Sandwiches - and they're reading....

We like sandwiches and have been especially eating them often while Jeff is home recuperating. Plain meat and bread sandwiches are OK, but we prefer

ours with extras. I don't have all the free time in the world so I like to make up a few days worth of toppings at one time. We like lettuce, sliced tomatoes, dill pickles and onions - pretty much the same toppings for hamburgers too. So I put them all in a plastic container and store in the fridge. They keep fresh for at least 3 days - but we usually eat them before that.

I put the pickles and tomatoes in their own container so their juice does not run all over each other and then put those dishes inside the big dish.

Speaking of sandwiches, I wrote a post last week or so just telling that we like Oroweat Sandwich Thins. It was an ordinary post, just to you all. The next day, I got an email from a communications rep for Oroweat/Arnolds.

And yesterday, the Fed Ex man brought us a package of Arnolds rye Sandwich Thins.

We had the Rye Sandwich Thins for lunch today and they were delicious, really good with turkey and mustard.

So, don't be surprised if more than your family and few other homemakers are reading your blog.

Here is more info about our favorite bread - they really are our favorite - and I thought that before they FedEx-ed me a package of bread.

Hi Rhonda,

Since you’re a fan of Arnold Sandwich Thins I wanted to let you know that they’re now available nationwide! Liven up lunchtime with a bakery product unlike any other - Arnold Select Sandwich Thins, sandwich-sized sliced flatbread rolls. Each variety of Sandwich Thins contains no high fructose corn syrup and provides the benefits of whole grains and fiber. Available in four varieties: 100% Whole Wheat, Multi-Grain, Seedless Rye and Whole Grain White, they are each an excellent source of fiber and contain only 100 calories.

Sandwich Thins are available for a suggested retail price of $3.19, for more information visit Arnold Sandwich Thins here. Let me know if you’d like to try a sample in a variety that you haven’t already tasted.

Furthermore, since September is Whole Grains Month, I wanted to also let you know about Arnold’s Dutch Country 100% Whole Wheat Bread, a soft and flavorful whole grain loaf with the heart healthy stamp of approval! It’s a good source of Calcium, Vitamins A, D and E packs 3 grams of fiber per serving and contains no High Fructose Corn Syrup. Each slice offers 19 grams of Whole Grains so you can feel good about lunching on a sandwich made with Arnold Dutch Country 100% Whole Wheat Bread.

If you’re not familiar with this bread, let me know so I can send you a sample as well! You can learn more about the bread here, which is available nationwide (branded as “Arnold” east of the Mississippi and “Oroweat” west of the Mississippi River).

Best,

Valeria

Get the most from produce purchases

I usually buy a good amount of fresh produce every week. We really like eating good produce but it can be expensive. I've got a few methods to keep produce fresh and easy to use. After all,
nobody likes to throw away produce because it spoiled in the fridge.
Grapes get washed in a colander, then cut into small bunches. I just store them in a bowl in the fridge. Having them cut in to little bunches makes them easy to get a serving at a time. I learned this trick from my Aunt Bernice.

I store many of our vegetables sealed up in Tupperware type containers. These romaine hearts have been in my fridge for a week but are still fresh and crisp.
Wash the produce and let it dry on a towel. I shake the lettuce a few times to get out any water hiding inside. Water can leave brown spots on leaf vegetables.
The celery gets cut up and washed before storing but most other veggies just get washed.
Romaine hearts each get wrapped with a single paper towel. I think it helps keep them crisp.
Jeff and I eat a salad most evening. With these romaine hearts, it is so easy to just take out one and unwrap it. Then, I chop it up with a few grape tomatoes, some red onion and any other salad vegetable we have.
I think the whole romaine hearts stay fresh much longer than bagged salad too.
Similar vegetables get stored together in a Tupperware container. Most of my containers for TupperWare Fridgesmart that I bought as a lot on Ebay. I've also got a few at thrift stores. I like the Fridgesmart best because you can see inside without opening them but I use other plastic containers too as needed.
Onions, potatoes and sweet potatoes stay in containers on the floor of the cool dark pantry.

