The 2012 Freezer Fill-Up - Part 1

I love cooking, however I hate cooking in the Arizona hot summers that we are known for!

I've always had the philosophy that once the outside temp hits 100* for a few days in a row, the ovens are on hiatus until the temps are back under 100*. That means for roughly 5 months my ovens are a means of storing kitchen items that I'm too lazy to put away in their proper place!

This year I'm hoping to change that by stocking my chest freezer with actual meals rather than just ingredients. I have in some way have been doing this on and off for years, whenever I make a lasagna I usually make one to freeze as well since it take the same amount of time and creates the same mess to do two as it does one. This year though I'm going bigger and hoping to have a better summer for it!

Today I'm cooking up and freezing potato skins and twice-baked potatoes.

I'm a sucker for potato skins and whenever I'm in the "mood" for having them I'm usually don't have the "desire" to create them; which leads us to either the frozen variety or take out. Big bucks spent on a low dollar item as well as big calories on my tush from unknown ingredients!

Last night before bed I scrubbed up a bag of potatoes and put them on a cookie sheet. This morning I just popped them into a 350* oven before fixing breakfast. While the potatoes were baking (and after my boys were fed) I cooked up two packages of bacon (1.5-pounds total) and set them aside to cool.

Once the potatoes were baked and cool enough to handle I started following my favorite recipe; Crispy Chipotle Potato Skins from Weight Watchers. Since the potatoes I was using are on the small side I kept most of them halved rather than quartered as indicated in the recipe. I also chopped up five slices of bacon for to use on the entire tray of potato skins rather than the Canadian bacon since that was what I had on hand.

Regardless if you are using this recipe or your favorite one, put together the potato skins as indicated, but do not bake. Place cookie sheet of potato skins in the freezer to freeze.

Once the potato skins are frozen I placed some in a freezer bag for this Sunday's Super Bowl game and the rest got Food Savered with instructions written on the bags.

When I'm ready to cook them I'll just take them out of their bag, place them on a foil covered cookie sheet and bake per instructions, then top with green onion and tomato. Yummy!

Now onto those fabulous twice-baked potatoes!

After I pulled out the little potatoes from the oven I put ten large baking potatoes in the oven to bake while I was putting together the potato skins.

I also steamed up a cut up head of cauliflower and two large chunked up carrots and roughly mashed them.

Once the potatoes were baked and cool enough to handle I set to work on auditioning each spud. Since potatoes aren't known for their uniformity I tend to make it easy on myself and either halve a potato to get two side dish size potatoes...

or cut off the top of a potato to get one large meal size potato with a potato skin.

Today I ended up with ten side dish size potatoes...

...and four dinner size potatoes with two side dish potatoes for dinner tonight and four skins for my lunch!

After auditioning, cutting, and scooping out the potato innards we are set to make whatever kind of filling you'd like.

I added the potato innards to my pot of mashed up cauliflower and carrot. I like to get as much veggies into my family as possible and this is a sneaky way I do it. You can't taste the cauliflower and the carrot could be disguised as cheese to a picky eater. I also tossed in some shredded cheese and some chicken broth and mixed really well with a hand mixer.

I then set out on filling the side dish potatoes first. My family likes the traditional baked potato so after I filled each shell I topped with cheese, bacon, and green onion.  I popped these into the freezer until frozen and  Food Savered them two per package.

I then whizzed up some chicken that I had left over from earlier this week in a food processor and added half of it to the rest of the potato mixture.  I filled the dinner potatoes, topped with the rest of the chicken, and finished with cheese and onion.  I also popped these into the freezer until frozen and Food Saver one per bag.

I did not write down any cooking instructions on the twice backed potatoes because like baking a potato itself there are many temperatures and times to do it in.  This flexibility in cooking time means that if I'm already cooking a roast at 325* I know it'll take approximately 45 minutes to bake up a couple of frozen side dish size potatoes.  If I just want to bake the side dish size potatoes alone I can do so in a 375* oven for approximately half the time.  I love flexibility when it comes to cooking!

