Frugal Accomplishments this week, and a recipe

This week, I feel like we've done really well with living frugally.  Here's how it's played out:

Grocery shopping on Sunday was only sale, coupon, and need items.  (Well, ok, I did splurge on a $1.99 box of clearance junk cereal for me.  I'd been craving some for about two months.)  We stocked up on cabbage, which is on sale around St. Paddy's Day, and keeps in the fridge for several weeks.  I also found some bell peppers on the discount produce rack at 3/$2.50, which is really good for grocery store prices around here.  It's hard to find them for less than $1.00/pepper.

We were also given some eggs and cheese by my mom, which was a nice treat.  Now I probably won't have to buy either until the end of the month.  When I got to school on Monday, I found the conference table covered with leftover concessions items, including a whole box of bananas.  The items were available to anyone for a donation of their choice, so I took a whole bag of bananas and a few other snack/breakfast items for the week for a small donation that fit our budget.  The bananas were mostly frozen for later use in bread and muffins.  Of course we used our reusable shopping bags, which we got a five cent credit for at one store.

Made a crockpot of cabbage, tomato, and ground beef soup.  I usually make this with ground sausage, but all we had was the beef.  It was a great way to stretch a half pound of meat, and we love cabbage in soup.  We supplement the protein by adding beans, this time pintos.  But usually, I prefer red kidney beans.  (I'm listing the "recipe" below.)  This lasted us for lunches all week, and dinner on Tuesday night.  By cooking it in the crockpot, it means we used a fraction of the energy of the stove top.

Made enchiladas with more pintos, turkey from the freezer, half of a sale pepper, onion, and cheese and flour tortillas.  (Most of these were bought on sale or with a coupon.)  I used store bought enchilada sauce.  This made enough for dinners and lunches to fill out the week.

Benny made a loaf of whole wheat bread in the bread machine.  This was great with soup and for toast for breakfasts.  We also made muffins early in the week using raspberries we had in the freezer from the summer, which we picked for free from a friend.

We were a one car family this week, since the Jetta was in the shop again, and found it really worked for us, especially since I carpool to work  We're slowly thinking that perhaps we could do this full time.  We'll continue to evaluate and see.

We didn't eat out, buy anything extra, or splurge (aside from my cereal) this week.  We went ahead and scheduled all our bills for the rest of the month, so they're all set to be paid.

Made a birthday card instead of buying one.  Made a loaf of banana bread as a gift for a friend.  Found a coupon code for a photo book for a birthday gift, so it's much less expensive than we originally thought, but still a very thoughtful gift.

Found the code for our tablet and realized that we still have a week before the warranty runs out.  This is great since the touch screen junked out earlier this week.  Benny's taking care of the details; we're hoping to get a replacement.

We sold about $70 worth of stuff on eBay, so we're that much closer to cleaning out and having our CSA money. Yay!

What about you?  What were your frugal accomplishments this week?  How are you living and saving green?

Cabbage, Sausage, and Tomato Soup:

1/2 head cabbage, chopped into about 1 inch pieces
1/2 lb ground sausage or beef, browned
1 small onion, chopped
1 24 oz can diced tomatoes
1 15 oz can kidney beans or 2 c homemade
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp garlic salt or minced garlic
generous tsp of ground pepper
fennel seeds if not using sausage

Combine all ingredients except beans in crockpot.  Cook on low for 8 hours.  Add beans about 4 hours into cooking time.  Serve with homemade bread or saltine crackers.

$100 a month grocery budget update

When we transitioned to basically a one income household, we tightened our belts a bit and committed to a $100 a month grocery budget.  We knew this would be tight, but we were committed to it in order to make our other savings goals a reality.

So, now that we're about eight months in, we can definitely say that it's tight, but do-able for us.  We've been diligent about keeping grocery receipts and entering them into our budgeting spreadsheet, so we know where we stand.  There have been a few months that we went over budget, like around the holidays, but there are also months where we were significantly under budget.  January was one of those where we tried to eat from the pantry, freezer, and use gift cards to purchase food (such as Panera cards for a dozen bagels for breakfast for a week instead of one lunch out).  We came in under budget for January by $40, which was awesome considering it was really six weeks since the December paycheck that came in before the holiday break.  But on average, we're sticking to our budget, and it's allowing us to continue saving for retirement and for emergencies.

