Now THAT is Frugality!

I think I've won a "contest" maybe a time or two in my life? Not to mention that I hardly ever enter them - maybe that's why I "never" win anything.

My chiropractor has a little box in their office where you can enter the answer to their "Question of the Month" (they give you 4 answers to choose from). Several weeks ago I thought, "shucks, why not, who knows?" and guessed at the answer (I made sure to fold my paper in half to give it a better chance of being picked if I had the right answer, yada yada.).

I walked in Monday, and the girl said "Hey, we've got a surprise for you! You won the question of the month, so you get 2 free movie tickets!"

Yay!! So, that night I took Daniel on a date :) Well, kindof. He drove, and we ran 2 errands on the way. We went to see Fireproof, and wow, it's a real deal of a movie!! If you haven't already seen it, you definitely should. We'd been talking about going to see it, and Daniel was going to take me to see it when it first came out but we had something else going on so we never did. And now we did get to see it and not pay anything for it!! Woohoo! And we ate a good dinner before we went so we weren't hungry - though the salty/buttery smelling popcorn was tempting :)

Gnats, Gnats, Go Away - and never come back!!

Ever since we had peaches in the house this summer, we've had a constant supply of fruit gnats in the house as well. Sometimes more than others, especially if some new fruit (pears lately) appeared, or a dirty dish was left out for them to graze upon. I've gotten pretty good at killing them by smacking them with my hand while they're landed on the cupboard doors (or somewhere with a hard surface!), but it was obvious that they were multiplying faster than I could kill them off.

And they were getting on my nerves big time. And getting more so as time went on and they were just sticking around!!

I tried the "vinegar/soap" in a dish thing - ha, that didn't work at all. Then I heard about this, and was still a little skeptical of it, but decided I was being aggravated by them enough to try it!

Last night after killing several of them, I pulled out an empty jar, and asked Daniel if he would make a paper funnel for me (I was in the middle of canning pear-butter and trying to get supper made). He did, and we put it in the jar - then realized we had to put the vinegar in first! Duh! So we untaped the paper carefully, and put in some vinegar, and put the paper funnel back in. Within just a minute or two, we had our first victim, and by the end of the evening we had quite a few!
You just put a little vinegar (I used Apple Cider Vinegar) in the jar, then put the funnel on top. We made the hole pretty small, about the size of a pencil. Then we used masking tape to tape around the rim of the jar to prevent them from sneaking out that way since it wasn't a completely crack-free fit. Supposedly once they get in, they can't figure out how to get back out. Daniel taped the seam in the funnel in a couple places, I would recommend taping it the whole way just in case!

Now I'm trying to figure out how I can successfully kill them and not just take the jar outside and release them to come back in my house or go pester somebody else. I'm also not 100% sure that a few of them haven't escaped as I hadn't seen any gnats this morning.... then later I killed two. So I need to figure out my plan of action and get actin'.

Anyways, I'm sure that several of you have these pesky things in your house, too, so I wanted to pass along what seems to really be workin' for me!!

Ahh... the joys of a kitchen that is gnat free....

Works for Me Wednesday

So I was digging in my cupboard trying to find out if I had Taco Seasoning or not, so I'd know if I needed to make some, buy some, or what. I keep all my seasoning envelopes in one place, but some had fallen over... and you know how it goes. I thought to myself that I needed to find something that I could put them in.

Then I emptied a pasta box, started to crumple it up to throw it away, and **bling**, the light-bulb came on!! It fits in my cupboard very nicely, and now I can just pull out ONE container instead of fishing around (since that shelf is above my eye-level) trying to locate the right packet out of several.

Chick-awwwnnn!

I was going to post about this last week when I "did it", but was in a hurry at the time and never got around to it.

I have made my FIRST meat purchase since June!! (you can read about my meat stash here.) My MIL took me to Costco with her, and I bought a 2-pack of whole chickens. They were $10.21 ($.79 lb, I think?), and they were pretty nice sized, too. I brought them home and stuffed them in the frige...uh, actually, Daniel stuffed them in the frige since I had to hurry up and get ready to go to a dinner, and then I cut them up later.

If you're like me, I was a bit "scared" of cutting up a whole chicken. I was sure I couldn't do it and it be "nice"... Lo and behold, way back when I bought 6 chickens for $.69/lb, I determined that pretty or no, I was going to cut up those birds and "make" my own boneless, skinless chicken breasts, my own thighs, drumsticks, etc. It really isn't hard to do! It just requires a good sharp knife and a bird or two to get the hang of where everything is and how to cut it. It might take me 5 minutes to cut up a chicken. I was going to take pictures, but once I got my hands wet and greasy and "chickeney", I didn't take time to wash and take pictures... and I wasn't sure how to take pictures with my non-existent 3rd hand while my other 2 hands were demonstrating for the camera. Check out one of your "I hardly ever look in there because it's so big and full of fancy dishes that I'll never make" cookbooks - that's where I read and looked at pictures about cutting up chickens!

