In the End

When I started this blog, I was immediately questioned by a number of people close to me with inquiries ranging from "so you're writing about being cheap eh?" to "What are you up to?" And truthfully, I was up to something. First, a little background.

This winter, we had a two hour delay for our kids' schools. When I went out to try to drive them to school, our driveway and street were still covered in ice. My complaints to the Superintendent were not answered but the reason for opening school when some student's roads were unsafe was later made clear in a quote from Rita Bishop (superintendent) in the newspaper. She expressed her desire to keep school open because the students needed and were dependant on school breakfast and lunches. She detailed a heart wrenching call during which a student begged her to open the school that day because he was so hungry.

I smelled BS.

First, I spend a fair bit of time at the kids' schools and, regardless of income level, I don't see ANY starvation. Quite simply, there appears to be rampant childhood obesity.

My next question to Tim was, if these families are so poor and hungry, shouldn't they qualify for food stamps? This led us to a multitude of google searches and some downright fascinating information. A family of five can receive a maximum of $793 per month in SNAP benefits (seems "food stamps" is an outdated moniker.) So we started to think about our own food budget. Did we spend more than that? It seemed like more than enough to keep a family of five from being so very hungry that they had to beg for the schools to be open in order to eat.

It can be done, we thought. Easily. But being one not very fond of failing, I thought we would give it a try before calling our shot. And, as I noted, there were those suspicious.

We started tracking our purchases. By and large, we did not significantly change the way we shopped. We paid more attention to cost but were not overly restrictive (see steak, fresh veggies and fruit, goat cheese, and large amounts of pork.) We ate well. Certainly, we were not eating Kraft mac and cheese and canned tuna every night.

So we tracked and posted. We ate awesome meals. When we got to the end of the month, I totalled it all up. Some things we had on hand but I gave it a fair estimate, generally rounding up. Do you want to know what we spent?

$725

And let's not forget that total includes items that would carry over to the next month. We have tons of flour left. The sugar and brown sugar are unopened. We have lots of salsa, ketchup, olive oil, goat cheese, and Parmesan. There were still granola bars and Cheerios left. We have a full, unopened jar of nuts and tons of raisins. We have two pounds of frozen taco meat, three pounds of bolognese sauce, and several pounds of chicken in the freezer.

Then there is what we ate. I am constantly reading about how the poor cannot afford fresh fruits or vegetables. We bought tons of both. We ate lots of protein. We even had lots of splurge items like M&Ms. Not to mention, any family qualifying for the maximum amount in food stamps would also be eligible for free lunch and breakfast at school for their kids. For a family of five, that is six meals a day, all of which we provided in our food budget.

So tell me again how people are starving.

Don't get me wrong, I am not necessarily calling for a wholesale revocation of such benefits. But I am looking for some critical analysis of how well they are working. Just last week I received a flyer from school asking me to send in snacks for the "snack cupboard" to feed the (seemingly) starving kids. And I chaffed a bit. My family and I are living on the equivalent of what they receive from the government, (read: us, our tax dollars,) why can't they? How is it that my family is eating fresh fruits, vegetables, cheese, and meat on a budget that is below that which other families, described as starving and underprivileged, receive?

It leads to some pretty hard questions, the type that are not very popular when asked. At exactly what point are we going to realize that the problem is not the amount given? When will we decide that it isn't additional money needed? That the problem might lie with the receiver. When are we going to say, you know what, I can live on less, far less, than you get for free. I don't have to give anymore. You need to take some, just the itty bitty tiniest bit of responsibility for your life. Your children have no reason AT ALL to call the school superintendent and say they are starving. That is, unless you are mismanaging the funds given to you to ensure they are not starving.

It is not a politically correct thing to point out, but mismanagement of food stamp money is widespread. Maybe we need to recognize that these benefits are sometimes squandered - sold for pennies on the dollar in order to buy non SNAP approved items. And as heartbreaking as it may be, maybe we need to realize that until these parents care enough about their children to sacrifice, nothing we do and no amount we give will matter.

So, you might be thinking, while I really do enjoy your ramblings Katie, what's your point?

As you can imagine, and if you were lucky enough to be my husband, you would get to hear all the time, I have lots of points. But what I am driving at here is that as a society, we need to engage in more critical thinking when it comes to governmentally backed charity/redistribution of wealth. When Government Program A fails to achieve its goal of eliminating hunger, maybe the best response IS NOT to rush into setting up Government Program B to address the same issue while increasing the funding to failed Program A.

And just maybe, we need to question the premise a bit. How can a nation that has a downright alarming rate of morbid obesity be starving at the same time? You have to admit, it doesn't make much sense.

As for our family, we'll continue to live quasi-frugally. (We love steak just a bit too much to be wholly frugal.) We will also continue to give charitably. But when I read about the plight of those on food stamps, I'll remember their food budget exceeds my own.

The Cinnamon Bread

While not as cheap as regular bread, we did half the cost.

$0.40 Flour
$0.30 Eggs
$0.30 Sugar
$0.21 Milk
$0.48 Butter
$0.20 Cinnamon/Salt/Yeast

$1.89 Total

And as you can see, it is awesome. Eion sat at the counter as I took it our and waited for it to be cool enough to eat. All three kids had some right away. Maggie told me, "Wow Mom. This is really good." When I asked if it was better than store bought, she said, "Oh yeah!" It was time consuming but I think it could easily be made in bulk and frozen. I think we may have to do just that as we have spoiled the kids for commercial bread!

