, the cost for 16 ounces of egg salad would be about 87 to 89 cents.

The cheapest peanut butter at Walmart this week is the 64-oz jar of Great Value Creamy Peanut Butter, at $6.44, or $1.59 for 16 ounces (452.5 g). So, about 95 cents for egg salad compared with $1.59 for peanut butter. The egg salad is still less expensive by weight than peanut butter.

So, that's a pound for pound comparison. There is also the consideration of how much egg salad is used per sandwich compared to peanut butter. I don't use the serving size of 2 tablespoons but use about 2  1/2 tablespoons (40 g/ 1.41 oz) of peanut butter per sandwich. With egg salad, I use roughly 2 ounces of egg salad per sandwich (the amount of about 3/4 of a boiled egg combined with extra ingredients). So for me, the filling for a peanut butter sandwich costs about 12 cents, whereas the filling for an egg salad sandwich costs about 8 - 9 cents. If I bought all of the ingredients for egg salad at Walmart, my cost per sandwich would rise to 10 - 11 cents each. Skipping the peanut butter and making egg salad was still the less expensive option, but only by a small amount per serving.

Going into my calculations, I thought for certain that egg salad would be a huge savings over peanut butter. And it is, if measured by weight for each, but not so much when considering my usage. Because we tend to use so much more egg salad per sandwich than peanut butter, the savings (even when figuring in my homemade ingredients) were small. However, our family does use bean spread in comparable amounts to peanut butter. So bean spread at 65 to 75 cents per 16 ounces is about half the actual, per sandwich cost of peanut butter. Considering that a batch of egg salad takes me about 15 minutes of hands-on time, but a batch of beans spread takes about 5 minutes of hands-on time, I'll be sticking to bean spread for the most part, adding in egg salad every now and then for variety. When preparing so many foods for my family from scratch, I am all about saving time as well as money.

We will buy peanut butter again, when the budget allows for it, as it is a food that we enjoy. Enjoying what we eat is important, too!

By the way, if you're looking for a couple of good bean spread recipes, the cookbook Laurel's Kitchen has a few.

Here is a modified hummus recipe. You can skip the sesame seeds, but they do add a nice flavor to the spread.

And here is a modified recipe from Laurel's Kitchen for her Zippy Soybean Spread. I use cooked soybeans in a version similar to this recipe, but I omit the vinegar. I use garlic powder in place of fresh, and omit the green pepper and celery when I don't have it, but this is a good use for celery leaves that you might not otherwise use. I use vegetable oil in place of olive oil, and I use more than 1 tablespoon, probably closer to 3 or 4 tablespoons. I add salt to taste.

And here is my own loose recipe for black bean sandwich spread. Four ingredients: cooked black beans, salsa, oil, and salt.


Over to you -- is egg salad significantly cheaper for you than peanut butter, given the prices for ingredients which are local to you?



information on egg sizing and liquid usable weight of large eggs is from thekitchn.com
*weight of peeled, boiled egg from Joy of Baking

Spring Blooms From the Garden

Crocus blooms don't make very good cut flowers. However, if you dig carefully (keeping the bulb and most of the root structure in tact), you can "borrow" a few crocus bulbs from your garden to enjoy indoors for a week. I dug these crocus on Monday. They are now bringing cheer to the kitchen eating area.

In my rainy climate, most of early spring can pass by with nary a clear day to get outside to enjoy garden blooms. Bringing some of the blooms indoors ensures that I will indeed get that chance to marvel at their beauty. I dig a couple of crocus, grape hyacinths, and primroses, then place in pots of soil for indoor loveliness in the weeks leading up to Easter. I keep them watered like any other houseplant. When the blooms have faded, I return the plants to the garden, adding a bit of bulb food to the hole in the soil as I replant. I water them in good, then rely on our abundant rainfall in March and April to take care of the rest.

I also brought some cherry tree branches into the house. I pruned the fruit trees this afternoon and thought how lovely some stalks of cherry blossoms will be in a few days. So, I brought some of the thinner branches indoors for vases.

