Corn Casserole Recipe

Someone in the comments asked me about my corn casserole recipe.
I use this one HERE.  It's a Paula Deen recipe except there is controversy about whether the "real" recipe calls for a 1/2 stick of butter or a 1/2 cup of butter(which is 1 whole stick).  You are either in the 1/2 stick or 1/2 cup camp.

There are two differences to my version of this recipe.......
1-I don't top with cheddar cheese.  It really does not "need" it and when I've put the cheese it you really get more cheese than corn flavor.
2-When mixing up the batter I reserve the water in the can of whole corn, and add 1/2 of what is in there to the batter, making it soupier.  I find that this extra liquid gives a texture that is more corn pudding(ie, a corn spoon bread)than corn bread to the finished product.  You should be able to spoon the finished product out of the casserole.

It's an easy recipe with only 5 ingredients(plus the water from the whole corn)and doesn't use eggs like most corn spoon bread recipes.

Corn Casserole from Sluggy

• 1 (15 1/4-ounce) can whole kernel corn, drained and reserve 1/2 the water and add to the batter
• 1 (14 3/4-ounce) can cream-style corn
• 1 (8-ounce) package corn muffin mix (recommended: Jiffy)
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1/2 stick butter, melted

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. 

In a large bowl, stir together the 2 cans of corn, 1/2 the corn "water", corn muffin mix, sour cream, and melted butter. Pour into a greased 9 by 13-inch casserole dish. Bake for 45 minutes, or until golden brown. Let stand for at least 5 minutes and then serve warm.

Let me know if you try this recipe and what you think.

Sluggy

Frugal Friday.......the January 19th Edition

Since I didn't leave the house much last week there isn't much to report in on, out of the ordinary(cooking meals, free entertainment at home, etc.)but here goes anyway.........

*  I finally went to Weis on Wednesday and got a couple of grocery store deals.......

Weis now doubles all coupons up to .99¢(so anything .99¢ or less doubles fully).  I got 8 cans of Campbell's soup, on sale for $1 a can.  I used 2 x .80¢/4 Qs(which doubled fully to $1.60 off each).
8 x $1=$8.00-$3.20 in Qs=$4.80 for all or .60¢ a can.
Of course I had a problem with the cashier(she usually works in the pharmacy and doesn't now how to deal with coupons when they don't scan, so we had to get a manager involved so I got my full value on those Qs). lolz

The other good deal was San Giorgio pasta was on sale $1 a box.  I paired 2 x $1/3 Qs and got 6 boxes of assorted pasta for .67¢ each.

* I did the Mix and Match/Buy 6 Items, Get $3 off Instantly Deal once, buying 2 bottles of dish soap, 2 bags of frozen veggies and 2 packs of Klondike bars(we were out of ice cream).  On sale that all came to $12.94.  The $3 didn't come off so I had to go to CS and get $3 cash.  Then I got $1.25 back from Ibotta for these 6 items so $12.94-$4.25=$8.69 OOP or $1.45 each.

*  But the best deal I got this week was this...........

Leftover bags of Xmas Lindt Truffles at Weis(PMITA)Markets.  Reg. price of $6.59 each.  The sign in the bin said $3.09 each.  I had printed off $1/1 Lindt truffles bags coupons from Coupons dotcom(NLA)and had them with me.
I got two and figured $2.09 per bag of 20 truffles was a decent price for something I could tuck into a giveaway box or two.
The cashier rang them up and $6.09 came off, making them .50¢ a bag OOP!!!
I rang back and got the other 6 bags in the bin.
$6.59 x 8=$52.72-$48.72=$4.00-$2 in Qs=$2.00 for all 8 bags or .25¢ per bag.
Woot!

* I dug 2 old whole chicken breasts out of the chest freezer this week.  After sauteing them up I diced up the meat and split the resulting amount for two meals.  I also found an old bag of mixed frozen veggies in the freezer as well as a 2 pack of store bought leftover pie shells, both of which needed to be used asap.

I used 1 of the pie shells, the frozen veggies and the diced chicken(along with 2 cans of chicken soup, an onion, some spices and a hand rolled second pie crust to make a big chicken pot pie.  There was a serving of veggie/soup/spices/chicken filling leftover but into the fridge that Hubs will most likely have over rice for a lunch this weekend.

The other pie crust was used to bake a sweet potato/pumpkin pie, using extra filling mix from Thanksgiving that I had put into the freezer, as the recipe I had used made more filling than usual because I added in canned sweet potatoes that I wanted to use up.
I was going to make College Boy this pie at Christmas but we had so many other treat foods I decided to wait.  An extra pie during the Winter doldrums is a pleasant surprise, right?  ;-)

* On Thursday Hubs and I went to have my Free birthday burger at Red Robin.

