Weekly menu

It's hard to make up a menu when nothing really sounds good. The only foods I'm craving right now are fresh fruits. So here is a rough draft of our menu for the week.

Monday - seafood alfredo

Tuesday - Swedish pancakes, bacon

Wednesday - grilled cheese, tomato soup

Thursday - manicotti with marinara sauce

Friday - steak, veggies, salad

Saturday - homemade pizza

Where to buy books when your on a budget

Last week when we went out of town we stopped at a Borders. It's one of my favorite stores and we don't have one where I live, so it is a real treat to get out of town to where they do have one. I was looking through the shelves of books and even looked on their computer to see what books I may want to purchase. I actually ended up buying a book for my husband and one for my daughter. I did find several book that I was interested in, but either they didn't have them in stock or they were more money than I wanted to pay. I made note of several of the books that I was particularly interested in and decided to see if I could find them online cheaper.

I don't know how many of you know about www.half.com. It's a great site to buy books (even textbooks), cd's, and even movies. I looked for the books that I had come across at Borders and found EVERY one of them for a fraction of the price. I haven't actually bought any of them yet, but I have started looking into the reviews on them to see which ones I want the most.

I know there are other sites that sell used books, but this is the only one I have used so I feel that it is currently the only one I can recommend. I have always found every book I'm trying to find on that site. It's also a great place to sell your used books! I've probably about $200 in the last year selling books that I had laying around the house.

Easy ways to save money in the kitchen

When setting budget for groceries it needs to be realistic. It's amazing what convenience items a you can do without when they are really trying to save money. Trying to live frugally and within a budget will test your creativity. But you can do it!

One of the things I used to do was to stretch our milk by mixing 1/2 a gallon of reconstituted powdered milk with 1/2 a gallon of 2% or whole milk. Some people say that the straight powdered milk & water mixture doesn't taste different, I don't buy that - to me it DOES taste different but is barely noticable (if at all) when you stretch it by mixing the powder/water mixture with an equal part of milk. I say used to because right now, at least for me, it doesn't save me enough money that it's worth the bother. A large box of powdered milk at Sam's Club is about $14. If you reconstituted the entire box you should get about 5.5 gallons (or 22 quarts). The total for me per gallon works out to about $2.55. I can buy a gallon of milk for $2.79 a gallon. Personally I can justify spending the extra $0.24 for that bit of convenience.

Some great place to save money in the kitchen is by making your own spice mixtures. You would be surprised by how much you could save and how many different mixtures you can come up with. I save my old spice containers to reuse with my mixtures. Here are a few recipes to get you started, you can mess around with the measurements to personalize them to your taste.

Taco Seasoning
6 tsp chili powder
4 1/2 tsp cumin
5 tsp paprika
3 tsp onion powder
2 1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

Seasoning Salt
8 Tbsp salt
3 Tbsp pepper
2 Tbsp paprika
1/2 Tbsp onion powder
1/2 Tbsp garlic powder

Italian Herb Mix
2 Tbsp dried basil
2 Tbsp dried oregano
1 Tbsp dried thyme

Most of these mixes can be made with spices you already have around the house. If I need to replenish my supply to be able and make more mixes or I need more of single ingredient spices I usually will hit our local Walgreens. They are often on sale for 2/$1 and sometimes even 3/$1 (with a coupon)!

Do you have a great tip to save money in the kitchen you'd like to share? If so leave a comment for me so that I may post it.

Update on my appointment

I had my appointment today. The verdict? My months of pain and and stiffness (sometimes to the point of complete immobility) is probably caused by sleep deprivation and possibly a thyroid problem. I'm not real sure if I believe that, but hey - I'm not a doctor. So I will be seeing my family doctor in a few weeks for a sleep test and a review of my meds. I'm glad it's nothing serious but was really hoping for a real diagnosis. (sigh) Hopefully they will find something trying this route. I'm getting desperate for some relief!

This weeks menu plan

I have only been planning my menus for a few weeks, and only posting them for a couple weeks but honestly I can already see the benefits.

1. We always know what we are having so we no longer have the "What sounds good to you?" "I don't know, what sounds good to you?" conversation.

2. Since we know what we are having we can have meat defrosted or whatever preps done prior to cooking that are necessary.

3. Less waste. Since we know what we are having and know which meals typically yield leftovers we can plan accordingly.

4. Huge money savings. We can make fewer trips to the stores. Which means less chances of being tempted to buy things we don't need.

With that said here is the plan for this week.

Sunday: chili & homemade cinnamon rolls (Which didn't turn out that great. What did I do with the awesome recipe I made 2 months ago?!?!?

Monday: French Toast & fruit

Tuesday: Leftover chili

Wednesday: Not sure. Depends on when we get home from my appt at UNMC.

Thursday: Chicken fajitas (from last weeks menu - ended up eating leftovers the night we were to eat these)

Friday: ribeye steaks, pan fried potatoes & onion, corn or peas

Saturday: Sushi night!!! My brothers & their spouses are coming over & we are going to make sushi & play guitar hero. How fun is that going to be?!?!

Tip for today: I've been seeing a lot of information about Tea Tree Oil lately and what a great product it is. Here is a link I came across when googling Tea Tree Oil. It says it is great for acne. I mixed several drops in with my witch hazel astringent. I will keep you posted on how well it works. I've only used it a couple days now and don't really want to recommend it for acne till I've used it for a lot longer. : )

The only good thing about the Super Bowl...

I don't know about you, but I don't really care about football. The only good thing in my opinion about the Super Bowl is the snacks. Since we are staying home, by ourselves, we didn't really make much for snacks. Actually all I made are pickle roll-ups. You know, dried beef with cream cheese and pickle, sliced into coin sized pieces. Yum. I could eat hundreds of these all by myself. I'm not kidding.

We also have a pot of my husband's yummy chili (he makes the best I swear!) and some homemade cinnamon rolls (which I'm really hoping turn out okay). We had everything on hand to make the snacks, the chili, and the rolls.

Check back tomorrow when I post the menu for the week!

Saturday's Bargains

Saturday evening I headed to our local Hy-vee. It was just a few minutes before 8pm; and yes, the time was part of my strategy. I knew I only had $15.32 remaining for the month of January and I knew that I wanted to pick up on some deli meat (1/2 price after 8pm) and some Dannon kids yogurt drinks (I can never think of the name of these things) that were on sale 2/$3.

See, the great thing about going at that time, besides the 1/2 price deli meat, is that there is almost no one there. You can take your time and actually compare prices without feeling rushed or crowded. Here are is my purchase:

1 lb of Sara Lee premium roast beef (usually $6.50 a pound, 1/2 price): $3.25 total
.75 lb of Delusso Genoa Salami (usually $6.00 a pound, 1/2 price): $2.21 total
2 packages of the Dannon smoothies: $3.00 total
3 boxes of Fiber One cereal bars: $8.00 total before coupons, $5.00 after coupons
1 box of Fiber One toaster pastries: FREE with the purchase of 3 boxes of bars

Total purchase: $13.46

Month of January: Under budget by $1.86!!!

Wish me luck in February!