A Crafty Solution

Recently, Benny and I were discussing the state of the kitchen table. It tends to be my craft work area/landing zone for all that everyday crapola that comes in the house... junk mail, jury duty letter and parking pass (yes, I get that joy next week), recipes we want to try, etc. I tend to be a "piler" while Benny needs a space to be free of clutter. He's put up with my craft junk covering half the kitchen table because he knows I need to leave a project unfinished at times, and because I like to be in the same space with him when he's working on the computer or watching TV. But I realized that it would make him tremendously happy to have a clear kitchen table, and I'd like seeing the space neat and tidy also.


So, this past weekend, we took about an hour to organize my small collection of stamping supplies that had recently taken over one end of the kitchen table. (I forgot to get a before picture of this... sorry for all of you who love before and afters. Just imagine all your junk mail piled up with stamping supplies and a few random leftovers from Christmas decorating and you've got the general jist.) Thanks to Benny's mom, I had recently acquired some fabric covered storage crates (from Costco, where else?!) which I used to organize the paper, envelopes, and stamps.


Then we moved Benny's dresser (it had been emptied at the time that we installed the closet system last year and had never made it's way to the basement... we're hoping it'll find a new home with a friend or a food pantry client--the dresser in it's previous location is above) in front of the window for the time being. We carried the small sewing table that was getting little use in the upstairs guest room down to that corner of our bedroom. With it positioned on the wall adjacent to the window there's plenty of natural light, but I added a small desk lamp for some additional lighting for evening work. The small drawer is great for storing embossing powder, ink pads, decorative scissors, etc. and hides all that clutter well. I love the tape dispenser that's got the pre-cut tape that I can grab with one hand while holding things together with the other, and I added a coaster for the glass or water or mug of hot tea that I always seem to need when I'm in the throes of a craft extravaganza.

I'm going to add a pen/pencil holder to the desktop when I find just the right glass container, and I want to get a desk calendar/blotter to catch all the random pen scribbles and ink from the stamps. Eventually, we'll add some floating shelves above the desk for additional storage. (I'm thinking something white and clean-lined, Ikea-esque, that would blend with our trim and not seem too out of place with the traditional lines of the table. What do you think?)
Right now, I'm bringing a kitchen chair in when I want to work, but our plan is to recover one of the chairs in the basement with our tax refund and some cool striped velvety upholstery fabric my mom purchased for us a while back.

I love the fact that it's allowed me to keep the kitchen table uncluttered, which keeps hubby happy. It also means that my craft area is on the same level as the TV and kitchen, so that means that I can visit with Benny while I craft or check on whatever is baking in the oven without running up and down the stairs.

But on to what you really want to know... how much did we spend?

Table: free (originally from my house growing up, so from Mom)
Storage crates: free (thanks to my mother-in-law)
Desk lamp: free from college days
Coaster: free (it was one of a set of four picture frame coasters--I used wall paper samples instead of pictures to add some texture)
Caster cups: $2 at Wally World (these were to protect the soft bamboo flooring from dents)

Not too shabby for working with what we've got! Have you done any fabulous transformations by just shuffling things around your house? Do you have any grand ideas for the shelving we want to do one day? I'd love to hear from you!

Lovin' Super Doubles

Did anyone else get some major deals at the good ol' HT over Super Doubles this past weekend? (For those not in the know, Harris Teeter occasionally does super double coupons, which means that those $1 and $1.50 off coupons actually end up being $2 and $3 off.)

We did our major shopping run on Saturday morning bright and early to miss the crowds and hopefully get most of what was on our list. It would have been great to go on Wednesday when the promo started, but that just wasn't in the cards with Benny being out of town and a crazy school schedule for me last week. (Love seeing my students play basketball, but it makes for crazy long days.) Of course, we used our Grocery Game list, which we printed and prepped on Friday night. Such a romantic date night, I know...

