Category Archives: Recipes

10 Things Tuesday 7/22

Posted on by
Reply

Not sure if Carla is going to post this today but I wanted to get ahead of the game and I simply LOVE this format for catching up!

1.  My BFF is enjoying a week at the beach, she had a hard time finding someone to take care of her dog so the little kids are dog sitting for the week.

2.This week and next week should be the slowest of the summer!  Swim team is over and the currently plan is to start cheerleading the first full week of August.

3.Both Lily and Kendall are enjoying piano lessons but neither likes to practice!  I am very impressed with how quickly they are picking up the skills.

4. I did finish the reorganization of the office, playroom and our closet last week. Total spent was $27 but the difference is huge!  I totally feel like my closet is finished now!

5.  On Sunday, I spent most of the afternoon, sorting our recipes. I filled a 3inch 3 ring binder with recipes we like and really want to make again or several times, a second 1 inch binder with “stockpile” or make ahead recipes and a third binder with recipes that I have printed from the internet and want to try.

6.Zach finished swim lesson but still does not like to jump into the pool. He did tell our swim coach that he was planning to swim on the team next year so we shall see. I am glad that he is able to go underwater now and is a little bit more comfortable without arm floats.

7.Because of the odd weather we have been having, dry and huge temperature swings, I had to throw out our squash and about half of our bean plants already. We are able to harvest tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers on a regular basis still.

8. We were all excited to realize that currently we have 3 watermelons and 2 cantaloupes growing so far. I am guess we should be able to eat one of each in the next week or so!

9.July is one of two months that I receive 3 paychecks in the month. It has really helped to cover not only our beach trip but also to set aside money for cheerleading fees for the girls.

10. We saw “Planes Fire and Rescue” on Saturday, the kids really enjoyed it but it definitely is not on my favorites list!

Food Facts

Posted on by
Reply

I realized the other day that groceries are the single biggest category of expense that we have each month, yes it is more than our mortgage payment! So it is fitting that I share some interesting, at least to me, facts about this number.

  • Based on the budgeted amount for July, we spend about $3.90 a day per person for food, toiletries and other supplies. That averages out to $1.30 a meal.
  • For the month of July, I am currently $4 over budget but I know this will go up by at least $10 due to the swim team party on Thursday, I need to purchase several items to use for my dishes.
  • Included in the spending for July are school supplies, I decided to stock up with the sale prices. I also had to purchase a new book bag for Lily and several new lunch containers. The only remaining supplies I know of for the girls are new 3 ring binders.
  • Matt and I have been shopping in our freezer today, we have no ground hamburger and no chicken at all.
  • We will be picking up 40# of ground beef on Friday from Zaycon. My plan is to cook at least 20# and freeze in individual bags.  The other will be used to make “sloppy joe mix, meatloaves (4) with the remainder to be frozen uncooked for anything else that may show up!
  • Our menu plan this week included the swim team party and at least one night of leftovers.
  • Over the last 2 weeks we have been attempting to eat most of the leftover food from Kendall’s birthday party. We did end up throwing out a couple of hamburgers but otherwise we have been successful. I am going to bring the plates, cups and napkins to the beach as well.
  • I have already cooked and frozen 4 dinners and 1 breakfast meal for the beach. We most like will eat out 2 times and use the final night as left overs.
  • I am a recipe follower- I am afraid to just try things most of the time because I don’t want to waste food; however, I made a chicken/vegetable casserole today without a recipe and it turned out great!
  • We have been able to cook and freeze at least a couple of packages of stewed tomatoes a week to use in the winter.
  • I made approximately 10# of mashed potatoes today because I realized that the potatoes in our closet were starting to go bad.
  • The current plan is that any unused grocery money for August  prior to our beach trip will become “fun” money. To assist with this I will not be going to Costco until after the trip in addition to purchasing only items at CVS for stockpiling. The overall goal is to add $300 to our fun money!

Saving Money/Menu Planning/New Recipes

Posted on by
Reply

I have mentioned before that we have 2 freezers in addition to the 2 small freezers that are part of our refrigerators. I love having all the extra space to freeze things and I often have had all of the freezers full. Last year I was able to clean out both of the larger freezers and made one a dedicated veggie freezer and the second one for meat.  The idea is to keep just enough for meals and a couple of convenience meals up in the house. However, what has tended to happen is that we just stick things in the two freezers in the house instead of going to the building. One of the next things on my cleaning list is to organize and rearrange the freezers to make things easier to find.  We have been slowly trying to eat things and rearrange slowly.

