The Blessing of Unexpected Sales

The more I get into using coupons and watching sales the more I come to realize how much God is taking care of my husband and I though our food bill.  I've known some Christians when times are tight a mysterious small check shows up to get them though the month, and others a old car goes without needing repairs, and for us right now I think some of it is unexpected sales that help keep us within what we can afford.

Let me take this week as an example.  We are going camping this weekend for a couple days and thus this week needed to get things bought that will be easy to cook while camping.  I mostly kept with things that would be lower cost, but I also added bratwurst one day.  Now here is the thing with hot dogs type foods, I dislike normal cheaper hot dogs (unless they are in pigs in a blankets for some reason) and bratwurst is so expensive (and fattening) for what you get that we rarely have them.  I added them though to the camping menu cause it would be a easy thing and my husband really likes them so I thought they would be a treat.  When I went to the store to get them I discovered that they were on sale this week.  They were normally like $4 and they were on sale for $2.50!  Cheese was another thing that is normally a more expensive item that I buy, and it happened to be on sale for the best price I can normally get it at this week.  Still not cheap, but more manageable.

This is not something I planned the trip around obviously or bought early when on sale to keep until now, but God still blessed us by providing for us not just what we needed, but what we wanted.

Thank you God for things like this and so much more!    

Copper Bottoms

I like cleaning the bottoms of copper pots.  I know it may seem weird, but there is just something about scrubbing and working at it until its nice and shiny.  I like the fairly instant gratification of seeing something all dark tarnished emerge into something shiny and beautiful.  Yes, I do believe I just called a pan beautiful.  I think I'm either crazy or something.  I would normally blame it on becoming a homemaker and that messing with my mind, but my mom had copper bottoms on her pans and I loved doing it years ago.  (When I had the time that is, for some reason I never liked doing it so much when asked...)

I mostly have a set of stainless steal, but this past weekend my mother in law passed on an old copper bottom pan and so I started working on it this evening.  I just use a brillo pad for the whole process as it's what I have, but may see if there are any better ways to do it (...starts searching Pinterest...) cause I may not always have brillo pads around once these run out.  It's only about halfway done and my arms are starting to hurt, but it is nice to little by little see progress. 

Homemade Flour Tortillas

Yesterday I decided that for dinner I'd surprise my husband with a picnic after work.  He normally works too late to do it this time of year, but on one day of the week he is home early.  I decided on chicken salad as its something he loves and we have not fixed in a long time.  He just likes it plain with maybe a little cheese in it while I prefer something crunchy in it as well.  My ideal would be to add almonds, but celery is cheaper and better for me so i went with that addition to mine.  Even though it was bread day and thus I would have fresh bread to put it on, I decided to try my hand at making flour tortillas as wraps.

I found several types of recipes but they basically boiled down to adding either lard/shortening or oil.  I had read a couple places that the lard ones have the best texture, but I wanted to be a little more on the healthy side.  I decided to split it in half and use both.  I might try one other the other sometime, but I think these turned out really well.

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup water
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 shortening

I just dumped the flour on the counter and then made a hole in the top and kept adding little bits of water and the other ingredients until it was all combined and worked it until it was smooth.  I then divided it up into 8 little balls and let it rest for a couple minutes.  I then rolled them out until they were about 8 inches around.  Okay, who am I kidding, they were not exactly round, but they were very thin.  I then heated up a large cast iron skillet until it was quite hot and then dumped one on and let it cook for a couple seconds until you get a couple brown spots.  I just made sure I did not cook it too long.  A couple got a little crunchy on the outside cause I left them on too long.  Then flip it for a couple more seconds and take off the pan.  Repeat with the others. 

I don't think I got them quite thin enough as they were a little thicker then store bought, but the taste was good and they were still thin enough to use as a wrap.

Interesting Marketing

I guess not everyone knows what to get if they are sick and hurt.  I was at Target this afternoon getting a prescription refilled and saw these little boxes on an end cap.  They were little boxes of medicine or other first aid items.  Like the the one labled "Help I have a Headache" contained store brand Tylenol, and the "Help I have a Cut" had store brand band-aids in it.   

I just found it interesting that someone thought of doing marketing medicinal items in this fashion.  It was very cute and easy to read if you did not know already what you needed.  I wonder if the Pharmacist gets any less questions from people with just a stuffy nose who have no clue what to take?  

Blue Ball Mason Jars

I had seen blue mason jars online when I was looking up things to decorate with for my wedding and loved the look.  I had tried to find a couple on craigslist once but they were going for like $8-$10 if I remember correctly and that to me was just too much for a jar.  Well, I had forgotten about them until my husband sent me a text last Friday morning asking if I wanted any blue jars as they had four being sold.  You see, we were in Richmond for a wedding and I had gone to the bridal shower and he had gone to help my Dad and brother out at a Boy Scout yard sale sorting things to be sold.  I, of course, wanted them and paid $.25 for each of them.  I thought it was sweet that he (and my sister who was up there) thought of me enough when they found them to text me.