Remember those potato skin tops that came off of the dinner size twice baked potatoes?  Well I doctored them up and had some potato skins for lunch as my reward for doing such a great job cooking and cleaning up the kitchen afterwards!

So for a morning's work in the kitchen I end up having four dinner size potatoes, ten side dish size potatoes, two side dish size potatoes for dinner tonight, four packages of potato skins, and four delicious potato skins for lunch.  I also have the innards from the potato skins which I'll use later on this week as mashed potatoes and about two cups of the twice baked potato filling, which I haven't yet decided on using right away or freezing it for later.

Book Review: Be Thrifty (Not Cheap!)

Be Thrifty (Not Cheap!): How to Live Better with Less by Pia Catton and Califia Suntree (c) 2010 by Workman Publishing.


Awhile ago I was watching (well trying to watch) the Today Show on NBC while trying to get my kids up and ready for their day. I was half listening to a segment about money, household tips, or something of that nature when I heard the title of this book. I shook my head, giggled, and served up breakfast.

Later that week during one of my rare down times when both kids were napping at the same time, I tried to find the segment on the Today Show's web site. I didn't have much luck, but I did find the book on Amazon.com which had their Look Inside feature to see some of the book. Even after "seeing" the book on the Web, I still wanted to hold it in my hand to look through before purchasing. After a week or so of searching I couldn't find it in any book stores, second hand book stores, or big box stores. I took a big gamble and just bought it (used) through Amazon and tried to wait patiently for it to arrive by mail.

I always get nervous when purchasing books blindly on the Internet, but I'm glad I bought this one!

The format of the book makes it very reader friend, especially for this mom who is constantly getting interrupted and can hardly ever finish reading a page in one sitting. I liken the page format to that of a newspaper or new magazine; short blurbs or articles, stand out boxes for quick information, etc.

I am only on the third chapter, but already I've jotted down page numbers for some really useful information. I'm sure that with lots of searching, filtering, and time I could have found these tips, hints, and useful information somewhere on the world wide web, but I don't have that kind of time and for the most part I never thought about most of these things.

A lot of the information that I've read so far has been somewhat new to me or a refresher course to those lessons that my Depression-era grandmother tried to teach me when I was a little girl. There's also a bit of a refresher course of things that I'm sure my Home Economics teacher taught, but this brain of mine lost a long time ago.

I just finished the page about making bread and all of it's terminology. I've always wanted to bake all of the bread that my family eats, which is at least a loaf or two a week. I don't know if I'm up to snuff, but this book makes me at least want to try my hand at it!

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who's looking to save money and wants to stop outsourcing a lot of tasks that can be easily done yourself.

Article Submission: Updated Envelope Method

I was reading an article on http://www.moms-living-debt-free.com/ and posted a comment to one of their articles on budgeting (Budgeting Percentages; Recommendations for Each Major Household Budget Category). My post hasn't been accepted yet, but I still wanted to share the information with you as well as the original article. Enjoy!

I'm always looking for free money (I'm constantly looking for coins on the ground!) and for ways to make my money work for me, yet be quickly (within 3-5 days) accessible as well.

I opened/created accounts at three online banking institutions which are FDIC insured, their interest rates are much better than the brick and mortar banks in town. I named each account and then set up automatic deposit so that every paycheck a chunk of money goes into the different accounts and accrues interest. I just happened to use three online institutions mainly due to already having an account with them or even getting free money deposited into my account after making a minimum years worth of deposits.

I created accounts for Property Taxes, Insurance Bills (Life, Home, & Vehicle), Clothing Fund, Vacation Fund, Home Projects/Fix-Ups, and most importantly an Emergency Fund. For those accounts that I know I won't (or shouldn't) be dipping into very often I make sure that the money is in a higher yielding interest account. For those accounts that I know I'll dip into 3+ times a year I don't really worry myself about the interest rates since I know I'm getting a better one than at the stand alone banks in town.

So now instead of wondering how I'm going to pay the property taxes on our house I can go into that account and have the money transfered into my main banking account (for free). If the kids need new clothes I can transfer money from the clothing fund and pay off the credit card (that has rewards) that I used to purchase the clothes with.

