Home Made Tv Dinners

Do you like the convience of tv dinners but don't like the idea of their cost and what all is in them? I don't either. I want to know what is in the food I serve my family and keep costs down at the same time. By doubling up on what you are cooking one night you can make enough to have a meal for everyone another night during the next month or two. Or have lunches for those who have access to a microwave at work.

Tonight I made pork enchiladas, refried beans and rice. I made enough to serve 3 meals tonight and have 9 more to make tv dinners for lunches or dinner during the next two months. This will save me time later on and because I made everything home made it cost me less than buying 9 tv dinners at the store.

These trays are trays that my uncle got when he was getting meals on wheels for seniors. He would save the trays for me. Some of them are also trays that you get food in from a fast food place. I also have family members who buy tv dinners save their trays for me. The trays cost me nothing and I can use them over and over again.

As you can see some of the trays have two compartments and some have three. When there is two I will combine a couple of the meal components in to one compartment.

Most of my trays have lids. I put the lids on them, set them in the freezer to freeze. Once they are frozen hard I take them out and quickly take off the lids, cover with plastic wrap, put the lid back on and back in to the freezer they go. I do that just to give the food a little extra protection from freezer burn.  For the ones I have no lids for I cover them with plastic wrap and foil.

They stack nicely in the freezer and are ready to grab and pack in a cooler to take to work or to get one out and heat up when some one is hungry.

What you can not see is that I use a Dymo label maker to make labels of what each dinner is and place them on top of the lids. That way you don't need to open to see what the meal is.

I have made lots of different meals this way and my family loves having them on hand for days when I am busy or sick they have  complete home cooked meal with out me having to cook it.

Some of the meals I have made are as follows:

Meatloaf, mashed potatoes and corn
Roast beef, gravy, mashed potatoes and peas & carrots
Pancakes, scrambled eggs and sausage patties
Beef & Bean Burritos and Spanish rice
Chicken Stew & biscuits
Spaghetti and Meat Sauce ( only cook the spaghetti noodles half way done before freezing )
Mac & Cheese w/ little sausages
Ham Steak, Baked Sweet potato and mixed vegetables
Sliced Turkey breast, stuffing and green beans

I used frozen vegetable straight from the bags with out cooking them. They will cook while you are heating up the dinner. I use only round white potatoes to make the mashed potatoes because baking potatoes some times turn grainy when frozen. I prebake the sweet potatoes and let them cool completely before cutting in half and placing in the trays.

Once you get in the habit of making these home made tv dinners you will love them. They are really easy to make a cheaper than store bought. And you can make them the way you want them. :)

March Stock Up Shopping

As most of you know we live on a limited income and only get our checks once a month. I watch all the ads for the week we get our checks and plan my shopping and menus for the month around what I can find on sale for super good prices. I also watch for good sales on meats, produce and fruit and buy big amounts to can and use for later dates.

This month included a trip to Lowery's Meat Market where I got just under 100 pounds of meat for $188.37. I love their meats. Everything tastes so good and the prices compared to Walmart, Meijers and Harding's are so much cheaper. Plus the meat is better at Lowery's if you want my honest opinion.

Here is a few pictures of the meat I got this month.

In the packages are ground sirloin, spareribs, fresh Italian brats, Cheddar brats, Jim Dean Italian sausage, breakfast sausage, honey loaf  and pepper loaf lunch meats, Colby cheese, cheddar cheese and pepper jack cheese. Of course hubby had to have his hot links and Mississippi smoked sausage. LOL Oh and plus I got two-50 pound bags of red potatoes.

We made a day of going out to eat at Golden Corral for lunch which was great! I have never been there before and then we spent the rest of the day shopping. We went to Lowery's, Walmart and Meijers. I stocked up on two months worth of meat, one month of other items plus some cabbage and corned beef briskets that I canned.

Here are some pictures of some of the other stuff I stocked up on.

All total I spent a little over $375 dollars to buy all that I got. Of course not all of it is pictured here because I didn't have time to take pictures of all of it. I had to get the meat taken care of. Other than buying milk, fresh produce and eggs I won't need to go shopping for another two months. Well that is unless I come across some really good buys in the next two months. LOL

Happy shopping everyone. Hope you are all getting some really good deals. :) Now I am off to split a double decker chocolate moon pie with hubby. I love those darn things but they are not good for my bg levels so we split them.

Another Big Shopping Trip

I had planned all along to take the $66 I had left from last Fridays shopping trip to go this week and pick up 4 hams that Meijer's had on sale for 77 cents a pound. Well I hit the jackpot when I was given and extra $200 to spend to my little hearts content. So I sat down and spent an hour going over sale ads and writing out a list of what all I wanted to get.