Simulcast

[For those reading both, this is the same post as the one at my other blog. It was largely about cooking and I thought it belonged in both places. I'll get you some pics of the cinnamon bread and financial breakdown when it is done!]

As part of some general cost cutting measures, coupled with a desire to pare down the number of processed foods in our lives, we dramatically cut back (read: stopped buying) cinnamon toast bread. This is huge as my kids, especially Eion, can be categorized as complete addicts. And at $3.99 a loaf, their habit was running us $12 a week or more.

But this morning Eion, who was nearly in tears at breakfast, begged that we might have it again. So I commenced to baking. I am following a recipe from a blog called Pioneer Woman who did a lovely job describing and photographing the process so rather than duplicate or replicate, I'll just send you there!

I got started about 8:15 and all was well until I went to add yeast. Tim mentioned yesterday we needed to get more but he certainly didn't raise the "Holy crap! We are down to our last teaspoon of yeast!" which would have prompted an immediate trip to the store. Instead, I figured this out in the middle of warming butter and milk when it was too late to turn back. Off to Kroger.

Once my dough was rising and Tim, who is working nights, was off to sleep in the basement, complete and utter boredom set in. That boredom, and the 3 1/2 pounds of hamburger meat that needed to be dispositioned very soon (I had somehow grossly overestimated the amount of meat we would need this week,) set me off to several hours of cooking. Morrigan, while too picky to eat many of the things I make, was more than happy to help cook. We turned on the Mozart channel on Pandora and commenced to cooking.

I don't like to freeze raw ground chuck because I dislike the taste of hamburgers made from thawed meat. (And overall, not a huge fan of frozen beef.) So Morrigan and I took two pounds of hamburger and made taco meat, which is perfect to freeze and use at a later date. We also whipped up a three pound batch of pasta bolognese (yeah - more freezer meals,) baked a loaf of plain bread and got the cinnamon bread ready for its second rise. We topped off our cooking morning by making lunch for Maggie and Eion.

Sadly, this brings us to only 12:45 and I am bored again. Time to clean out the closets!

Mashed Potato Soup

After a week or so of weather that was downright fantastic, things have turned cold and winter like again and I was hankering for soup. It will come as no surprise that our soup recipes are as loose as everything else we make. I'll outline what I made tonight with apologies in advance for the rough estimates on content amounts. Really, soup has so much room for improvisation that it is a perfect clean out the fridge meal!

First, boil about 2 lbs peeled potatoes in salted water. When they are soft, drain and add butter (don't be shy) and heavy cream (with a generous pour) and mash. Then add chicken stock - homemade if you have it, if not, commercial will do. I used about 32 oz and ended up with a thin soup. Add about 10 oz shredded cheddar cheese and a teaspoon cayenne pepper. I had some leftover broccoli so I threw that in too.

Let simmer on low, stirring occasionally, for about a 1/2 hour. Then enjoy!

But as ever, this is just a starting point. Feel free to add whatever you like: onions, mushrooms, peppers etc.  Meat if you really want it!

In addition to being a magnet for left overs, soup is a great value:

$1.79 Chicken stock
$0.76 Potatoes
$0.50 Heavy Cream
$0.30 Broccoli
$1.47 Cheese
$0.10 Butter

$4.92 Total and I made a big pot of soup - about 11 cups at $0.45 each.

If you are like me and come from a family not quite as enamored with soup as you are, freeze it in 2-4 cup portions. Perfect for when a rainy or snowy day comes along.

Last Shopping Trip of the Month

Sadly, no picture this time. My kitchen was a train wreck.

$3.98 HUGE jar of salsa
$10.98 Mixed nuts (times 2)
$3.39 Milk
$6.88 Ketchup (3 bottles)
$6.98 Peanut butter
$9.98 Chicken nuggets
$4.48 Sausage
$6.98 Ham (lunchmeat)
$7.98 Breakfast sausage
$21.12 Steak
$15.04 Hamburger
$13.04 Chicken
$8.78 Bacon
$8.37 Rice Krispie Treats
$1.54 Bananas
$3.79 10 lbs potatoes
$4.76 Mushrooms
$5.48 Grape Tomatoes
$4.18 Tortillas
$5.76 Cheerios
$7.74 Raisins
$9.48 Granola Bars
$5.98 Pretzels/Popcorn
$4.98 Asparagus
$2.48 Celery
$3.98 Baby Carrots
$1.98 Hamburger Buns
$3.57 2 18 pack eggs
$6.98 Clementines
$10.48 Chocolate
$6.97 Goat Cheese
$13.23 Parmesan Cheese

$242.32 Total

Pizza Night

A few nights back we had pizza and I neglected to take pics. So go back to Strawberries and Slacking for recipes, but here are some pics from tonight's pizza!

Chicken Curry Casserole

I made one of our finest “refridgerator velcro” meals last night. It is such a common use of leftovers dish I didn’t even think to take a picture. [Note: added the pic the next day. Not pretty but way tasty.] I’m going to give you the outline for this frequent dinner plan but if you make it, know that almost all the ingredients are flexible. We just put in whatever meats and veggies we have left over in the fridge. Amounts too are very flexible – just whatever you have.