We have lots of chicken from our big purchase in October. My original thought was that we would have one chicken meal a week so that should last a year. I am finding that each of the crockpot meals is making at least 2 meals with leftovers. I have also discovered that only 2 of the crockpot meals so far has been worth the effort.  I would say at this point that we have eaten less than half of the chicken that was purchased.

The other meat item that we have in abundance is ground deer meat.  We have been using it in some of our favorite recipes but the “wild” taste was proving to be a little strong for our taste buds. However I have discovered what I hope to be a solution to this problem, bacon grease.  Tonight we used a pound of deer meat fried in bacon grease for cheeseburger pizza, and no one was able to taste any of the “wild” flavor. My hope is that we can use this secret trick to get a lot of use out  of this meat.

After all that let  me get back to the original intention of this post. So other than deer meat and chicken, we only have one more pack of cube steak in the freezer. We do have several packs of bacon and sausage in addition to at least one kielbasa sausage but as you can tell our choices for meat are limited. I really want to use up most of this meat prior to purchasing any more but you can only eat tacos, and spaghetti so many times. So I decided to search the internet for new recipes using chicken and ground deer meat. So far I have collect right at 10 that I am planning on using in the next two weeks. We actually tried a new recipe on Thursday with chicken and one with deer on Friday. Neither of these first two dishes make the cut, they were not awful just not good enough to repeat. My goal is to make it at least 2 additional weeks in April with using just the meat we have on hand and trying the new recipes. However, in my head, I am hoping to be able to not purchase any meat until the last weekend of April.

Do you have any awesome chicken or ground deer recipes to share to help me achieve this lofty goal?

 

Cooking Day-Non Chicken 1/23/2014

Posted on by
Reply

Matt pointed out the other day that although we have lots of food to choice from we were running extremely low on quick and easy to prepare meals. So with a few minutes of discussion, we decided that today would be a “cooking day”  I am quite pleased with the results.

First, early this morning, I placed the turkey that was purchased prior to Thanksgiving in the crockpot. I must say this is the best way to cook a turkey. I cooked it on high for 4 hours till the internal temperature was 160 then switched to low for another 3 until the temperature was 170*. I cook it breast down, rubbed with olive oil, and coated with Paula Deen seasoning. I did place one onion inside the cavity and added 1 cup of apple juice. We enjoyed turkey for dinner, I have plans to use the rest for at least 2 additional meals this weekend plus at least one or two meals of plain turkey.  In addition to the meat, I have already frozen 16 cups of broth with plans to finish with at least another 20 cups today from the bones and skin.  Total cost for the meat for 5 meals is $12.

Next, we purchased for the cost of processing some venison in November. We have not been able/ forgot to count the total amount of ground venison we received but we are thinking it was around 60#.  Today we used 8# to make and freeze 2 cheeseburger quiches  and 11 packs of Salisbury Steaks. Matt and I both worked in the kitchen for a total of 3 hours or less for these meals. The Salisbury Steaks will need to have a starch and vegetable add to complete.  Total cost for 13 meals of meat is $6.

This was one of the easiest cooking days that I have done in a long time. In less than 4 hours and for less than $25 total, we have 18 meals for 5 people. That works out to  $1.38 a meal. This should go a long way to helping reduce our grocery spending for the first part of the year!

Menu Planning-Using up leftovers

Posted on by
Reply

I have said before that we enjoy eating out! For me it is more about the convenience and speed than the actual food. Another thing that we have learned is that if we fail to make a plan then we are going to end up eating out regardless of our good intentions or need to stick to a budget. I am proud to say that we have not eaten out in 7 days!  The plan is to continue with this trend until Thursday when we are travelling.

I also hope plan  to be able to take some prepared food with us so that we will be eating out only once per day instead of three meals. The first reason is that feeding 5 people, 3 meals a day for 5 days can cost close to  $500, which as you can probably guess is not in our budget. Another big reason is the time involved in just stopping and ordering a meal and consuming it, even grabbing fast food is a bare minimum of 45 minutes to an hour of time that we end up wasting adding to our travel time. Finally, when travelling 800 miles you realize that your choices are often limited based on the area you are at especially with the 2-3 days of actual travel involved.