With these two chickens, I DID have (or rather "take") the time to cook down the bones. Surprisingly, after cooking for several hours on low, I was able to pick off about 2 more cups worth of chicken meat! It took some very careful picking to make sure I didn't get any over-cooked-till-they're-soft bones, and there were no large pieces of meat so it took alittle time, but hey, for that kind of savings, I'll spend a little time. I figure it's enough meat to make a batch of fried rice - which makes 2 meals for us. And 1 1/2 cups of broth which I chilled, scooped the grease off the top, and then froze, either to use in recipes, or to save for my family's Christmas get together since I'm on the food planning committee.

While I know that $.79/lb isn't the BEST deal I've seen this summer, my chicken stash is starting to run low, and I wanted to get a little while I had the opportunity to hopefully tie us over till the next REALLY GREAT deal that I'm hoping some store will run really soon!

Thrifty Thursday - Eggs!!

Find yourself looking to save in whatever areas you can and still have good food to eat? I tell ya, this is the latest and greatest in my book. Gayle posted about this over on her blog, and I knew I had to try it.

In cooking and baking, use 1 heaping Tbsp. of Soy Flour and 1 Tbsp. of water in place of 1 egg!!

(I'm sure you have to use your judgement for which recipes you can use it in - I wouldn't want to make an omelet with this stuff!)

The best part is that is it SO much cheaper than eggs. I bought a box of Soy Flour from Walmart (it was the only kind they had) for $1.23. It has approx. 23 quarter cups of flour in the box.

4 (Tbsp. per 1/4 cup) x 20 (1/4 cups) = 80 Tbsp!! (I multiplied by 20 to allow for the "heaping" part.)

$1.23 (for the box of Soy Flour) / 80 (Tbsp.) = $.01 per "egg"!!

Is it really cheaper and worth it? You tell me...
1 Dozen eggs: $1.63 / 12 = $.13 an egg.

Now, how do you use the stuff in baking? Ha ha, don't make the mistake I did the first time I used it, and mix the water and flour together - it made a thick, boogery paste that didn't mix into the other ingredients well!! Instead, add the water with the wet ingredients, and the soy flour with the dry ingredients, or however your recipe works.

I've used this in two recipes so far, and they have both turned out great, (ha ha!! not to mention that they were both new recipes so I wouldn't know what they are like with real eggs anyway, but hey, they didn't flop, and tasted just fine!)

Now if I could just use up my store-bought laundry detergent so I can try the homemade...

Monday's Menu and Groceries

This weeks shopping trip started to make me sweat! I had a longer-than-usual list, and I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to come in "under the wire" or not, but I DID!!

Groceries:
1 lb. fettuccine* - $1.23
16oz. LF Cottage Cheese, SB - $1.68
1 cucumber - $.88
2 Gala apples - $1.15
Garlic Powder, SB - $1.58
Saltine Crackers, SB - $1.00
Garden Rotini, SB - $1.12
Soy Flour - $1.98
head lettuce - $1.44
Parmesan Style Grated Cheese, SB - $2.74
8oz. FF Cream Cheese, SB - $1.18
3 OJ concentrate, SB - $4.26
doz. eggs - $1.63
Total: $22.41
SB = Store Brand
under budget: $2.59

Menu:
Spaghetti w/ homemade sauce, Garlic Parmesan Potato Wedges, Salad
Fried Rice My Way
Chicken Calzones, Rotini Salad
Roast Pork w/ Raspberry Sauce, Green Beans, bread
Salisbury Steak over Egg Noodles, Broccoli
Fettuccine Alfredo with Chicken (from the new Kraft magazine), Peas
Leftovers
Snacks restock:
Apple Pie Muffins
Peanut Butter Cookies

If you followed the Soy Flour link, you'll see that I plan to severely reduce the amount of eggs that I'll use in cooking/baking. I couldn't believe this, and haven't PERSONALLY tried it, but I tell ya what, if Gayle does it and it works for her, it's as good as tried 'n' true in my book.