Cook 1 lb pasta in heavily salted water. We had penne so I used that but my favorites are capatavi and campagnelle. Combine the cooked, drained pasta with diced, cooked chicken, cooked broccoli, one can cream of chicken soup, a couple of scoops mayo (maybe ¼ cup ish,) and about a tablespoon of curry powder. None of the ingredients need to be hot when combined. Generally, the pasta is hot but everything else is fresh from the fridge.

Top with some bread crumbs (just toss a slice in the food processor – stale bread is fine) and shredded cheddar cheese. Bake at 350 until warm through and bakey on top. About 25 minutes. You can also take this casserole (prior to baking) and put it in the freezer. We love freezer meals!

Substitutions and additions can be just about anything: green beans, sauteed onions, sauteed mushrooms, asparagus. I don’t generally use any meat except chicken but that’s mostly because beef doesn’t last around our house long enough to be leftover.

For the cost, I am only considering “new” ingredients. The chicken and broccoli were left over from other meals so they are “free.”

$0.89 Cream of Chicken Soup

$0.50 Mayo, Curry powder, bread crumbs

$0.50 Cheese

$0.86 Pasta

$2.75 Total (Makes about 6 large servings at $0.46 each)

Even if you want to add in the cost of broccoli and chicken, you’re still only looking at a dish that is about $5 total. It’s great comfort food and perfect for fridge cleaning.

Strawberries and Slacking

You may have noticed I have totally been slacking. I was discussing it with Tim and we determined that it is largely due to the very boring nature of leftovers, which occupy our plates a fair bit. So either apologies, for providing you with little reading material or you're welcome, for not boring you to death.

Friday we had a few people over before the Parent-Child dance at our elementary school. Since it started at 6, we hated to show up hungry and wanted a few snacks on hand...

First, I made chcoclate covered strawberries. These are always popular and so much easier than you would think to make. I just melt semisweet choclate chips (a cup or so) in a double boiler and then dip clean, dry berries (1 lb total) in the chocolate. Place on a baking sheet covered in foil and refridgerate until set. Seriously, it is about 15 minutes of active time. If you don't have a double boiler, take a pan and fill it half way with water. Then place another pan inside the larger pan (making sure the water won't spill into the smaller pan) and place chips in the smaller pan. Voila - homemade double boiler!

The cost was $3.70: $2.70 for strawberries and $1 for chips.

We also made homemade pizza, which is a family standby, but I completely forgot pictures. I am sure we'll make it again soon and I won't be so remiss. Pizza has very little to do with recipe and much more to do with technique. We use the same dough recipe that we use for bread. One batch will make about 4 pizzas of equal size.

Where to bake: We will use the charcoal grill (Big Green Egg) in the summer and in the winter, use the oven. For ease of explanation, I'm only covering the oven. We have a pizza stone that permanently lives in the oven. It's good for pizzas but also helps the oven keep an even temp when you're cooking anything else. For pizza, we preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

Other useful tools: pizza peel. You can use something else to transfer the pizza in and out of the oven but a pizza peel, with a healthy dusting of cornmeal, is your best bet.

So we take the pizza dough and divide it into 4 equal portions. Each, when rolled out, will make the equivalent of a medium pie. Roll out a dough into a circle (14-16ish inches across) and brush with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. From there, the other toppings are up to you. The kids like cheese only where as we will use cheese, sausage (or any other left over meat), caramelized onions, peppers, canned tomatoes or mushrooms. Really, anything can go on there. It is a great clean out the fridge meal. Bake until brown and bubbly on top.

Last night, we used different combinations of cheese, sausage, onions, mushrooms and tomatoes. Cost is a little hard to estimate but I'll ballpark it!

$0.45 Dough
$3.99 Cheese
$1.25 Tomatoes
$0.75 Sausage
$0.25 Onion
$0.75 Mushrooms

About $8 when you add a little for olive oil and salt. And it is infinitely better than take out!

Garde Manger Epitomized

Today we made a leftover packed meal. We had left over link sausage and pork tenderloin we needed to use up. We essentially made a bolognese. And by we, I mean Tim. First we made a mirepoix (onions, carrots, and celery plus a little garlic today) and cooked in olive oil. Then we finely chopped the leftover meat in the food processor. Combine with one small can of tomato paste, a cup and a half of milk, red wine vinegar, salt and cayenne pepper. Serve over pasta. We had enough sauce to use over a pound of pasta and have an equal portion of sauce left over.

What I love the most? This meal was oh so cheap. The meat was already included in previous meals and the new costs were low (Milk $0.69, mirepoix $0.35, Tomato paste $.69, and Pasta $.83.) It adds up to $0.47 per serving. Not to mention, it was good!

Cornbread

Our Supper Club had a Mardi Gras themed party on Saturday. We brought Jalapeno Cornbread which we can't take any credit at all for this as it is Michael Ruhlman's recipe. But it was pretty darn good!

I'll let you link through to his site rather than reprint it here. We followed him exactly with three small changes: we used one can of corn, jarred jalapenos rather than fresh and topped the whole thing with some shredded cheddar cheese. 