Once home I wanted to see if I could find out anything else about them.  As I was in Richmond I just used my phone and found the first website in my search that used the way the "Ball" logo to date jars within a couple years.  As I don't know any of the other "jar terms" I had to stick with logos as thats something I do know. 

I have two with lids that I think are from 1910-1923.

The other two do not have lids and are from somewhere in the vicinity of 1923-1933.

I don't know yet what I will do with them.  I might just use the lidded ones for bean storage until I have more space to decorate a room somehow with them.  I just love the pretty blue look of them.  

:-)  

Of Smooth Hands And Baked Potatoes

I love going into someplace like Bath and Body Works or something similar when I'm at the mall to smell all the wonderful lotions and to try things out.  I can also remember two ways my mom would bake potatoes growing up.  One was to wrap them in aluminum foil with a little butter, and the other was to rub them with olive oil and then sprinkle course kosher salt all over them.  I've tried making baked potatoes a couple other ways, but these are still my old stand by way of baking them.  

These may seem like very different memories and they would be, if not for the fact that a couple years ago I wanted to see if I could make my own scrub for my hands to make them smoother.  I tried looking up a couple things online (this was before pinterest made finding things like this so so so so much easier) and while most called for essentual oils to make them smell good I did not have any at the time.  So, now I still use a simple mixture of a small nickel to quarter amount of olive oil poured out onto my hand, a little bit of sugar or salt, and sometimes if I'm not feeling lazy, a drop of vanilla.  I just rub this all over my hands and wash it off with water and a little soap.

Making baked potatoes is now a good excuse to scrub my hands as it uses up the oil already on my hands and the salt being used.  I usually pour out the salt into a separate small bowl as my hands get too dirty to be dipping into the bag of salt, but most times there is extra sticking to the sides of the bowl.

I just love feeling my hands afterwards!  

Simple Sourdough

So, I've been wanting to try a sourdough type bread for awhile as I LOVE sourdough, but have not been able to get a normal starter to work right.  I don't know if its just to cold in the apartment or maybe I forget about it too much.  The other day though my husband picked p at the library an Alton Brown cookbook and in it was a recipe for a sourdough without a starter.  Well, actually it did call for like a little bit of yeast so I don't know if its a true sourdough, or just a hybrid, but I decided to make it hoping it would taste a little sour like I love.

It was a little weird just leaving raw dough out overnight in a bowl, but this afternoon when I went to take it out it was all fluffy and pretty and super soft to the touch while punching it down.  The hardest part about all this was planning as the second rise took almost four hours.in my apartment.  

We ate it last night while the bread was still warmish with leftover corn chowder.  As it was not fully cooled it was a little hard to cut so we ended up just tearing some off.  I'll definitely be making it again sometime.  

Public Library : Beyond Books

One thing that has been such a blessing about the county I moved to in Kentucky is the library.  It has been so much fun to borrow both new and older movies to watch when we need something new.  Some of the things my husband and I have watched is all the superhero movies leading up to The Avengers coming out this summer.  I'm normally not a big movie person, but its becoming a fun, mostly free (gas is what makes it cost something and its close so thats not much) thing to do together at home.  For the most part I'm enjoying the classic action movies that I have not previously seen like the Die Hard movies.  I don't know though how anyone survived 80's/early 90's hearing so much bad language in one movie and it be normal.  Seriously, I don't think I've heard so much bad language in my life as I have in Die Hard and The Terminator.  The Terminator....yeah, lets just say I can normally handle a bit of blood and death in movies as I get it adds to the emotion, action, and adrenaline of it all, but by the end of that movie I was so ready for something happy to happen.  I really liked the story, but it got a little heavy for me.

Yes, I have borrowed some happy "girly" movies from there.   Its also always fun to get kid's movies that I may not have wanted to buy a movie ticket for, but I would not mind seeing.

We are currently borrowing our fair share of books as well.  I'm having a hard time getting back into reading a bunch.  I use to read all the time in middle and high school, but college seemed to burn me out to the point where its a struggle for a book to keep my attention.  I do read the book and all for the small group I am in, but that is currently it.  Maybe my road trip in a couple weeks would be a good time to try and get a couple more chapters read in a book I am currently working on finishing.

Its also been a blessing that the county I live in has reciprocal agreements with neighboring counties so we can get items that our county does not have.  It takes a bit more of a drive, but the option is nice.

Tonight we watched Mission Impossible 1 and 2 after I checked them out from the library this afternoon.