How the Month's Grocery Budget is Going

Here’s where we stand with the grocery budget for the month —

It’s a little past mid-month, and I’ve about depleted my allotted $125 for March. I went to Walmart the first weekend of the month, spending $29.81 for the items that I had determined would be least expensive in that store, including 5 dozen eggs, 10 lbs of chicken hindquarters, 2 heads of cabbage, some garlic powder, vegetable oil, and bananas. On March 5th, I shopped the Senior Discount Day at Fred Meyer, following the same game plan as Walmart, spending $57.01 and buying canned green beans, canned dried beans, canned tomatoes, 1 package of chocolate chips*, bread, frozen orange juice concentrate, butter, milk, and ground beef, with the ground beef as my stock-up item. On the 14th, I went to Safeway and bought 8 heads of green cabbage, spending $8.78. This last week, I went to Walmart to buy the Oreo-style cookies, a package of frozen French fries, and another bunch of bananas, spending $5.64. Finally, Monday morning, I was driving right by Cash & Carry, so I decided to stop and finish my grocery list for the month. I bought 10 lbs of carrots, 25 lbs of onions (my 2nd stock-up item for the month), 10 lbs of potatoes, 32 oz container of frozen apple juice concentrate, and a bunch of very green bananas (to get us through the last week of the month, I hope). I have now spent $123.13.

I am well-stocked on all of the food groups. I may not have lots of some particular foods, such as butter and flour, but I do have a large container of oil and enough other grains to get through the month. I did decide to buy loaves of bread instead of baking bread this month. I didn't have enough in the budget to buy the two 50-lb sacks of flour that I normally buy, getting the best price per pound and resulting in homemade loaves of bread that cost about 50 cents/loaf. Instead, I bought the cheapest bread that Fred Meyer sells, at 80 cents/ loaf. Next month, I'll have the money to buy the 2 kinds of flour that I use in bread. A similar situation with buying the canned dried beans. The canned beans were 45 cents each. I've been using them to quickly make a container of sandwich spread once or twice per week to substitute for the peanut butter that was out of my price range. The cost of bean spread using canned beans and other ingredients is about 75 cents per pound, while peanut butter was $1.40 per pound in a 64-oz container. Next month, I will buy a large sack of dried beans to cook for meals and make sandwich spreads.

On a very low budget, I find that I have to pick and choose which foods to buy in large quantities, and which to wait for another month or opportunity. The goal is to buy two or three basic items per month at a super low price and in quantities large enough to last for 3 or 4 months. By doing this every month, after a few months I should have enough of the basics that I can splurge occasionally on non-basic ingredients. It will all work out, and truly, we are being well-fed.

I still have $1.87 of March's grocery money left. Should we need a bit more fresh fruit, I will pick up one more bunch of bananas for 42 cents per pound at Walmart.

In the total food budget (including eating out), we have been exceptionally good. We haven't so much as bought a single burger out. My daughters had coupons for free birthday frozen yogurt and invited me to come, but I declined and sent them off together to enjoy their birthday treat. If I had gone, my frozen yogurt would have cost about $5. In addition, I had to go to the mall on a couple of occasions this month (birthday gift shopping and walking/exercise), every single time I brought my thermos of coffee and some sort of snack in my purse. On another occasion, I had a 3-hour wait in the city for one daughter. Not only did I find free, street parking, but I brought a book and my laptop for entertainment and a thermos of tea and my lunch plus snacks, avoiding the purchase of any food or drink while I waited. Also, our Sunday lunches have reverted to eating home-prepared, quick foods. We add interest by eating on the deck, on the grass, or at the mall. When we have warm, sunny Sundays, we plan on cooking hotdogs over the fire ring or taking sandwiches to the beach for our after-church lunches. Our original goal was to preserve a family time each week, where we all share a relaxing meal together. Eating out after church helped get that going. Now, I think we are continuing but without the restaurant expense.


