A Busy Saturday to Tuesday-Cooking!

Hubs and I went to Maine Source on Saturday and I picked up some meat and veg-a pork shoulder, 5 lbs. ground beef, 10 lb. bag of onions, 4 lbs. of green beans(@ .79¢ lb.), 6 ears of sweet corn and 3 packages of mushrooms.  I also went to Weis(PMITA)Markets for their Fantastic Friday sale and got two whole chickens(@ .75¢ lb.).

Add in that the cuke plants have been in overdrive while we were gone AND the kids didn't eat a single one(though they picked 5).  I picked another 5 on Friday plus there are SEVENTEEN more out in the garden still.  8-O

So on Sunday(and Monday)I was in food prep/cooking mode.

I tried really hard not to run the oven as it's been typical August weather here(hot and muggy).  I did have to acquiesce on Monday evening though to make the mac and cheese.  College Boy had requested it before going back to college.

Sunday, the pork shoulder got put in the smoker outside.......

That was put in the crock pot last night to perk away overnight and will be pulled pork sandwiches this evening for dinner.

I also prepped, blanched and divvied up the green beans into dinner sized portions and froze all put one bag for later.

One of the whole chickens I bought on Friday got dumped into the freezer and on Saturday the other had a can of beer shoved up it's ass and grilled to within an inch of it's life and served with boxed stuffing and fresh corn on the cob.

I defrosted chicken breasts on Saturday in the fridge and with the addition of Marsala wine and all those mushrooms I bought, I turned this into Chicken Marsala over Noodles and served it with Tossed Salad on Sunday.

I also took a London Broil out of the freezer on Saturday as well and set to marinating it in the fridge for two days.  It was grilled and served along with spinach souffle and homemade mac and cheese(at the kids' request)on Monday.

As for the 5 lbs. of ground beef--1 lb. was reserved for hamburgers for lunch on Tuesday and the other 4 lbs. was turned into WV hot dog chili on Sunday........

I've portioned this big pot of chili up into 4 containers-2 in the freezer for later.  1 container will be heading to school with College Boy on Wednesday.
This hot dog chili is a family favorite now and I especially like it as I can just add beans, green chiles, cumin and more onions to a portion to turn it into Mexican chili, so two different flavor profiles quite easily.

On Monday while making the mac and cheese for dinner I portioned off 1/4 of the bechamel sauce I made and also did a small pot of Cheese and Cauliflower Soup(CB's fav)for him to take to school with him, as it starts with the same recipe.

And all those cukes?
Besides being an addition to the salad served on Sunday I turned 7 of them into pickles.........

Three jars of bread and butter pickles(2 pictured)and a large Tupperware container of my mother's "Almost New Pickles"(a vinegary type pickle)which is not pictured.

After making peanut butter cookies for College Boy to haul back to school with him later today and finishing the sauce for the pulled pork for dinner I am taking a break from cooking for a few days.

Wednesday the Daughter and I are getting a pizza from the local place that does the "sweet sauce" pie that is a fav in this region as Hubs and CB will be gone.  We'll have salad with that.

The rest of the week I hope to get by on leftovers, BLT's using farm market "real" tomatoes and whatever else folks can dig out of the fridge/pantry.

I am done cooking for a bit.

What's been cooking at your house lately?

Sluggy

This Week....Frugalness, Money & Wisdom

We got a second car insurance refund last week.
$234.71 back in my wallet?
Why thankyouverymuch!

Hubs took last week off from work and we went away for 4 nights to the beach.  With both weekends that made 9 Days of "togetherness".
I have discovered on this week off how long I can be constantly side-by-side with Hubs before I just can't stand it any longer.
It was on Day 8.
What in the world will I do when he retires and is here in the house fulltime? lolz

That trip to DC in May, where I had to pay $75 for the conference dinner?  The organization still hadn't cashed the check as of Oct.
Upon inquiring we found out that the President of the organization holding the conference decided to comp all the meals for attending spouses as well as members.
$75 back in my wallet?
Why thankyouverymuchagain!!

As of Thursday we have cut the TV cable.
Goodbye $110+ a month for cable and internet.
Hello $40 a month for just internet.
I don't know if we will survive this drastic measure but I do know that having it disconnected on Thursday was VERY bad timing.
Project Runway's season finale was Thursday.
So I have to wait until tonight to watch it online.
Ugh.
But for a savings of $70 a month I will be OK with it.
Give me strength to survive not being able to watch PR All-Stars beginning next week though!

