It is Salad Season!

 Summer is the time for lots of salads. They taste so cool and yummy, they are good for you and they can be made from things you can easily grow in your garden and potentially forage from your woods.

I planted a lot of different greens this year: Chinese Cabbage, Kale, 3 types of Lettuce, Tatsoi and Purple Mustard and possibly more that I am not remembering at the moment. My goal is to be able to make salad every day for supper throughout the remainder of the growing season. Not only will that be good for us but it will help us save money on our food budget as I will not need to buy so many fresh fruits and veggies.

Besides greens there are a lot of ways to make your salad fun and interesting. By adding some protien you can also turn it into a whole meal. Our family really enjoys Cobb Salad with all sorts of toppings.

Here are some ideas of things you can add to your salads:

• Chick peas (easy and economical to cook up yourself.
• Cheese- any variety shredded or even chunked. Our homemade cheese from Goat milk is yummy crumbled on salad.
• Boiled eggs (this works well for us right now since our birds are producing nicely.)
• Homemade croutons
• Sunflower Seeds
• Sprouts
• Black eyed Beans
• Cooked up Chicken Breasts
• Cooked up pieces of steak
• Many other veggies such as radishes, carrots, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc.
• Black Olives
• and much more...

I would love to hear how you like to eat your salads. Do you grow salad stuff in your garden?

If you are looking for some homemade salad dressing recipes or want to know how to make croutons then visit this old post of mine.

Staying Home More and Making Do When the Groceries Run Low

 When the weather gets cold (and it has been lately!) and the snow starts falling (I heard we might be getting a blizzard!) then I just like to stay home if I can. I don't mind getting out for church on Sunday and Wednesday but beyond that I would like to just stay home. This week I did end up going out 3 times but the week before only once as midweek services were cancelled at church. Last year with moving and building and teaching music lessons away from home I was on the go a lot but I think this year we are ready for some home time!

  When we don't get to town much it generally means that I don't go the the grocery store very often either and that sometimes we might run out of things - like milk (we happen to be low on that just now) and cocoa powder and who knows what all else. So sometimes we have to get a little creative in the kitchen.

 We do try to keep a pretty stocked kitchen. We raise bees and then harvest and get our own honey in late summer (so we can still keep our sweet tooth happy). We buy 1/2 a grassfed beef and pick that up in October. We butcher chickens with my parents in the fall and then have a bunch of chicken in our freezer. We buy wheat (generally enough to last a year) in the fall and we also try to put up a bunch of garden produce either by canning or freezing. So it would take us quite a while to truly run out of food but sometimes some of the things we like to normally use run out. We have to get a little creative with what we do have.

   What we do if we run low on or out of....

~Milk

• Drink more water
• Drink herbal tea (from herbs we dry in the summer) with honey - this can be either hot or cold.
• Use butter (or ice-cream!) on our oatmeal instead of milk.
• Use water instead of milk in baking. It really doesn't make much difference. 
• Use whey (that we freeze in the summer when making cheese) instead of milk in baking and pancakes and such.
• Use pureed squash instead of milk in baking and pancakes.
• Use broth instead of milk in gravy.

 ~Eggs

•  We stretch our eggs in things like scrambled eggs by adding things like baked potato chunks, pureed squash, tomatoes, refried beans, cheese, hamburger, ham, sausage, bacon, onions, green peppers, grated zucchini, milk and more. You can be very creative with this one. I believe I have made scrambled "eggs" for the 6 of us with only one egg before.
• In baking you can substitute one tablespoon ground flax seed plus 1/4 cup water for the egg.
• For breakfast protein we might eat cheese slices, sausage, yogurt or fried ham instead of eggs.

~Fresh Produce

• I have made fruit salads using thawed berries from our freezer.
• I make smoothies with frozen berries and fruit.
• Start making sprouts. These work well on sandwiches and various other things and give you that fresh taste that you start to crave and need.
• Try to eat plenty of other veggies from the freezer and cupboards.

~Cheese (This is something that we like pretty well at our place and so we miss it  a lot when we run out)

• Make some ourselves if we happen to have plenty of milk. Here are instructions to make Mozzarella  or Ricotta.
• Go through the international cookbook I have for meal ideas and most of them do not use cheese and many of my standbys do. 
• Make homemade croutons or add something else that is special like olives or boiled eggs to the salad so we don't miss the shredded cheese.