The best suggestion for the leftovers, also Mr. Ruhlman's - I'm really lazy and ripping off others today, was to fry pieces of the leftover bread in bacon fat. We did that Sunday for dinner and it was even better than the first time around!

Cost:

$0.70 Corn

$0.36 Eggs

$0.08 Flour

$0.08 Sugar

$0.21 Milk

$0.65 Butter

$0.20 Jalapenos

$0.75 Cornmeal

$0.30 Cheese

$3.33 Total

Poker Night

Friday we hosted poker and some heavy apps were in order. The first thing we made was Cheese Slaw. I had never heard of this before moving to Roanoke but around here, it is a staple at cocktail parties. The recipe I use comes from the Junior League of the Roanoke Valley's cookbook.

Mix together 1 pound of shredded swiss cheese (shred it yourself, it's worth the extra effort), one bunch green onions (chopped), 1/2 cup chopped pickled jalapenos, 1/2 cup chopped hot banana peppers and mayo (full fat please) to bind. Serve with Fritos scoops. This stuff is absolutely addictive and I have yet to find someone who doesn't like it.

Next we, and by we I mean Tim, made meatballs. He took a pound of ground chuck, a pound of sausage, onion, garlic powder and some bread crumbs and combined them. He portioned them out with a disher and baked at 400 until done.

We served them in homemade barbecue sauce. 

Take one small onion and three cloves garlic. Dice fine and sweat (cook in olive oil and salt at a low temp) until translucent. Add one cup ketchup, one cup water, two tablespoons molasses, two table spoons brown sugar, one teaspoon cayenne pepper, two tablespoons dry mustard. Cook on low for about an hour.

Cost of appetizers:

$11.55 Cheese slaw and chips (we ended up with about half the bag of chips left over)

$7 Meatballs (7 adults all enjoyed them and we had enough left over for Tim and I to have them for lunch the next day.)

Pork Tenderloin & Mac and Cheese

It was raining (again) today so I was in the mood for some comfort food. I went with pork tenderloin and mac and cheese. Neither is very hard and really hit the spot. For the pork tenderloin, I rubbed some dijon mustard on it and coated it with a mix of fresh breadcrumbs, salt and pepper. 

The pasta & cheese (as I didn't use macaroni, I figure I need some truth in advertising) was a bit more complicated so I recommend having it done first and both can go in the oven together. 

Boil salted water to make the pasta (1 pound.) While the pasta is cooking, make a 1/2 batch of bechamel sauce. When it is done, add about 4-5 ounces shredded cheddar cheese. Add salt and cayenne pepper to taste. Then combine with cooked, drained pasta and put in a souffle pan or small baking dish.

Put both the pasta and pork in a 350 degree oven and bake until pork has an internal temperature of 155 and the pasta is fully baked. Fully baked is completely subjective, of course. I left mine in for an extra 5 minutes after I pulled the pork because I like it extra bake-y.

The financials:

$2.26 Pasta and cheese

$7.26 Pork

$0.93 Broccoli

$10.45 Total ($2.09 per person)

The whole family ate plus we have several servings of pork and pasta left over. Now, based on some of the initial reactions I got, I might have titled this post "Epic Fail." Maggie came down, surveyed dinner and said, "I thought we were having left over pizza." In the end, she was won over by the pasta. None of the kids much cared for the breading but they scraped it off. Broccoli was the only item well received by all. Go figure.

I feel I should also note here that my mac and cheese was roughly 3.7 times more expensive than Kraft mac and cheese. That being said, mine is way better and doesn't contain sodium tripolyphosphate, yellow #5 or yellow #6.

Shopping Again

We had food left but were lacking in some essentials like milk and bananas and were critically low on many other vital foodstuffs, like bread flour, sugar and olive oil. So we have:

$7.69 25 lbs bread flour

$5.76 7 lbs brown sugar

$6.29 10 lbs sugar

$11.98 2 liters olive oil

$3.33 heavy cream (quart)

$7.98 10 lbs oranges

$1.59 half and half (quart)

$3.39 Milk

$9.14 M&Ms (we're hosting poker and need table snacks)

$3.22 eggs

$4.76 mushrooms

$4.98 broccoli

$4.48 sausage

$4.98 asparagus

$19.09 steak (I can't help it - the kids love it so much.)

$18.27 ground beef

$3.98 blackberries

$3.98 strawberries

$1.54 bananas

$5.98 green beans

$3.98 spring mix salad

2.48 onions

$4.93 Fritos (poker - I need them with cheese slaw)

$4.99 swiss cheese

$0.63 green onion

$3.83 tax

$153.24 Total 

I was kind of bothered by this total since we just did a big shopping trip just over a week ago but I figure  some of these things (like the flour, sugar and olive oil, are likely to last a while. At least I hope! 

Correction

My friend Olivia pointed out a glaring error I made in a previous post. In "Breakfast for Dinner," I said to use a quart of buttermilk. WRONG! You only need a pint (about 2 cups.) If you tried to make this and wondered why the batter was thin and it didn't work out, it was because I made a mistake. Sorry! It is corrected now. Thanks for the heads up Olivia!

