Five Days of Mexi-Foods Began Last Night!

Our family is trying out something fun to liven up the cooking around here. For five consecutive nights leading up to Cinco de Mayo, we're dining on Mexican-inspired cuisine every night. While this may sound redundant, the motivation is to minimize our meal-prep for this week. We're all pretty busy right now, so making meals simpler while staying on a tight budget is a priority.

How we are doing this:

Each night, the dinner-cook prepares a large quantity of one or two Mexi-themed items, as part of their menu. There should be leftovers of these basic foods, from one night to the next, so that the other cooks can quickly and easily put together their Mexi-dinner.

Here's an example of what we're doing: last night was my cooking night and I made a large batch of refried beans, a large pot of Spanish rice, and a large jar of quickie salsa (quickie salsa uses chopped canned tomatoes, vinegar, salt, garlic, oregano, chopped onions, chili powder, red pepper flakes, pinch of sugar, and lemon juice, all cooked on the stove for about 15 minutes, following the proportions in this post).

My dinner plan for last night was for burrito bowls. I set out the refried beans, salsa, seasoned rice, shredded cheese, and plain yogurt. Everyone assembled their own bowl. Dinner was hearty and filled everyone. (I also made a batch of vanilla blackberry-rhubarb sauce, as a side/dessert.)

Tonight is my daughter's night. She's planning on making enchiladas. So, she'll use some of the leftover beans, rice, and shredded cheese, along with packaged corn tortillas and a homemade enchilada sauce. She'll make enough extra enchilada sauce for another night, too.

Friday is my night, again. I'll make a large batch of taco meat with some ground beef and seasonings. Then, I'll put together a casserole of sorts using many of the leftovers, along with the beef.

Saturday is my husband's night. He'll take any leftovers, make a large batch of fried tortilla chips, and make a family meal.

Sunday is Cinco de Mayo. We'll take all of the leftovers and make a Mexican buffet, using up as much of everything as we can.

The whole idea is to shake up our menu planning for the week, use budget-friendly foods, make cooking a bit easier for all, and celebrate Cinco de Mayo. Maybe I'll even get out the maracas!

Do you make anything special for Cinco de Mayo? Or is it just another day for you? Do you make salsa yourself? We have discovered that while we like to have jalapenos in salsa, our quickie salsa is equally tasty.

May's Grocery Haul

Since you've read my grocery plans for the month (in this post), I thought you might want to see what my May groceries actually look like -- The deals, surprises, size of packages, variety of foods, and some brief explanations of how I manage the larger sizes. If you have any questions, I am more than happy to 'splain (as in "Lucy, you've got some splaining to do"). 

I hope this works -- she says crossing fingers.

My apologies for the rough editing. After I taped this, I discovered it was too big (in MBs) for blogger and therefore, had to edit it down substantially.

Just a note: the bathroom tissue is not calculated in my grocery budget, but in a non-food household item budget, and the carrots are stored in the garage fridge, not the garage freezer.

Cream of Green Soup

or, why plant a garden if you're not going to eat everything that comes out of it?

Those who keep gardens know that, for the most part, greens are the first item to come up in abundance. For my garden, that means fall-planted kale and Swiss chard, second-year parsley, watercress, sorrel, chives, and garlic chives. That's a lot of greenness. When I have so much green that needs eating, I have a basic soup that I like to make -- Cream of Green. It doesn't really matter if the green is kale, chard, spinach, broccoli, or any of the spring herbs. They all make a delicious soup.

This week, I made a cream of kale, chard, chives, and immature garlic (greens and bulbs) soup. I used ham fat (from Easter's ham), 1/4 of a whole onion, 1 potato, chicken soup stock (simmered the bones and skin from chicken leg quarters 2 weeks ago), whey strained off of homemade yogurt over a period of days, homemade plain yogurt, milk, salt, and flour plus water to thicken.

To make this batch, I cooked the onion in the ham fat, then added the chicken stock and the peeled and cubed potato, then cooked until the potato was tender. Next, I added the greens and herbs, rough-chopped, and simmered about 15 minutes. I pureed the mixture with an immersion blender and then added the whey, milk, and yogurt. Once the soup was smooth, I seasoned with salt and thickened with a slurry of flour and water.

The family agreed -- this soup was delicious. It was also extremely frugal. I used greens and herbs from the garden. The only purchased ingredients were the potato, 1/4 onion, salt, flour, and milk. I also used several scratch-made ingredients, including the yogurt (and resulting whey), the chicken stock, and the rendered ham fat. The bonus is that a soup like this uses items that might have otherwise been thrown away, such as the fat, the bones and skins to make the stock, and the whey which was drained off of the yogurt.

In addition to using spring greens from one's garden, a cream of green soup is also an excellent way to use aging and wilting purchased green produce. Leafy greens like kale, beet greens, and chard are pricy in the supermarket and have a short shelf-life. They wilt quickly and become much less appealing. In soup-making, any wilting is completely obscured.

Although its spring, it's still soup weather where I live. Nights are cold and evenings are chilly. Soup is warming in this shoulder season. As a result, soups are still featured on our family's menus until the end June.