*the chocolate chips sound like a money-waster on such a tight budget. However, I am using them to make homemade candies for our family several times this month. If you figure a regular chocolate bar weighs 1.55 ounces, then one 12-oz bag of chocolate chips would yield 7.74 candy bar's worth of chocolate. The 12-oz bag of chocolate chips cost just under $2. 7.74 candy bars would cost about $6.11, based on a price of 79 cents per bar at Dollar Tree. Maybe this sounds like rationalizing the purchase of a non-essential item. For us, having some treats sprinkled throughout the month may prevent some of the discouragement that can set in when you constantly feel deprived.

DQ Free Cone Day 2019

photo source: https://www.dairyqueen.com/us-en/Promotions-US/

Do you have a Dairy Queen in your area? This coming Wednesday, March 20 is DQ's Free Cone Day. Not all DQ's participate, and not valid at mall locations. Phone your local Dairy Queen to see if they are participating in this offer on Wednesday, the 20th.

Birthday Dinner for My Daughters

The birthday dinner this year was a little more tricky to pull together than previous years, as there was very little wiggle room for "special" ingredients. However, my daughters and I brainstormed what we could do with what we have and still make the meal a special one. Now, you need to understand, "special" to my daughters does not mean steak, lobster, roast or anything that you might normally think of for a special, home-cooked meal. "Special" to my daughters meant burgers and fries for this birthday. So, for their birthday dinner, that's exactly what we did.

I had ground beef in the freezer, the ingredients to make buns, plus ketchup, mustard, canned tomatoes, garden watercress, a tiny amount of onion, plain yogurt, garlic powder, a packet of au jus mix, and cabbage (for a slaw-style salad). I did splurge and bought one 2-lb bag of seasoned French fries, for a little over $2 at Walmart.

I baked a batch of burger buns on Saturday, so the basic burger was covered. Because this was a special burger meal and because our selection of on-hand ingredients didn't match what one would think of as usual burger toppings, we put together some different toppings, which we billed as "gourmet." Here are the toppings from our "gourmet" burger toppings bar:

• au jus for dipping French dip-style (surprised me, this was very popular with all)
• tzatziki, without the cucumber, using strained yogurt, olive oil, mint (didn't have dill), lemon juice, garlic powder, salt (also very popular)
• salsa made from canned tomatoes with jalapenos, to which I added fresh onion, garlic powder, chili powder, salt, chipotle powder, pa inch of sugar, and vinegar, cooking it down for about 20 minutes
• watercress
• rosemary mustard, made last summer
• plus the usual ketchup and yellow mustard

Our birthday dinner menu was as follows:

• burgers with our "gourmet" toppings bar
• seasoned fries from a package
• cole slaw, made with a vinaigrette mixed with yogurt
• cookies and cream birthday cake
• 1 bottle of sparkling cider to toast the birthday gals
• 1 bottle of homemade lemonade
• 1 bottle of water

We served the lemonade and water in empty sparkling cider bottles, as we did for one daughter's graduation reception last June. I have saved the quirky-shaped or nicely-colored cider bottles that we've received over the years. They make nice bottles for water on the dinner table or for taking lemonade on a picnic.

The entire meal used an extra $4.12 out of our grocery budget for the Oreo-style cookies and the seasoned fries. That's considerably less than what we had originally planned for their birthday before we knew about the upcoming income reduction. 

Cookies and Cream Birthday Cake

Today is my daughters' birthday.  One of the ways that I show them my love is to bake a special birthday cake. This year's cake is mostly about taste and texture, and less about beauty. I gave a lot of thought to what kind of cake to make for them. One daughter really loves Oreo cookies, and the other loves cookies and cream ice cream. So, the logical choice for this year's cake was a cookies and cream cake.

I had a white cake mix in the pantry, along with plenty of cocoa powder and confectioner's sugar. The only ingredient that I needed to buy was 1 package of Oreo-type cookies, which I found at Walmart for just under $2.

Once home, I mixed the cake mix according to package directions, then folded in 12 crushed cookies. I left some kind of large chunks, as you can see in the split cake. The cakes baked in slightly less time than the mix instructions suggested.

After baking, I cooled the cakes, then split each so that I would have a 4-layer cake. Between the layers is the dark chocolate frosting which also is glopped onto the top of the cake to hold the cookie "garnishes." The dark chocolate frosting is simply a homemade, cocoa powder buttercream frosting.