How are making it work?  We've decreased our "extra" spending, so there are no more chips, crackers, store-bought cookies, or convenience items like frozen pizzas, in our pantry or fridge.  Our snack food of choice is now popcorn popped in our air popper.  Any beverage other than milk or water is not something we purchase.  We have been given some juice by friends and some beer and wine around the holidays, which have been nice treats for family pizza nights and dates.  Pricey dairy products like cheese, sour cream, and yogurt are carefully portioned out to last.  So, when I purchase a bulk package of mozzarella cheese for pizzas, I know that it needs to make eight pizzas, and we make it stretch for that.  Yogurt is only something I purchase for 15 cents a carton or less, so by carefully matching coupons and sales, I can get a few cartons a month.  I'm also contemplating making our own yogurt in the crock pot, which will make organic yogurt a lot more accessible to us and not as cost prohibitive.

Keeping pantry staples on hand is important too.  By having powdered milk, flour, sugar, flax seed meal, yeast, and corn meal, I can always whip up bread or corn bread, even if I don't have the eggs.  (You can substitute one tablespoon of flax seed meal and three tablespoons of water for one egg and get most recipes to come out just fine, and they even have more omegas than some eggs do.)  We always have canned tomato sauce, canned diced tomatoes, and lots of dried beans of various types.  This way, we can always come up with a soup, chili, or sloppy joe recipe from the pantry.

We also try to be very intentional about meal planning, and because of that, grocery list planning.  Going to the grocery store once a week, if that, cuts down on the opportunity for impulse spending.  If we can go two weeks, so much the better.

We've found that eating this way can be a challenge, but it's also forced us to be more creative.  We've found a fabulous lentil sloppy joe recipe that we might not have otherwise found.  We love our new recipe for lemon poppy seed muffins and recently found one for coffee chocolate chip muffins that both make great week day breakfasts.  We've had some great pizzas and stir fries with whatever we have on hand in the freezer.  By adding barley, rice, or pasta to soups, we get more nutritional content and can stretch the stock and veggies a bit further.

How are your budget challenges going?  Do they force you to be more creative?  Any creative meals you've come up with just cooking from the pantry and freezer?  I'd love to hear from you!

Cleaning Green

Since having our little one, we've definitely streamlined our cleaning (not the we loved doing it so much that we spent hours on it before!).  We're in the process of implementing a cleaning schedule, including the diaper washing rotation, and have found that incredibly helpful.  It is super nice that Benny's home and can do some of the cleaning during the day, so that we aren't doing it all in the evenings or on the weekends.

Perhaps the most pivotal thing we've done is to really streamline cleaning the bathrooms.  I've never minded cleaning the counters or toilets, but I LOATHE cleaning the shower.  I always liked the idea of the shower sprays that keep a clean shower clean, but I hated the chemicals in them and knowing that they were going into the air and water each time they got sprayed.  And I know it'd stay cleaner if I dried it after each use, but I had trouble remembering to do that in the morning rush.

But now, I have a solution, literally.  And it is so. simple.  One repurposed spray bottle.  One cup of white vinegar.  One cup of dish washing soap (I used Seventh Generation Lemongrass and Clementine).  That's it!  I heated the dish soap in the microwave a little to have it mix better with the vinegar, and you shake the bottle prior to each use.  Using this has majorly cut down on our time cleaning; no more scrubbing on hands and knees with homemade cleaner or Borax.  Now, you have to start with a clean shower, so that might be the challenge, but man is it worth it!

So, now we can literally clean the bathroom in 10 minutes on a weekend morning while the muffins bake for breakfast.  (Of course that doesn't include the deep cleaning of blinds, windows, etc., but a quick once over sure does help!)  And I love that it's totally green and low cost.

