Cheap Eats

This item has been on my to-post list for a while, so it's time to post it.

Every now and then we have a really on-the-cheap meal. For us, it's scrambled eggs with a little Spam and cheese mixed in, and hashbrowns. All the ingredients are really cheap, especially if I cube up some leftover baked potatoes to make the hashbrowns. Better still, it is as quick to make as it is inexpensive.

Fried rice is another good, inexpensive option. I always have some leftover peas or peas and carrots in the fridge. Scramble in a couple of eggs, toss in a handful of cubed ham (or Spam, like we do) or other leftover meat, a packet of seasoning, and there you are. Lunch!

I love this recipe for Oriental Chicken Salad. It's especially cheap if you use leftover chicken from another meal (I grill chicken breast in Yoshida's sauce and garlic, and these leftovers are fantastic in this salad).

Oriental Chicken Salad

adapted from "Eat Up Slim Down"

2 envelopes low-fat chicken ramen soup mix

2 c cubed cooked chicken breast

1 head cabbage, thinly sliced (6 c)--I use a bag of precut coleslaw mix

1 celery rib, thinly sliced (I use celery seed)

1 red onion, thinly sliced (I use minced onion)

3 T seasoned rice vinegar

1 T canola oil

1 t sugar (optional)

Set ramen seasoning package aside. Place noodles in a large bowl. Add water and soak for 10 minutes. Drain. Add chicken, cabbage, celery, and onion.

In a small bowl, combine ramen seasoning package, vinegar, oil, and sugar. Pour over salad, cover and chill 1 hour to allow flavors to blend.

A Great Fallback Meal

We tried a new crock-pot dinner last weekend, which turned out pretty good. It is simple to make, and the ingredients are ones that can be easily stored and kept on hand, making this a perfect fallback meal when your other dinner plans fall through. For your consideration:

Sweet and Sour Meatballs
1 can pineapple pieces
1/2 c white vinegar
3 T soy sauce
1/2 c brown sugar
1.25 lb precooked meatballs

Place meatballs into crock pot. Mix other ingredients together and pour over meatballs. Cover and cook for 5-6 hours on low or 3-4 hours on high. Serve with rice or noodles, and vegetables.

Prep Notes: I doubled the recipe, which I won't need to do next time, as it makes quite a lot. I thought it had a little too much of a vinegar-y taste, so I will cut the vinegar down to maybe 1/3 cup next time. The original recipe link did not say what size can of pineapple to use. I used a 20-oz can of pineapple chunks (with some of the juice) for my double recipe. We all agreed that was the best type of pineapple to use, as those of us (my teenage sons) who weren't wild about the pineapple could easily pick around it. We all agreed that the sauce needed to be thick, not runny, so next time I will try adding some cornstarch and water about 20 minutes before serving.

Verdict: Definitely tasty, with room for improvement. I give it extra points for being so simple to make.

Yum! Bison Tacos!

Just thought I would report on a meal I made with some of the ground bison that I got for such a deal last week. The other night, I made tacos using one pound of 94% lean ground beef and one pound of bison. I used 2 packets of Taco Bell taco seasoning mix. The unanimous verdict: DEELICIOUS!!! My family of 4 devoured this. We barely had any meat left over. You don't taste these and say "oh, this must be bison." The bison, to me at least, tastes like beef should taste. Very flavorful without overpowering the seasonings. Add taco shells, grated cheese, shredded lettuce, tomatoes, etc. Perfect-o!

On a side note, as I was surfing the web to find the image of the taco mix, I found that amazon.com has them for much cheaper than I can get in my grocery store. I bought them at Safeway last week on sale for 99 cents each. On amazon, I got a pack of 24 (which will last me about a year, considering we do tacos about once a month and use 2 packets each time) for $15.71, or $0.65 per packet. And, because our household has a subscription to Amazon Prime (which I will discuss in more detail in a future post, I got 2-day shipping for free).

Fallback Meals

I heard from many Frugal Readers regarding fallback meals, so I thought I would list them all in a post. Yum. When’s dinner??