I had an old Red Robin gift card to use for Hubs meal.  Between the burger and the steak fries it was enough food for me and I had water to drink so no charge for that either.  I couldn't believe how much the price of the burger I usually get there has gone up!  It was over $11.  I remember when this area got a RR and that burger was under $8.
Hubs decided to get a large expensive beer with his burger. Hmmmm  I am such a frugal hard-ass that I made him pay me $5 out of his WAM to reimburse me partially for that beer as I didn't want to spend more than 1/4 of my gift card on a beer and it wasn't HIS birthday after all! lolz  Unless we are specifically going out to drink alcohol I don't "spring" for drinks.  Buying liquor at a restaurant is so pricey and goes against my grain, ya know? ;-)

*  Tonight's dinner is that free ham I got at Christmas time from Weis(PMITA)Markets.

I'm going to put it into the slow cooker before I go out to Weis for a few groceries.  This 10 lbs. of ham will give us more than one dinner.  Sliced again into ham steaks for meal #2, diced into quiche meal #3, into omelettes meal #4, etc.  The bone will go into soup eventually too.
I don't buy/serve ham often(maybe twice a year since the sodium content is so high)but every now and again it's on the menu.  That being said, if I spy a leftover ham shank on clearance this time of year I'll pick it up for cheap and throw it into the freezer.  8-)))

That's about all this week at Chez Sluggy.
What frugal things have happened at your house lately?

Sluggy

Winter Wonderland

Except for the two days of 55F+ weather last weekend, it's been cold, colder, coldest here 24/7.
This morning it was -2F(not wind chill temp mind you, REGULAR TEMP!).

But this guy here, he don't care!
Chester is enjoying marking the snow and romping through the drifts like a porpoise.....until his paws get cold then he wants in!

We got a bit more than expected.....say, about 4-5 inches more than expected. lolz

The sun came out yesterday as we were shoveling out.  I caught the sun peeking through the clouds and the branches of the snow covered trees by my garden bench.

  A couple of shots of the giant pine tree where Chester does his "business".......

I didn't leave the house from last Thursday until yesterday.....well I went outside but didn't go anywhere in the car.

I've been watching Wrestlemania bouts in the den.  Daughter's dog lays down and Chester crawls all over her and they play for 30 minutes at a clip.

I received this in the mail earlier this month..........

It's a thank you card from my December Giveaway Box winner.
Often times I'll get a thank you email from a winner letting me know the box got there ok(and sometimes I have to nag the winner to let me know)lol.
This is the first winner who sent me a real honest to goodness snail mail card!  I was shocked and touched to get it.  8-)))

6 days and no shopping or errands for this gal.
This means we'll be going out today for meds, hit the bread store, Walmart(maybe)and..........

a free Birthday Burger at Red Robin!
Yep, Sunday is my birthday.  Time to cash in those Birthday Freebies!
Too bad nobody hands out free birthday trips to Cancun or magnums of Champagne tho........8-)

What's going on in your life lately?


Sluggy

My Goals in 2018...Not 18 Though

Everyone and their brother seems to be doing an "18 Goals in 2018" deal.  For the life of me I can't come up with 18 Goals but here are the areas I want to concentrate on this year so far.......

*  Sewing-I want to get 5 sewing projects completed.  I have identified 2 of them.....1 is finishing some canvas tote bags.  I bought canvas and webbing many many years ago to make tote bags.  It's sitting by the bedroom door staring at me every time I go in that room so they need to get made.
2 is to make a table runner for the top of my new dining room buffet.  I had Fall and Christmas ones but now it's nekkid.  For now I've got a quilted hexagonal topper on it that was gifted to me on the road trip this past Summer.
I've got quite a few pieces of batik cotton fabrics so I am going to make a table runner(or buffet runner rather).

*  Continue to drop some weight.  I've gotten back into some bad eating habits(it's Winter and the only thing I want to eat is comfort food)so I need to make it a point to keep the comfort foods to a minimum now and get back to more veggie eating.  I really don't want to eat salad when it's -2F outside but I can roast root veggies, right?

*  Cull more of my toiletries stockpile.  This shouldn't be too difficult a goal but will take most of the year to make a big change in what I have.  I have already started--I spent last Monday in the toiletries stockpile stored in Hubs man cave/the spare room.  I went through every Rubbermaid tub(and all the stuff from the last 3 months of 2017 that hadn't made it into the tubs yet)and made decisions about every single item.  Some things already got pitched, other things got separated into either a food bank pile or a "fill a year's worth of Giveaway boxes" pile or give to relatives during 2018 when we see them.  With the next system at Rite-Aid I don't foresee me pillaging there as much so once my Plenti Points are used up I won't be bringing home as much goodies as before.

