Frugal Food For A Crowd

The food doesn't have to be fancy, it just has to taste good! When it's your time to have the crew at your house, break out the crockpot and let it do the work for you, frugally! You can use any meat you have on hand...chicken breasts, pork roast, etc. Those bags of frozen chicken breasts you buy for $6.00 work really well. Add your meat to the crock pot, pour a bottle of barbeque sauce on top, along with a small red onion (chopped). Cook on low until the meat shreads. Serve on your favorite bread/buns.

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This can be made a day or two ahead and reheated in the crockpot when company is coming. Add a big bowl of chips, some pickles and maybe your favorite macaroni salad. Sure to please a crowd AND your wallet.

Get Ready Frugal Gardeners!

The time is here for all of you frugal gardeners out there to start peparing for spring planting. I'm sure you've gathered your seeds, and are probably using the compost from last year's table scraps, so let's start collecting other things you can use for your garden.

You will need containers for some of those plants (maybe cherry tomatoes, pepper plants, or just some of your favorite flowers). No need to go out and buy any. Just take a look around your house. I'm sure you will be able to find plenty of things you can use. Old cake pans make great seed starter containers, as do egg cartons. Gather up your old pots, vases, popcorn tins, tea kettles...you get the idea. Anything you can find that will hold a nice sized plant. Look at these great ideas:

(Thanks wildaboutgardening.org)

Get really creative and head into the closets for old boots, baskets and children's toys (think sand buckets). Important to remember: Create drainage in these items by either drilling a few holes in the bottoms or placing gravel in the bottom.

Next, start saving all of those plastic soda and water bottles, any size will do. Use the 2-liter size to make small terrariums (cut in half, plant and tape the two halves back together). Cut the individual size in half and use the top half to cover small seedlings and create a greenhouse affect.

When you head into the office, offer to take care of the shredded paper bin. All of that shredded paper will make great mulch for your precious plants!

Make sure you'll be able to properly mark your seedlings and plants. Start saving your used popsicle sticks and small pieces of scrap wood from DIY projects. You can also save plastic cutlery from those fast food trips. Wash them well and use permanent marker to label.

Save your toilet paper and paper towel rolls to use as plant starters instead of buying them. Don't have enough? Make newspaper pots. There are many how-to videos online, they are very simple! There's one article on how to make your own starter pots...HERE that's easy to follow.

Ok, you're off to a great start! As the time gets closer, we'll talk about homemade pesticides, mulches, stakes, fencing and just about anything else we can think of!

Make Homemade Tortilla Chips And Save Money

Why pay $3.49 for a bag of tortilla chips when you can make them at home for about $1.00? The homemade ones are healthier for you because they're not fried and they taste much better! Here's how you do it:

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Ingredients:

10-12 flour tortillas
vegetable oil (or spray) - I use cooking spray such as Pam
spices

1. Cut tortillas into 8 wedges. (You can stack them and cut with a pizza cutter)
2. Brush or spray baking sheet with oil.
3. Arrange tortilla wedges in a single layer on the baking sheet and brush or spray lightly with oil.
4. Sprinkle with seasonings: salt or seasoned salt, chili powder, cinnamon sugar, etc.
5. Bake at 325 until crisp and lightly browned, approximately 10 minutes.

My favorite spice combination is garlic powder, italian seasoning and parmesan cheese.

Enjoy!

Free Barrettes From Goody

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Free Sample Playtex Tampons

For your free sample of Playtex tampons click HERE. You will be able to choose between three different packs.

Free Recipe Booklet With Coupons

To receive your free recipe booklet "Eat Better America" click HERE. Inside, you will also receive $10.00 in coupons. Good deal!

Free Pet Steaktopia Treats

How about some free treats for Sparky? To get yours, click HERE and request your free sample. Confirmation will be sent to your email, so don't forget to respond!

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More Organization = More Money In Your Pockets

Every time you come home from grocery shopping, you should re-organize your refrigerator for the upcoming week. When everyone knows where to find things, they will not stand there with the door open, so electricity is saved. You will be able to tell when you are getting low on something or when it's getting near expiration.

Here's the inside of my fridge, just re-organized today. Starting from the bottom, of course is vegetables inside the crispers. I actually have the veggies in the left crisper, with kid snacks in the right (jello, puddings, tortillas, etc). Next shelf up, meats that I'll be making this week, fruits and yogurts. Next shelf up, bottled water and backup gallon of milk, along with foods for lunches. Top shelf - opened jars and containers to see what needs to be used, along with breads and cut up veggies for after school snacks. Door is for condiments, butter and home-canned items.

It is so easy to keep track of things we have AND things we need. My favorite is keeping all of the open containers on the top shelf so you know what has to be used up. Give it a try!

When Low On Dinner Ideas....Just Dump It

I usually do my grocery shopping on Sundays (after I get my hands on the coupon inserts of course), so pickins are slim on Saturdays. I have found that almost anything can make good stew. See what you have on hand and just dump it all into the crockpot, cook on low for at least 4-5 hours and see what happens. Here's the ingredients from yesterday's "dump".