Neslay Toulouse

Do you remember that Friends episode where Monica bakes a billion different batches of cookies trying to find Phobe's grandmother's "secret" recipe? On the show, it turns out the much guarded Neslay Toulouse cookies were indeed Nestle Toll House. What is so funny is that it really is the best cookie recipe. But you do need to use some technique...

We were baking because my hairdresser came in, on her day off, before we went to Key West to make sure there were no nasty grey hairs accompanying me on the trip. I had missed my original appointment due to snow and she came in the next day for just me. She clearly had earned a batch of cookies. 

So you start off just like the recipe on the bag: preheat the oven to 375. Then cream 2 sticks butter, 3/4 cup sugar, 3/4 cup brown sugar and one teaspoon of vanilla. Then add in two eggs.

Next, the dry ingredients: add one teaspoon salt (I use kosher) and 1 teaspoon baking soda. When that is mixed, add the flour. They call for 2 1/4 cups. You want at least 3 cups. Then add the chips. They call for two cups. Add that and then throw in another handful.

One of the most important steps in having uniform cookies is to use a disher, rather than spoons, to portion out your cookies on the sheet. We use a one ounce disher. But the most critical step is to underbake the cookies. Now, oven temperatures vary and even batch to batch in my own oven changes so I can't really give you a time. Suffice to say, if they are dark brown, they've been in there too long. You want to pull them when they are very light brown with some darker spots.

Cost for a batch of cookies:

$1.75 Chocolate Chips

$1.29 Butter

$0.36 Eggs

$0.47 Flour

$1.25 (ish) Sugar, Brown Sugar, Vanilla, and Baking Soda

$5.12 Total You get about 40 cookies so they are $0.13 each. Why would you ever buy Chips Ahoy (at $4.50 a package) again?

Dinner - Epic Fail

As we are leaving swim practice, the girls ask what is for dinner. Pork tenderloin (which I took out of the freezer earlier) and home made bread (which was rising on the counter) I let them know. Maggie looks at me blankly and says, "But we want steak." Sorry buddy.

I get home and find the pork bordering on rock solid. Hmmm. Well, time for a substitution. Breakfast sausage, which my children consider a dinner food - they laugh when they see it at breakfast buffets, it would be. Oven heating and sausage in pan, I went upstairs to change out of my tennis gear.

Then the power went out.

We waited, hoping it would come back but in the end I declared it was peanut butter sandwich time. Said declaration was met with universal groans. Truth be told, I wasn't that hot on the idea either. And realizing my cell phone was at 1/4 power and my only charging plan was the car charger, I knew something had to be done. So we ditched the cold sandwiches and it was off to Little Caesars where $15.62 later, we had a couple of pizzas and some crazy bread. (I did have a coupon for free crazy bread at least.)

We drove back up to the house and, you know it, the power was back on. In the world of frugality, do I get credit for going to get the pizza rather than taking the more convenient but also more expensive delivery?

Lasagna

With all the rain this past weekend, I had a hankering for lasagna. Now I have my own recipe, that I may cover in another post, which is pretty conventional but what I was craving was Tim's special lasagna. And I wasn't brave enough to make it on my own. Fortunately for me, he was off yesterday and was in the mood to cook. I assisted, but this was definitely his gig.

For this delight, you need bolognese sauce, fresh pasta, and bechamel sauce. Three things - easy, right? 

First, you make the pasta. Granted, you can substitute commercial pasta here but I promise, it won't be as good. We chose to make green pasta which tastes essentially the same but is so much more attractive! By weight, take 2 parts flour, 1 part egg and a 1/2 part cooked, chopped spinach. We weigh the eggs first (2 eggs should make plenty of pasta) and then determine how much flour and spinach. Mix them in the stand mixer with the dough hook to make a ball like this:

Then use a pasta roller to roll out the dough into sheets. We have a stand mixer attachment for this. [Note: both these steps can be done manually but it will take a bit longer.]

In heavily salted water (think: it tastes like the ocean), boil noodles for about 2 minutes. Then remove and place in a big bowl of cool water.

Then, on to the bechamel! We basically use Mario Batali recipe. You can read the full version if you want, but here is the basic idea.

Melt 5 tablespoons of butter over medium high heat and add 4 tablespoons of flour. Stir pretty close to constantly until flour is cooked. In a separate pan (or the microwave), heat 4 cups of milk to almost a boil. Add one cup at a time to flour/butter mix. Stir constantly. When all the milk is added, bring to a boil and cook for a few minutes, still stirring. Take off heat and let cool a bit and thicken.

We thawed out some bolognese we made the other day to use. We have a big pan so I used 3 batches. For a more standard pan, you can probably use one.

You layer as follows: meat sauce, bechamel, noodles. Repeat until you run out of sauce but make sure the top layer is meat and bechamel sauce.

Bake at 350 until brown on top and bubbly on the sides. We tend to broil at the end for extra crispy goodness.

Our big pan (15x10x2) yields 12 portions. Personally, I had it for dinner yesterday and then for breakfast, lunch and dinner today. It is well worth the work.

Cost:

$12.04 Bolognese sauce

$1.45 Bechamel sauce

$1.16 Pasta

Total: $14.65 or $1.22 per serving (12 servings total.) 

