Frugal Mom Blog

Archive for the ‘In the Kitchen’ Category

Hi there. This is Lou Manfredini, Ace’s “Helpful Hardware Man.” Composting is a great way to reduce what heads to the landfill and also the amount of fertilizer you need to buy for your garden. You can turn just about any table scraps or cooking leftovers into compost, but remember not to add in any meat products (it will make your compost stink and could attract rodents!).

I am a fan of the rotating bin style of composter, which resembles a barrel on a stand.  You open the lid and insert your scraps and then rotate it to help it all meld together.  Banana peels, coffee grounds, and leftover cereal — all make a great foundation for your new super fertilizer.  After about a month you can open up your composter and dump the contents into a wheelbarrow or buckets.  Use this in your vegetable garden or flower garden and mix in with the top 4-6” of soil.  There will be an odor for about a day or so but once you water it and give it some time your plants will be smiling. It’s a great way to save green by going green!

About the Author

Lou Manfredini is a nationally recognized DIY expert, sought after both for his expertise and his energetic, entertaining style. In an extension of his ongoing effort to help people maximize the value and enjoyment of their homes, he is also Ace Hardware’s “Helpful Hardware Man” and editorial media spokesperson. Along with his wife and four children, Manfredini lives in Chicago, where they also own and operate a neighborhood Ace Hardware store.

Looking over my grocery receipt, I realized the majority of our money is spent on dinner.  In a quest to reduce (yet again!) our weekly food bill, I’ve come up with some ideas to get the dinner cost even lower – have breakfast for dinner.  I hope you enjoy some of these ideas:

• Pancakes.  You can buy pancake mix at Aldi’s for $1.00 (just add water), and a bottle of syrup for $1.00.  That $2.00 can feed our family of 7 easily.  My boys love pancakes for dinner, and the pancakes fill them up.  You can also add fruit such as blueberries to the mix to add a fun flavor to your dinner.
• French Toast.  A carton of eggs, a loaf of bread, a little cinnamon, and some syrup makes a delicious rib sticking dinner.  To make the French Toast, scramble the eggs in a shallow dish.  Cover each piece of bread with the egg by dipping in both sides.  Cook break pieces in a buttered skillet until the bread is golden brown on each side.  Sprinkle with cinnamon and serve with syrup.
• Bacon and Eggs are a treat at our house, and we love having them for dinner.  Bacon is a luxury in our house and gets a bit pricey with 5 boys devouring it.  But because we have our own egg laying chickens, I can consider bacon and eggs a frugal meal.
• Breakfast Burritos.  These treats are a huge hit at our house, and I love making them ahead of time and freezing them.  Fill a burrito with scrambled eggs, shredded cheese, and any other ingredients your family enjoys.  You can add sausage, bacon, onions, green peppers, salsa, a variety of cheeses, ground beef….whatever you have on hand.
• Breakfast Casserole.  All Recipes has a list of top 20 breakfast casserole recipes.  They can be made ahead of time, and often taste better when you allow them to sit for hours before cooking them.
• Biscuits and Gravy.  If you do not have your own recipe, you can find some great biscuit and gravy recipes at Cooks.com

What’s your favorite breakfast meal to serve for dinner?  I’d love to hear about it!

Summer is here and what better time to fill your freezer with delicious homecooked meals!  The way this can be done is by doing something called once a month cooking.  Once a month cooking (also called once a week cooking or freezer cooking) is an incredible way to save money and time each month.  The concept is very simple – you cook all of your meals for the month in one day (even diet meals).  Now that may sound overwhelming but if you do it right it is very easy.  Check out Frugal Mom’s section on Once a Month Cooking to get a brief overview of how the process works.

I have just finished writing a cookbook on once a month cooking that not only teaches you in detail how to do it, has once a month cooking forms to help you every step of the way, but it is filled with over 70 recipes that were tested by members of the FrugalMom forum!

Here’s one of the delicious recipes in the book:

Beef Manicotti

Freezing Method: Flash Freeze / Freezer Bag

Cooking Day Ingredients:

1 lb. ground beef
1 small chopped onion
3 slices of bread, torn into small pieces
1 egg
1 ½ cups shredded mozzarella cheese
½ cup milk
1 tsp. Italian seasoning
1-package manicotti shells (8 oz.)

Cooking Day Instructions:

1. Cook ground beef and onion in skillet until browned.
2. Drain.
3. Stir in bread, egg, cheese, milk and seasoning.
4. Mix well.
5. Fill uncooked manicotti shells with meat mixture.
6. Flash freeze, then transfer to freezer bag.

Serving Day Ingredients:

2 jars of your favorite tomato sauce.

Serving Day Instructions:

1. Place frozen shells in a lightly greased 13” x 9” baking dish.
2. Pour sauce over shells.
3. Cover dish tightly with foil and cook at 375-degrees 1 ¾ – 2 hours or until shells are tender.

Enjoy!

Last night I cooked about 3 pounds of chicken breasts.  My plan was to pull the meat off the bones, divide the meat, and freeze it in small portions.  That way when a recipe called for cooked chicken, I’d be ready.  Well by the time the chicken was finished cooking I was too tired to pull the meat off the bones, so I decided to put the chicken into Tupperware and finish it today.  But there was a problem…I didn’t have any clean Tupperware because my refrigerator was filled with leftovers.  Old leftovers.  Moldy, yucky, unusable leftovers.  So this morning I realized I need a better plan for leftovers.

One of my favorite frugal living books is the The Complete Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn.  In the book Amy has a section called “Leftover Wizardry” where she shares ideas for dealing with leftovers, and I want to share some of them with you.  Maybe we’ll find an idea to help us not waste any food.

• Amy’s system for leftovers is to immediately freeze any leftovers.  The key to this, it to label everything you freeze so you can tell at a glance what it is.
• Use leftovers for lunch the next day.
• Soup bucket:  A large container is kept in the freezer.  As you have leftover vegetables, meats, sauces, etc. you add them to the bucket.  When the bucket is full, you “cross your fingers and thaw.”
• Leftover night:  Defrost a bunch of leftovers and serve them buffet style.
• Leftover Wizardry:  Transform your leftovers into a completely new dish.  For example, to create a casserole you need to combine a meat, a vegetable, a binder (such as white sauce or cream of ‘anything’ soup), and a topping such a bread crumbs and cheese.

So what is your system for leftovers?  I’d love to know!