Here are a few of the deals we scored:

Free Items-- salad dressing, boxed potatoes (for the local food pantry), cough drops, 16 cups of yogurt, canned biscuits (they make a great quick pot pie)

Less than $1-- bacon bits, pizza sauce (two cents!), pasta, juice, crackers, muffin mix, toothpaste, crescent rolls, frozen veggies (ten cents per box--we got six)

Most other items on our list were somewhere between $1 and $2. There were a few things we bought without coupons, like produce, but there we shopped specials.

Our total.... drum roll please.... for over $110 worth of groceries, we paid just $39.90, a savings of almost $78.00! Recently, we discovered the eVIC coupons, which you can find online when you sign into your eVIC account. These are electronic coupons, so they aren't doubled, but they're tied to your VIC card, which means you don't have to clip them. They will allow you to compound these with regular printed manufacturer's coupons, so we did this with a few items, like the veggies, yogurt, and granola bars.

There are all sorts of coupon/savings sites out there, but most of my favs are in my list here. You can also check out my previous posts on couponing, if you've got questions, or feel free to leave a comment. By shopping coupons, sales, and planning our meals for the month, we've drastically cut our grocery budget beyond what I had thought was possible, even with sticking to our values of buying organic and local when possible. I hope that this is some encouragement for you to do the same, while not compromising your family's health or values.

Happy savings! I'd love to hear from you! :)

February Menu Plan

First, an update on our January quest to "rock whatcha got" and use our pantry and freezer goods to their best. We ended up spending around $50, instead of the estimated $30, for groceries for the month, due to some necessary dairy products (milk for the homemade yogurt and I gotta have my cheese) and produce being a bit more than anticipated. We did stick to the menu for the month, with a few extras thrown in, such as stir-fry and fried rice.

This month we're still trying to use as much from our stockpile as possible, and use coupons and gift cards to purchase the rest. Hopefully, we can stick to the $50 grocery budget this month as well. (We did splurge and go out to eat in downtown Raleigh with a friend this past weekend, but the visit was well worth--always so good to catch up with you, Paul-- it and the food was fabulous. If you're in the area and haven't checked out The Raleigh Times, it's a great bar with fantastic food. I had the Frech Country Salad, and it was to die for with roasted beats and slices of pear.) So, without further ado, here's the menu for the month...

Week 1:
spinach lasagna, supper club meal, acorn squash chili (leftover from what we made for the local campus ministry)
Groceries to purchase: peppers for chili, ricotta cheese, sour cream, acorn squash

Week 2:
chili cheese oven fries, shepherd's pie, stir fry with shrimp, Valentine's dinner
Groceries to purchase: baking potatoes, organic baby spinach, onions, heavy cream, wild caught seafood (whatever's on sale and looks good)

Week 3:
quiche/breakfast casserole (with eggs from my student), black bean burgers (using leftover beans that have been frozen), hot dogs with warm cabbage slaw/kraut, supper club meal
Groceries to purchase: organic milk, organic cabbage, bacon

Week 4:
breakfast for dinner (blueberry or pumpkin pancakes, eggs, grits), vegetable beef soup, pizza
Groceries to purchase: flavored tea for hot breakfast teas, coupon items focusing on dairy and frozen veggies, citrus fruit if available and reasonable

As usual, our breakfasts will consist of one of the following: cereal from the stockpile, muffins (the sunny morning ones were very good, btw), or homemade bread turned toast with homemade jam. Weekend breakfasts will be more along the lines of coffee, eggs, and grits/fresh muffins.

Here's what we'll be using from the pantry/freezer this month: frozen pasta sauce, frozen summer berries, frozen ground turkey, canned chili, canned veggies for soup and shepherd's pie, dried black beans, grits, pancake mix, basic baking supplies

The homemade breads this month will be: pumpkin spice bread, whole wheat hamburger/hotdog buns, sunny morning muffins/lemon poppy seed muffins, beer bread, pizza dough

And, if you're wondering what we'll have for Valentine's dinner (all ingredients will be purchased from EarthFare thanks to a certain Santa's giftcard we stashed away... thanks, Mom), here's that specific menu (maybe you'll like it so much you'll steal it... be my guest)

Valentine's Dinner:

Steamed/sauted seafood seasoned with lemon, sea salt, parsley, and pepper
Warm spinach salad with caramelized onions and a butter sauce
Baked potatoes with butter and sour cream
Homemade cream brulee (using the recipe from The Joy of Cooking served with a warm berry compote

I'm hoping you're finding your meal planning, budget cooking, and couponing as helpful as we are in these lean times. Let me know if you've got any fabulous budget cooking ideas or cookbooks to share. I'd love to hear from you, so leave some love in the comments for me!