~Amy

My Taco Concoction

Basic burritos are one of those things that my husband and I tend to disagree on in the world of cooking.  I'm perfectly fine with, and prefer, a flour tortila, refried beans, cheese, sour cream, and salsa.  To me this type of burrito is pure tex-mex comfort food.  For my husband though he must have ground beef in it for it to be good enough to eat.  So, this evening I mixed up some ground beef with taco seasoning in it for his burrito.  I had tried one homemade recipe for taco seasoning but it fell a little flat, so I was gonna mix up some from a cookbook I'm borrowing from the library, but it called for coriander which is a spice I did not have.  I finally found one via pinterest that looked promising to give a try.  About the only changes I made was to decrease the salt and pepper a little and to leave out the cayenne pepper.  As much as I've tried I just cannot seem to like the taste of cayenne.  I don't know why this is, and its not like I totally hate the stuff, but I'm just not loving the taste of it in anything I've tried it in so far.  As I already own some I may keep trying it in things, but for now I'm leaving it out of this mixture.      

2 tbsp chili powder

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp onion powder

1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

1/2 tsp oregano

1 tsp paprika

1 tbsp cumin

1/4 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp pepper

(Yes, I know nothing in the recipe is 1/8 tsp but I needed to use it as I could not find the 1/4 tsp )

I only tried a little of it, but my husband said it turned out pretty well.  I added 3 - 3 1/2 tbsp to a pound of ground beef along with a little water to make the spices easier to distribute to all the meat.  It was not super spicy, so I may add a little more red pepper flakes next time or up how much mix I put in, but it was still really good.  

Morning Date

On Tuesdays for the past several weeks my husband has needed to work late.  On one hand it is sad not having him home for dinner, but it also means he does not go into work until after 10am.  It was so nice to have a morning with him.  We've been working on a budget together the past couple days to help us both know where money is going and where we want it to go.  It really is nice to have clearly defined boundaries to spend within so as long as we stay within it I have no fear of if we will have enough at the end of the month.  Due to all this and dinners out being so expensive we never go out to eat on a date unless someone has given us a gift card.  

This morning though after my husband was kind enough to go with me to Remke (local grocery store) to pick up some frozen vegetables on sale he took me out to eat for a breakfast date to Panera for bagels.  He got a cinnamon rasin swirl with plain cream cheese and I got the whole grain with honey walnut (their cream cheese is so good and soft).  It was so nice to just be able to sit together and relax for a couple minutes sharing and enjoying a meal that did not have to be thought of, prepared, and cleaned up at home.  

I am very thankful for the thoughtful husband God has given to me.     

  

Fettuccine in Creamy (errr Milk) Tomato Sauce

Here is a recipe I've made this a couple times in the past couple months I've been married. I used other pastas and its always turned out well. My husband says he likes it with penne best, but fettuccine is what I used tonight.  As I keep tomato sause stocked normally this is something I usually always have the ingredients on hand. Yes, its not the healthiest thing in the world, but it is simple and not the worst thing as far as pasta dishes go.

Fettuccine in Creamy Tomato Sauce
1 Package (12oz) Fettuccine
½ cup chicken broth
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder (yes, whole garlic would be good, but this is what I have)
½ cup chicken broth
1 (8-ounce) can tomato sauce
1/2 tablespoon butter/margarine
1 cup Milk (I used 2% as thats what I had in the house)
Pepper (to taste)
A pinch or two of flour and dried mustard
A bunch of dried parsley and basil
In a large pot, boil some water with a bunch of salt. Add the noodles and boil according to package directions.

Heat the butter and olive oil in a dutch oven (You could use something else, but I like any excuse to use this as mine is blue) until it melts. I personally use a whisk for this. Turn up the heat a little and add the garlic, flour, dried mustard, and chicken broth to this and cook it down to half. (This will take a little bit of time) Afterward, stir in the tomato sauce and then the milk. Season with the pepper to taste. Turn heat down to low. Add your basil and parsley (no such thing as too much in my book, but whatever you want)to sauce and mix it up well. Drain your pasta and add it to the sauce. Then let it sit for a couple minutes to soak up some of the sauce.

P.S. - This is my first time trying to write out what I do in recipe format. I tend to get an idea for a dish, take a couple recipes that may have some part of what I think will make the dish work, tweak them all together, and then add more of my own depending on what I have to use at the time.

$20 a Week

Well, I guess I should start out by saying what I call a food budget, cause as I've seen online a weekly budget for food can run anywhere up to $125 a week.  Yeah, lets just say my budget is nowhere near that.  Starting this year my budget has been $20 a week with an extra $20 a month if I really need it for something like stocking up on meat cause its on sale and I just don't have the funds yet.  This is not money I always spend though.  Its only an emergency fund.  So far it's gona really well and I've been able to make some really great meals for 2 (plus hopefully leftovers) on this budget.  In the future I hope to keep track of some of projects and recipes I make for future reference.  So far its not been easy, but I'm trying to make due with what funds I am currently provided.

So, here is to the beginning of my journey being frugal and having fun being a housewife.