Before doing single accounts per category, I tried to lump all the money into one account, hoping to take advantage of making even more interest on the large balance in the account. However I found it much too difficult to keep track of what monies were for what, even with my spreadsheet to help me keep track.

It's really just personal preference on the number of accounts and I choose to keep the hair on my head by not pulling it out trying to figure out how much money I had left in my vacation fund!

E-Article - 7 Radical Ways To Save Money

7 Radical Ways To Save Money by Jennifer Mulrean on MSN.com

I have no idea which Facebook post directed me to this article, but I at least wanted to share the article with you. I found the contents a bit of common sense and had a few "duh" moments when reading it. Of course I myself just reevaluated my family's budget this past week which caused me to bang my head against the wall a few times and quietly scolded myself about our recent run-a-way spending habit. I'm a firm believer that you need to reevaluate your budget every quarter just to make sure you're still on the track that you set yourself on in the first place...it's far to easy to jump track and live in the moment, forgetting about your goals.

So back to the article, Jennifer Mulrean quickly goes through seven steps to make money and/or keep money in your pocket. They are...

1. Hold the mother of all garage sales - get rid of all that stuff in your house the you don't need, haven't used in ages, and just plain don't want anymore. In my case since I can't stand hosting a typical garage sale it's to the baby/kid consignment stores and craigslist!
2. Quit smoking.
3. Tame your driving addiction - take public transportation, unfortunately in my case that wouldn't work too well. It takes hubby an hour to get home, to take the bus would add at least another 40-minutes to that the last time we took a look at the bus schedule. I'll take the expense rather than the missed family time. Metro Phoenix is getting on the bandwagon of more ways to get around the city, but until the metro-rail comes up the Glendale way, the hubby will be driving himself.
4. Buy used - the article mainly focuses on clothing, but buying gently used appliances (we love B&B Appliances!), baby items (Kid-to-Kid or Other Mothers), cars, etc. will save you a lot of money. Now for those of you who wrinkle your nose at buying used clothing, get over it and hit the local consignment shops and donation stores like Savers and Goodwill. I'd much rather pay no more than $4 for a pair of nice looking shorts or pants for my rapidly growing children than the $12+ retail.
5. Become a homebody - stop going out for your entertainment. Rent movies rather than going to the theater, eat at home rather than going out for dinner or calling in for take out, borrow books and audio from the library rather than purchasing them, etc.
6. Cut your housing expenses - physically moving to a cheaper part of town may work for some, but for others it's impractical. Instead they focus on renting a portion of your home to create income. Of course there are other ways to cut housing expenses too like doing your own landscape maintenance rather than having landscapers come out or find ways to lower your utility bills.
7. Cut up your credit cards - yeah, I don't think so. I can understand the reasoning behind this idea, but I myself feel much more comfortable knowing that I have a large amount of credit in my pocket for a just in case (like we need a new AC unit). However most families out there do carry a large chunk of credit card debt month to month and so I can see how cutting up the cards, or locking them up, would help those people stop blindly charging and whittling those balances down.

To read the full article yourself click on the link in the title of this page.

Grocery Savings 101 - Part Three

Where to look for coupons before going grocery shopping!

• Local Newspapers
• Online
• Other Print Materials
• Coupon Clubs

Coupons in Local Newspapers

It is said the majority of all coupons can be found in your local newspaper; tucked in the middle of the Sunday edition between the funny papers and the weekly store advertisements. Each week you will discover either a bumper crop of coupons or one little booklet (or none at all). Just as with everything else in the consumer world, coupons too have cycles.

Proctor and Gamble (P&G) comes out with a coupon booklet once a month, usually at the first of the month depending on what day Sunday falls on. There you can find coupons for your basic cleaning supplies and paper products. I find that these coupons are usually low value, but great when you redeem them at a retailer that is doubling or tripling their coupons, making that $0.25 coupon worth $0.50 to $0.75 off! The downside is that they expire within 3 -4 weeks, of course you'll find most of them again the next month.