I made Halupki, otherwise known as Stuffed Cabbage Rolls this week.
Having lived here in the Polka Belt of Pennsylvania for the past 14 years I don't know why I never made this dish before.

Hubs had 3, I had 1 and we still have 10 left.
Instead of ground beef I used ground turkey with the ground pork in these to be a bit healthier.

I also have about half of the filling I made up left too, so I'll tuck that away in the freezer and make more another time and/or add some more ingredients to make it Mexican(chili powder, cumin and green chilles)and make enchiladas with it instead.
I spent approx. $9.25 for all ingredients and if I buy another head of cabbage I can make another 14.
Or I can turn the filling into Enchiladas with ingredients I have here already.

Between the leftover halupki, chicken Marsala, meatloaf and side dish of butternut squash & apples, I think the rest of the new planned meals on this week's menu will move to next week at this point.

I went to Target and did the Kleenex/Viva Deal on Thursday.
1 X 4 pack of Kleenex and 1 X 8 pack of Viva paper towels=$14.78-$4.25 in Qs=$10.53-$5 free Target gift card I had=$5.53 OOP......making each item come out to less than .50¢ each.
And I received another $5 Target gift card for buying these 2 items so it truly was only $5.53.
Not "almost free" like Rite-Aid but a good buy and we needed both tissues and paper towels so I am good with it.

I need to get my butt into gear and list a few things on eBay this weekend.  There is a short window of opportunity for Christmas on there after all and I don't want to miss it.  Hopefully I can rehome a few items using that platform and add a few coins to our savings.

October is a 3 paycheck month for us....yay!
I finished paying all the month's bills yesterday and if we don't spend anymore cash this month(besides what I've already taken out of the bank)we will have saved in total for the year just $400 short of the $24K goal.
Plus, unless the train goes flying off the tracks in November and December, I should be able to throw another $1K or so at the challenge in overage from those months.  But then again, December DOES mean gluttonous Christmas spending and then real estate taxes come due in January........
It IS always something, isn't it?  '-)

We just had to re-enroll in our healthcare.  Since we've got it all set up in the plan we are in finally, we are sticking with the same plan for 2015.  When you have ongoing medical needs and use DME it's just easier not to be switching around every year.
We have 5 paychecks, thus 5 more deposits from said paychecks for this year into our HSA before the $4K deductible kicks in again on Jan 1st.  This means we'll have just shy of $1.8K in the HSA that wasn't used this year, which can be put toward our high deductible plan.....so we'll only have to lay out about $2K in new money before we see any benefit from our insurance.  That will be nice for a change.
I swear having to fork over almost $300 for 1 bottle of pills(what they cost before we satisfy our deductible for the year)is about enough to make me swallow my tongue.

Sluggy
 

6 Things About Our Merry Little (Non)Frugal Christmas

Well I guess I could call our Christmas celebration frugal, if I couched it in terms of what we didn't do,  like.....
"We didn't fly the entire family to Vegas and spend Christmas wantonly gambling away our savings."
OR
"We didn't hit the local Mercedes dealership and there was no new car with a big bow on top in my driveway on Christmas morning."

Yes, compared to those two scenarios, ours was a very frugal Christmas. 8-)

Here is the main offender to our frugal celebration.....

A standing rib roast.
And here is why I have never bought one of these before, in my entire 53 years on this planet....

I about fainted after I saw the price in the grocery store! lol
And THAT was the "on sale" price.  Look above the yellow sticker part for the regular price for a 7lb hunk of this steer.....Geez!

It did look purty though, nekkid and going into the oven....

Unfortunately I don't have an "after" photo as I was too busy to snap a photo before serving it to my ravenous crowd......and there were no leftovers.
We almost had fist fights breaking out over second helpings.....


Now here are the Frugal Points to our Christmas Celebration.

1.  We stayed home and cooked.

2.  No relatives here that required anyone to fly cross country or drive further than 5 minutes away to get here. (Excepting #1 Son, who arrived on Sat. night, driving and he was in PA anyway.)

3.  Other than the roast, we made our meal from items in the stockpile(except for a couple of cans of whipped cream and a bag of carrots).

4.  Entertainment consisted of voyeurism like
Watching family members opening gifts.....

Tormenting the family dog......

Tormenting the children and spouse too by making them smile and pose for a photo.....