Every few days, I check to see what produce we still have and use up whatever seems the oldest.

Making the morning a little easier

Just about every evening, I set up coffee in one pot for Jeff and tea in the other pot for me. I put in the water and the coffee and filter/tea bags in each one.
Then whenever I wake up, I just push the button for my tea to start and I start Jeff's coffee just before he wakes up.
I'm a morning person so I could do this then but it just takes a minute to set them up, usually when I clean up the supper dishes, and it is very nice to push those buttons each morning for our beverages.

Yes, both pots have timers and I could set them and not even touch the buttons in the morning, but I prefer to just turn them on when I want to. And looking close, it looks like I need to clean a little around both pots. Coffee and tea both leave stains on everything but the stains come up easily with a little spray cleaner.

saved fruit

I need to buy produce soon and while I was looking in the fridge for fresh veggies for last night's supper, I found 4 grapefruit and 5 clementines. They did not look so pretty on the outside anymore, kind of bruised and wrinkled, and I wondered if they were still good.
So I got out a knife and cutting board and ten minutes later, I had a nice bowl of peeled and diced grapefruit and a bowl of peeled clementines. They taste great and look so much more appealing to eat when they are ready-to-eat than how they looked starting to shrivel in the crisper drawer.

I still need to go shopping soon, but now we have fresh fruit to eat today when I thought we didn't.

How I kept track

It was really not much effort at all to keep track of our 2008 household spending and coupons.
Whenever I had a new receipt, I stuck in under a magnet on to the side of the fridge.
Then usually on Sunday afternoon, I went through each ticket, added up the coupons and totals, then posted it here on the blog.
Because it was posted on the blog, it was a great incentive to stay with the record keeping.

I'll be doing the same thing this year but so it will make more sense with my budget and when our pay periods start and stop, and when grocery ads run, my "week" for this budget will start on Wednesday.

My first week started off great! I only spent $40.08.

I am starting off the year with a well stocked kitchen and that should help with totals.

Here is what I bought last week. I know it does not represent a balanced menu, but I had lots of things already on hand.

Walgreens
4 Garnier hair products and 2 Electrosal - with coupons and sales, all were very cheap

Walmart
1 gallon milk
4 pounds rice
1 box Saltines
24 count corn tortillas
2 pounds tomatoes

Food Pyramid
1 gallon milk
1 loaf bread
11 pounds ground sirloin

Dollar Tree
corn chips

Actual meals
1st
Sausage biscuits for breakfast
black eyed peas, ham, rice and stir fried cabbage
2nd
whole wheat waffles
pizza with turkey pepperoni
3rd
New York Crumb Cake (half recipe)
Chicken and noodles
4th
eggs, toast and sausage
vegetable beef soup
5th
Mexican casserole with green salad
6th
turkey chili with corn chips and green salad

Summary of Grocery spending for 2008

Even though I averaged a little more on my weekly spending than I hoped to, I think keeping track of everything was a success. I hoped to spend $100 or less a week, my average was actually $112.
My pantry and freezer ended 2008 very full and I am hoping to continue with keeping track of household spending and keeping the totals low.
I have been using coupons all of my married life, sometime more seriously than others. My town does not have a CVS or grocery stores that double or triple coupons (except for 50 cents with a one like coupon limit) I mostly use coupons at Walmart and Walgreens. My coupon savings for 2008 was almost $2400 - and I am very pleased with that.