There are also certain times of the year where coupons are more abundant in your local paper; upcoming holidays and major events like Back to School produce a higher number of coupons in your paper. When this happens it is almost always worth going out to get a few more newspapers just for the coupons. There have been weeks where I can clip $10 - $15 (or more) worth of coupons per paper knowing that I'll be using them relatively soon; that is where purchasing another Sunday edition is worth the additional $2 because I will still be saving so much money using the coupons in it.

Coupons can also be found within the pages of the newspaper itself. If you're not a paper reader normally, take a quick scan of each page just to make sure that you aren't missing any valuable coupons that are hiding amongst the pages. Same goes for all the weekly advertisements and magazines that are found in the center of the paper.

If you only look for coupons in your local paper, you can save quite a bit of money each month on your grocery bill. However you can double or triple your monthly savings by looking for coupons online as well.

Online Coupons

These days everything is online and coupons are no exceptions. There are three types of online coupons; printable coupons, e-coupons that get stored on your loyalty card, and coupon codes.

There are many places to find printable coupons on the Internet.

Web-sites like SmartSource.com, Coupons.com, and Shortcuts.com only require you to download their printing application before you can print off any of their coupons. The plus side here is that all you need to do is add yourself to their mailing list and then they send you an email every time there is a new batch of coupons on their site, usually every Tuesday.

Most grocery store web-sites also have a section on their web page devoted to coupons that you can print out (or load onto your loyalty card). They too tend to send you an email every time that they have new coupons on their web-site.

Manufacturer web-sites may also have a coupon page. For example BettyCrocker.com comes out with new coupons at the beginning of every month. The down side of looking for particular brand name or manufacturer coupons is that they can be hard to find on their websites or non-existent. Sometimes you need to sign up for their weekly/monthly newsletter in order to get access to coupons.

Don't despair if you can't find coupons for products that you usually use. In most cases you can go to the products web page and request coupons. Requests like these tend to be hit or miss, but if you are persistent and tell the manufacturer how much you enjoy their product, but need some assistance in the form of coupons to purchase their product - most times you'll get mailed a few. I've even gotten free trial sized products this way too!

Other Print Coupons

Coupons are printed everywhere, but most of them are missed because we are too involved with looking at the actual print material to realize that there is a money saving coupon that we can use. Money saving coupons can be found in magazines, junk mail inserts, and on the back of your grocery receipt. They can also be found on the product packaging materials (i.e. cereal boxes) either on the visible outer part of the packaging, inside the packaging, or as an additional insert within the packaging.

There are also coupon stands that can be found at some retailers (i.e. the car wash) that might have discounted coupons for not only the service industry but at grocery stores as well. In the past I have found coupons for our discounted bread store and our discounted grocery store.

Grocery stores also have coupon kiosks in nearly every aisle for coupons on a particular product. Even if you aren't going to purchase the product that has a coupon kiosk under it, grab a few coupons to use the next time you need to purchase it.

Some retailers mail their loyal customers coupon books every few months with store coupons. These coupons are fantastic because they usually are all store coupons which means that if you have (or can find) a manufacturer coupon for that same product, you can stack the coupons on a single product. Getting on their mailing list can be as easy as setting up a loyalty card with the retailer, signing up for a registry (i.e. by signing up for the baby registry at Target you will get not only their store coupon booklet, but their baby coupon booklet as well), or asking at customer service.

Coupon Clubs

Coupon clubs consist of people just like you who want to save as many pennies as they can on their grocery bill. You can start a coupon club at your office, amongst your friends or social group, or join an existing one. You don't necessarily have to stick with clubs in your area either, join a club in another state or across country and you'll get a whole new variety of coupons.

There are many ways you can set up your own coupon club, the main thing now is that you clip every coupon that you find in the Sunday paper and other resources so that you can share those with your fellow club members. For instance say that you don't color your hair, but other club members do. Rather than throwing out those coupons every month you can pass them along to the members who do use the product.

There are also coupon club web-sites out there that want you to pay a monthly or yearly fee. Some even let you purchase coupons (which is illegal) like CentsOff.com. I just let these pass by my radar. The most I'll pay for any coupon is the cost of a stamp to mail it.

For more information about starting your own coupon club read an article I found on about.com, Starting a Small Coupon Exchange Club.