Cream of green soup is just one frugal soup choice. Do you have any favorite frugal soups using garden produce or inexpensive purchased ingredients? Or soups that use items that most people tend to throw away, such as the green leaves on radishes? I'm looking for new ideas. URLs and suggestions are most welcome in the comments' section!

A Trio of Meringues

Here's how my meringues turned out. These are the treats that I had mentioned I would make to take to our church's coffee hour. I baked three kinds: cocoa-chocolate chip kisses, coconut, and cherry chunk. They were well-received and enjoyed. The recipe for the chocolate meringues and how I varied the recipe for the other two varieties is in this post.

What always surprises me is how easy meringues are to make, yet they have the appearance and texture of something "special." The bonuses are that for those on low to no-fat eating plans or gluten-free, these have no added fat (except the fat that is in chocolate chips) and no flour. In addition, they're very inexpensive to make. The chocolate ones are my favorite -- they are very chocolate-y. I've promised my family that I'll make them again later this month, and they might be a good treat to make for my second daughter's graduation reception in June.

Thank you again, Kris, for the suggestion!

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for the Last Week of April

Thursday's dinner
ham and beans, baby green salad, steamed kale with cheddar, toast

Saturday
bean and vegetable soup
buttered toast
apple wedges
raisins

Sunday -- Easter dinner
baked ham
sweet potato casserole
green bean casserole
curried pea and peanut slaw
French bread with herbed "cream cheese" and butter spread
watermelon pickles
rhubarb custard pie

Monday
bean and grilled onion chimichangas
carrot sticks
leftover green bean casserole
leftover sweet potato casserole
chocolate cake with dark chocolate frosting

Tuesday
ham sandwiches on homemade French bread, with a spread of leftover herbed "cream cheese"
cole slaw
leftover chocolate cake

Wednesday's dinner
baked beans and ham, spinach and onions, rice and ham gravy

Wednesday
baked beans and ham
small cup of leftover bean soup from Saturday
frozen spinach sauteed with onions in ham fat
brown rice with ham gravy
leftover rhubarb pie

Thursday
leftover baked beans and ham combined with leftover refried beans from Monday
buttered toast
steamed garden kale with salt, garlic, and cheddar cheese
spring green garden salad of watercress, sorrel, chard, and chives in a homemade orange vinaigrette
rhubarb pie

this week's Swiss chard from the garden

Other Meals This Week

Easter breakfast
Using my crockpot, an overnight breakfast casserole. I stole a couple of slices from the Easter ham on Saturday evening and added an egg, potato, onion, milk, and cheese filling. Many crockpot breakfast casserole recipes call for commercial hash browns. For this recipe, I used whole potatoes that I shredded in the food processor. No complaints. Using home-shredded, fresh potatoes worked just fine.

Breakfasts
Most days we have steel cut oats, cooked overnight in the crockpot. About a year ago, I bought a huge bag of steel cut oats -- 25 pounds. This is a lot of oats! I figure we have enough left to last through summer and maybe into fall. To the cooked oats, we each add our own toppings, which include, raisins, peanut butter, butter, jam/jelly, bananas, sugar, and milk.

Some of us have toast, topped with butter, homemade jam/jelly, cinnamon & sugar, peanut butter, or bean spread.

And I also bake muffins from scratch. This week, I made a batch of rhubarb muffins. I used up some pancake mix and corn muffin mix that I had in the pantry, plus garden rhubarb, and topped with the crumb topping from rhubarb pie-making over the weekend.

On the weekends, one or two of us might cook up an egg to go with breakfast. The eggs are simple, just fried, scrambled, or egg-in-the-hole. If anything is added, it is greens or herbs from the garden (such as chives), plus milk.

Lunches
Meat-based leftovers are usually saved for another dinner. But bean-based ones are often up for grabs when making lunches. Otherwise, we have bean spread, peanut butter, or egg salad on home-baked whole wheat sandwich bread or home-baked French baguettes. Whole eggs are also available for frying or scrambling. With the sandwiches, family members also choose from raw carrots, raisins, bananas, juice, frozen fruit, homemade yogurt, any greens from the garden, cole slaw from the March-purchased heads of cabbage, and any home-baked cookies, muffins, or snack cakes we may have. Sometimes, there is cheese available for lunches, depending on what else is still in stock and plentiful.

I vary the bean spreads each time I make a batch, so that there is always something new to try (and encourages us to eat the less-expensive beans in comparison to other sandwich toppings). This week, I made a pinto bean spread with salsa, fried onions, and some cheese powder which had begun to harden into clumps. The hot dogs which were available for lunches last month are now set aside for weekend cook-outs around the fire ring.

part of my afternoon snack yesterday -- bean spread
on home-baked baguette, topped with chives

Snacks
The least expensive snack foods are not snack foods at all, but some of the foods that I prepare for suppers, such as fruits and vegetables from the garden or foraged, baked or mashed potatoes, toast, leftover baked or refried beans, homemade tortillas, and leftover rice and gravy. We'll also snack on snack cake, cookies, muffins, peanut butter or bean spread on bread or by the spoon, popcorn, carrot sticks, raisins, and any fresh fruit.