~Lunch meat (Ken likes me to pack a sandwich in his lunch everyday. I have found that you can freeze lunch meat so now I don't have as much trouble with running out as I used to.)

• Make a sandwich with leftover ham or sliced roast beef.
• Make a chicken or turkey salad with leftovers.
• Make egg salad.
• Make tuna salad.
• Instead of a sandwich substitute with a piece of homemade pizza or a tuna turnover.

~Mayonnaise

• I make my own - not all the time but at least I know how to do it when we run out. I looked for my recipe on this blog but couldn't find it so I guess I need to post about it still.
• Some people might substitute butter for mayo on sandwiches but that just doesn't do it for us.

~Pasta

• We will sometimes make our own pasta. 
• Instead of eating pasta we will choose to eat rice, potatoes or a bread.

~Oil or Butter (Sometimes we will run out of one of these things or both)

• Use fat that I get from off of meats such as chicken fat (which we get when we boil our chicken bones and skins), beef tallow, sausage or bacon grease.
• Pull out the coconut oil that doesn't get used so often.
• Substitute applesauce, squash(pureed) or yogurt for oil in baking.

Those are some of the things that we tend to run out of if we don't visit the grocery store for a while. We do run out of other things to but they aren't in our list of things we need regularly so we just do without it. How do you manage if you run out of things? What are the things that you might typically run out of?

Some of the Ways We Have Saved Money Recently

 I enjoy reading on other blogs about what they do to save money so I think it is also fun to share with you every so often some things that we have done to save money around here. Here is some of the things we have been doing.....

• When we were on our trip last month we were staying at a place that had a washer and dryer in the apartment but there wasn't any laundry soap. There was bar soap however and I had taken along baking soda (for washing hair but I had extra) and so I decided to make up my own laundry soap. It was easy and though it was simpler and a bit different than what I normally make it worked fine and we were able to keep up with the laundry while we were there and go home with clean clothes which was nice. Now our vacation was by no means cheap but that is one of the reasons we like to save money - so we can use some of it to do fun things like travel - but even in our traveling it is fun to find simple ways to save some money.
• For our Winter Retreat at church this year we had fun doing some decorating to go along with our theme of revival. We were able to decorate using things that I and others already had on hand. We made things like the fire banners at the front of the building that are shown below. To make those I used some old drapery material and than various scraps of fire colored fabric.

• We have been using our homemade soap to wash dishes quite a bit lately. 
• I have been doubling up on cooking fairly frequently lately so that I can freeze an extra meal. This saves money because I can use less energy for cooking and keep my freezer full (so it works more efficiently) that was already going. It also can save money because I am less tempted to want to go out to eat or something like that when I have some quick and easy meals.

• Our windows had some moisture issues that we needed to get fixed before we listed our house with the Realtor. We didn't think the project sounded like much fun but we did it ourselves rather than hiring it done. We got the job done, it looks much better and we saved a bunch of money in the process.
• I used old crumbly bread and made homemade croutons for our salad.
• I have been making bread and pizza dough with squash in it. I can use a food that we are able to get for free (my parents grow a lot of it) and get more nutrition in our diet at the same time.
• We made homemade gifts to give at a baby shower.
• I was able to use $10 off $10 or more coupon at JC Penny to buy a gift for a birthday.
• We have been spending hours talking with contractors and other professionals concerning the house we are planning on building so that we can figure out the ways that we can save money and still get the look and quality we want.
• We have been feeding our chickens lots of scraps to stretch out the food that we need to buy for them.

What have you been doing to save money lately?

Inspiration from this post comes from the Prudent Homemaker.

Use it up....

I have long appreciated the saying,

"Use it up, Wear it out, Make it do or Do without"

I try to follow it a lot, using it as a way to challange myself in my homemaking skills. I find it works for clothing,household needs, hobbies, gardening and of course food. I have heard from many others about how hard they find it to use up leftovers and food often ends up going to waste at there house. That can be very hard on the food budget! While I won't say that never happens at our house, I try to make sure it is pretty rare. I thought I would share some of the ways that I use up leftovers at our house.

• First of all we do eat a lot of our leftovers for lunches. Ken has a microwave at work (where he eats lunch) and he enjoys getting leftovers for his lunch. I also like it when we have leftovers available for lunch at home because that frees up time (when I would need to be cooking) for me. Also leftovers are usually cheaper than sandwiches or something like that would be.
• If we have a large amount of leftovers from one meal (like enough for another complete supper) I will freeze the leftovers (This works with many meals- not all). Then someday when I am very busy or not feeling well I can just pull out the frozen meal. This is very nice and definitely helps save on money as otherwise I might be tempted to go out to eat or use some more expensive convenience food.
• If there is something that I don't think we will use right away then I will also freeze that in appropriate amounts for Ken to take to work, then for the days we don't have leftovers I can just pull some out of the freezer.

