Category Archives: recipes

Saving money on groceries

Intentional Spending, recipes

Since so many moms are trying to cut costs in order to live on one income and stay home with their kids, I felt it would be appropriate to share some tips for how to cut your grocery bill. This is an area where most people can realize huge savings without compromising the quality of their lives.

Your budget will probably be very different from mine, unless you also have a big family, but the principles behind saving on your grocery bill are the same. I shop and cook for a family of 9, plus guests and my mother on most weekends. Our monthly food bill is about $450, and has been about that for the last year. This is less than half of what most families our size spend. (Before I started buying farm fresh milk and eggs, it was reliably $400 monthly, but adding these into our diets has pushed up the costs.) So you won’t need to spend that much since you won’t need as much food as us. 🙂

I’ve heard the complaint that to be healthy, you need to spend a lot of money. And sometimes, it does seem like that. Yes, there are lots of costly options, but there are also lots of affordable options. And affordable options don’t mean that we have to limit ourselves to oatmeal everyday for breakfast, and beans and rice for all other meals to stay within a budget.

Since there are so many things to share, I’m going to spread out my points into separate posts to keep this easy to read for you! Firstly, as I said in my post about menu planning, I make almost everything from scratch. Not only is it cheaper, it’s lots tastier and healthier to boot. Many moms will insist that it takes them time they don’t have and they are willing to pay for the convenience. I think we too often underestimate how much we spend for conveniences to save ourselves time, and overestimate how much time it would take to make something from scratch.

Today I took a son out for pizza (he redeemed one of his coupons from the holidays) and he commented how much money people waste on eating out. I explained to him that there’s a benefit to eating out, and the more someone else does to your food, the more expensive it gets. The example I gave him was pizza: we make our own pizza, which means we make the dough, the sauce, and then we sprinkle the cheese on. That’s the cheapest option (and my kids think it’s also the yummiest – and they like that they can eat much more than I would let them buy if we went out!). The next option would be to buy a ready made pizza crust and pizza sauce, slightly more expensive still would be the frozen prepared pizza, and most expensive is fresh pizza at the pizza shop. Is there a huge qualitative difference in what you are eating? Not usually. So what accounts for the cost difference? How much work someone else has done to get the food in edible form to you! The more you are willing to do, the more you can enjoy wholesome and tasty meals at a fraction of the cost it would be to purchase them, and it doesn’t take nearly as long as most people would assume.

Tonight a neighbor stopped by to borrow a can of chickpeas. I’m really glad I could help her out, since this is something that I happened to buy at a really excellent price, but generally, I don’t have things like this in my pantry. Why not? I don’t need to pay someone else to soak a handful of beans and then cook them for me. How much time does making your own chick peas or beans take? It takes about a minute to fill a pot with water, throw in the peas/beans, and let them soak. After a few hours, rinse them, fill the pot with fresh water, and let them cook on low for a few hours while you’re doing other things at home. Total hands on prep time? Maybe 3 minutes. But you’ve easily saved 50% or more on your expenses.

Multiply the above technique a number of times in a week, and you are starting to save some serious money. Take an honest look at all the things you buy ready made: sauces, pie crusts, cookies and cakes, granola, etc. I’m not saying you shouldn’t buy anything ready made, but look at what the price of convenience is for you. Don’t forget to factor in the time you spend going to and from the store to buy all of this stuff, because that adds up, too. Cut out bakery goods as much as possible. It’s cheaper to buy a cake mix, and cheaper still to bake from scratch. But if you like the convenience of a cake mix and would like to enjoy the savings advantage of cooking from scratch, consider spending 15 – 20 minutes making up a number of batches of your own mixes and store them in separate labelled ziploc bags until you’re ready to bake.

To get you started, here’s a recipe for Dark Rick Chocolate Cake Mix (makes one 9×13 pan):
1 c. white flour (I use white whole wheat flour)
2/3 c. whole wheat flour  (again, I prefer white whole wheat flour)
1 1/2 c. sugar (I use sucanat)
3/4 c. cocoa
1/4 c. dry milk powder/rice milk powder
2 t. baking soda
1 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1 T. instant coffee

Measure all the above ingredients directly into a gallon sized ziploc bag.

When you’re ready to prepare it, mix together:
one pkg of your mix
2 c. water
1/2 c. oil
2 eggs

Put it in a greased 9 x 13 pan, and bake at 35 – 40 minutes.

Avivah

Menu planning

Homemaking, menu plans, recipes

Since I wrote a couple of days ago about creating structure in your days, I thought it might be helpful to share what I do about meals. Since mealtimes come around with almost frightening regularity, being prepared for them makes all the difference between relaxed family meals and a tense mom rushing around trying to find something to fill everyone up at the last minute. (I’ve been on both sides of dinner time, and really strongly advocate being ready!)

I make three meals a day, and almost everything is cooked from scratch. I don’t do anything too fancy, but just knowing ahead of time what is planned makes cooking from scratch much easier. For eg, I can soak and sprout the beans a day before I need to cook them (which maximizes the nutritional value as well as making them more digestible), without needing to spend extra time on it because I see it coming up on the menu. If I’m making turkey pot pie, I will whip up a double recipe of biscuit dough and use half for a breakfast, and the other half to top the pot pie.

As each week progresses, I often make some changes to my written menu, depending on what leftovers I have, maybe to take advantage of a great sale on something this week, etc. But I still have the basic structure there, I don’t have to plan every meal an hour before dinner. Like this, we have a nice variety, we have meals everyone usually enjoys, and I don’t have the pressure of trying to think about it more than once every three weeks.