Julie says that her favorite fallback meal is Trader Joe's orange chicken. She also relies on Zatarain's, mac 'n cheese, spaghetti, frozen pizza, stir fry stuff, boxed Thai meals, frozen burritos and ravioli (from Costco—they have several tasty varieties), and Bear Creek Soup, which is a dehydrated soup mix found in most grocery stores. In most cases all you have to add is water. She has also recently discovered the yumminess of cooking meat in a cast iron frying pan. It only takes about 5-12 minutes, after the oven heats up to 500 degrees.

Aubrey’s main fallback meal is waffles and scrambled eggs. She admits it is definitely not nutritious, but it’s good on the budget and sure to please the kiddos. Another one on her fallback list is frozen meatballs (either Swedish or Italian) and sauce.

Soozcat admits that too often their fallback meal is pasta with a protein mixed in. “It's cheap and quick to make,” she says, “but unless I can get a decent salad on the table with it, it's probably not the wisest choice.” Still, it’s better than fast food (in more ways than one, I might add)!

Christina reports, “I do fried rice or kitchen-sink soup! Or else homemade pizza because I've always got dough ingredients, some form of cheese and tomato sauce and spices.” (I’m very impressed by anyone who can call homemade pizza a fallback meal!)

Slow Cookers

I've always had a slow cooker, but it wasn't until this past Christmas when I got a programmable one, that I really fell in love with slow cooking. Using a slow cooker has become one of my favorite tools in my war against eating out. One of the things that made a basic slow cooker less- than useful to me is that I had to time when I put the meal into the pot just right so we didn't have an overcooked mushy mess come dinnertime. With my programmable, I can put a meal in anytime, and program it to cook for however long I want, then it shifts automatically into a WARM setting so the food stays at a safe, warm temperature, but does not continue to cook.

Last night was a prime example of why this is useful. I had a training class from 4:30-8:00, my husband was going to have to work late, my oldest had swim team until 6, and my youngest was at home, just hanging out. I put a meal in this morning, programmed it, and everyone had a hot meal when they wanted it (actually, after the boys ate, I had them put the leftovers away and hubby and I heated it in the microwave when we got home).

I like being able to put the meal together in the morning, when I have more energy and time, and having it ready and waiting for us. We have saved lots of money and time by not having to eat out on those nights when everyone is going in different directions.

Now, all I need to do is find more slow cooker recipes (anyone? anyone?). This is what we had last night:

Campout Casserole
(reminds us of foil dinners)

Spray slow cooker with PAM. Place the following in the slow cooker in order, sprinkling each layer with minced onion and pepper (or you can use real onions if you aren't cooking for picky people)

1 2-lb bag baby carrots
4-6 potatoes, skins on, scrubbed, and cut into chunks
2 lb ground beef, browned and drained

Smother with 2 cans tomato soup and 1 can cream of chicken (or mushroom or celery) soup mixed together (no water, just the soup). Cover and cook on high for 8 hours.

Do You Have a Fallback Meal?

The other night, I was browning some hamburger for dinner. I had planned to make a skillet casserole that called for pasta, tomato soup, and frozen corn. The meat was sizzling away, and I had started the water to boil for the pasta when I went out to the garage freezer only to find that I was out of frozen corn. I didn't have any leftovers in the fridge, either. I didn't want to just waste the meat, so I went to one of my fallback meals. A fallback meal is something my family likes, that has a minimum of ingredients needed, that I can pull together at a moment's notice. For hamburger, my fallback meals are usually Hamburger Helper or Dirty Rice (made with Zatarain's Dirty Rice mix).

I have long been a planner of meals. I have a menu stuck to my fridge of the meals I have planned for the week. It's taken me a long time, though, to learn flexibility when it comes to dinner menus. It is important to have a fallback meal or two that you can pull together quickly. In a less-frugal stage of life, being out of corn on the night I was planning to serve Curly Noodle would merit a trip to a drive-through, which can easily cost in the neighborhood of $40. Instead, I pulled out two boxes of Hamburger Helper (which I had bought on sale with a coupon and probably paid about a dollar each), and cooked up some peas & carrots to go with it. Not necessarily great, nutritionwise, but more nutritious than that drive-through meal would have been.

I am convinced that eating out is bad for both your budget AND your waistline. Plan for a couple of things that you don't normally schedule for a meal. Be prepared with a well-stocked pantry.