I make yogurt once every 3 weeks and bake bread about once per week, alternating between whole wheat sandwich and French baguettes. I found some rye flour in my pantry and will begin a batch of sourdough caraway-rye bread this afternoon (it's a 2-day process).

About the Meat Fat . . .
Remember the conversation about using meat fat the other week? Well, we've been using the beef fat from the meatloaf, chicken fat from making the chicken pot pie, and ham fat from the Easter ham for our cooking this past week. The level of oil in the vegetable oil bottle has only gone down a little. On Wednesday, I rendered the fat from the fatty bits of the ham. Doing so gave me enough cooking fat for a few suppers. In addition, I simmered the meaty bone in the crockpot, and then skimmed more fat off of the stock. Plus, I still have 2 sticks of butter hidden in the freezer. I bring out one stick at a time and have discouraged the use of butter in baking for the time being.

this week's kale from our garden

About Our Vegetable Supply . . .
I know that when reading my grocery shopping list it appears that we have little in the way of produce. I still have fruit in the freezer from last summer, frozen veggies purchased in fall and winter, plus now our vegetable garden is in production. Just the other day I harvested a large bowl of Swiss chard, a medium-sized bowl of kale, a mix of baby greens and herbs for salad, and a large bundle of chives for the fridge for adding to cooking throughout the week.

The Cheaper Chocolate Chip Cookie: Cocoa-Chocolate Chip Kisses

A while back, I mentioned that I needed to bring treats to our church's coffee hour at the end of the month. Well, here we are, last weekend of the month. When talking about running low on butter and oil, Kris suggested that I make meringues. Meringues are not only an excellent suggestion when thinking of baking with minimal fat, but they are super-duper frugal all around, comprised of sugar, egg whites, and flavorings of choice. Today, I'm baking cocoa-chocolate chip meringues. A batch of 2  1/2 dozen cost me about 55 cents, or 22 cents per dozen. That is about one-third of what I spend to make the traditional chocolate chip cookie. So, what accounts for the cost difference? Meringues have no butter, flour, salt, or baking soda, and less sugar. In addition, for this batch, I substituted chopped dipping chocolate for the chocolate chips.

Here's my sister-in-law's recipe that I use:

Gini's Cocoa-Chocolate Chip Kisses

2 large egg whites
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1 tablespoon chocolate jimmies/sprinkles (optional)

Preheat oven to 225 degrees F.
Line a large baking sheet with parchment or foil.

Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Add sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, continuing to beat.
Add vanilla, reduce speed and add cocoa powder, 1 tablespoon at a time. Fold in chocolate chips.

Drop by rounded teaspoons onto the baking sheet, about 1 inch apart. Optional - sprinkle the chocolate jimmies onto the mounds of meringue.

Bake for 1 hour. Do not open oven door. Turn oven off and dry the meringues in the oven for 2 additional hours.

Remove from parchment or foil and store in an airtight container. (Foil can be washed and reused, BTW.)

I was out of chocolate chips, so I turned to my supply of clearance-purchased dipping chocolate (the chocolate that I used to make the candy bunnies).

I paid $1.69 for a 16-oz package and used 1.75 ounces for today's batch of meringues. For price comparison, I normally pay about $2.50/lb for chocolate chips in a 12-oz bag. It should be noted, the dipping/coating chocolate is only a good deal when it's on clearance. If I had used store-brand chocolate chips, then my cost per 2  1/2 dozen batch would have been around 79 cents, or 31 cents per dozen, still about half of what traditional chocolate chip cookies (made with butter, flour, and brown sugar) would have cost.

Anyway, aside from the savings, these Cocoa-Chocolate Chip Kisses are a real winner.

I'll also be baking coconut meringues and cherry meringues for this weekend. For the coconut meringues, I follow the above directions and omit the cocoa powder, chocolate chips, vanilla, and chocolate jimmies, and include about 3/4 cup of shredded coconut and 1/2 teaspoon of almond extract. For the cherry meringues, I omit the cocoa powder, chocolate chips, vanilla, and chocolate jimmies, and include about 3/4 cup chopped candied cherries, 1/2 teaspoon almond extract, and a bit of red food coloring. I'll post a photo when I bake those two.

The Shopping List on a Small Budget

In a consumer environment where there are so many appealing options, sticking to a budget is never easy. I have found that, for myself, organization and planning is key for maintaining a small grocery budget.

Over the years, I've had larger budgets and smaller ones. When I had a larger budget, the leeway in spending was great enough that I didn't need to plan to the penny. I also didn't need to stick so tightly to a specific number. If I went over by a bit one month, then I tried to keep spending under by a comparable amount the next. My guess is that this is the way that most of us carry out our spending. For now, I need to plan, calculate, and negotiate.

First, I make out my list of wants for the month. That's a pretty quick job. Next, I research the prices, comparing across several stores. To do this, I log into my usual stores online and look up the prices for each item. I note each store's price and record the lowest for each item. If a low price is also a sale price, I record the expiration date on that sale, as well. If the expiration date falls before my budget month begins, then I need to decide if I will pick up that item before the month actually begins and hold it for the days of the remaining month, or let the sale go. (I'm fortunate enough that I am not shopping with cash, but instead I do have flexibility.)

