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Saving Money on Groceries: In the News

I like to browse the Yahoo Finance columns from time to time and today I was fortunate to catch a great article by Laura Rowley called “How to Save $400 a Month on Groceries.”

In it, she runs through several websites that help consumers figure out where the best deals are on groceries. First there’s The Grocery Game, and then there’s myClipper.com. The best one, though, in my opinion is Coupon Mom, who’s motive is to give people the information they need to save money and then encourage them to donate some of their cheap groceries to charity. This last one reminds us that even if we have the means to spend a lot on food, we ought to consider paring down and then forking over the savings in order to help other people out. Combining a simplified, frugal lifestyle with helping others sounds like a great “recipe” for living!

Some of her commenters do point out that in order to save a lot of money on groceries, you do have to put in the time. One even says that it is impossible to do if you are employed full time (in their words: “not a SAHM or SAHD”). I’d like to know if anyone else is doing well with cutting coupons and staying on top of deals despite having full time employment. I work full-time, and I am writing a book, and I still am trying to save on groceries. Of course, I do not have the time to meticulously go through every Wednesday circular for adds, and I also appreciate my local store’s lack of lines at check-out despite their higher prices, so perhaps I am not the best example.

Tips to Save Money

There are a couple of good tips on how to save money over at BankRate right now. They hold a frugal tips contest every month called Frugal $ense. You can win $100 if you submit a tip and it gets the highest user rating. Last month’s winner was all about saving money by only grocery shopping once a month. She literally plans out all the meals for the month on a calendar, saving the items that take the longest to cook for the weekends. Check out her tip here.

I was sifting through the entries for this month and while I didn’t see much cost savings in the tip to line dry your clothes instead of using the dryer, I did think that the one on growing your own vegetables was great. Basically, this person is talking about taking your background garden to a whole other level by producing a surplus and canning/jarring/freezing it to make it last throughout the year. We’re talking not just veggies but also berries and fruit trees. Although fruit and vegetable prices would probably never go as high here in the continental U.S. as they are, say, in Japan where I hear it might cost about $50 to buy your own fruit and make a fruit salad with, it still would save you a lot of money to do this. It makes me remember a trip to Switzerland where I saw that most of the homes along a train route I was taking had their own little vegetable gardens. Perhaps our residential landscape will start to look like that in the future.

Menus for a Week: With Shopping List!

A Week of Cabin Cooking!

The theme for this week’s worth of dinner recipes is cabin cooking. And the cookbook with the recipes is

Okay okay, so I know this cookbook is OLD but it is time-tested and cheap! We make stuff from it on a regular basis. It came to me by way of my husband and wow does it have some good recipes in it! It contains very easy, simple, and classic American recipes. A lot of them do take some time to cook, though, so get out the crockpot or make some of these on a Saturday and freeze for the week if you aren’t home.

On The Menu
Cottage Cheese Spinach Quiche p.45 / Sweet and Sour Chicken Wings p.121
Mandarin-Cashew Salad p.77 / English Muffin Pizzas
Pot Roast Supreme p.113
Steamed Artichokes see here / Pesto Pasta
Hamburger-Wild Rice Casserole p.89 / Garlic Bread

With regard to the very first recipe, I know it sounds weird to put cottage cheese in the oven, but we just had this very recipe tonight and trust me, it  was delicious! Make 2 quiches because it does not make “6 servings” as stated in the book. More like 3!

The English Muffin Pizzas are a staple around here. Here’s how to make them: toast the English muffins, then put a dollop of spaghetti sauce on top of each, on top of that put 1 or 2 slices of cheddar cheese. If you have a toaster oven, pop them in there for about 5 minutes until hot and bubbly. If you don’t have a toaster oven then just put them in a regular oven on a cookie sheet as the cheese can melt over the sides.

For the pesto, just put one clove of garlic (peel it first), a cup of basil, and 1/2 cup of olive oil in a food chopper or blender. Boil whatever noodles you choose and top with the pesto. Add some grated Parmesan if you want.

For the garlic bread you can buy a pre-made loaf at the store or just make your own very simply with regular ‘ol sandwich bread. Toast the bread (in the oven if making a bunch), smear on some butter, sprinkle with garlic powder.

The onion powder in the shopping list is a substitute for the Lawry’s seasoned salt called for in the Cottage Cheese Spinach Quiche.

The Shopping List

Cottage cheese, large tub (2 cups)

Frozen chopped spinach, 20 oz.

Eggs, 3

Salt

Garlic powder

Onion powder

Parmesan cheese, 1 cup grated

Paprika

 

Mandarin oranges, 3 11-oz. cans

Lettuce, 2 heads

Salted cashews, 1 cup

Medium onions, 2

Oil and vinegar salad dressing

 

Wild rice, 1 cup

Ground beef, 1.5 pds.