The big bad thing about my shopping trip: Garlic Powder was high on the "need to restock" list. I only had a teeny bit left in the bottle, and needed it for tonight's spaghetti sauce and the potato wedges. Well, Ms. Checker-Outer-Lady wasn't paying attention one bit to my transaction. I handed her my cloth grocery bags before I put anything on the belt. She laid them on top the bag carousel, and started bagging my groceries into the plastic bags! Ok, I'm not so green that I mind plastic, but I could tell her brain had been captured by aliens and I needed to bring her back to earth. I kindly asked her if she could use my bags. So, she picked the few items she'd already scanned and bagged out of the plastic bag, and started loading into my cloth bags. All's well, end's well... until I went to make my potatoes! I realized that I had put garlic powder into the grocery cart, had unloaded it out of the grocery cart, but it wasn't in my grocery bags that I'd already unloaded and put away! I checked my receipt, just in case it had fallen out of the cart somehow. If I hadn't paid for it, no sweat, I'd do without until next time. But it IS on the receipt. So, I will take the receipt with me on Friday and get another one. This has happened before and they've given me a replacement, so I'm hoping they will do the same this time.

Otherwise, I had a fine shopping trip!

Oops, I just re-read this post and realized I hadn't written about the *fettuccine. If you were nosey enough to peer at each item in the picture of my groceries, you'll notice that it is Barilla brand and NOT GREAT VALUE!! *gasp!* Well, that's because I whipped out my handy cellphone calculator, and found out that the Barilla brand was cheaper per ounce than the GV brand - even though "per package", the GV was cheaper. But the GV pkg. had fewer oz in it, even though the boxes were the same size. Ah-ha!! I found them out, and I win!

What Do I Do With 25 lbs. of FLOUR?

Debbie commented on this post wondering what do I do with my flour? So I took some pictures today to show you :)

First off, I have an amazing husband who built this pantry for me over the winter/spring, where the bottom shelf was put at exactly the right height off the floor so my flour/sugar bins could sit on the floor.

In case you can't tell from the picture, I use Rubbermaid containers. Are they food grade plastic? I don't know and would still use them even if they weren't (unless it caused us to be sick, but we are healthy horses, so no problem with that).

The on the left is marked "bread" for bread flour, the other one is marked "cake & cookie" for All Purpose flour. The two white ones all the way on the right hold my sugars - granulated (on top since I use it more) and 10x (on the bottom since I use it less).


I clean all the "old" flour out of the bin before I put in the new flour.

As far as weevils in the flour - weevils don't "get in" your flour, they COME IN your flour. So as long as you don't have weevils (or their eggs) in the flour you buy, you won't have weevils in your flour! I've never had any trouble with any bugs in my flour or sugar bins.

Do I really use this much flour? You bet! I made 7 pies today - took all of 12 cups of flour, so a good bit of what I bought today is already used.

So - that's what I do with 25 lbs of flour! I used to buy it in 50lb. bags, but that was a more expensive brand, and this brand (Walmart brand) works just as well.

Thrifty Thursday - Cloth "Paper-towels"

Daniel eats his breakfast on his way to work every morning. And that means he gets an egg sandwich - every morning. He likes something wrapped around it while he carries it to his work van, and for a long time that was a paper-towel or napkin. I bought the very cheapest kind because that's all we used paper towels for, and he threw them away anyway.

Ta-da!! Over time we accumulated some of his worn out, stained or ripped work shirts (T-shirt style) that weren't wearable anymore. I thought "ok, most of this material is still good material, I don't want to just throw them away!" (you can't give them to thrift stores, donate them, etc - company policy, and that makes sense - it'd be like a Dr. giving his badge to Jo-Schmoe), so I scratched my head and came up with this:

You bet! A nice stack of "paper-towels!" I laid the shirts out on the table, and cut the sleeves off right along the shoulder seams, then cut the sleeves open along the bottom seam. Then I basically cut the main body up both sides and across the top shoulder seams, then each front/back half I cut straight up the middle, and straight across the middle.

They are not meant to be beautiful, but they are meant to be serviceable, and they are VERY serviceable. He now gets one of these around his breakfast sandwich each morning. When the pile starts to run low, I let him know, and he brings me a grocery bag full of dirty ones that have collected in his truck. They get thrown in the washer with his load of laundry, and I have a clean stack of them again.

They also double as napkins at our dinner table (unless we have company, then I do pull out real, paper napkins that are a LITTLE nicer! :) ), rags to wash the floor, rags to wipe up spills, quick hankerchiefs (for Daniel who doesn't like my Puffs Plus With Lotion tissues), and anything else that a rag or paper towel comes in handy for.

And it saves us $$ from buying and throwing away paper towels!