The deciding factors for pre-spending the budget involve necessity and urgency. If the item is needed urgently for good health, then I'm willing to buy and use it before a month begins, for example, if I had no fats in the house (oil, butter, shortening, nuts/nut butters, meat fat). Or, if the item falls on the need-want spectrum closer to need but isn't urgent, then I will pre-spend, but hold the item until the next month begins. An example of this might be something like cheese in contrast to chocolate chips. Even if chocolate chips are at a rock-bottom low, if I have spent my month's allotment, I won't buy them until the new month's budget begins. But cheese does fulfill a nutritional area in my budget, so I am willing to pre-spend but hold off on our use.

Once I've recorded all of the prices for my list, I total the purchase amount. So far, I've not come beneath my budget in this early stage of planning. And so, the mental negotiations begin. What can we live without versus what would improve the quality of our eating for the month? An example, for several months, I decided that we could live without mayonnaise. This month, we finally have enough in the budget to afford this sandwich and salad condiment. However, this month we'll be forgoing soy sauce. In addition, I took chicken leg quarters off of my list again this month. The lowest available price for my area has risen to 60 cents per pound for bone-in meat. From the Texas Agricultural Extension Service, the percentage of thigh/leg that is meat alone averages 62%, which means that the meat-only price per pound of chicken leg quarters is about 97 cents per pound, and that is only if every morsel of meat is cleaned off of the bones. That is still a good deal for meat, but not so good that the price won't be around again, and we do have enough other meat to sustain us through the month. And, I'm now negotiating with myself over my decaf instant coffee. I am thinking that, for one month, I could put the $3.52 expense toward more produce for my family. This is a tough one for me. My husband would still have his regular coffee for the month, so I don't need to consult him on this decision. I would have some decaf instant left from April. If I limited myself to a half-cup of decaf per day, I could drink decaf tea in its place for the rest of the day. (And just so you know, I'm not so self-sacrificing that I would always give up "my thing" for the benefit of the rest of the family. The next time this scenario arises, I will ask another family to give up one of their "things," so long as it's a non-nutritive, unnecessary item.) And so the negotiations carry on over the course of about a week, as I whittle away until my list fits the dollar amount of the budget.

With a whittled-down list, I organize the items by store and begin planning the shopping dates. Although I have the month's purchases planned out before the first of the month, I hold off on some of the shopping until later in the month. This allows me to pick up a few more perishable foods, such as bananas, at a later date. In some months, special occasions and holidays dictate when I will shop and where. For example, Cinco de Mayo is before Senior Discount Day at Fred Meyer (which would be my go-to place for a small package of corn tortillas, but only if with the Senior discount), so I will need to shop at WinCo early in the month (has the best price per unit on corn tortillas, but in a larger package, using more of my budget). With a small budget, ease sometimes takes a backseat.

About unexpected sales and bargains . . .
In my ideal scenario, I would have a small amount of money leftover in the budget for the unexpected deal. I hate to have to pass up savings, but that is what needs to be done at times. I do remind myself that many (but not all) of these deals will cycle through again.

My long-range plan to accommodate unplanned bargains relies on building a stockpile of staples (bought at a low price per unit). With the staples in store, there will be some extra money available for the non-basics each month, as well as for building a little fund for those unexpected deals. I will need to deliberately divert some of the extra money toward this fund, as it is so easy to find ways to spend all of the budget each month. But I do believe that a special fund set aside for picking up bargains could be a benefit for my small budget.

I sometimes come across deals on the items that I had planned on buying, such as with the marked-down milk that I bought last month. When that occurs, I often have a contingency plan for how to spend any savings. In addition, when I buy from the bulk bins at WinCo, I try very hard to stay beneath my price limit for each item. I miss the target by a bit, going over or under, each time. Plus, WinCo gives a refund for bringing my own bags. It's only 6 cents per bag, but that little amount can offset any overages in the bulk area or allow an extra piece of fruit for the month.

The entire planning procedure requires about 5 to 6 hours of my time. I take the same care with precision that I would if this were a business enterprise. I think the common conception is that grocery planning is quickly carried out, minutes before heading out the door. Whether you plan and shop once per month or once per week, planning is a time-consuming activity. However, if  it is done well, it can reap some serious financial benefits. My forecast for the 2019 grocery savings for my household is roughly $1500 above the savings that we had previously experienced.

In case anyone is curious about what is on May's list for my family, here it is. This is the "raw" version of my list and contains notes to myself within the list. I make the list in MSWord and revise and input data as the month progresses. For May, I will squeak in about 25 cents under budget, at $125.25 to $125.30.