I realized on Friday that we had a large assortment of food in our refrigerators that I was not crazy about leaving for a week unattended. So I decided that I would try to use up as much of the leftovers and other items prior to leaving on the trip.

First up is the leftover Boston butt from Christmas Eve at my parents.I decided to make Pork Fried Rice (followed 30 day Chicken Fried Rice Recipe). I was able to make enough for 2 complete meals, one we enjoyed for dinner tonight and the second was frozen to use later. We do have enough left that my plan is to reheat, add dip, and serve for dinner either Monday or Tuesday evening.

I purchased some green peppers the first of the week with the intention  of using in omelets this week but they are still unopened on the top shelf.  So they will become stuffed green peppers for dinner tomorrow night. I will be able to top with mozzarella cheese that is starting to turn. The other ingredients are easily accessible in the freezer.

One of the items I plan to take on the trip is Taco soup. I was able to grab all the ingredients out of the freezer to complete this today as well. We will enjoy one meal for lunch tomorrow (Sunday) and another will be frozen for eating in Michigan.

I used some of the leftover chicken from last week to make a pot of Chicken and Rice on Thursday.  We have already frozen a dish of this to travel with us as well.

Last but no least are all the breakfast items that need to be used up.  This morning the fridge contained; baked oatmeal, French toast, pancakes, gravy and bacon. I decided that no cereal could be eaten until we clear out these items!  A spinach quiche, which will be an option in the morning,  used up a single pie crust and some of the bag of spinach in addition to leftover bacon from Christmas Eve.

It does appear that at least one evening meal, most likely Tuesday will be a left over choice depending on what is eaten for lunches. Another option will be baking sweet potatoes for dinner which are quick easy and well liked.

Here is the plan and we are sticking to it!

What to Do with 120# of Chicken?

Posted on by
Reply

Day Zero- This actually occurred several weeks ahead of time for me. I started searching for a variety of chicken recipes that could easily be frozen. I discovered that the internet is full of ideas but I eliminated first the ones that required ingredients that I don’t normally cook with or just sounded like the same basic idea and second ones that didn’t sound like they would freeze well or be easy to complete. I printed these recipes up and made a stack to be addressed in the next step.

Day One- I will admit that this step took 3-4 hours to complete. I took my recipes decided if I wanted to double triple or just try it out. Next, was a list of the quantity of dishes. Third was the list of ingredient divided into two parts, items on hand and items that needed to be purchased. Finally I made a list of items to be purchased, including which store to purchase at and searched for any coupons I could find.

Day Two- Shopping.  I purchased most items on my regular trip to Costco and Target but did make another stop the week we received the chicken to purchase the fresh veggies that were still needed.

Day Two and half- I again spread this out over 3-4 days of the week of chicken arrival. I clean and made space for the chicken first in our large chest freeze, then in one of our kitchen freezers so initial freezing will be easier for some of the items. We also located several crates that will make transporting to the chest freezer easier. I also clean out space in the fridge to be able to place at least one of the boxes to  take a break on Saturday night to get the kids feed and in bed.

Day Three- I spent about two and half hours chopping up all the fresh veggies and even beginning to label some of the bags.

Day Four- Chicken arrived, the pick up was smooth and the easiest I have ever experienced.  In total we spent 4 hours processing the chicken into the recipes you can find here. I am only counting time that we (Matt and I) were working with the chicken. I did have around an hour that I stopped to get the kids to bed and another 30 minutes that I took a shower while waiting for the crockpots to finish with the chicken to be shredded.  By far, the best tip I have is the Kitchen Aid mixer will shred chicken in 2 minutes!

Total of 48 set meals not counting left overs, so easily 50 meals totally prepared in 10 hours or less.  Now to see how long it actually last!

Why did the Chicken Cross the Road?

Posted on by
1

To avoid our house!

Now to answer the other question that I heard several times. Below is the inventory of the items that we made from our 120# of chicken. I have linked most to recipe that I used. A lot of these are total new to us so  my plan is to come back and make a quick comment regarding how we liked it. Then the next time we try this I will have a starting place as to what to fix and what to replace. I am a little disappointed as I did not have enough chicken to complete 2 of the meals I wanted to try so next time these may replace what is don’t like.