* * *

So now that you know where to look for coupons, you just now have to start looking, clipping, and organizing them! It may sound like a daunting task to set up, but it really isn't and once you get in the habit of looking for and clipping coupons it'll just become second nature to you.

Magazine Article: 42 Ways To Cut Everyday Costs

42 Ways To Cut Everyday Costs by Celia Shatzman

Family Circle - August 2010

In this months Family Circle Magazine there is an article that I thought you might be interested in taking a look at. It gives you ideas and resource information for ways to save on buying online, couponing, gym memberships, insurance, home improvements, and more. To access the entire article online use the title link above.

Of course I immediately read the Coupons section of the article and here's what I found that's useful at the grocery store.

Commonkindness.com- a coupon website that makes donations to the charity of your choice (I started with St. Mary's Food Bank Alliance) each time you print off a coupon, up to three coupons.

• Perks: You are donating to worthy charities of your choice by printing off coupons that you would still be printing out on a different website. You can have as many charities as you want and choose which charities you're printing the coupon for, giving them the donation through Commonkindness.com. There are also coupons for local businesses, discount codes, magazine subscriptions, etc.
• Downside: You have to sign up and give some personal information like your name, birth date, and zip code.

Edeals.com - a coupon site for local businesses and much more. Think of it as your electronic junk mail coupon holder and more. (Note: I'm just looking at the printable coupon section of edeals.com; they have other coupon and savings options available.)

• Perks: You can search for coupons via zip code, finding coupons that you wouldn't normally get in the junk mail on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. They also have a map option that you can drag and drop to any area in the Valley.
• Downside: I haven't seen one yet.
  

I just focused on the two sites above because they have the potential of lowering my grocery bill, which is what I always look for. However the entire article is a good read and give a lot of advice and website sources that you wouldn't otherwise think of. It's worth the few minutes to read it and who knows, you may find a valuable tidbit that will save you and your family money!

I love my...Gemini Range/Oven!

I've always wanted double-ovens in my kitchen and when we starting looking for a new home that was on the top of the priority list, double-ovens or space to add double-ovens. Then we found our house, it didn't currently have nor have space for double-ovens; however it already had a Gemini range which I never thought about before.

Now I would have never purchased the appliances that were in our house, they are just too space-aged for me with all the bells and whistles that I would never use or figure out how to use. The stove top on our range is ridiculous with just one big burner and three smaller ones. Two of those burners do connect together to make a big oval burner and until I got an oval pan, it was very annoying - now, not so much. However it's the ovens that after a year of using that I'm starting to have the warm, cozy feelings about about.

For those of you who do not know, a Gemini Range/Oven is a stand alone range with two ovens, the top oven being significantly smaller with only one rack and the bottom a full sized oven with two to three racks. I'm sure that most of the Gemini Range/Ovens out there have (or can have) a convection oven option like mine do (mine is for the bottom oven) that cooks food quicker using a circulation fan.

Now as I've said in previous posts and for those of you who know my idiosyncrasies, I have always put my oven on strike once it hits a 100-degrees outside and I don't consider using it until it is below 100-degrees for at least a few days in a row. This is why if I have had to have an oven on for some reason during the summer (and the NESCO wouldn't cut it), I would use our toaster oven since it is so much smaller, won't heat up the kitchen as much, and will cool off that much quicker. Now that I have a Gemini Range/Oven I've actually turned on the smaller oven a few times this summer (Gasp!). It may take a bit longer to cool off after using, but it's does the trick when you need a full cookie sheet of say....chicken pieces to cook. I no longer feel the need to split the chicken pieces into two cooking batches to use the toaster oven just to stay cooler at night.

I know that this will sound crazy to most of you, but I'm an Arizona native and I refuse to line the coffers of APS anymore than I have to. Also having to live on one income makes you come up with all sorts of creative ways to save money and not having an oven on during the summer makes a significant dent in our electric bill (I'm talking hundreds of dollars over the entire summer). I will still prescribe to my old way of thinking by not having the oven on during the summer, but I will also occasionally break that rule just because I now can have a small, full sized oven on without killing the AC unit (or my bill) that night!