Breakfast for Dinner

Tonight it was breakfast for dinner. (Yes, Tim is still working and yes, I am still lazy.) We had pancakes, bacon and some berries. Our pancake recipe started as Alton Brown's "Instant" Pancakes (from the show Good Eats.) While our contents remain the same, our method varies slightly. That said, we're totally ripping his recipe. Here goes.

First, you have to make pancake mix. We always have some mixed and keep it in a large Tupperware container. You need:

6 cups AP flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

3 teaspoons baking powder

1 tablespoon kosher salt

2 tablespoons sugar

Place ingredients in a lidded container and shake.

Now the pancakes themselves....

Melt 4 tablespoons butter in a large bowl. Add 1 pint buttermilk and 2 eggs (lightly beaten.) Combine and then whisk in 2 cups of the pancake mix from above.

Heat frying pan to medium high (you may have to adjust down later) and grease with butter. Use an ice cream disher to portion out three pancakes. When the sides set and bubbles form on the top, flip and finish cooking.

I can't take credit at all seeing as this is someone else's recipe, but these are the best pancakes I have ever had. 

Breakfast/Dinner cost:

$3 Bacon

$1 Berries

$0.50 Pancake Mix

$0.36 Eggs

$0.40 Butter

$1.50 Buttermilk (I used the pint size which is more expensive but what I had on hand)

$6.76 Total or $1.35 a person (We still had 5 people since Maggie's best bud was over.) And we have pancakes left over for (real) breakfast and bacon left for lunch!

Pasta Bolognese

It is raining and icky today and Tim is working. Now we've already established what Daddy-is-gone meals are like so you know the kids have largely fared for themselves today. (Bless them for being old enough to do so.) Cheerios, bananas, apples, cheese and bread have been big movers today. As I type, Mags is getting strawberries for herself and her brother.

While I would like to take the day off from cooking altogether, I have an issue. One of the problems with buying ground beef six pounds at a time is making sure you use or disposition said meat before it turns. Personally, not a huge fan of freezing ground beef for later use as hamburgers. It seems to taste funny. And there are only so many meals in a row we can eat hamburgers before there is revolution (even if they are great burgers.) 

One of the best fixes for utilizing a few pounds of beef is making a big batch of pasta bolognese sauce. I make a triple batch and freeze in three separate containers. These "freezer meals," as we like to call them, are then ready to defrost in the microwave (takes about 10 minutes on high) and combine with a package of dried pasta (which is cooked first of course.) Great for days when time is short. You can go from freezer to table in under 20 minutes.

How to Make Pasta Bolognese Sauce:

Finely chop a mirepoix, which is a combination of carrots, onion and celery. My ratio is a handful of baby carrots, one onion and 3 celery ribs. That being said, the actual amount I use varies wildly depending on what is in my fridge. Set the mirepoix aside.

In a large saucepan (I use a dutch oven) combine 2 pounds sausage and 2 pounds ground beef. Cook on medium high-high until browned. Us a slotted spoon to remove meat and set aside. Disposition the grease. Personally, ours gets dumped in the woods but you do what suits at your house. 

Take the pan in which you browned the meat and put it on a burner on high. Add a little bit of olive oil, mirepoix and two big pinches of salt. When it is sizzling, turn to low and cook until soft and onions are translucent, stirring occasionally. 

Then add back in meat, a small can of tomato paste and a teaspoon of cayenne pepper. When combined, add a 1/4 cup red wine vinegar (or leftover red wine - we just don't tend to have left over wine.) Then add a cup of milk. It will taste better with whole milk but use what you've got - providing it's not soy or some other such buffoonery. 

Cook on low for a half hour or so and you are all set. It can be eaten right away or divided up into three portions and frozen.

To make sure we have the right pasta to sauce ratio, I take the six pound bag of pasta and divide into six containers of one pound each. [It is a little more work than buying individually packaged pounds of pasta but the cost is about half. The average store brand pound of pasta is $1.69-1.99 whereas each pound below is $0.83.] The pound of pasta to 3 1/2 ish cups of sauce is just about perfect.

And the costs.....

Sauce (3 batches):

$4.38 Sausage

$5.56 Ground Beef

$0.69 Tomato paste

$0.20 Vinegar

$0.21 Milk

$1.00 Mirepoix (guesstimated)

For a total of $12.04 or $4.01 per batch.

When you have this meal (one batch sauce with one pound pasta), it will feed six adults for about $0.81 each. Not to mention, making the sauce is a great way to kill time on a rainy day.

Dirty Little Secret

So I knew that in writing this blog, my secret would come out. When Tim is working late or nights, I am L-A-Z-Y when it comes to cooking. Tonight I got to be extra lazy since Morrigan was at a sleepover so it was just me, Maggie & Eion. 

We had a combination of cheese, yogurt, strawberries and bread. Yeah, not so much cooking involved. But in my defense, I did make the bread from scratch! Really and truly, it is not as hard as you think. All you need is:

20 oz bread flour (regular will work too)

12 oz water

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon yeast

The flour is in weight. If you don't have one, you really want to get a kitchen scale. But if you must bake today, it is about 4 cups. But I can't recommend enough using weight. 