 

This makes a total of 47  meals. My thought is that in reality this will be 50 meals or more including leftovers at least one night.   I will add another post with the details of how long it took to actually prepare these meals and how I complete the task on a very busy Saturday for us.

Do you have an easy freezer chicken recipe to share?

Bunches of Breakfast

Posted on by
Reply

One of the areas that few people talk about is breakfast meals. I am assuming that most plan to eat the cheap  cereal for months on in. However that just would not happen in this house. I LOVE breakfast, it is probably  my favorite meal. Now that school is back in session, it is hard to eat a quick and healthy breakfast that does not cost a lot. Over the past few weeks we have developed a list of breakfast items that seem to be working for us.

  • Cereal at least once a week, currently we have several varieties of Cheerios. My price point is $1 a box so I try to stock up when I can.
  • Poptarts- depending on the flavor we have, some weeks the kids could eat this several times a week. But I can definitely say these are one of the foods I refuse to eat.
  • Eggs- Fried or scrambled.  Over the summer it has been really  nice to add fresh green peppers, ham and onions to make a quick omelet. The kids are starting to enjoy plain fried eggs which take less than 3 minutes to fix.  Last week I was given the following recipe which I plan to make over the weekend and we can re-heat at least one time if it last. I  made it last weekend but we did not have any leftovers.
      • 10 eggs whisk together, 2 cups of cottage cheese, diced onions, diced green pepper and spinach. Bake at 350 for  45 minutes.
  • Pancakes- These are a great meal that we can prepare ahead. I place in a ziplock bag and simply pop in the toaster any morning when the kids ask for them.
  • Baked Oatmeal- our current favorite is Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chips. The recipe can be found here :http://www.lynnskitchenadventures.com/2009/05/peanut-butter-baked-oatmeal.html.   I timed this last night and it took 10 minutes from start to finish. I set the stove to cook and we wake up to a warm breakfast. I also have tried apple oatmeal in the crock pot not bad but with all the variety and ease of this recipe, honestly this is better and easier!

On the weekends we tend to make bigger more traditional breakfast meals but these are quick and everyone enjoys!

Restocking

Posted on by
Reply

Over the past several months we have been working on cleaning out our freezers. I am happy to say that task is complete. We currently have chicken broth/stock and beef broth in our large chest freezer along with a 20# box of chicken tenders/nuggets. In our second stand up freezer we have veggies. It is quite full but all these are easily seen and I now know what can be used. The plan/goal of the next several weekends will be to restock.
We are a busy family and most weeks, we have extra activities three to four nights a week. One of the most successful ways that we have found to make these evenings go smoothly and not end up eating out is by  have an assortment of items in our freezers that when combine make simple meals.  We have recently purchased 120# of boneless chicken breast, these will be picked up mid October. I am already collecting recipes to use to make meals with at least the first 40#. The remaining will be divided into portion bags and use for grilling or other things.  My hope is that we can find several of meals that we really like and can then just add ingredients together.

This weekend, I am cooking and freezing beans. A can of beans on sale usually is about $0.50 to $0.75 each. A bag of beans is around $1.00. Currently, I have 4 variety of beans soaking overnight; pintos, red beans, black beans and navy beans. I have washed and looked them over, actually removing one rock today.  They will soak overnight. I will cook overnight on Friday night and then divide up and freeze on Saturday.  Each bag of dried beans will produce 3-4 cans so the saving add up quick, in addition to a significant decrease in sodium. We mainly use beans as soup ingredients, because I don’t like the taste of them.

By the end of October, my goal is to have the freezers restocked and ready for the winter.

Tiger Bark- My New Favorite Desert

Posted on by
Reply

I was given this recipe by one of Sandy’s patient. It was awesome so I decided to try it at home. YUMMY! and Simple!  So I had to share..

24oz Bag White Chocolate chips
12oz Creamy Peanut Butter
4oz Milk Chocolate chips

Melt White chocolate chips in microwave 1 minute at 70%, stir if not smooth add additional 15 seconds at 70%. Mix in peanut butter. Spread in 9×13 pan. Melt milk chocolate chip, same 1 minute at 70%. Drizzle on top of other mixture. Using a toothpick swirl into the mixture but not too deep. Place in fridge to firm up. I keep mine in the fridge but you can keep in air tight container.