Grocery list May, budget- 125.52 (52 cents leftover from April)

^indicates shopping comparison onsite

strawberries for Mother’s Day <$2

C&C-soybean oil–big box, 35-lbs, First Street, stock-up item $18.98

C&C-whole wheat flour, 50-lb bag, ADM, 13.17-stock-up item

C&C-canned whole tomatoes, #10, 2.89 Simply Value

C&C-raisins, 4-lb bag, First Street, 9.37

C&C-cheese, 5 lbs First Street, medium cheddar or cheddar/jack $10.24 until 4/28, Sunday

C&C-mayonnaise, $6.77 First Street 1 gallon

C&C- carrots 25-lb bag, Kern Ridge, 8.95 thru 4/28

C&C-5-lb Fuji apples, 3.35

73.72 at C&C

FM-butter- $2.51,Simply Moovelous, Senior day, 2 lbs

FM-milk- 5 or 6 gals, 4 or 5  2%, 1 whole for yogurt, $10.75/$10.80 (5 gallons total if $2.15, 6 if $1.80 or less), Senior day

FM-orange juice- 1 large, 1.61 each, Kroger, Senior day

FM-hot dogs 3 packs, 75 cents each ($2.25), Heritage Farms, Senior day

$1 any marked-down produce bag

(Check for markdowns: eggs - less than 95 cents/doz, bananas – 39 c/lb)

$20.63, if 5 milk, 20.68 max if milk <$1.80 and get 6

WinCo- bananas 8 lbs, (or Walmart) 42 cents/lb

WinCo- apple juice WinCo 2  99 cents each

WinCo- garlic granules – $1 worth

WinCo- chocolate chips- $1 worth

WinCo- soybeans or white beans -$1 worth

WinCo- corn tortillas- $2.69 big pack , 70 or 80 ct

^WinCo-lentils- Winco if less than 98 cents/lb, get $1 worth, or Walmart 98 cents for 16-oz. bag

^WinCo-marshmallows-1 bag WinCo, or 96 cents for 10-oz bag at Walmart

$12.99 inc lentils, marshmallows

Walmart-bananas, 42 cents/lb

Walmart-eggs- 5 dozen, $4.75

Instant decaf, Walmart, $3.52? maybe not 

^Walmart -lentils- Winco if less than 98 cents/lb, get $1 worth or Walmart 98 cents for 16-oz. bag

^Walmart - marshmallows-1 bag WinCo or 96 cents for 10-oz bag at Walmart

$4.75, eggs alone, bananas above

bought--peanut butter, 4- 40-oz, $2.79 ea, Target, 11.16, stock-up item

total 125.25 to 125.35 (depending on milk)

Last Week of the Month and Our Grocery Budget is Holding Out

One week left in April and I have 52 cents in the budget remaining. That's enough to buy about 4 or 5 small bananas from Walmart or WinCo. While I can see that our supplies are reducing, we still have a lot of food items in the pantry, fridge, and freezers, with substantial amounts of meat, eggs, milk, beans, flour, oats, cabbage, carrots, and sugar. We are starting to deplete all of those nice little tidbits which enhance meals, such as nuts and olives. But that was to be expected, as we're not buying any of those sorts of items, instead sticking to the staples. Easter left us with the nice bonus of leftover ham, ham stock for bean soup, and ham fat for cooking.

Full disclosure on the budget -- I did have to "borrow" from May's budget in order to use a $10 coupon at Target and take advantage of a sale on peanut butter. However, the peanut butter that I bought is kept out of the stock that we are currently using, and won't be opened until May 1. So, that $11.17 will come out of May's budget.

I began working on May's grocery list around the second week of April. In March and April, we stocked up on ground beef, pinto beans, all-purpose flour, and onions. The stock-up items for May include the already-purchased peanut butter, 50 pounds of whole wheat flour, and 35 pounds of vegetable oil. I see lots of baking in my future! In addition to these items and my regular list of staples, I also have two special occasions to keep in mind while preparing my list for May: Cinco de Mayo and Mother's Day. If my funds are used up for the basics, I believe that I can get by with just adding corn tortillas to my list for Cinco de Mayo and a container of strawberries for Mother's Day. The remainder of the menus for those special occasions can be drawn from my basic purchases for the month and what I have at home right now.

I know that this is still early on in my stocking up, but I've still found myself a tiny bit disappointed that our pantry is not yet looking stocked. I know that will come with a few more months of buying in stock-up quantities.

Do you know what I do when I feel down about my grocery situation? I kick myself in the pants and get busy in the kitchen, preparing as many foods as I can think to provide ready-to-eat snacks and lunch items for my family. Even if it's just boiling some eggs, those boiled eggs are one more thing that my husband and kids could grab to eat. Honestly, that thought cheers me up.

This morning, I had one of those days. I was down a bit, struggling with a headache that's only partially responding to OTC painkillers (day 2 of a migraine), and worn out from the weekend. But I knew if I made myself busy in the kitchen, then that would be addressing one of my situations. So, I made a batch of rhubarb muffins, using a small baggie of pancake mix and an even smaller baggie of corn muffin mix, plus rhubarb from our garden, an egg, oil, vanilla extract, sugar, liquid from the canned yams on Sunday, and whey from homemade yogurt. After the batter was in the muffin tins, I sprinkled some leftover crumb topping from pie-baking over the weekend. I also made a batch of pinto bean and grilled onion sandwich spread, a pot of boiled eggs, and a pitcher of juice. These are just simple foods, but as my family members trickles into the house this afternoon, they will be greeted with snacks already made.