Cream of mushroom soup, 1 10.5 oz. can

Cream of chicken soup, 1 10.5 oz. can

Canned mushrooms (fresh would be better though!), 1 can

Water chestnuts, 1 can

Beef bouillon cubes, 2

 

Beef roast, approx. 3 pds.

Flour

Carrots, 6

Potatoes, 6

Onion soup, 1 10.5 oz. can

 

Chicken wings, 20-25

Soy sauce, 1 cup

Pineapple juice, 1 cup

Sugar, 1 cup

Salad oil, ¼ cup

Ground ginger

 

Dried or fresh noodles of your choice

Fresh basil, 1 cup

Olive oil, ½ cup

Garlic, 1 clove

 

Artichokes, 2-4

English muffins

Spaghetti sauce, 1 cup

Cheddar cheese

Bread

 

How to Cook an Artichoke

Tomorrow’s post will be a week worth of dinners with a cabin cooking theme. But it will also include one delicacy-type side course - artichokes! I realized that to prep for that post I’d need to explain just how to cook a choke since it isn’t something that is in every cooks repertoire. If it isn’t in yours, you need to try this because it is such an easy delicacy to prepare! Not only that but their peak season is just ending so get them now before their prices go way up.

Don’t Be Afraid!!!

Washing

Rinse the chokes with water really well. Shake upside down to get most of the water out.

Trimming

Some people don’t trim their chokes but I do. Using a cutting board and a serrated knife, cut the top 1 inch off of the leaves. It’ll leave the top of the choke flat. Cut off the bottom inch of the stem so that the stem is flat and allows the choke to stand up.

Steaming

You will need a very large pot, especially if you have big chokes. Sometimes only two chokes will fit into my lobster pot. If I have to make more than 2 I will use 2 pots and 2 burners. Fill the pot or pots with 1 or 2 inches of water, place the chokes in it on their stems so they stand up, and bring the water to a boil. Let them simmer, covered, for 30 minutes.

Checking for Doneness

With a fork in one hand and a pair of kitchen tongs in the other, stabalize one of the chokes with the fork while you attempt to pull out a leaf with the tongs. If the leaf comes out easily then the chokes are done. Keep checking back every 10 minutes. Sometimes it will only take 30 minutes, sometimes it’ll take 50 minutes.

Eating Artichokes

If you need a primer on how to eat an artichoke check out this wonderful pictorial on SimplyRecipes.com. As far as the choke dip is concerned, there can be only one natural accompaniment: melted butter! Make sure the butter you use is salted. If you buy unsalted butter as a rule, then add a sprinkle of your own salt to it. If you really feel like you need to add lemon to the butter, which a whole heck of a lot of cookbooks say to do, then please at least try them without the lemon first.

How to Beat the 3 year-old Blues

The 3 year-old blues: no, I am not talking about sad 3 year olds, I am talking about sad parent’s of 3 year olds! For any of you out there raising someone this age - hats off to you because this is tough! Let me just give you the run down of my morning.

6:20am - “I want cereal” “I want a peanut butter and jelly” “I want a different kind of cereal” “Peel this banana”

6:30am-8am - I let both kids watch TV for, gasp!, 1.5 hours! Call the parenting police! My usual guideline is 1 hour a day, tops, for both kids, but this morning I must’ve sensed that it would be a tough day so I let them watch PBS Kids for a bit longer than usual. That was probably the quietist most peaceful moment of the day.

8am - 12pm - Sheer h*ll. He wanted food constantly, then he couldn’t get along with his big sister. Then both kids got their corn chips taken away when they couldn’t stop complaining about who got more. Then he pulled her hair, REALLY hard. He got sent to his room. Then he wouldn’t stay in his room. Then there was the tortilla incident, oh yeah, but that was after the Throwing Stuffed Animals at Mommy incident. The tortilla pieces were left in his room (where they aren’t supposed to be in the first place) so he was told to pick them up. Oh boy did that unleash some fury. Let’s just say that about 1 hour later he finally picked up the tortilla pieces, which were now torn completely into shreds, making them very hard for him to throw away.

I don’t normally recommend drinking as a way to solve one’s parenting problems, but let’s just say that the normally disgusting-sounding Bourbon, which was all the alcohol we had in the house, was sounding REALLY good at about 11am!

The Alcohol Alternative - Cupcakes!