Microwave the water for about a minute. Add the yeast. Then combine water/yeast with the flour and salt. Use the dough hook on your stand mixer and mix on the second level for 5-7 minutes. If you don't have a stand mixer, you can do this by hand. It is harder but yields the same result.

Then take the dough and work it into a shape that closely resembles a mushroom cap (Tim calls it a squid.) Place in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap (or a towel.) Let rise for an hour. Make a new squid, working out all the air bubbles, and then let it rise for another hour or so. Punch down and place in a dutch oven. I brush olive oil on the top and sprinkle with salt but this isn't strictly necessary.

Bake in a covered dutch oven at 450 for 55 minutes. And then you have:

which will allow you to say you "cooked" dinner, even if you only get that designation on a technicality.

The cost? I used the King Arthur bread flour we had on hand, which at 5 pounds for $4.50 certainly doesn't fall under frugal but seeing as we already had it, was garde manger. Even with the swanky flour, it was only about $1.30 for the loaf. If you were to get a 25 pound bag of flour at Sam's Club for $7.69, your per loaf cost falls to about $0.45. Which is most definitely cheapy-skate!

Chicken Breasts Don't Have to be Boring

Tonight we made a family favorite (save Morrigan who in her teen before her years ways hates nearly everything) pecan chicken. Now in a full disclosure sort of way, I have to say this recipe's origin was the local restaurant Alexander's. So hat tip to them. Our version has some changes but the inspiration must be credited.

Now, we are cooks around here and find recipes generally to be suggestion lists rather than hard and fast rules so I am going to need you to embrace very loose calculations and ingredient portions. Depending on your experience level, you might have to try this a few times before it is right.

You'll need:

4 large chicken breasts

10 (ish) oz pecans

a slice of bread 

butter

Toast the pecans. Personally, I use the toaster oven but a pan or the full over will work too. Then combine with the bread in a food processor and chop. [Certainly this can be done manually but it is much more arduous.] Place the mix in a shallow pan and combine with salt, pepper and about a teaspoon of cayenne pepper. 

Preheat the oven to 350. As always, pan in the oven to preheat it as well.

Melt some butter. Apply butter to each chicken breast and then coat the chicken in the pecan mixture. (I find it even better to add more pecans after the chicken is on the baking dish.) Bake until you reach an internal temp of 59 degrees. I know all the thermometers ask for 65 but they fail to take carry over into account. Trust me - you won't die of salmonella. 

For our side we had broccoli, which was simply prepared. Boil and then add butter and salt. Seriously people, don't dis the butter. Even Eion had seconds. Of broccoli. 

For tonight's financials:

$6.00 Pecans

$7.37 Chicken

$1.80 Broccoli

For a total of $15.17, which is $3.03 per person. And I have to add we have at least a third of the chicken left over. Which is a great thing considering Tim needs lunch at work tomorrow.

The Perfect Burger - Dinner Wednesday

I'm always somewhat surprised at how few people/restaurants know how to make a really good burger. So let's go through the steps now! 

Take your ground chuck (Use sirloin if you want, but it doesn't taste as good. C'mon people you only live once.) and measure out the number of burgers you need 2/3 cup measuring cups. Is it important to measure them out fairly precisely? Only if you want them to cook evenly and be done at the same time. Not to mention, the 2/3 measurement fits most standard buns perfectly.

Anyway, shape into burgers and salt liberally with kosher salt. 

As far as cooking goes, I am, as ever, a fan of the grill. I get it hot as I can and then cook the burgers on full heat with the lid open. Important! Only flip once. When are they done? I go by sight but generally, my grill takes about 15-20 minutes.

As a side, we are having a Maggie favorite - roasted cauliflower. First, preheat the oven to 450 with your pan in the oven. Cut the cauliflower into small florets. In a bowl, coat with olive oil. Bake until golden delicious and then salt to your taste.

And now the cost:

$5.90 Ground Beef

$2.00 Cauliflower (I think - we had this from last week's grocery run. But I'm not sure. Part of the reason we're doing this.)

$0.83 Buns

$8.73 Total

We'll just go ahead and round up to $9 (for the olive oil and salt) which brings us to $1.80 per person. And best yet, we had a burger and a half left over for lunch the next day.

All the Small Things

In writing this blog, I feel sure that I can't document every meal or snack our family eats. It would be a little time consuming, not to mention, that level of minutia would lose me the dozen or so readers along for the ride. So I'm going to cover what is generally going on at the meals I am not writing about on a regular basis.

Breakfast
We are about the least creative family EVER in this department. Tim has oatmeal with nuts and raisins. Every. Single. Day.  The kids have cereal, cinnamon bread, or home made bread (we'll get to that recipe soon!) As for me, I'm a big fan of peanut butter toast or (if I have time) eggs. But that's about it. Very predictable.

Snacks
All those granola bars and goldfish? You betcha. We're all big fans of fruit for snacks too. [And chocolate. But that's not a snack, right? That's dessert.]

Lunch
During the school week, the kids really, really hate change in their lunch. They also despise school lunches. So I pack them almost the same thing every day. Boring, but what they want. The girls have bacon or a peanut butter sandwich, an apple (or another piece of fruit), pretzels, and veggies (baby carrots, sweet peppers, and grape tomatoes.) Eion is close to the same but he prefers 2 gogurts rather than the bacon/peanut butter sandwich option.