What about you?  Have you done anything to streamline your cleaning routine?  I'm on the hunt for a homemade stain remover to get tomato stains out of a little one's favorite shirt... any ideas?  Here's to living and saving green!

Cash from Junk: Paying for our CSA share

It's no secret that we love our CSA share.  The farm we work with, Creek Song, is fabulous and always provides great produce.  It's wonderful that it's all organic and it is always super fresh and great for our family.  This year, we decided that we wanted to purchase a full share so that we could can and freeze some of the extra produce to use in soups, stews, and stir fries throughout the winter.

However, the $500 share fee wasn't in our $100/month grocery budget and we didn't want to use our savings to pay for the CSA.  So, we had to come up with a way to pay for the share that wouldn't dip into our savings.  Enter:  Raygan's closet, or more accurately, the junk we've stored in his closet.  It has become abundantly clear over the past few months that our little guy is growing and will need the closet space sooner than later, which meant our junk had to go.  Since we're giving up about 800+ square feet of our basement and upstairs for rental income, this space is now out for storage.  So, we evaluated... did we really need the junk?  How much of it had we actually used in the past year or so?  If we hadn't, we sorted it... keep (mostly if we saw that it had reasonable future use), donate (if we saw that it didn't have substantial cash value), or Ebay (if we thought we could sell it for $20 or more online).

Slowly, we've weeded through a box at a time, mostly in evenings after dinner and on snow days.  We found more than we thought that we could sell, including old phones, crocheted items, maternity and baby items, gifts from students, and some old Mary Kay inventory.  We tried to set a goal of posting 3-5 items a week.  This meant that we weren't overwhelmed with trips to the PO and that it was easy to post items during Raygan's naptime.  It's worked out that we've been able to make our regular weekly trip to the PO and take items to mail then, so it hasn't been any extra fuel cost added to the budget.  We're still fine tuning the shipping costs, but all told, by the end of this month, we're sure we'll have our $500 CSA fee, if not a little more to put into our savings.

It's so nice to know that we've turned our junk into some cash for our food for the summer.  And we love the bonus of having the extra space in Raygan's closet.  (Built in shelving there soon, anyone?!)  Plus, it's great knowing that none of our junk went to the landfill, but it's either getting repurposed in our home or finding a new life in someone else's home.  

Have you had success selling on Ebay or some other site?  What closets have you been cleaning out?  I'd love to hear how you're living and saving green!

Five Frugal Habits for Today

As I reflect on today, I realize that there are tons of things that I incorporate into my day that are frugal that are completely second nature to me now. I don't even think about them, and they've become such a habit that they're an automatic part of our budgeting process now. Perhaps one or two will be something you can incorporate into your routine to save a buck, some of our planet, or both.

1. Homemade breakfast (and all meals). Today we had toast from homemade bread and grapefruit that we purchased in a bulk case from our local Rotary club. The bread is from the french bread recipe from The Prudent Homemaker. (Her site is one of my new favs, btw.) We both had hot tea with breakfast, which we purchased with coupons during Harris Teeter's Super Doubles (good through tomorrow). All told, I think we probably spent fifty cents total on the meal for the three of us. Later in the day, we both had other meetings after church, so we took our lunch instead of going out to eat. This was made easier since I had pre-packaged our soup for the meal into portable soup mugs, and we took some bread to go along with the soup. (The soup was turkey soup, which I'll share the "recipe" for later in the week.)

2. Take advantage of potlucks and free food when possible. Our church always offers a great little breakfast and coffee bar on Sunday mornings. So, generally, we eat a light early breakfast on Sundays and then take advantage of this offering to fill the gap. Since I'm still nursing, I'm always hungry, and there's usually a good selection of healthy fruit and breads available, as well as coffee and cocoa. We take our own travel mugs so we have some after the service too, although our church does use reusable coffee mugs instead of disposable (thankfully, though I'm still pushing for a composting bin on site!). The coffee bar volunteers also know that we're always open to leftovers, so the past few weeks we've gone home with some leftover fruit, which has been a wonderful and welcome addition to our weekly breakfasts (and often includes fruit I wouldn't ordinarily purchase, such as more expensive grapes or strawberries). We also applied this principle to our church's Thanksgiving potluck, where the church provides the turkey. The cooks knew we did a lot of from scratch cooking, so they offered to send us home with four turkey carcasses. Unfortunately, I only had freezer space for two, but we brought home two and have been using them for turkey stock, soup, and casseroles since.