Weekly goal for all household spending $100

amount spent and coupons used
Week 1 $82.40 / 23.90
Week 2 $85.30 / 43.32
Week 3 $91.97 / 50.62
Week 4 $162.90 / 108.25
Week 5 $155.55 / 23.90
Week 6 $94.66 / 60.90
Week 7 $64.53 / 28.01
Week 8 $128.52 / 53.30
Week 9 $71.38 / 19.48
Week 10 $159.90 / 98.44
Week 11 $80.07 / 26.10
Week 12 $185.24 / 58.50
Week 13 $89.56 / 62.40
Week 14 $125.95 / 16.78
Week 15 $53.16 / 43.16
Week 16 $147.78 / 50.68
Week 17 $116.83 / 19.08
Week 18 $131.16 / 9.09
Week 19 $96.44 / 63.50
Week 20 $116.39 /40.54
Week 21 $126.59 / 53.50
Week 22 $112.78 / 52.60
Week 23 $124.74 / 11.58
Week 24 $111.17 / 68.25
Week 25 $105.59 / 90.20
Week 26 $120.52 / 58.97
Week 27 $86.77 / 42.21
Week 28 $72.69 / 41.73
Week 29 $76.04 / 117.50
Week 30 $99.75 / 145.70
Week 31 $49.92 / 49.59
Week 32 $135.74 / 106.24
Week 33 $138.73 / 24.00
Week 34 $96.80 / 38.34
Week 35 $68.53 / 19.25
Weed 36 $132.37 / 0.00
Week 37 $85.58 / $19.00
Week 38 $221.68 / $30.00
Week 39 $90.99 / 16.00
Week 40 $136.87 / 40.40
Week 41 $97.75 / 0.00
Week 42 $48.68 / 16.40
Week 43 $202.64 / 30.00
Week 44 $188.77 / 23.62
Week 45 $57.81 / 7.62
Week 46 $112.47 / 49.25
Week 47 $95.94 / 2.00
Week 48 $166.03 / 25.45
Week 49 $115.16 / 40.98
Week 50 $200.03 / 12.00
Week 51 $90.83 / 9.25
Week 52 $ 224.67 / 24.15

Weekly spending average $112
Coupons used $2384.25
Total spent $5824.39

Meals for a group

We had a fun weekend with visits from my parents, Jeff's parents and our 4 children and our 3 inlaw children. They were not all here at the same time, but there were 9 of us here for 1 meal and 8 of us here for 2 meals.
I planned out the menu ahead of time, did some of the cooking and prep work ahead of time and it worked out nicely that I was not really in the kitchen very long getting each meal ready at meal time.
I thought I would share this menu since it worked so well for us.

Friday night
homemade beef stew with crackers and cheese
assorted desserts

Breakfast on Saturday and Sunday

freezer biscuits with butter and jam

bacon, sausage and fried eggs. The eggs were free-range eggs from chickens raised by my step-son and his wife, aren't they cute?

Saturday lunch

smoked pork from the freezer heated in a crock pot with barbecue sauce served on buns

baked beans

cole slaw

Saturday night

we had supper at Garber Dinner Theater

Sunday lunch

Jeff grilled 4 chickens

Ranch style beans- straight from the can

WW potato casserole

Apple salad

Quick Cheese bread

Desserts

Four-Layer Dessert - this is a new recipe from Kraft and lower calorie than most desserts and was really good.

Yellow Bundt cake with chocolate frosting

Peach Crisp

Pumpkin cupcakes made by Nina

My other tip for feeding a group - keep a big stack of disposable plates on the counter, it just makes clean-up so much easier!

Freezer Biscuits

I've been reading about making freezer biscuits and thought you all would like to see my version of them.
Making biscuits is so messy, so for me, it is really nice to just have the mixing and rolling mess once and then have fresh biscuits any time.
To save electricity, and because I just need to bake a few biscuits when Jeff and I are here, I have been baking them in our little Oster toaster oven. This oven bakes just as nice our full size oven too.

Freezer Biscuits
6 cups all purpose flour
2 T baking powder
2 T sugar
2 t baking soda
1 t salt
1 1/4 C butter or shortening - I used butter flavor Crisco
2 C buttermilk

In a large bowl, combine all the dry ingredient. Cut in shortening (I use a pastry blender) until the mixture resembles fine crumbs.
Stir in buttermilk. It should come together in a ball, you might need a little less or a little more buttermilk.
Turn dough onto a floured counter top, knead just until it all comes together.
Roll out dough to a 1/2 inch thickness and cut with a floured biscuit cutter.

To freeze, put the biscuits on a baking sheet lined with wax paper and freeze until firm. Then take the frozen biscuits and store in a freezer bag in the freezer until you are ready to bake them.