Once big sis was off to kindergarten for the afternoon, I figured the only thing that was going to get me and little bro through the next few hours was to bake something. So I came up with cupcakes. After some complaining about how he does NOT like cupcakes, I got him started. He cracked the egg and put the cupcake liners in the cupcake pan. Then he worked the Kitchen Aid like a pro and helped put the butter in the microwave. 30 minutes later we had some cupcakes and he decided that yes, indeed, he DOES like cupcakes! Well imagine that. So do I.

Nothing can cure a bad day like some cooking. This whole experience just shows how important it is for those of us who have little kids around to keep cooking supplies on hand at all times!

Addicted to Blogging

I am a new blogger, as evidenced by the fact that this blog was started a month and a half ago. I think I became addicted to blogging the minute I started this thing. Not only have I spent a lot of time researching and writing the posts themselves, but I have spent a lot of time figuring out how to get the word out to people about the blog. That second part, getting the word out, I told myself I wouldn’t do much of because it takes time away from all of my other responsibilities. You know - like my day job and my family! But then I get sad when I take a lot of time to write a post that not many people will read. So I start looking for ways to promote it and bam, there I am, addicted to blogging.

I also can’t get enough of going onto Google Analytics to check out how many hits I’ve gotten (now that must be narcissism or something), or see where on the world map people are reading from, or to see what I’ve made off of Google AdSense. Uh, yeah, not a lot.

If I am to keep up this blog then I need to set some limits for myself. Like maybe 45 minutes to research and write a post, 5 minutes to check stats, and 10 minutes to read other relevant stuff for material, all adding up to 1 hour a day. That was my original intent with this blog and I need to stop going WAY past that in terms of time! I am sure I can write good stuff, pass on my wisdom, research recipes, and whatnot within my time limit. What I will have to cut out is all of the stats checking and blog-promotion stuff.

I do want to make sure, though, that I shout out a big THANK YOU to all of the readers who have ventured to read this new blog and who, I hope, will continue to read it. Some of you are even coming back to read things on a repeat basis! I hope I can keep providing you with the information you need to feed your family well on a limited budget!

Food Budget Update

Food Budget Update

First off, our budget is looking so great this month! I am excited to announce that we only spent $707 this month on food. I don’t expect that we will spend any more money in the next few days either. So that brings us in at $93 under budget! You know, it has actually been really easy to get our food budget down and it makes me wonder just how in the heck we were spending SO much ($1100-$1200/month) on food before we started keeping to this budget. So, since we have been eating relatively well (we are not living off of beans and rice alone, here!), it makes me realize that if we were to start eating off the super-cheap stuff we could probably cut it down by at least another $200. For now, though, I am satisfied to keep it at this level of spending.

Emergency Supplies

Secondly, after reading Frugal Dad’s recent post Is Recession Preparing a New Breed of Survivalist? I remembered that our emergency supplies are probably all out of date. We have about 12 gallons of water in the garage which is probably 1.5 to 2 years old. I need to remember to dump it on the garden and buy new water. We also need more canned food. This all leads me to another thought: about a year ago I saw a picture in some random magazine that showed a middle class family standing proudly in front of a rack of emergency supplies that they kept in their garage. Now, I think that is great, but the weird thing about the picture was that the rack had like 10 boxes of cereal on it. It is so funny that we have gotten so out of touch about basic survival that we would think that cereal is the way to go. I mean, yeah, it is fine if your power is knocked out for a few days, then you’ve got cereal (what about milk?!), but if it were a true emergency I would think that cooking basics like 10 or 20 pounds of flour, sugar, salt, etc., would be the best and most versatile thing to have. All of that was a long-winded way of saying that I might spend that extra $93, or some of it at least, on new emergency supplies.

Meal Planning Secret Weapon

Do you ever sit down to make a grocery list and realize your mind is as blank as the piece of paper in your hand? Maybe you’ve made all the family favorites recently and just aren’t into making them again this week. Or maybe nothing sounds good. When this happens to me, I have several tricks up my sleeve, and one of them I will share with you here. I guess that doesn’t make it a secret anymore!

The Secret

What I do is simply go to the website of one of those make your own frozen entrees places, look at their menu for the month, and take note of any dishes that sound good. Then I either attempt to make something similar without an actual recipe or I find a recipe online that is similar to the one on the website. There it is. My secret weapon. So when your mind draws a blank try out this tactic and you’ll probably wind up with more than a week’s worth of meal ideas!

 

Learning To Cook Part II: Throwing Stuff Together

A few days ago we had nothing planned for dinner. In days past, I would have a) gotten take-out or b) ran to the grocery with a recipe in-hand. Since I am now in the save-money mode, these two options aren’t the best. Take-out is too expensive (and not usually healthy) and running to the grocery for just one meal wastes time and gas money.