We're still making it. That's a good thing on which to focus my thoughts.

Holiday Dinners Using Just (or Almost) What I Have On Hand

Easter dinner went well. I do have to admit, though, that making everything with minimal convenience products is time-consuming. I cooked all Saturday afternoon, and then a good chunk of Sunday to put everything together. Despite this, in my current circumstances, cooking from scratch was the way to go. I was able to put together a nice meal for my family without adding extra expenses. I've included links to the various recipes that I used for yesterday's feast, as they may be of use to your frugal cooking, as well.

The Ham
I bought a spiral sliced ham on sale for $1.27/lb. Safeway also had the unsliced hams, which were selling for 99 cents per pound. In my experience, so far, the unsliced hams have a lot more fat and rind than the spiral sliced hams. It's true, the ham fat can be rendered for cooking. However, this time around, I went for more meat and greater convenience. My budget for Easter this year was much smaller than last year, so I prioritized buying a ham with the money. The ham is the only item that I bought just for Easter this year. By the way, if you have large chunks of fat from your ham, this post tells how I render the fat to use in cooking later.

Green Bean Casserole
The traditional green bean casserole calls for commercial fried onions. I make my own substitute using bread crumbs, butter, and onions. This post explains how I do this. For Easter, I used 1 can of green beans (bought on sale last fall), 1 dented can of waxed beans (paid 26 cents because the can was dented), a handful of frozen green beans (because it seemed like there was to much sauce), 1 can of cream of mushroom soup (bought on sale last fall), soy sauce, pepper, and milk, along with my homemade version of the French's fried onion topping.

Sweet Potato Casserole
I had a can of yams that were bought on sale last fall. I pureed the drained yams with eggs, spices, and some of the light syrup in which the yams were packed. I set aside the remainder of the yam's light syrup, to use in baking later. My family's favorite topping for sweet potato casserole is a praline one. However, I was out of pecans for this holiday and opted for marshmallows instead (which I had in the freezer).

Curried Pea and Peanut Slaw
The idea for this recipe came from the comments on a post back in 2014. I amended the idea slightly and created a salad which my family loves. Here's my version in this post. For the dressing, as I was out of mayonnaise, I used plain homemade yogurt as a substitute for both the mayo and vinegar, and added a pinch of salt to taste. I had chives in the garden, so used those in place of green onions. For the peanuts, I opened a can of mixed nuts and picked out a handful of peanuts. The rest of the can has been tucked away to use in a batch of caramel nutty bars on Father's Day.

French Bread
I've discussed our butter and oil situation, here. In a effort to conserve both, I opted for homemade French bread in place of the traditional dinner rolls. French bread uses hardly any oil and is more open to spreads or dipping oils other than butter. (In my family, butter is the favored spread for dinner rolls.) The post in this link has the recipe that I use for an all-purpose French bread, pizza, and calzone dough. It's a really great recipe and very easy for me to remember. For Easter dinner, I made the recipe into 3 long and skinny baguettes. For a spread for the French bread, I combined strained homemade plain yogurt (to the consistency of soft cream cheese) with very soft butter (in a 2 to 1 ratio of yogurt to butter) and chopped rosemary, garlic powder, and salt. The resulting spread was very tasty, and my crowd agreed that it was better than butter. So, there you go. Just when I think my substitutes are inferior, my family votes them superior, at least some of the time.

Watermelon Pickles
We're out of almost all pickles and olives, now, so I brought out a jar of homemade watermelon rind pickles, from a couple of years ago. the recipe that I've been using for watermelon pickles for the past 30 years is in this post.

"Bottled" Water
I used one of my salvaged sparkling cider bottles to "bottle" some tap water, which I chilled for several hours before dinner. My son and his wife also brought some sparkling beverages. I also made a large pot of tea, using tea that I had on hand. So, we were good with the drinks.

Jayne's Rhubarb Custard Pie
Since it's now rhubarb season where I live, we had a rhubarb custard pie for dessert. In fact, I made two pies, so I would have 1 to give as an Easter gift to my son and his wife. Making 2 pies isn't a whole lot of extra work for me but is a nice thing for them, as neither of them bake pies to my knowledge. If you grow rhubarb and don't have a recipe that you enjoy, the recipe for this pie comes from a good friend, and you'll find it in this post. We love the custard filling so much that I was thinking this could make a delicious rhubarb dessert, without the pie crust or crumb topping, in place of our usual rhubarb sauce. I'll let you know how it goes when I try baking the filling by itself. I use a scratch pie pastry recipe for the crust. It's reliable, easy, and freezes well. Here's a link to that recipe. The batch makes 5 crusts-worth of pastry at a time, which sounds like a lot. However, you can freeze it in single-crust portions to use later. It's good for both savory and sweet fillings, so I use this for chicken pot pie as much as for fruit pies.

In addition to the food, I used what I had for the table and buffet decor. You all saw the egg shell and violet table setting pieces. I also cut enough tulips from our garden for a pretty little bouquet for the buffet. The bonus is that we now have a nice bouquet to admire, indoors and out of the rain for the next couple of days.

I hope that you had an enjoyable weekend!