Bartering and a CSA

I love living in an area where bartering is still very much a part of life, and where you do things for acquaintances and neighbors, just because you feel like it's the right thing to do.

This year, I'm blessed to teach a fabulous group of sixth grade students, one of whom has her own flock of thirteen chickens. She is responsible for their care, feeding, and checking the nest boxes daily. And she has started bringing me fresh eggs about every two weeks. I offered to pay her for them, but she sweetly said no, that they give away the eggs they can't eat to friends. So, we've been enjoying wonderfully fresh eggs, with far more nutritional content and likely more environmentally responsible management methods, for several weeks now. They've made fantastic omletes, deviled eggs, and I love adding them to baked goods. The yolks are so bright yellow, and it warms my heart to know that they were given yummy veggie scraps from the kitchen with lots of love from this child, rather than some commercial feed strewn about by machines adults getting underpaid for their work. In return for these fabulous eggs, I share my favorite reads with this student, who gobbles up books the way her chickens do blackberries in the summer. All in all, more than a fair trade.

A few weeks ago, our neighbor took out his snow blower and cleared the entire bottom portion of the drive for us. We called to thank him and offered to bake them some homemade bread. I don't think they really expected us to go through with it, but they were thrilled with the banana coconut bread, and I loved baking it as a thank you gift... and it was much more economical than paying someone to scrape the road.

At our favorite local bakery, we've discovered that if we go in at the end of the day, they'll often cut us a deal on the day old bread, which is already reduced. If they don't sell it by the end of the day, they have to throw it out or donate it, so by having us purchase it for a reduced cost, we're helping them pay for the ingredients and overhead, while still getting a lovely and hearty bread for sandwiches or breakfast. Even though we generally make our bread ourselves, we find that we love patronizing the bakery and that we get ideas for new flavor combinations to add to our own breads. (The apple rosemary bread sourdough we had a few weeks was fabulous both with butter and cream cheese, as well as being prepared as a grilled cheese sandwich. It's definitely something we'll try this fall when apples come around in abundance again.)

We've decided to split a share of a local CSA (community supported agriculture) program through a farm cooperative with another family from church this spring. This means that for about 20 weeks, we'll get farm fresh veggies, with the option of adding eggs, goat cheese, and even meat. For $25 a week, this is a steal for providing ample organic produce for 4 adults and two kids. The cool thing about this CSA is that it has a service expectation with it, so I'll get to spend some hours out at a farm this summer learning just how they do things and helping to maintain some of the veggies. (Or maybe I'll get to help out with the poultry and learn how to care for some chickens... I can't wait!) It's amazing how much further your budget goes when you decide to spent locally, and how much better you feel knowing that more of that money goes to support those farmers directly. Not to mention the benefits of transporting the produce a shorter distance, meaning fewer fossil fuels used and fresher ingredients.

So, how about you? How are you sharing in the abundance that you have, large or small? Are you considering supporting more local farms this year? And how do those decisions impact your budget; are you like us and finding that it's worth it, both for the money and the health of your family and the environment? Or maybe you're not quite there yet, and are still on the fence about the whole local food movement. Whatever your thoughts, I'd love to hear from you!

Updated DIY List and Breakfast Baking

A few weeks ago, I was blog hopping all over the place since we had yet another snow day. I stumbled upon this in my wishful thinking of warmer weather projects and decided I'd begin the hunt for a soda crate of my own to create this living garden art. I found a few on ebay, but with shipping, they ended up being about $20, which was more than I wanted to spend for something I was going to staple to pieces and fill with dirt and plants.