To bake, preheat oven to 400 degrees. Put biscuits on an ungreased baking sheet and bake for 20-25 minutes until golden brown.

I get about 28-30 biscuits from a recipe.

16 breakfasts for $3.84

My husband says 2 of his co-workers stop at a convenience store every morning for a pack of cigarettes and an energy drink, then make a second stop for biscuits and gravy at a fast food place on their way to work. Yikes! That all seems like it would take so much time and money aside from being so unhealthy.
Jeff brown-bags his breakfast and lunch everyday he works. His lunch is usually a helping a leftovers from our previous night's supper. For breakfast, he really likes a homemade breakfast sandwich.
I use Grands biscuits, $1.67 a can - 50 cents/2 coupon and Farmland bacon, $2.50 - $2 coupon, bought at Wal-mart.

Each sandwich gets wrapped in a Baggie and frozen, then Jeff re-heats his 24 cent sandwich when he gets to work.

Produce tips

We are very fond of cantaloupe. This one was especially good and sweet.

Cantaloupes are kind of tricky, I never cut them when I first buy them. I let them sit on the counter for a few days and when the skin just barely starts to wrinkle, I put them in the fridge or cut them.
When I wait for them like this, they are always ripe and sweet.

Our supper tonight was taco salad, homemade baked corn tortilla chips and this cantaloupe for dessert.

I guess I did not watch the news much last week and was shocked when I went shopping last Friday but could not buy tomatoes. Apparently now, I think they are only banning California and Florida tomatoes. Food Pyramid had these beautiful Arkansas tomatoes today. Aren't they pretty?

They also had red bell peppers for 65 cents. Yes, it is as big for real as it looks in the picture.

Shocking laundry soap discovery

I just refilled my laundry soap jar and the new box of soap came with a scoop. I also discovered this scoop had markings on it to measure out the correct amount. It is marked for small, medium and large size loads.

If you just use one scoop full ( like I am sure most people do, they assume one scoop = one load) you would be using way too much.

Most of our laundry loads are medium sized so I need less than 1/2 a scoop for those loads.

I used a marker to highlight the correct sizes on my scoop. This new box of soap should last a really long time!

3 nights of budget suppers

On the first night, we had enchiladas made with seasoned taco meat from the freezer and home made enchilada sauce, a big green salad and coconut macaroons.
Country Living Coconut Macaroons
2 1/2 cup shredded sweetened coconut
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoon flour
2 egg whites
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Toss coconut, sugar, and flour together in a large bowl and set aside.
Whisk egg whites, vanilla extract, and salt together to soft peaks and stir in the coconut mixture.
Spread heaping tablespoonfuls of the batter into 2-inch circle shapes 1 inch apart on a lightly greased baking pan. You may need to press the together into a nice shape and so they will hold together.

Bake until macaroons begin to brown around the edges -- about 12 minutes. I got 14 nice sized cookies from one recipe.

On the second night we had Salmon patties, fried potatoes made with leftovers from Sunday's baked potatoes, cole slaw, apple crisp and iced tea.
On the third night we had taco soup made with the last of the ground beef from the enchiladas, brownies made a little bit healthier by using whole wheat flower, 1/2 sugar and 1/2 Splenda and substituting apple sauce for half of the butter.

There's always room for Jello

I was home most of today so I decided to make a batch of striped Jello cups. I have been making these for years and they are a family favorite. The Jello is easy to make but it takes lots of time to make all the layers.
I start with one small box size of Jello and make it with 1/2 hot water and 1/2 ice. Divide it between the cups for the bottom layer, put in the fridge, and set the timer to come back in 1 hour to make the next layer. Repeat until the cups are full. Try to put contrasting colors beside each other so the layers show better. This batch is 5 small boxes of sugar free Jello, strawberry, lemon, orange, lime and cherry.
It would be cheaper and greener to not use the disposable cups but I like the disposables for this. My family usually eats these for evening snacks and I don't like waking up to sink full of dried Jello on dishes.