3. Carpool and combine errands whenever possible. Yesterday, this wasn't quite possible for us, since we both had meetings in different areas of town at the same time, but almost always we ride as a family to church and combine that trip with some errands (grocery store, etc.). Since we've been having to do a little more work to the Jetta as it ages, we're doing all we can to get in the habit of being a one car family. It helps that I carpool to work, and now that Benny's home with our little one, the idea of being a single car family is a little more realistic. If we did make the switch, it would save us on car insurance. We continue to weigh the options here and try to decide what's right for our family, our planet, and our budget.

4. Compost your organic waste. This has become such a habit for us, and it truly saves tons of stuff going into the landfill each year. It also saves us some cash by creating nice fertilizer and potting soil for our gardening needs. I'd estimate that it probably saves us $40 each year on supplies, and would save more if we had to pay for garbage pick up (we take our own to the dumpster, recycling center, or landfill).

5. Hang clothes to dry. We use cloth diapers, which means we do a good bit of laundry (at least one load a day). Despite the volume of laundry, we still always manage to hang our clothes to dry, except the occasional load of sheets or towels in the winter months. We make good use of our drying racks, the clothes line in warmer weather, and rod/trim above the laundry closet. We have gotten into the habit of doing the diapers at night so that they can dry under the ceiling fan in the living room while we sleep. This way, we can stuff/fold them first thing in the morning so they're ready to go. The same strategy would work for other clothing items hung on a drying rack.

There are tons of other things we do throughout the day that are frugal, but this is just a sampling. I hope it inspires you to take a look at something you already do in a new way. I'd love to hear from you! Here's to living green and saving green at home!

Rock Whatcha' Got January: Edition 3

You know we've always loved to cook. That is evident by the number of recipes you'll see posted throughout the years. And you know that January is always a lean month for teachers, since we get paid prior to the holiday break and then don't get paid again until the end of the month. So, here's the third edition of our rock whatcha got January menu, where we try to live out of the pantry and freezer as much as possible so we don't spend as much of our grocery money.

But first, a few tips to share about pantry and freezer cooking, and frugal cooking in general. 1) Veggies are almost always cheaper, healthier, and more filling than meat, especially when you add beans and some grain. 2) Stretch a dollar by having soup at least once a week. We have soup 2-3 times a week to stretch even further. 3) Sugars and oils are expensive. Where possible, we use oil in baking instead of butter, or go halfsies and use some of each. We also save bacon drippings for future use. They're great for frying eggs or greasing a cornbread pan (though not when our vegetarian friends are around.) I generally cut the amount of sugar in a baking recipe down by at least 1/4 cup. You can't tell the difference in taste, it's healthier, and saves more for the next batch. 4) Leftovers rock! They're great for lunches or a quick weeknight dinner. Or remix them into a burrito, soup, or some other dish that makes sense. 5) Bake your own...it's almost always cheaper and healthier. And if you do it in a huge batch, then you save energy by only heating the oven once.

So, on to our January menu. After assessing the holiday leftovers, pantry, freezer, and knowing what was coming in our spice order from San Francisco Herb Company, I compiled the following menu.