After the layers were assembled, I frosted the sides and top with a cookies and cream frosting -- a vanilla buttercream frosting into which 12 crushed cookies are folded. I used a baggie with a corner cut out to pipe globs of dark chocolate frosting on the top, after which I placed a half cookie into each chocolate blob around the edge, and 1 whole cookie in the center. To finish the sides, I took some cookie pieces and crushed them finely with a rolling pin in a bag. I then scooped up the cookie crumbs, and pressed them onto the sides of the cake. The crumb finish kind of hides any messiness of the cookies and cream frosting. I'm hoping this will be a hit tonight.

A Couple of Early Garden Herbs and Greens for Making Salads

In our cool maritime climate, I can count on a couple of herbs and greens to return early each spring, from which I make some of our early-season salads. These include watercress, sorrel, garlic greens, chives, violet blossoms, and the fall-planted Swiss chard and kale.

Yesterday afternoon, the sun was out, warming our yard for the first time in months. I ventured out to the garden to see what could be poking through the winter-weary ground. This is what I found.

This is watercress. I planted it about 15 years ago, from a small bundle of watercress which still had its roots, purchased from the produce section of the grocery store. I was using watercress in tea sandwiches and had a few leftover stems with roots attached. I thought that I might as well see if it grows if planted. It did, and it reseeds itself every year. I particularly like sprigs of watercress in place of lettuce on egg salad sandwiches. But it also makes a nice green for an early salad.

Here's what a single stem of a watercress plant looks like. Despite its name, it doesn't need to grow in standing water. In fact, it grows throughout my vegetable garden. Watercress is high in vitamins A, B6, B12, C, folate, and the minerals magnesium, calcium, phosphorus, and iron. Watercress may help fight breast cancer and may help prevent colorectal cancer. It may also help thyroid, cardiovascular, and bone health, and may help prevent cognitive decline. (www.organicfacts.net)

These are garlic greens. Garlic greens are the above ground, immature portion of garlic. What most of us think of as garlic is the bulb of a mature garlic plant. In early spring, the bulb sends up shoots that look a bit like fat grass stems. As the season progresses, the bulb grows and begins to form sections. At that time, the green portion turns brown and dies back.

Garlic greens have the same immune-boosting and anti-bacterial/inflammatory benefits of the garlic bulb, but the greens are milder in flavor. A few shoots snipped into bits adds a nice zip to salads and sauces.

This is sorrel. Sorrel is a perennial herb, coming back very early in the spring in my region. The tender baby leaves are good in salads, imparting a tangy, almost lemony flavor. Sorrel is high in oxalic acid, so the recommendation is to eat it in moderation. Sorrel is rich in several vitamins and minerals, and it is known as a digestive aid, as well as being beneficial for diabetics. It is reactive to aluminum and cast-iron, so it should only be cooked in stainless steel or enameled pots. Cream of sorrel soup is a well-known use of this herb, but it is also delicious in omelets, quiches, mixed in with mashed potatoes, added raw to hummus, and fresh used in chicken sandwiches or salads. 

Due to the health warnings about oxalic acid, anyone concerned about adverse effects should read this article from www.verywellfit.com.

These are baby sorrel leaves. When picked young, both stalks and leaves are tender. Later in the season, the stalks are stringy and are best removed from the leaves before using in cooking.

I plant both kale and Swiss chard late in the summer for early spring harvesting. Early spring is a low time for the garden and a period of high produce prices at the market, so having something for garden harvesting is welcome. The chard and kale will bolt some time in April, but for now, we have something fresh and green.

My salad spinner is full of herbs and leafy greens. Time to make a salad. An herb salad is so highly flavored that I treat it almost like a condiment. I chop the pieces small, then dress in a sweet vinaigrette and serve in small portions. Its bite is refreshing and wakes up the palate during an ordinary supper.

These early garden herbs and greens will continue to produce for about a month, adding variety to our budget-vegetable rotation of cabbage, carrots, onions, and canned vegetables.