It’s really nice to all sit down together for a cooked meal. It’s just a totally different feeling than everyone scrounging for something of their own. I try to sit down as a family for all three meals every day, though lunch tends to be the weakest – sometimes only half the family is there at a time and others are busy playing outside, or something like that, but I’m okay with it. Soups, casseroles, and one pot dishes are great in terms of ease and limited time.

Here’s what this week’s menu looks like (many that look vegetarian actually have meat stock or gravy added for flavoring and nutritional value):

Sunday – b: pancakes (made of freshly ground millet, buckwheat, and rice); l – can’t remember, leftovers, I think; d – chili with cornbread
Monday – b: farmers casserole (shredded potatoes with eggs, ricotta cheese, and yogurt); l – freshly baked Cuban bread, split pea soup; d – buckwheat with ground beef and veggies
Tuesday: b – baked oatmeal; l – fresh bread, chickpeas, fried potatoes (my kids asked if they could make this today so I agreed and changed the original plan); d- baked beans and hot dogs
Wednesday: b- cranberry muffins; l – turkey pot pie; d – pizza
Thursday: b – pumpkin bread; l – baked potatoes w/ leftover stew ; d – spaghetti squash with meat sauce

Having meals planned out ahead of time also helps keep the food budget in check, something I will write more about in the future since there seems to be more interest in this aspect of things than I initially expected!

Avivah

Making broth from scratch

nutrition, recipes

I’ve been feeling tired the last couple of days, and I’ve been frequenting parenting boards more than usual since it’s easier to be online than to be actually doing stuff when I’m this exhausted. Tonight I just have had enough. It’s like a huge ocean of lousy parenting suggestions. 🙁

So I decided to shift mental gears and instead of writing about parenting I’ll share with you how to make chicken stock. Especially in the winter when kids aren’t feeling good, it’s great to have some germ fighting chicken soup on hand! Lots of people think that making chicken stock from scratch is hard and think that adding soup mix is necessary to give it flavor. I don’t know where this idea came from, since there’s nothing much easier than homemade stock. My kids make ours on a regular basis, and every time, it is delicious! I had a couple of turkey carcasses in the fridge today, and this is the perfect use for them.

Put the chicken/bones/whatever you are using in the pot, covering it with at least a couple of inches with water. Some people like to skim it after bringing it to a boil, to make the soup clearer, but I stopped doing that years ago. Once it is boiling, add your veggies – onions, garlic, parsnip, carrot, celery, turnip, rutabaga, squash, tomato – use as many or as few of these in combination as you like. Personally, we use most of the veggies listed – they make for an incredibly rich flavor. Just peel the vegetables and pop them in the pot; don’t worry about chopping them up.

Once the soup is boiling again, turn it all the way down and let it simmer, for hours. I sometimes start a large pot before I go to sleep, and leave it on the lowest setting overnight. When I wake up, the house smells amazing and there is a delicious pot of soup waiting for us. The long cooking time is really important in giving the flavors a chance to meld and deepen.

If you want to put a couple of tablespoons of vinegar in when it’s cooking, that will help leach vitamins from the bones and adds to the nutritional value. I like to use Bragg’s raw apple cider vinegar for this. If you don’t, it will still be good for you. Some people also like to let it cool in the fridge once it’s finished cooking and then skim off the fat from the top so the broth is clear- I don’t do this, but just in case it’s something you want to try, I’m mentioning it.  Then you can put the fat that you skim off in the fridge and use it to cook with!

When it’s finished, I take out the carcass, and take all of the turkey meat off of it. Then I use it in a turkey pot pie for another night’s dinner. I end up with so much soup that we have soup as a first course for one meal, and then later in the week, add rice to whatever soup is left for a hearty lunch meal. Amazing how much good eating can come from a turkey carcass that most people would throw away!

Avivah

Fun with oobleck

Homeschooling, recipes,

A few days ago we went to the library and one of my younger kids chose a book called A Hatful of Seuss – it is a collection of Dr. Seuss stories. One of the stories is Bartholomew and the Oobleck, in which the kingdom in invaded by sticky slime. The kids loved the story, and when we found a recipe for homemade goop that we made up a couple of days later, we decided to rename it oobleck, since it resembled the Seusslike stuff.

This is a fun and easy activity to do with kids. I remember stuff like this being sold in little plastic balls from the vending machines in the front of supermarkets when I was a kid – they probably still do. It’s almost magical for kids to see it created in front of their eyes! The recipe uses just a few common household ingredients – I bought a box of Borax quite a while ago and now have it on hand for recipes like this (it’s useful for laundry, too :)). Here it is:

8 oz white glue
3/4 c. water
food coloring (optional)
1 t. 20 Mule Team Borax
1 – 2 T. water

Combine the first 3 ingredients in one bowl; combine the last two ingredients in a different bowl. Add borax mixture to the glue mixture, stirring until a blob forms. Remove the blob from the mix, add a new batch of borax and repeat until glue mix is gone. Knead all blobs together; store in airtight container (we use ziploc bags).

My kids discovered that they could blow bubbles with it, which was really fun – until my youngest daughter (with hair almost to her waist) had the bubble pop right into her hair. Supposedly this doesn’t stick to anything – but when I saw her, with orange slime entangled throughout her hair on each side of her face, my first thought was to just chop it all off. It looked like a wad of bubble gum that had gotten smooshed in. She looked ready to cry, so I got to work on one side while I told her not to touch the other side – but unfortunately, I was so focused on getting it out that I didn’t realize she was rubbing it in more on the other side as I worked (trying to help get it out). It was a painstaking job, getting it out tiny bit by tiny bit and I finally thought of using a brush to get it out. That worked really well, and I was able to brush it all out pretty quickly (it fell out in lots of crumbles all over the floor).

Now you’ve been cautioned – don’t let your kids eat it or rub it in their hair, and they will have an amazing time with it (and so will you)!

Avivah