Breakfasts:

Egg and cheese sandwiches using this french bread recipe (which will also be used for serving with soups)
Fruit salad (using some gifted fruit, leftovers from church, and grapefruit from our bulk order from Rotary Club)
Oatmeal or baked oatmeal (Simply in Season has the best recipe for baked oatmeal)
Lemon poppy seed muffins
Toast and homemade jam

Soups and Stews:

Corn Chowder
Turkey Soup with leftover carrots, celery, onion, and frozen swiss chard from our summer CSA, and of course leftover holiday turkey
Taco Soup
Potato Soup using gifted potatoes and homemade turkey stock

Casseroles:
White Lasagna with pesto and butternut squash
Pasta bake with gifted pasta and homemade pesto
Pizza (you know it's our Friday night go-to) with whatever sauce and toppings we have on hand

Miscellaneous fillers and snacks:

Whole wheat pancakes and fruit
Bean soup
Veggie stir fry with bean sprouts (I got a sprouter kit for Christmas which I'm super excited to try out!)
Candied grapefruit peel
Peppermint bark

All told, I think we'll end up spending maybe $25 on groceries this month, which include cheese, milk, and a few vegetables. What about you? How are your pantry and freezer menus coming? I'd love to hear from you! Here's to living and saving green in the New Year!

Frugal Living and a Happy Family

Over the past few months we've transitioned to a mostly single income household, but the transition has been a joyous one. It has been wonderful to know that our little one is home with his daddy all day, and Benny has so enjoyed being home with him. And it's been such a blessing to realize that even with the transition that we're able to put away a little each month in savings, even little one's college fund.

One way we've trimmed our expenses is by purchasing some of our groceries in bulk. We've purchased dried beans, flour, brown sugar, rice, and pasta in massive quantities from Costco and Walmart, though we're seeking out other sources so we're not patronizing Walmart as much. While the initial purchase was tough, it's meant that we can readily use these things, and the unit cost is much lower. We've also purchased spices in large quantities from Costco and online sources, which also reduces the unit cost, and keeps our simple meals from being bland.

We've begun using our crockpot (aka Mrs. Cleaver, as Kingsolver calls it) at least three times a week. We use it to prep stuff, like cooking winter squash or dried beans, or preparing whole meals in the form of soups, stews, and casseroles. This has allowed us to spend more time with little man, and means that we're using far less energy for our meal prep, which means we're spending fewer dollars on our energy bills. Later, I'll share some of our favorite crockpot recipes. Using the crockpot also means that there's still time in the evenings for a family walk, because we can eat an early dinner and still have a little daylight to walk before little man melts down.

We're eating even less meat than we did before. We consider ourselves "weekday veg", meaning that we only eat meat on the weekends, and even then, it's sparingly. Toppings on a pizza, a little bit in the soup, some in a stir fry. In place of meat, we're using lentils, beans, dairy, and combos (veggies and rice, fruit and whole grains, etc.) to create complete proteins.

Our upstairs renter has worked out fabulously. He's really low key and is a great fit for our family. Most weeks, he's only around a few nights a week, so it's almost like we don't have a renter. When he's around, he sometimes joins us for family meals and loves our little guy, and lovingly tolerates Lavender's incessant barking when he comes in the house. It's this income that's probably allowed us to really save each month. We'll probably continue to rent the upstairs space, at least while the Wubba is little.

Now that the weather's cooler, we're closing the shades earlier in the evenings, but keeping them open during the warmest part of the day for the light and passive heat. We're putting our sweaters on in the evenings and loading the blankets on the bed, but we love it that way. It also allows Benny more time during the day to walk with our little guy, and hike with the pup, which means he's happier because he's outside and he's getting great exercise. It also means that the Wubba is getting lots of stimulating time outside.

The majority of our Christmas gifting is handmade or homemade this year. I found a template for making reusable coffee sleeves, so we'll be giving some of those, which will help use up fabric scraps I've stashed away for years. We've made jams and jellies and salsas when produce was free or cheap in season that we canned. I'll use some found time in the evenings or weekends to make note cards and bookmarks to use as gifts. We'll make goodie platters with cookies, candies, and snacks to give. Our homemade hot cocoa is fabulous given with a peppermint stick and a sweet holiday mug, which we usually pick up at the dollar store or Goodwill. And of course, the family will love their pictures of the little man.

So, overall, the transition to Benny staying at home has been relatively smooth. We love that he's able to stay home with Raygan; it gives him a connection with our boy he might not otherwise have and it really allows me not to worry while I'm at work since I know Wubba's in good hands.