5.  Making food from scratch or buying complicated desserts from the Bread/Bakery outlet.
We had 5 desserts Christmas evening.....a cheesecake and Stollen from the Bakery Outlet, 2 kinds of pie and fudge(all made from scratch)

And scratch made rolls from my Great Aunt Lula's recipe.  I made a double batch of rolls actually, since they are quite popular and we hardly ever have leftovers.  So I saved myself some time and energy by making double to throw into the freezer for later.....IF they all don't get eaten in the next few days.....which they probably will.....
I made 11 pans of rolls, and I had 6 pans leftover when the clock struck midnight on Christmas night.

6.  We give sensible gifts mostly.  Though #2 Son's Christmas Wish list consisted of 1-a 2 thousand $ flute and 2-a $400 smartphone(which he can't afford to pay the plan for anyway), he received neither.
And he KNEW he wasn't getting them because this Santa mom doesn't roll that way.
We spend sensibly on children, even teenaged and almost grown ones.

When Hubs and I married, and thus marrying our vastly different Christmas traditions, gifts and spending were at opposite ends of the spectrum from what each other had experienced.  His family, which struggled financially for many years, didn't lavish money/gifts on the kids.  1 present was their norm.
My family, which had struggled early on but grew to be upper middle class and had parents who enjoyed spending their wealth and going into debt, thought nothing of dropping serious money on kids at Christmas.  In our family, there were many many gifts under the tree for each of us kids and usually 1 big(and expensive) present too.

So compared to Hubs parents, we are spendthrifts at Christmas, but compared to my parents, well, just call us Scrooge and a very Merry Hum-bug to you all. ;-)

We have a monetary limit for spending on gifts.  I try to get deals to make the spending seem like it's more than it really is.  I try not to buy mindlessly.....buying "things" just for the sake of buying stuff.  If it's a "thing" I buy, it's a thing that was asked for or a thing that is needed.  While I prefer to give services and consumables, it's very hard to do that with teens and almost adult children who don't live around here to buy services.  Since 1 is 21 now, buying consumables for him at least, adds a whole new dimension.

With my crowd now, MONEY is the most popular gift.  It always fits. lol

Now you will excuse me because I have $5 in +Up Rewards expiring today so I need to get up to Rite-Aid before the roads get any worse.
Yes, we are having a White Day-After Christmas here. 8-)

Merry Christmas!

Sluggy

How We Celebrated the 4th

Here are some photos from our 4th of July. I spent a good piece of the day looking out from the front porch.....

It was beastly hot but a clear sunny day with a slight breeze.  As long as you were in the shade you could deal with the day.

We didn't have anyone over, nor did anyone invite us to their cook out.  We had a quite(except for the pyromaniacs in the neighborhood) day, just the two of us and the dogs.

And here is why I spent so much time on the front porch....

Just me and my little smoker.
This is the first time I've used it this Summer.
The problem is, in order to make it worth the effort/time, you need to load it up with meats.
And that's great if you have a lot of people around to eat what you smoke.

But this Summer, it is basically just Hubs and I here.  The sons are off working at summer camp and while the daughter is home, she is either working when I serve meals or off with her friends on her day off.  And she doesn't seem interested in eating leftovers, even awesome leftovers.lol

And here is what I cooked in the smoker......

About 8 lbs. of pork ribs.  What do you think of that bark?  This is apres sauce.

On the rack underneath is a whole large roasting chicken.  I figured I would cook it all up and we could eat on this goodness for most of the rest of the week.  No running the oven this week, just reheating in the microwave or on the grill outside.  Cook once and eat 5 times?  I'll take it!

And here is another thing I made from scratch in the crockpot.....

Boston Baked Beans made with Yellow Eye Beans from my last trip to Maine.
I made these on Tuesday and we just reheated them on Wednesday.

While the ribs and chicken smoked I made a big batch of macaroni salad.
I put the sauce on the ribs and then it all came together.....

A truly home cooked and awesome meal for the 4th.

After licking my plate clean(ok, maybe not "clean"), it was a long swim in the pool and then a nap next to the a/c window unit.

After cleaning the smoker out that evening, my day ended as it began, sitting on the front porch, watching the town's fireworks over the tree tops from my hillside home.
No pics of the pyrotechnics though, due to my camera's delay feature and my lack of timing.lol  I do have about 8 totally black/dark photos I could share.....

The good thing about smoking a lot of meat at once and only 2 people eating?
We are still working on that chicken and those ribs from Wednesday and there is plenty left to go!