Benny and I were also on the hunt for a pretty and unusual plate to hang in the kitchen to balance out a little vignette we're doing on the wall (I'll post pics when we get that finished), so we took one Saturday afternoon (after I'd had a morning of Saturday school with the kiddos to makeup a snow day)to visit our favorite local art gallery and the antique store down the street. After visiting the main and top floors in the antique store, we were about to call it quits, but decided to investigate the basement level, which is mostly where they keep the furniture. And were we glad we did... we found both things we were hunting for; a silver plated punched decorative plate and a soda crate that had seen better days. So, all told, we spent $25 for both and were pleased with our purchases. Not only did we like what we found, but we were happy that we were able to put our money into a local business, rather than sending it who knows where through ebay. (Not that ebay isn't great for some things...)

I'm super excited about my hanging garden and plan to hang it on the exterior basement wall when we finish the patio area underneath the deck this spring. I think it'll add a nice touch to the seating area under there and it should do well with the amount of sun it'll get. But I'll wait to construct it until it's a little closer to spring here, and I'll give you a step by step rundown when I tackle it.

My next project is to make a Valentine's wreath for my classroom door. I'm thinking a yarn wrapped cardboard thing, something like this. I want something that's going to be simple to make (and I can do it while I watch Arrested Development or one of our James Bond movies with Benny), but will be fun and festive for the kids.

This month has also been about using what we have around here in the kitchen as much as possible, so we've worked down the freezer and the pantry a good bit, but still have plenty of staples to spare. One of the things I had an abundance of in the freezer was bananas and berries. (The school occasionally gets donations from the local grocery, and the cafeteria can't use them, so when they sent boxes full of bananas, I stocked up.) You can freeze bananas right in the peels, no kidding, if you're planning to use them for baking. I just thaw them in the fridge overnight or in the microwave and they're ready to go. I discovered this fabulous coffee cake recipe in my Coffee Cakes cookbook by Lou Seibert Pappas that uses bananas and coconut, both of which we had on hand, and the recipe was perfect for dessert when some friends invited us over for dinner a few weeks ago. You'll find that recipe at the bottom of the page. I also plan to work some bananas and berries into these muffins, which will either get made tomorrow (if we have another snow day) or this weekend.

Banana, Macadamia Nut, and Coconut Coffee Cake

2 c all purpose flour (or substitute 1 c whole wheat and 1 c all purpose)
1/2 t salt
2 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
3/4 c packed brown sugar
1 1/4 c mashed bananas (about 2 1/2 large bananas)
2 large eggs
1/3 c veg or canola oil
2 T amaretto liquor (or just add some extra vanilla)
1/2 c sour cream or plain yogurt
1 1/2 t vanilla extract
1/2 c sweetened flake coconut
1/2 c chopped macadamia nuts or pecan halves
1 T granulated sugar mixed w/ 1 t cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour a 9 inch cake pan or springform pan.

In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and brown sugar. Stir to blend. In a food processor, combine eggs, bananas, oil, liquor, sour cream, and vanilla. Add banana mixture to dry ingredients and stir to combine, until smooth. Stir in coconut. Pour into greased pan. Top with nuts and sprinkle cinnamon sugar mixture over the top.

Bake 30-35 min, or until golden on top and cake tester comes out smooth. Cool on wire rack, and then remove from pan. Serve warm or at room temp, cut into wedges. Serves 8-10 (or breakfast for two all week long).

I'd love to hear what you're up to, or if you try the recipes or project ideas!

Homemade Yogurt, and Living to Tell about It

A few days ago, I took yet another one of our snow days to try my hand at making some homemade yogurt. I had done this several years ago at a microbiology workshop (yes, I'm that much of a nerd that I'd take a week of summer to learn about microbiology), so I knew it wasn't nearly as complicated or scary as many people make it out to be. Basically, you're trying to do the same thing you do with yeast bread... encourage the microbes you want to have to grow and crowd out the bad ones.