*  Make a new Passwords/Log In Book and a new Address Book.  I keep a small spiral bound notebook with all my computer account information.  It, along with my physical address book are so old and out of date and have so many items scratched out it's getting hard to find the current information in them.  I picked up a new spiral bound notebook so I need to cull all the current info and copy it into the new notebook.  I also need to find a new address book that doesn't cost much money and put all the current addys/phone numbers into it.

*  Deal with the house in Louisiana.  Now Daughter says she may move back to NW Lousiana/NE Texas.  Her BF got a raise and a promotion and it looks like he's going to stay at his current employer long term so once she gets her degree so now we are thinking about keeping the house for them to rent from us.  We are going to have to dump money into this house to get it sold otherwise.(BF and his father redid HALF the kitchen when Daughter owned the house and now this is the main reason we aren't getting offers on it because nobody wants a half done kitchen. lol)  So we keep and rent it out in a year to Daughter and BF(on the condition they don't move his parents back in with them and 9 cats)or we finish fixing it up and move into the house ourselves once we sell the house in PA.
We at least need to make a decision on the LA house this year and start implementing a plan.

*  Sell more stuff.  I got a few things sold on eBay and through the local Yard Sale site  in 2017.  I just need to ramp that up more and get a minimum of 4 Rubbermaid tubs of items sold.  I also need to earmark what I make from those sales toward something.  At this point I am thinking of putting it toward work on the PA house.  Which leads into the next goal...........

*  Start putting together a punch list of things to address in the PA house in preparation for putting it on the market after next Spring once Daughter graduates.  We still need to figure out where we are going to live once we leave here but we need to start the plan for getting this house ready to sell. sigh.

*  I need to put all my genealogy stuff into a family tree software program.  Other than the few things I have printed off and stored in my computer my extensive family tree is on Ancestry dotcom.  I don't like that if they ever go away(not likely to happen as they make money hand over fist with that site)or for some reason I can't access the site I don't have most of my info.  If anyone out there does genealogy and uses a family tree software program that you like, let me know about it.  Thanks!

*  Other areas we need to ponder are gardening and traveling.  Not sure yet what is going to happen in those arenas for 2018 as it's still early.

That's all I have so far.  I'll keep pondering goals to add.

Have you got any lofty goals to accomplish in 2018.
Tell us about it, won't you?

Sluggy

Rejiggering the Budget & Spending in Retirement-2018

We had our budget meeting for 2018.  That's our discussion on how much money we'd have for 2018 and where we are going to spend that money.

Just to recap, our income is derived from an annuity payment each month, and once we access it, our 401K account.  We also have additional regular savings that I've socked away since 2009 which we can access if needed(but I hope we don't need it this year).
We have a RMSA to reimburse for healthcare premiums in 2018 and I'll be starting to use our HSA account starting in 2018 for medical co-pays/payments.
So this discussion is just about how/where to spend the annuity income and how much 401K cash we need to withdraw in 2018.

First thing was to figure out how much money we spent in 2017.  This will help us figure out what we'll need to spend in 2018.  Using that as a base we can add/subtract due to changes we want to make in 2018.
After tallying it all up I found that we actually spent just shy of $60K last year.  That's a lot of money!  Some of that spending won't be happening going forward, like College Boy's tuition and living expenses at the apartment up at college.  And hopefully all the expenses associated with the Louisiana house will be going away this year too.  Other expenses we stopped paying in 2017 once Hubs retired were commuting costs, dry cleaning costs, and other costs associated with him working.  If the stars all align I believe we'll have expenses about $10K less than what we spent in 2017.

Last year we had a foot in both the regular income world and the retired income world so it was a hard year to balance spending.  This year it's Retirement 24/7 at Chez Sluggy. ;-)

Going forward our annuity comes to just over $38K per year net.  I don't know with the new tax legislation if the tax withholding will change so I'll go with what we've been getting so far.

First order of business was to figure out how much we actually "need" to withdraw from the 401K to supplement the annuity income in 2018.  We were able to hold off withdrawing from the 401K the last Quarter of 2017 but that won't cut it going forward as Hubs wants to spend more on "fun" in 2018.

* Hubs' plan going into retirement was that he wanted to withdraw $36K a year from the 401K($9K per quarter).  Even at this rate, once we stop needing to withdraw the 401K $ to live on in 7+ years, when Hubs hits full Social Security age, we'll have over 75% of what we had when he retired in that account. So it's in no danger of being depleted withdrawing at that rate.
$36K after tax withholding would be $30,600 net.
$38K+$30,600 is $68,600 net income a year.