Menu Planning

I. Hate. Menu. Planning! Hate it, hate it, hate it!

Menu planning, to me, is a necessary evil. If I don't have a week's worth of menus posted on my fridge, we are so much more likely to go out for dinner than not. If I don't know what to thaw the night before...well, you get the picture. That said, I am burnt out on it. Entirely. Even with keeping a monthly calendar of what we ended up eating each night, I still get in a rut.

The only thing I hate worse than menu planning is cooking.

Grocery Deal of the Week, September 1

Two grocery deals this week, both with essentially equal savings percentages.

My first grocery deal was planned from the Grocery Game list I use each week. I got 6 boxes of Hamburger Helper for 75 cents each, or a savings of 73%. We don't use HH very often; however, my boys will often make up a box for lunch when they are at home during the day. As our school district just called for a strike (meaning school won't start tomorrow), they will be home during the day for a while. I think I'll fry up some hamburger and freeze it so all they have to do is thaw the browned hamburger and add it to the HH.

My second grocery deal was something I stumbled on at Safeway. They had the small boxes of chocolate and banana cream Safeway brand instant pudding mix on clearance for 23 cents each, or 75% off. I unashamedly took all of the boxes of chocolate (8) and 6 boxes of banana cream. Not only are these a nice, cheap treat, but I also use the small boxes of pudding to make cake frosting (1 small box pudding, 1 envelope Dream Whip, 1 1/2 cups milk, use a mixer to whip until creamy, spread on cake, refrigerate---YUM!).

Always keep your eyes open when you are shopping, and learn to spot a good deal when you see one! Happy shopping.

Keeping Track of Your Stockpiles

For a long time, I've been keeping track of what meat is in my freezer so I have the information at hand while planning menus and grocery lists. See above for a picture of my grocery planner/inventory lists. Just recently (this week) I decided to make an inventory of everything in my pantry, garage storage, both freezers, and toiletries.

I have one page for each category: roasts/steaks, prepared meats (like hot dogs, hamburger buns), ground meat (hamburger, turkey, vegetarian crumbles), fish/poultry. I list each item individually. For example, on the ground meat page, if I have 8 packages of hamburger in the freezer, I write “hamburger” 8 times, and then cross off one instance of “hamburger” every time I use a package. When I buy more hamburger, I add to the bottom of the list.

I've now added some new pages: toiletries, pantry/garge (nonfood), pantry /garage (food), cereal (has its own page), extra freezer, etc. I find that as I am stockpiling and having to store my stocks in a variety of places in the house and the garage, that I am losing track of what I have, and consequently, what I might need when things go on sale.

By having lists of everything I have, I can look very quickly to see that I already have 18 cans of chicken broth, and that I might want to pass on the sale that is coming up. Or that I seem to have way more Golden Grahams and Cinnamon Toast Crunch than anything else, so not to buy those flavors for a while. Equally important is I can now more easily make sure we use things before they go out of date. When I was doing the inventory on my “spare” freezer (part of my refrigerator in the garage), I had to toss FIVE packages of Van De Kamps fish portions that were more than a year past date.

I hope this makes sense and that you aren't all laughing yourself silly. What can I say, I'm definitely Type A! But, I think this will help me keep tabs on what I have on hand, so that I can shop even smarter.

"Secrets of Thrifty Families" in Parade Magazine

Today's issue of Parade Magazine (in the Sunday ad inserts of the newspaper) had several articles about families and how they save money. Take a read for yourself. I have a hard time believing that a family of 6 can make dinner for $3.69 total (not each), but that's what one family claims. The family must not include teenage boys, that's all I have to say! Anyway, it was an interesting article and the entire issue has some good ideas. If you don't get the Sunday paper, you can follow the link above.

(If you don't get the Sunday paper, you need to start, even if you just pick it up in the grocery store on Saturday. Two words: Grocery Coupons!)

Tracking Meals with a Dinner Calendar

I make dinner menus and shop once a week. I post the menu on the fridge each week, and used to just toss out each menu at the end of the week. Just recently, though, I started keeping track of what we actually ended up eating each week, as even with a weekly menu, things tend to change. I write it on a monthly calendar, and keep the calendars in my menu planning binder. I have found this helps us eat out less (not that you would know it from the sample calendar), because I am planning dinners better, and it also is a very useful tool when one of my kids (or my hubby) says, "not that again!" I can whip out my back calendars and say "for your information, we haven't had that in five weeks!"