How I Save Money Cooking Healthy, Cheap Dinners

1. Use a crock pot.  Make some kind of chicken or beef one day, and re-serve it a day or two later in disguise. Like, chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy one day.  Then, chicken chopped up and served with cilantro, tomatoes, cheese in tortillas another day.  This is cheap and also easy because you can put a frozen hunk of meat in a crock pot.  Today I'm doing a pot roast in the crock pot.  I'll serve it with baked potatoes and carrots tonight.  Then I will serve it as barbeque beef sandwiches tomorrow night.

2.  Make breakfasts for dinners.  We love omelettes, french toast, eggs, breakfast casseroles, pancakes, waffles, eggs and bacon and toast, cereal, etc.  Eggs and bread are cheap so it makes a good dinner.

3.  Buy in bulk but only when it's on a killer sale.  I get tons of bread for example, and freeze it, when they have the good kind on sale.  Same with cereal, oatmeal, soups, toothpaste, etc.

4.  Rice is cheap.  Make your main thing rice and have the meat and veggies almost like a condiment with good sauce (soy, teriyaki, salsa, etc.)

5.  Have "Smorgasbord night" once in a while.  You put out the leftovers from the week, cut up fruit and veggies, put out bread and jam and cheese, and let everyone just make whatever they feel like.  Then you throw away the leftovers and feel less guilty.

6.  Don't make recipes that use more than five ingredients.  They just cost more.  (The five is not including salt, sugar, oil, etc.)

7.  Beans are cheap and one of the healthiest foods on earth.  Make taco soup without the meat.  Make beans and kielbasa.  Make bean and cheese enchiladas, meatless.  You can even substitute refried beans for oil in brownie mixes, and it comes out less oily, more cakey, less fattening, and super delicious. But do not tell anyone!  It will gross them out.  I made that mistake.  The people who didn't know, loved it.

8.  If you like oatmeal, eat it almost every morning.  We do.  We add a little salt, some brown sugar, honey, jam or cinnamon, or bananas.  It is very cheap and we just put it with water in the micro for 1 or 1 and 1/2 minutes.  So fast and so good.  It is way cheaper than buying cereal. 

- Show quoted text -

A Thousand Words Are Worth a Picture

Today my computer won't let me upload any pictures, so the cute pinewood derby photos (A.J.'s first pinewood derby!) and the cute flute-concert-at-B.Y.U photos of C.E. and the rest will have to wait.  I guess I will write a few thoughts instead.

Is there anyone out there who isn't in a state of almost constant overwhelmed-ness when they have a baby in the house?  I am constantly practicing the art of "inspired neglect"; that is: not doing my chores.  And it makes me nuts to step over a sticky kitchen floor, mountains of clean but not put away laundry, a cluttered counter, a cluttered table, a floor that needs vacuuming again and again and again now that he rolls so much and can get a big hairball in his sweet little face!

Why am I so behind, every day, always?  Because a) I am too tired and now that he's asleep, I have to sleep; b) the baby would rather that I do not do my chores because he needs to: play/ needs a diaper change  / a bath / a feeding / a tickling / a massage / playtime, or c) yes, he is asleep, and I could do my chores, but I need a mental vacation!  So I work on my blog or call my sisters, friends or mom on the phone or go visiting teaching or play on facebook or pinterest or read the news or scriptures or email.  These things are so much more fun than chores.

But how I love a clean house!

One night, I stayed up, unbelievably, until 2:00 a.m. doing nothing but playing on "pinterest" and left the dishes undone, to be miserably faced in the morning on no sleep and the baby on my hip.  Pinterest is a really silly waste of good time.  But harmless.

What isn't harmless is t.v.  Yuck!  We haven't had t.v. for several years, and haven't missed it.  We rent movies or documentaries from Netflix sometimes, but mostly we just don't have time.  Between the kids' activities and church work and family get-togethers and household chores, who has time for t.v.?!!

But my dear sister's husband gave my husband antennae recently, which are making it possible for us to pick up several t.v. channels now, for the first time in ages.  We saw bits of "Secret Millionaire," which is a noble program with a millionaire going undercover to find out who he wants to bless with lots of money at the end of his investigation.  We saw bits of "Wipeout" which is a funny, good-natured, harmless family sport. We saw some news.  But we also saw pieces of "Seinfeld," a show I once found funny and now I find it insensitive and mean-spirited.  And we saw just the commercials for (never mind the real thing) several shows that made me shake my head in disbelief.

Then there was the Rascal Flatts concert on t.v., with silhouettes of women dancing seductively in the background.  Am I the only woman who finds this not only insulting but also prejudiced?  What do the producers think we'll enjoy about that? Are they all male?  Are they unaware that sexuality is supposed to be an intimate secret between one man and one woman, married?!  Talk about insensitive and ignoble.

I don't want to be what the Hollywood mentality would turn me into.  That's why I almost never watch t.v. and I've quit PG-13 movies, now. Lots of t.v. shows/movies/radio shows give me the same icky feeling I get while standing in line at the grocery store,  faced with the covers of the tabloids, all bad manners, voyeurism and disrespect.

Well, I helped my friend write what we think is a very important letter.  We tried to keep it short but it ended up being five pages long.  I will ask her if it's ok to post it here. 

Now the baby's awake, and calling me from his crib. I need milk and eggs, so I think we'll go for a walk in his pram to the grocery store.  I'll spend less money if I don't have the car to lug things home today.  :)