Then yesterday morning hubby and I sat off to some friends house where he stayed with the hubby and his wife went shopping for me. We spent 4 hours going to 5 different stores and had a blast shopping and talking as we went. Below is a couple of pics of some of what I bought. I couldn't get it all in just 2-3 pics.

This is not all of it. There is about another $100 worth I never got around to taking pics of. I did splurge a little on some donuts and cheese cake but that is not something I do very often. One thing I learned along time ago is that if I do not allow myself to splurge every once in awhile then I will go crazy one day and buy a lot of junk food. LOL

After I got done putting all this stuff away I took out the three chickens I had in my refrigerator, cut them up and packaged them in to meals for the freezer. I did the same with the big package of bacon I had in the refrigerator and one of the hams. There are now 50 meals worth of meat sitting in the freezer now and some meat that I canned early this morning and I do mean early. Couldn't sleep last night so got back up at 2 am after going to bed at 12:30 am and started canning.

Tomorrow I will show you what I canned and tell you about some mistakes you never want to make when canning. You may get a laugh out of one or two of them. :)

Making the most of my food dollars

I was going to post this tomorrow but decided to go ahead and do it tonight because I have another canning project tomorrow and may not have much time for the computer.

I hate food waste. Every time I see one bite of food go into the trash I see money being thrown away. For years there was not to much I could do about some of the food that was wasted since I was working a full time job outside the home. Between work and travel time I was putting in 60-70 hours a week away from home either at work or on the road. Then back in 1994 I was hurt in a car  accident and was no longer able to do the work I had been doing for almost 17 years. And having teens at home eating when they wanted.

But all that changed when I could no longer work. I went back to the frugal ways I had learned as a child watching my grandma and my mom. My grandma could take little bits of this and little bits of that and make a mouth watering, belly warming meal that was also very filling. You never walked away from her table hungry unless it was your own fault because she was a great cook.

By watching my grandma I learned to always scrub vegetables before peeling instead of throwing the peelings away, save them up in the freezer until I had enough to make a big pot of vegetable stock which then was canned. She would save potato peeling, carrot peelings, celery tops, onion peelings and any other veggies she prepared for meals in freezer boxes in the freezer. When she had enough she would make a big pot of vegetable stock and then either can it as is or turn it into a big pot of soup which she would then can.

Lately I have been into canning more and more and in the last year have gotten into canning fresh citrus. I was heart broken every time I throwed all those peelings from oranges, grapefruit and lemons away until this last time when I had a light bulb go off in my head. Yeah that does happen to me every once in a great while. LOL

I decided this time I was going to try to dehydrate any citrus peelings from the fruit I canned this year. On Friday night when I peeled the oranges for canning I carefully peeled the peel off with a very sharp knife leaving most of the white pith still on the oranges. I put all the peelings in a bowl, covered then with lid and placed them in the refrigerator until yesterday morning. When I got up yesterday I took the peelings and laid them out in single layers on my Excalibur dehydrator. I filled up 8 trays. Set the temp for 135 degrees and plugged it in.

Don't they look so nice and pretty with their bright orange color?

This shows you just how little of the white pith I left on the peelings.

After drying for 6 hours I took them out of the dehydrator. They were nice and crisp but still had a lot of their orange color.

 

All eight trays dumped on to one tray.

 

After they all cooled I ran them a few at a time in the blender to grind them into orange zest for baking and cooking. After all the peeling were ground up I came out with almost a pint jar of orange zest. Seeing as a tiny bottle of zest in the store can be pretty pricey I think I came out on the better end of the deal for the little extra time I spent carefully peeling the oranges and running the dehydrator.

 

 

I was giving a bottle of vodka by my uncle when he moved in with us and since we don't drink I had put it up and forgot about it. I remembered I had it while I was peeling the oranges the other night so I pulled it out and pulled out three small canning jars. I put some of the fresh peelings into each jar and then pour in enough vodka to cover the peelings. So I shook it up a little and sat it in a cool dark place. I opened on today and smelled it. It already has a good orange smell so of course I had to take a taste. It does have a taste of orange but not as much as I want so am going to let it sit for a few more weeks before using it. I have a feeling this is going to come out tasting great!

Now if only I could find a use for all that white pith I threw away I would be very happy. Then there would have been no waste at all from my canning oranges. :)

Not bad from $9.98 of oranges is it. I got 4 quarts, 6 pints, one half pint of canned oranges, almost a pint of orange zest and a pint of orange extract for my money. Think I got my moneys worth on this deal?? I sure do!