Sluggy

Meal Plan, Smeal Plan....Sometimes You Have to Abandon What You Do in the Short Term

I haven't been posting meal plans lately because well, my plans have been concocted on a daily basis.
Mostly they have been daily "what can we throw together today" plans, not weekly well thought-out plans.
Yeah, I could post a weekly plan but it would look something like....

Sunday--meat TBA, veg TBA, carb TBA
Monday--meat TBA, veg TBA, carb TBA
Tuesday--carb sub for meat TBA, veg TBA

You see what I mean?lol

Since I've been trying to eat down what is here already, here's how I've been creating my meals.
I'm not scouring the grocery ads and planning meals and buying specific foods.

I've gone to the freezer each morning and dug out a hunk of animal protein I already have here.  Then I figure out what treatment to give it(roast, grill, saute, etc.), what sauce it needs(if any from the stockpiled items), and then I pop my head back into the freezer around noon and find a veggie to go with the hunk of protein du jour, either as a side dish or to throw into a casserole treatment.  I'll head into the stockpile about an hour before dinner time and grab a carb item(rice, taters, rolls, pasta, etc.).
And Voila!.....it's dinner.
I guess I've been operating in 1950's housewife mode because this is what she must have done each day.
And if she didn't have a hunk of something frozen(and since freezers were sketchy things back then and not temperature reliable she probably didn't keep much frozen on hand), she went to the store to pick up something fresh every day or so.

If I lack something I have Hubs stop on the way home and pick it up but mostly I try to make-do with what is here.
Not very creative or labor intensive but it's sort of homemade and it's frugal.
At least it isn't fast food or tv dinners.lol

This have been working on many levels for us lately.
Hubs has been getting home at different times each evening.
#2 son has had various Band rehearsals so he's been home at irregular hours and not on solid food for the next few days after his Orthodontic visit.
Daughter often doesn't eat here and I never know from one day to the next or even 3 hours ahead if she will be dining at Chez Sluggy or not.
So doing a pre-set weekly plan hasn't been a good fit for us this past month.

So this 1st week in May, the Meal Plan is going to so something like this....

Sunday....leftovers DONE
Monday....Teriyaki Barbecue chicken thighs, mac and cheese, brussel sprouts DONE
Tuesday....whatever I feel like eating(no one else will be eating here this evening but me)
Wednesday.....another last minute meal thrown together from what is on hand and/or leftovers(possibly 2 eating home this evening, but most likely just me again)
Thursday....Ravioli, Tossed Salad
Friday....leftovers or Soup & Sandwich
Saturday....Burritos and Chili

Next month, after #1 son(who is on a strange eating schedule as well)gets home from college, I think I am going to go with a weekly plan where I will cook large meals 2 or 3 days of the week only.  This will give us a dinner for that day plus I'll cook extra so we can eat off of the leftovers for a day or even two more. 
For example, a large pot of chili, which can last for 3 dinners or more......a large pot of Pork Ragu which can see us through 3-4 meals.......a large pan of Chicken Enchiladas which can stretch out to 2-3 meals...these would be good choices and keep me out of the kitchen for long stretches. 8-))

Ok, this has turned into a rambling stream of half ideas with no point to it all so I'll stop now.

The point to take away from this is that you shouldn't come looking for Meal Plans here anytime soon.
If you can find a better more frugal point to this please let me know! ;-)

Sluggy

It's All I Can Stands, I Can't Stands No More!

The other day #2 son came downstairs at the crack of noon and asked me what was for dinner.  He's not one to wait until the last minute to find out vital information like that, ya know?!

When I told him I was yet again, making dinner from scratch, he got a look on his face and asked me if we could ride up to Burger King so he could get some burgers for dinner instead.

When I nixed this idea, a dark cloud descended over him and his long face got even longer.
Sensing this was more than the usual teen-hormone surge I am use to at home, I pressed him as to his response to me. 
I thought my no to the burger plan was just the last straw on a day that was difficult for him emotionally or something.
Nope....it wasn't that.
He finally opened up and the truth came tumbling out.

He has had enough!
Enough of all the nourishing home cooking.
For the last 18+ months I've been cooking from scratch(or something approaching it)and he is FED UP with eating healthily so much!

The poor thing.....I've cut down on his junk food to a point that he is longing for that fat, sodium, sugar, chemical laden stuff from the House of Ronald and the King, and the Bell of Taco & the Hut of Pizzas.
He misses the tasty poison and I am a bad, bad mom for denying him his minimum daily requirement of crap.

The horror.....the anguish......the Woe is Me!

Yah, I can live with it.....and so can he.  ;-)

Sluggy