So instead I dug through the cabinets and found half a box of whole wheat noodles and a large can of tomatoes. Ah ha! Not only that, but I also had some fresh asparagus that I hadn’t cooked yet. Since I am not totally well-versed on making pasta sauce I looked up some recipes on Epicurious and looked at the major ingredients. Thankfully I also have an AeroGarden with basil, I always keep a few heads of garlic around, and I had some left-over wine. Here’s what I came up with: A beautiful-looking pasta sauce with canned tomatoes, crushed basil, garlic, and wine. Topped with some cheese and a few small basil leaves. Add to that a side of asparagus and it looked as if I had planned this meal out! Take a look:

This is the great reward for those of us who know a little bit about cooking: we can save money by putting together ingredients that we have lying around. It is also really helpful to keep in-stock some of the basic cooking ingredients in your well-stocked pantry (see my post on that subject!). 

What Steps Do You Take To Learn To Cook?

The way I learned to cook was in steps:

1) Use recipes for everything (from age 10-19)

2) Watch someone else cook who knows how to whip things up without recipes/from memory (age 20)

3) Use a combination of recipes (80% of the time) and trying to create things on my own (20%) - age 21-29

4) Use a combination of recipes (50% of the time) and trying to create things on my own (50%) - age 30-31

Do I think everyone learns to cook this way? No! I am sure there are plenty of people who taught themselves from books or just from trial and error. I assume they had a lot of errors along the way, though. I am a bit more risk-averse so I was probably slower than most to start trying things out on my own.

Pasta Recipe

In case you were wondering what that pasta recipe is that I came up with, I will try to record the gist of it here:

Boil the whole-wheat pasta according to the box directions. In a pot, put a tbsp. olive oil, heat it up at medium heat, then add two cloves of crushed garlic and saute for about 20-30 seconds. Throw in a can of plum tomatoes (if whole, use a potato masher or something to crush them up in the pot). Simmer for 10 minutes. Add 3/4 cup of white or red wine and a tbsp. of sugar (to sweeten the tomatoes if they are too acidic). Simmer for another 10-20 minutes. Add 2 tbsp or up to 1/4 cup of crushed or chopped basil depending on how much you like basil. Add other herbs if you like those better. Simmer for another 10 minutes. Top the pasta with the sauce and some cheese. Serve with fresh, steamed, or broiled vegetables.

If you are trying to be healthy I would aim to make the veggies the same proportion as the pasta - like 50% veggies and 50% pasta on your plate. Before you take seconds of the pasta eat more veggies. We Americans do not eat enough vegetables!

Our Kids Aren’t Learning How to Cook!

Knowing how to cook is so important when it comes to saving money on food.  It is all too common for people to not know how to prepare a simple meal from scratch, even something as simple as spaghetti.  Add to that most people’s pathetic knowledge of how to put together a nutritious meal and we have ourselves a problem. 

I was thinking about this the other day when my daughter had a little friend over to play.  They are six years old and I was blown away by the difference between my daughter and her friend when it came to cooking skills.  I have involved my kids in cooking since they were old enough to hold a spoon.  They have been cracking eggs for me since they turned two!  This other little girl, mind you, is no dummy.  She reads at a 4th grade level, writes extremely well, and plays the piano with a natural grace.  However, her parents have not taken the time to teach their kids how to do the simplest of household tasks!  I thought that the pre-school years were supposed to be all about learning how to do things around the house like sweeping, mixing, washing, feeding the dog, etc.  Turns out my peers have been focusing on teaching their kids reading and writing and neglecting these other very important skills.

So what was the difference between their cooking skills?  When I handed a bottle of oil to the friend to open, she actually tried to open the thing the wrong way!  She was turning it to the right instead of to the left.  When I told her to mix some ingredients in a bowl she held the wooden spoon as if it were a dagger and didn’t really get to mixing the food at all.  I was frankly quite taken aback by this.  Even though her mom had told me that she hasn’t taught her how to cook because “they are too busy,” I was still shocked at the fact that a six year old couldn’t hold a spoon and mix.  Her parents are simply too busy to wait a few extra moments to have their daughter help mix things or open things.  But aren’t we doing our children a disservice by not teaching them these things?  What is our role as parents if not to teach them these basic skills?

(Before you start worrying that I was forcing my daughter and her friend to do chores during a play-date, let me explain that they were making popcorn and ice cream - both items were for them to chow down on, not me!)

So this is a first post in a series on learning how to cook (no matter what your skills!).  This is a life skill that everyone needs to know.  If all you can do is order a taco from the local fast food restaurant then you will be hurting in any kind of emergency if you don’t have these skills to fall back on.  Not to mention the fact that you could save a lot of money and eat a whole lot better if you can make your own tacos at home!