Now if you are looking to be cheap, you can't package all these components into ziplocs. We have a wide variety of (well used) Rubermaid containers.

I also use the outer plastic bags from store bought loaves of bread. This practice was much maligned by the children until I told them flat out, if your father, the Doctor, can pack his lunch in reused bread bags, so can you. Remember children, we are the freaks.

Tim and I are big leftovers for lunch fans if we are home. When Tim has to work, I pack him some sandwiches or a few of those Rubbermaid boxes of brown rice and some sort of protein. I love leftover lunches because they feel almost free. And so very garde manger.

The Fallback Meal

One of the big jokes in our family is that whenever we don't know what to have for dinner, the plan is steak. Then coming as no surprise, when I told the kids we had all manner of food at home (see giant shopping trip) and asked what they wanted for dinner, the answer was steak!

Well how can I turn down such a crowd pleaser? Before the financials, the cooking methods. 

First, you take a couple of potatoes (washed) and run them through a mandolin. [If you don't have one, you can just cut them by hand.] Then you want to soak the fries. 

Preheat the oven to 450 (convection if you have it) and place your pan inside to heat it. Take the fries and toss them with olive oil. Spray the pan with Pam and put the fries on your hot pan and bake until crispy and delicious. Salt the hot, fully coked fries at will. Personally, I am a huge salt fan but feel free to season less as needed.

And then the main event - steak. Luckily, it was nice today so I was able to grill. Preheat the grill to hot as you can get it. Salt your steaks liberally (or less if you hate flavor) and place on hot grill. I tend to sear one side with cross hatch marks and then flip. After flipping, I turn off the front and middle burners and cook with indirect heat to 122 internal temperature. [If you don't have a probe thermometer, get ye to Target directly and purchase this critical device.] Result: the yummy, yummy fallback meal!

While I know this is not what one might expect from a blog self described as frugal, the kids all ate really well (including Eion, who hates dinner.) And now the cost (complete with rounding, always up.)

Steak: (I cooked 3 out of 4 from the package) $14.40

Potatoes: I cooked about a pound from a bag we already had which was 10 lbs @ $3.79. Tonight's cost was $0.40. 

Throwing in a bit for salt and olive oil, we're at $15. Or three bucks each. Maybe not our cheapest meal, but well received across the board!

First Shopping Trip O' the Month

So in the full disclosure kind of way, I have to say that as we start to track purchases, we do still have some stores at home. I figure we will detail what we buy from here on out and estimate what we are using from what we already have. Sound fair?

That being said, our stores, especially in the protein department, were at critical levels. And we had no peanut butter, which is always a crisis. So after suffering a crushing tennis defeat (it was a 6-1, 6-0 beat down - not pretty) I was off to Sam's Club! $293.25 later, I was home with this:

For those looking for excruciating details, the breakdown is as follows....

$17.35 Ground Beef

$7.98 Breakfast Sausage Links

$19.20 Steak

$12.90 Chicken Breasts

$9.98 Chicken Nuggets (you know you feed them to your kids too)

$8.78 Bacon (you will soon find out how big a role bacon plays in our lives)

$4.38 Sausage 

$4.98 Apples

$14.54 Pork Tenderloin

$5.98 2 bags pretzels

$4.98 Pasta (it's a big bag - remember, I was shopping at Sam's)

$20.72 Leg of Lamb

$8.58 Granola Bars (kids snacks)

$7.18 Even more Granola Bars

$8.98 Gigantic Package of Goldfish

$8.98 Chocolate Chips (we love to bake cookies)

$6.98 Gogurt (a mainstay in the boy's diet)

$6.98 2 Pack of Peanut Butter

$16.98 Starbucks Coffee (huge vice)

$3.39 Milk

$11.72 That Big Ole Block of Cheese

$7.98 String Cheese

$7.98 Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs (that would be another vice)

$3.2 Eggs

$1.98 Hamburger Buns

$6.98 Clementines 

$1.54 Bananas

$10.34 Butter (4 lbs)

$2.48 Celery

$3.98 Baby Carrots

$5.48 Grape Tomatoes 

$7.28 Bell Peppers

$3.98 Blackberries

$5.48 Strawberries

$5.76 Cheerios

$7.15 Tax

So clearly, this was a BIG trip meant to last a while. I came home and immediately put both pork tenderloins in the freezer. There will probably be some chicken breasts headed there too. And that block of cheese, that should be around for a good long while. 

But that's the start! Let's see how far we can stretch it.

How This All Got Started

So Team McK has been doing some belt tightening. We've done some pretty basic things (axing the cleaning lady - $200 a month savings) to some more radical plans (getting rid of cable - $110 a month savings.) As we got financially leaner we found there were a few categories remaining. There are the things we can't touch: retirement savings, college savings, piano lessons. And things we won't touch: country club membership and tennis lessons (I really like them.)

One big line item out there though where we saw room for improvement was food expenditures. We eat out infrequently so that budget category is pretty well under control but we are careless with the trips to the megamart.

Which brings us here. We're going to track our purchases, meals and see how it all shakes down. This blog is going to be kind of a mixed bag: recipes, meal planning, any other living frugal tips that come to mind.

Hope you like the trip.