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers From the Last Two Weeks

I somehow forgot to post last week's Cheap & Cheerful menus. Oops! Life gets busy, right? Getting on with it, here are menus from both this past week and the week before.

Saturday  4/6
bean soup and toast

Sunday  4/7
spinach, canned tomato, onion, and mozzarella frittata
home fries

Monday  4/8
cabbage, carrot, peas, and garlic chive fried rice, topped with eggs

Tuesday  4/9
bean burritos
cole slaw
these brownies, following the oven-baking suggestions, and frosted with cocoa icing

Wednesday 4/10
seafood casserole w/ cod, peas, pasta, frozen cream soup, onions, lemon juice, bay seasoning
sorrel pesto on French bread
steamed carrots

Thursday 4/11
vegetarian chili, using pinto beans, canned tomatoes, TVP, onions, seasonings, topped with cheese
cornmeal pancakes (quicker than baking cornbread)

Friday 4/12
burrito bowls -- leftover brown rice, leftover refried beans, taco meat from the freezer, canned corn, homemade salsa, homemade plain yogurt
Menchie's frozen yogurt freebie

Saturday 4/13
hot dogs in biscuit dough buns
oven-roasted potato wedges
green beans

Sunday  4/14
scrambled eggs and pancakes

Monday 4/15
spinach, onion, tomato, and beef meatloaf
mashed potatoes with mushroom gravy (from a packet)
sauteed cabbage and onions

Tuesday 4/16
bean burritos
cole slaw
apple wedges
German chocolate cake

Wednesday 4/17
almost-vegan chili (used beef fat to saute the onions)
garlic bread
German chocolate cake

Thursday 4/18
chicken pot pie casserole
salad
grapes
cookies
(This was a meal at our church where I provided the casserole, and salad, fruit and cookies were provided by others.)

Friday 4/19
chicken pot pie
(I cooked big for Thursday's casserole and made an extra for tonight.)



Sunday (4/7) breakfast -- overnight cinnamon rolls, yogurt, granola. Saturday afternoon I was working on the egg soap project. By evening, I was still in a project-sort-of-mindset, so I stayed up late cooking and baking. I made a batch of granola as well as the cinnamon rolls for a bit of a selection the next morning, as well as snacks to keep on hand for early in the week.

On Tuesday (4/9), I made a batch of salsa to go in the bean burritos. For the salsa, I used canned tomatoes, onion, garlic, chili powder, chipotle powder, salt, vinegar, and lemon juice, all simmered in a stainless pot for about 20 minutes. It didn't seem to matter that I didn't have jalepenos.

Wednesday (4/10) -- the sorrel pesto was inspired by a suggestion from Allie in the comments from March.  Allie had mentioned that an upscale restaurant in LA serves a sorrel pesto rice dish, so I thought, "why not?" I made my sorrel pesto with sorrel leaves, garlic, pine nuts, mozzarella cheese, salt, and oil. It was delicious spread on French bread. You may already know this, but you can use many different greens to make a pesto. Pesto based on other greens won't have the same basil flavor (obviously), but it can be delicious in its own right. Radish green pesto is a popular one and is a terrific use of the abundant leaves when buying or harvesting a bunch of radishes.

Friday (4/12) -- Menchie's is a self-serve frozen yogurt place. They have several deals going on at any time. Currently, if you sign up for their app, you can get a $5 off coupon. $5 will buy a modest-sized yogurt sundae. They're sold by the ounce, so you do need to be careful not to take too much if you want to stay beneath the $5 threshold. You can use the scale at the register to gauge your sundae as you're building it. Anyway, my daughters and husband downloaded the app for the $5 coupons while I used a birthday coupon. Menchie's offers a $5 coupon to use any time during your birthday month.

Monday (4/15) is when I began to earnestly cut back on butter and vegetable oil use in cooking. I now have both beef and chicken fat set aside to use in cooking this next week. For the chicken pot pies that I made for Thursday (4/18), I used some skin-on chicken leg quarters and boneless, skinless chicken breasts. The leg quarters have lots of fat. After simmering the chicken parts in water, I removed the meat and put the bones, skin, and most of the simmering liquid into the crockpot to draw out even more fat. Chilling the broth left a nice layer of fat to skim off of the top of the liquid and a very delicious soup stock to use in cooking. To save additional butter or oil in baking, in the comments earlier this week, Kris made a really great suggestion for treats that I need to bring to coffee hour at the end of the month. Kris suggested meringues. Meringues are very inexpensive cookies to make at home, using no fat at all. They're also easy to make, and since they don't spread, a whole batch can be baked at the same time.

Tuesday (4/16) was my birthday. My daughter bought some apples to share, so she added them to that night's dinner. I'll be honest, after not having any apples for a couple of months, those apples tasted so good. My daughters made a small cake for my birthday, as well, topping it with the traditional coconut frosting, substituting chopped almonds for the recipe's pecans.

Despite my momentary panic-stricken bouts, we're doing okay with groceries and meals. I think that we're eating pretty well. My current mantra is as follows: "I only have to manage one day and one crisis at a time. No need to worry about tomorrow's crisis, today." Everything will work out. We will have plenty of food. I just need to have faith that the answers will be provided to me. And I am so thankful that some of those answers have come from you all, here.