Now I know if we take out that much Hubs will set about spending that much! lol  I really don't think, at least for now, we need to withdraw $9K every quarter to supplement the annuity and live a comfortable life.
Call me the "stick in the mud" in this relationship but starting in 2019, for the following 4 years and 3 months(4 years and 11 months for me)we are on our own with regard to healthcare insurance and who even knows what health insurance will look like/cost after 2018.  Yes we have a medical savings account but there isn't enough in there to pay for almost 5 more years on insurance premiums out of pocket.  I am staying cautious when it comes to spending money on "fun".  I pointed out to Hubs that we already spent over $8K in discretionary or fun in 2017 so we really don't need to withdraw lots more $ for that purpose.   ;-)

Withdrawing $6K a quarter gives us $20,613.24 per year after tax withholding which bumps our income up to $58,690.80 net per year.
It's about $1500 less per year than what we spent in all of 2017.  I'd like to try to keep the withdrawals to this amount per quarter, at least for now.

* Next order of business was the "Walking Around Money" or WAM.
Since retiring we've been allotting $100 each per month for each of us.
In the last 6 months I've found I can stay under $100 per month easy.  Hubs?....not so much.
He doesn't feel comfortable getting down to his last dollar.  He had a "situation" where he went out for Chinese take-out at the other place in our town because our usual place decided to close on Mondays(and it was a Monday).  This other place only takes cash or local checks, no credit cards.  We didn't think about that when he went and of course, being the end of the month, he didn't have enough cash to pay.  Ever since that incident he's been antsy about running out of cash.

Now I don't think it's "fair" that he gets more WAM than me to throw about anyway he wants and he doesn't think it's "fair" that he can't spend what he wants on what he wants.  It's the old "I work hard so I deserve it" gambit, right?

I asked him to make a list of things he might want to buy in 2018 and we can set this much aside for him to blow.  But he refuses to be pinned down or give me any inkling on what he WANTS to spend on in 2018.  This makes me nervous since I am sure between buying coffee drinks, trips to McDonald's, books at retail price, alcohol, spending money on chess(software and entering tournaments)and on his new beer brewing hobby(the equipment can be pricey!)during all this free time he now has, he could blow through his WAM plus another $10K in short order and have no clue he's blown through that much.

We came to a compromise on the WAM--we still only get $100 per month each BUT he gets an extra $50 in January ONLY.  He's going to keep that $50 as an emergency WAM back-up amount so "if" he runs out of WAM before the month is over he won't "feel" broke. lolz  I just keeping wondering how long until he spends that extra $50 and wants it replaced?...Hmmm.....

* Then it was on to the Sinking Fund to pay irregular bills out of.  Hubs didn't like the idea of pulling $650(or more if costs go up on those bills)off the top of the annuity payment each month.  I went through the IBs(irregular bills)per quarter and showed him how much we need each quarter to pay those in full. 
1st Quarter-$2558.51(Garbage, Sewage, R/E Taxes, LTC(Long Term Care Policy))
2nd Quarter-$1383.24(Car Insurance, LTC)
3rd Quarter-$3220.29(House Insurance, School Taxes, LTC)
4th Quarter-$1383.24(Car Insurance, LTC)

So I am taking the corresponding amounts in Jan., Apr., Jul. and Oct. off the top of the 401K withdrawals in each of these months to cover the IBs and putting it into a designated account out of which the IBs will be paid.
I really don't see what difference it makes if I take it out of the 401K withdrawals or $650 out of the monthly annuity payment but if doing it this way makes Hubs happy, I'm good with it.  8-)

For the 1st quarter after deducting the $ for the IBs into the Sinking Fund, we have $2,594.80 left in the 401K withdrawal to add to our income this quarter, or $86493 each month to add to the annuity income for Jan., Feb. and Mar. 
For the 2nd and 4th Quarters we'll have $3770.07 left in the 401K withdrawals to add to our income, or $1256.69 each month as the IBs aren't so much in those quarters.
For the 3rd Quarter we'll only have $1933.02 left in the 401K withdrawal to add to our income, or $644.34 each month.

So after taking the IBs dedicated amounts off the top of the 401K withdrawals here is what our net "income" will look like per month--
Jan. $4038.06
Feb. $4038.06
Mar. $4038.06
Apr. $4429.82
May $4429.82
Jun. $4429.82
Jul.  $3817.47
Aug. $3817.47
Sep. $3817.47
Oct. $4429.82
Nov. $4429.82
Dec. $4429.82
$50,145.51 Total for 2018 to pay all the variable bills per year.
(Plus $8,545.29 tucked away to pay the IBs for the year.)

So this is the financial game plan heading into 2018.

Questions?
Comments?


Sluggy