1 lb 90% lean ground beef (starting to get a little freezer burn, so had to be used) - cooked it on stovetop first and drained any fat.
1/2 bag of red potatoes, quartered
1/2 bag of frozen peas
1 can of corn
2 tbsp minced garlic
3 tbsp onion soup mix
1/4 cup flaxseed
1 tbsp italian seasoning
2 cups water

I cooked that in the crockpot for about 4 1/2 hours on low, then added a carton of V8 tomato soup and cooked for another 1/2 hour on low until the potatoes were cooked through.

It got rave reviews and requests to have it again. Served with slices of rye bread (purchased for $.50 due to upcoming expiration date ~ stored in freezer until yesterday). We ate 5 servings and there are two leftover servings in the fridge for lunches. Total cost: about $7.25. Not bad for a family dinner and two lunches.

So all you have to do is take your favorite meat (in bite sized pieces), cook it off, add veggies and spices of choice, along with enough liquid to get it cooking. Add more liquid later to your desired consistency.

What's in YOUR cupboards, waiting to be dumped?

Make Your Own Window Cleaner For Pennies

It's very simple to make your own window cleaner. This mixture cleans and shines any surface really and doesn't leave streaks like commercial cleaners.

1 cup water

1 cup rubbing alcohol

1 tablespoon ammonia

Add all ingredients together in a clean spray bottle and spray away!

A Frugal Snack

This incredibly easy snack can be made to fit whatever taste you are craving at the moment. All you do is place ordinary oyster crackers into a large frying pan. Spray the crackers with non-stick spray like Pam. (If you have a gas stove make sure you do all of your spraying AWAY from the flame!) After the crackers are sprayed well, sprinkle dry seasoning of your choice on top of them. Heat crackers on medium high heat, turning often. Spray a few more times, followed by a little more seasoning. Turn the crackers often to keep the coating consistent. The crackers should only be on the stove for as long as it takes to coat them well and make sure the seasoning sticks.

Some seasoning suggestions:

1. Onion soup mix

2. Popcorn seasoning (like cheddar, nacho, etc.)

3. Ranch dressing mix

4. Italian sesoning

Use your imagination! This snack is very low in fat and tastes great! It is also very economical. I can get a bag of oyster crackers for $.50 most times. You probably have the ingredients in your cupboard right now...go ahead and try it!

Free Packets of Splenda With Fiber

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Big Rebate When You Buy Olay

Olay is offering a $25 rebate when you buy $50 of Olay Pro-X Products. To take advantage of the rebate, print out the form HERE. Hurry, you have to purchase before March 8th!

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Today's Freebie

For those of you that are on an aspirin regime, this freebie is awesome! Bayer is offering a key chain that is made to hold a few daily doses, so you can take your aspirin wherever you are! Head on over to Bayer and sign yourself up for this great offer!

Never Buy Garlic Salt Again..

How many out there purchase and use garlic salt on a regular basis? I'm sure most of you have a jar of garlic salt in your spice cabinet, and it's probably been there quite a while. Here's a trick to making your own garlic salt when you need it:

Just mix three parts salt to one part garlic powder to create garlic salt. Store in an airtight container (maybe use that old garlic salt jar) or just make enough to use for one recipe. Easy and very budget friendly! Cross garlic salt off of your shopping list!

You CAN Dine Out in Today's Economy...

For all of you who enjoy a night out, but don't think you can afford it...head on over to http://www.restaurant.com/ and save yourself an enormous amount of money. They normally sell $25 dining certificates to the restaurant of your choice for $10. That's already a $15 savings. But until the end of the month (the next three days), they are selling them for $3 when you use the code SUPER at checkout! That's $25 worth of food for a measly $3. But wait...there's more! If you order within the same time span, you will also get a $15 gift card code to Dale and Thomas. You must also use this code by the end of the month and it can be used on their website at http://www.daleandthomaspopcorn.com/ . The $15 code can be used for any purchase $25 and over.



So...act today and you can get $25 worth of food and $25 worth of products for a total of $13. That's gonna save you a cool $37! So here's the plan...use your restaurant.com certificate for a lovely dinner out, head back home, pop in a DVD and munch on some great gourmet popcorn during the show. When was the last time you paid $13 for dinner and a movie?

Online Book Swaps

For us avid readers, online book swaps are fabulous! You can share books throughout the country by swapping with other readers. This saves paper and money. All you do is sign up, enter the books that you have available and put books on your wish list. Then the swap takes place. The only money you invest is the postage to mail your book. Send it media mail and it is quite inexpensive. There are a few sites that you can swap through. Here's links to two:




http://www.swaptree.com/ and







http://www.paperbackswap.com/





Are you a college student looking for text books? Head on over to http://www.bookswap.com/ where you can sell and buy used textbooks. Obviously a lot cheaper than buying new, plus you can earn some bucks back by dumping the ones you've already used.

I just posted my first two books for trade! Off to post some more...