Have a wonderful weekend and happy Easter!

Semi-Homemade Cranberry-Apple Juice

A while back, I mentioned in the comments that I would be trying out an idea to use some of my frozen cranberries combined with commercial apple juice concentrate to make a no-sugar added cran-apple juice. This week, I tried it out and made a 64-oz pitcher.

Here's what I used:

2 cups of frozen, whole cranberries
3 cups of water
1 12-oz can of frozen apple juice concentrate
additional water to fill the pitcher

So this is what I did:

I ground up the frozen, whole cranberries in the food processor (not super fine, just what you might do if you were to make cranberry bread). Next, I simmered the ground cranberries with about 3 cups of water in a stainless saucepan for about 30 minutes.

After cooling for a bit, I poured the cranberry slurry through a sieve placed over a wide-mouth, 64-oz pitcher and strained until no more liquid would drip through. I pressed it gently, but wanted to keep most of the sediment out of the juice. Next, I added the can of apple juice concentrate and enough water to fill to about the 1 and 3/4 quart-line on the pitcher. Stirred and chilled -- that's it. It took about 5-10 minutes of hands-on time while doing other tasks in the kitchen.

The verdict? It's not as cranberry-ish as commercial drinks -- more like a cranberry-infused apple juice. My family has really enjoyed this and I'll be making it again later this month. It adds variety to our beverages, gets us to use some of the frozen cranberries from last fall, and diversifies the nutrients that we consume in juice form.

I saved the leftover cranberry mush in the freezer to add to applesauce the next time I buy or make some.

Obviously, we could have simply drunk the apple juice made up plain. However, on such a tight grocery budget which limited the variety of ingredients that I could buy, it's been important for me to keep trying new ways to prepare the same ingredients, as well as tap into some of the items that we hand on hand from before the last couple of months. Variety really does stave off feelings of deprivation. Anyway, just thought that I'd share how it went.

Discount Thrift Stores? That Almost Sounds Too Good to Be True!

94 cents plus tax

So where does a frugal woman go for shopping when she's on a super tight budget? How about a discount thrift shop? Yes, there is such a thing in my area. It's where surplus thrift store merchandise is sold at a steep discount.

I had been vaguely aware of the Goodwill outlet for a while, but I assumed it was too far or inconvenient to get to from my house. Then one of my daughters heard from a co-worker that we had one in the town to the north of us. Still thinking this was a bit far, I asked my daughter to google map it for me. It turns out that our local Goodwill outlet is even closer to our home than the regular Goodwill store.

Okay, so how does the Goodwill outlet work, you may wonder. The merchandise is primarily clothing, but they also have some small hard goods and a section full of furniture. Nothing is on racks or shelves, but it is all contained in huge, wheeled bins. Clothing is not sorted in any way, all sizes and genders mixed together. It is piled high, and you have to dig through the piles to search. There is no way a person could see it all. That may sound like a bad thing. However, it means that some "good stuff" will still be there, undiscovered. Just an example, in my own search, I came across two 100% cashmere sweaters in great condition and in my size after a bunch of people had plowed through that bin. As the bins get picked over, the employees wheel them out to the warehouse and replace them with freshly-stocked bins. There are no dressing rooms. However, they do provide a power strip for testing small electric appliances. It's a bit noisy and chaotic. However, I found the other shoppers to be very courteous.

When you've found what you want, you take it to the cash register and your items are weighed by category. There's a large white board at the registers that indicates the price per pound for the various categories of merchandise. Everything is sold by the pound; any tags are irrelevant, merely reminders of where items were previously for sale. Shoes were selling for $1.15 per pound yesterday. Clothing and linens were selling for $1.59 per pound. And small electronics were 59 cents per pound.

75 cents plus tax

So, what did we buy? I carried around a pile of clothing for a while. At the end, I sorted it all and tried on what I could. I had dressed in leggings and a slim-fitting long-sleeved knit shirt, so I could slip items on over my clothes. There were no mirrors, so my daughter used her phone to show me how I looked in the garments. (If you have a smartphone, do you do that? Use your phone as a mirror?) Anyway, after discarding about half of my pile, I settled on one dress for myself and three items for my husband. In between looking through the clothing bins, I checked out the hard goods. I came across a handheld mixer to replace our broken hand mixer. It was missing it's beaters, but it was still in working condition. I have found that for the most part, the beaters for American brand hand mixers are interchangeable from one brand to the next. I have 2 sets of beaters leftover from hand mixers that have died. And both sets fit this new-to-me mixer.

The old Goodwill price tag on the mixer said $5.99, but I paid 94 cents. The dress that I bought is a Calvin Klein. I found the exact same style listed on ebay for $29 as a previously-owned dress. I paid 75 cents for it. I have my summer dress, now, and it barely put a dent in our budget.

The prices were fantastic -- I can easily see us going back and searching the bins again. In fact, the next opportunity I get, I'm going back to find a white cardigan or jacket to throw over this dress.

Does Goodwill have an outlet in your city? To find out, check this Goodwill outlet locator page.  Happy thrifting!