Our favorite pot-luck dish

I make these stuffed eggs often and I always take them to any covered dish or potluck event we go to. My family thinks we should have them at every family meal too.
I make the filling a little bit different from standard deviled eggs, it is more like egg salad. For every 5 eggs that I boil, I boil one extra and mash the whole egg in with the filling. The rest of the ingredients are standard, just mayo, mustard, salt and pepper.
When I put the filling back in, I use a one-inch scoop and it works beautifully.

The Frankhoma plate belonged to my husbands grandparents. We got it in 1991 and every stuffed egg I have made since then has been served on this plate.

Stuffed eggs are a very thrifty choice for side dishes too. Just be sure to plan ahead a little, I like the eggs to be at least a week old so they peel easier.

Fast Food

I really dislike fast food restaurants and rarely eat at them. But sometimes we do need fast meals at home. I did some bulk cooking for the freezer tonight. I made beef taco filling, turkey taco filling, turkey chili with beans and Roma spaghetti sauce. I try to always keep salad ingredients, grated cheddar, chips, crackers, rice and pasta on hand. A meal can be prepared in minutes as long as we have some of my freezer cooking and basic ingredients on hand.
I have been cooking like this for years and my family is very fond of all these entrees. Jimmy and Nina both called today and when I told them what I was cooking, they said they would be over tomorrow to get some for their freezers. I am happy to help them. Jimmy starts law school on Sunday and the newlyweds are still adjusting and have not yet seemed to find a steady routine and I know they will appreciate these meals.
I counted and I think there are 26 containers, most are about a quart size and 10 are pint size.

Coffee, Coffee, Coffee!

I might should of titled this post "wedding leftovers" Nina used whole coffee beans at her reception. We bought large vases and filled them with coffee beans and then had blue and brown balloons coming out of the top of every one. The reception room was very large but the twenty five arrangements of coffee beans gave just a beautiful scent to the room. Nina bought 60 pounds of beans from a discount coffee seller in Oklahoma City. When we filled the vases, 30 pounds were plenty to fill them all. We thought guests would take center pieces home with them but I guess they were all happy with candy boxes and no one took coffee.
So now we have lots and lots of coffee beans. I don't drink coffee and neither does the bride but my husband does.
He says it is really good coffee too. We don't have a coffee grinder and I did not want to buy one because we won't use coffee beans normally. My Kitchenaid food processor does a good job of grinding them though.
We have been giving beans to all our friends, family and co-workers that like coffee but we have only gotten rid of half of them so far.

The 30 pounds still left.
Fresh ground coffee for Jeff, the in laws and the groom. And some bags for the inlaws if they want to grind more.

Getting ready for company

We will have lots of house guests during the next weeks as family members come to town for the wedding. I was off work Friday morning so I baked a batch of Betty Crocker oatmeal squares, Everyday Living's Black Bottom coconut squares, a double batch of shortbread from a recipe from my friend Joanne at http://joyfulblessings.blogspot.com/. I also made 4 batches of what we called "salad crackers" My grandmother started making these more than 25 years ago, they are just soup crackers moistened with oil and sprinkled with a combination of dill, onion salt, garlic powder and dry ranch dressing mix.

But I did not and will not be eating any of these treats. I started a low carb and low fat diet about 3 weeks ago.

Breakfast Biscuits

Jeff works 10 hours shifts and takes a lunch box full of snacks and his noon meal every day. One of his favorites things is sausage biscuits. Whenever we have leftovers on the weekend, I make the extras into sandwiches and freeze them. We have not had biscuits for breakfast lately so I made up a double batch of sandwiches "from scratch like Sandra Lee" this morning. I used 2 cans of Grands biscuits and 2 pounds of sausage. The sausage was cut into 16 pieces and made into flat patties. I baked the biscuits and cooked the sausage.
Then I made them into 16 breakfast sandwiches. I love it when everything comes out even too.
Each sandwich was put into a Ziploc sandwich bag and put in the freezer, just 15 of them made it to the freezer though. I had one for my breakfast and it was pretty yummy.
Saving the Box Tops for Education for my grand-nieces in Arkansas.