The above ideas work for when you have a complete leftover, but what about when you have just spaghetti sauce or just the noodles or just the gravy, what then? Below are some of the things that we have enjoyed that use up things like that.

• Just the other day I was looking through the fridge to find stuff for lunch and clean it out. I found Plain spaghetti noodles, I tiny bit of cream cheese, garbanzo beans, and about 1/2 cup of sausage gravy. I decided to mix all of it together, sprinkle a little shredded cheese on top and heat it up. Guess what? It was quite good, the kids thought so too. A key to using up leftovers is a willingness to be creative and not be afraid to try something new!
• If you have leftover rice you can make Spanish Rice, Asian Fried Rice or Chicken or Beef and Rice Burritos.
• If you have leftover spaghetti noodles try melting cheese on top or stir fry some veggies and maybe some meat and serve on top the noodles instead of rice.
• If you have leftover Spaghetti sauce put it on top of buns or slices of bread to make individual pizzas (add cheese and possible other ingredients as well and heat under a broiler). Or you could add beans and whatever else you want to make Chili soup.
• If you have leftover mashed potatoes you can make lefse, potato bread, potato pancakes or mix them with a little egg and shredded cheese and make into patties and fry them.
• For leftover Baked potatoes, make potato soup, potato salad or put in you scrambled eggs (which you could then use for a breakfast burrito).
• A little leftover Chili soup, serve of Baked potatoes with shredded cheese or over hotdogs. Or mix with rice (preferably brown in my opinion) and cheese for a yummy meal.
• Leftover hotdogs: use in potato soup or scrambled eggs.
• Old (but not moldy) bread: make stuffing, croutons or bread pudding.
• Little bits of veggies: make soup or throw them in a casserole dish or a stir fry.
• Gravy: Use in soup or a casserole.
• Oatmeal: include in your bread or pancakes or heat a little oil in a pan and put in big spoonfuls of the cold oatmeal and fry, then serve with honey.
• Cornmeal mush: Slice up and fry and serve with honey.

There are lots more ways but if I told them all this post would get very long and I wouldn't get anything else done today! :-) I would love to hear ways that you use up leftovers.

Oh, also as I know at this time of year people may be struggling to use up Zucchini, here are a couple of links(here and here) to some previous posts about using them up.

For more frugal tips visit Biblical Womanhood.

Saving on Salad dressings

We enjoy eating salads at our house and lately I have decided it would be fun to make our own dressings (I have done that some in the past as well but had gotten out of the habit) to save money and also to give us hopefully healthier food.
I thought I would share a couple of quick salad dressing recipes with you.

Italian Dressing

3/4 cup oil (olive oil is preferred)

1/4 cup lemon juice or vinegar

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper or lemon pepper

2 cloves crushed garlic

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

1/2 teaspoon dried basil

Just put everything together in a jar and shake it up good. Serve on your salad.

Ranch Dressing
1 cup mayo
1 cup buttermilk
2 tablespoons finely chopped green onions or chives
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
2 teaspoons minced parsley (or 1 teaspoon dried)
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper.

Mix well and then refrigerate. I actually have halved this recipe because I wasn't sure how long it would stay good in the fridge. Also feel free to adjust spices to suit your tastes. Just play around with it and have fun!

Another nice frugal addition to your salad is Sprouts. Also homemade croutons are very yummy! Here is a recipe for them.

Croutons
Mix: 4 cups bread crumbs
1 1/2 tablespoons melted butter
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
Other optional additions are: 4 tablespoons Parmesan cheese, 1/2 teaspoon oregano, 1/2 teaspoon basil, 1/4 teaspoon garlic salt and 1/8 teaspoon celery seed.)

Lay in baking dish and either

• Microwave on high for 3-5 minutes (stirring each minute) until sizzled and browned. OR
• Bake at 300 degrees for 30 minutes, stirring every ten minutes.

When done, store in an airtight container and enjoy on your salad!

I would love to hear about any salad dressings you make or any other frugal ideas for salads.

For more frugal Friday tips visit Biblical Womanhood.