My rationale for trying this was twofold. I wanted to try it at home because I knew I'd be able to have more control over the ingredients; I could use organic milk, mix in local honey for sweetner, use jam and frozen fruit for toppings. In essence, I could make sure that it was quality, with no artificial flavors, sweeteners, or preservatives. I also wanted to try doing it because I knew it would be cheaper than purchasing store bought yogurt of the same quality, unless it was free with a coupon (which happens occasionally).

I primarily used the recipe in The Joy of Cooking, but I found a method for using the CrockPot in The Backyard Homestead, which is a fabulous book for those gardening enthusiasts. Basically, you use a milk of your choosing (I started with whole milk, just because that's what several recipes recommend, but skim will have the same protein content as whole, which is really what matters) -- 2 cups--and warm it to 180 degrees on the stove. I used a candy thermometer to measure the temp. Then, you allow it to cool to 106-110 degrees, add your yogurt culture (about three tablespoons of plain yogurt), stir well, and put into sterile jars. I just used small mason jars, the kind you would for jam. You place the filled, covered jars in the Crock Pot and set it to warm. (Not low, just warm) Cover the Crock Pot and allow it to set up for 5-6 hours, or overnight. Mine took about 7 hours, but I think I had a little less yogurt culture than the called for 3 T. The yogurt will keep in the fridge for about a week, but if you plan to make another batch, you should use your yogurt culture within 5 days.

I've enjoyed it for breakfast this week with blackberries from the freezer and some honey, but it would also be great with granola, sliced banana, or frozen for a dessert treat. You could easily add vanilla or orange extract if you like those flavors.

Let me know if you try it; I'd love to hear from you! Here's to living green, and saving green, in the kitchen.

Incredible Savings

Here's the long-awaited guest post from Mr. Living Green, Saving Green; I hope you enjoy! ~ Allyson

I would have liked to typed this guest blog entry sooner, but with vacation and other blog posts where I was on worker status, I didn’t have it in me to type it out. I know...I know...it is just a short blog post, but I am not the blogging queen like my wonderful wife.

Little backstory to bring you up to speed with my cellular story... February 2010 my mother purchased a Palm Pre Plus and I also got one because of a BOGO special Verizon was running at that time. I have thoroughly enjoyed the convenience of having a smartphone and we have used it for a lot of helpful applications beyond it just being my everyday phone. In the life of the phone, however, I have had to have it replaced under warranty for some technical issues. The second replacement being in the first part of December for battery overheating issues.

The question I faced was do I replace a phone and mobile OS experience that I really enjoy or switch over to another phone. I decided I would start searching if I could make the switch over to another phone at little to no cost to me, because it is the “Saving Green” way to do things. In my searching, I had decided I would stick with a smartphone, but would go with an android based phone. I went to our local Verizon reseller and tried a couple models out to get an idea for size and feel, so that when I could get to a corporate store I would no how to best use my two year upgrade pricing that I found to be an option on our plan for my line.

Enter Bestbuy...in the middle of December with a great promotion...free smartphones for the month of December. They chose four smartphones per carrier and made them free with new 2 year contracts or upgrades. So, with my wife totally unaware of my plans, I called and told her we were going to the big city to get me a new phone. She is usually skeptical of my last minute half-baked plans and this time would be no different, but when I used words like "free" and "gratis" (that's Spanish for free, for those of you who weren't in the know)...she went along with the plan.

We called on the way down and asked if they could set one aside for us, so when we arrived walked up and told Shawn my name and he got my phone out of the back to begin setting it up. 25 minutes later, and after not even having to take my wallet out except to double check my license number, I was the proud new owner of a free HTC Droid Incredible.

After having the phone a couple weeks, I have been really pleased with the purchase and the general sense of outdoing myself on the deal. Allyson will be the first to tell I am a master of saving green, but this was such a good way to finish out 2010.

What deals have you found lately that make you just want to put another feather in your cap? Good luck and keep searching for those incredible savings.