Canning Oranges

Last Friday hubby and I went grocery shopping at our local store because they had a good buy one get one free deal on lots of items. One of the deals we picked up were 4 pound bags of oranges. We got 4 bags. I knew what I wanted to do with them. I wanted to can them up so during the summer months when oranges are more expensive I would be able to save by opening one of our jars instead of buying oranges at the more expensive prices and still give my family the vitamin C they need. Out of the four bags of oranges we bought I got a total of 4 quarts, 6 pints and one half pint of pretty and oh so yummy orange slices to store in my pantry for this summer. Don't they look pretty to you to?

Here is a close up on one of my pretty jars of golden sunshine.

The reason I used quart jars and the half pint jar is because I am running out of pints. When all my kids were still at home I canned everything in quart jars so I have many more of them then I do pints. Now with just the 3 of us at home I am starting to can more in pints but haven't gotten enough of them stocked up yet. Working on that as I can afford to.

To can the oranges all I did was to wash the oranges really good in a light soapy warm water then rinsed well. I wanted to make sure there was no chemicals left on them. Then I peeled the oranges, using a very sharp knife, keeping the outer peel as thin as possible for later use, leaving most of the white pith still on the oranges. After peeling off the outer layer I then peeled all the pith off the oranges. Then pulled the sections apart.

I made a light syrup from water and sugar. Keeping the syrup hot while I packed the sections into hot jars I filled the half the jars, wipe the rims, applied the 2 piece lids and placed the jars into the boiling water bath. Processed them for ten minutes then removed them. Finished filling up the rest of the jars and placed them in the hot water bath and processed them for ten minutes.

Now my jars of pretty golden sunshine are sitting so pretty on the shelf in my pantry waiting for this summer when we will be enjoying them as is or mixed in fruit salads. I just love oranges don't you?

Check back tomorrow and see what I had in store for all those peelings I saved from the oranges. :)

Our Shopping Deals for Yesterday

This week our local store had a lot of good buy one get one free deals. I wanted to go to this sale but since I have been really sick this week hubby went with me so I could get in and out faster. I took time to make two lists and we divided the store in half. He took one half and I took the other. We met up at the check out lane to check out together. Here is a pic of hubby showing off our haul for this week. LOL

Please forgive the mess in the background. Hubby has been doing most of the kitchen duty this week and he doesn't always know where I keep things. But bless his heart he has been trying. :) Almost every thing on the table was a buy one get one free deal. Except for the meds (for me), his bag of popcorn, canning lids, milk, cheese, syrup, mustard, carrots and green peppers. Oh and the silver bag of coffee which is a restaurant blend that they had that was $4 cheaper then the same size can of Folgers.

Before we went shopping I spent a couple of hours going through the sale add and planning meals around what was on sale. All total for the 3 of us there is enough here for a month's worth of meals including using some things we all ready have in our pantry.

Because we do live on a limited monthly income I plan one big shopping trip a month to save on gas so I do not by just what I need for that month. I just plan a months worth of menus and then buy enough to make those meals but those meals may be cooked 2-3 months down the road. By doing this it has helped me keep my food bill down considerably each month. Some months I may spend as high as $200 and some months I may spend as little as a $100 and still have enough to feed all 3 of us 3 meals a day for the month. Not to bad considering the rising food costs lately.

Below is some close ups of what I bought. The English Roasts were buy one get one free and so where the pork steaks. The cheese sausage were in the markdown bin for $1.69 a package and they are normally $4.29 a package. They still have a week to go on the sale by date.

The oranges and two different kinds of potatoes were also buy one get one free.

The total it would have cost me was $197.64 if I had paid full price of each of the items. Actual cost for me was $131.15 saving me a total of $66.49. Not bad is it? Check back starting tomorrow and see what I have planned for some of the items we bought yesterday. Since I budgeted $200 for food costs this month I will be going to another store next week after Hubby's doctor appointment and seeing what more deals I can find to feel the pantry with. :)  Who knows! Maybe I will find some really good deals on baking stables.

Making your own mixes

About 4 years ago I heard of a book called Make a Mix and how easy the recipes in it for making your own mixes so I bought the book. That book sent me on a journey that I have yet to return from. The first recipe I tried out of the book was chocolate pudding mix. I knew if that recipe past my family's taste test then I had a real chance at making more and thus saving money. Since then I have surfed the net and thanks to other people's creative minds I have collected over 300 make your own mixes. I use this mixes a lot because they save me a lot of money over time. I am not paying  for fancy packaging and all I need to stock are the basic food supplies to make them. I keep all my mixes in glass canning jars and gallon pickle jars that I get for free from local restaurants.

Some of the mixes I make are pancake & waffle mix, different pudding mixes, cake mixes, ABM mixes, baking mixes, gravy mixes, cookie mixes, hot cocoa mix, flavored tea mixes, hamburger helper, rice a roni and more. These mixes also make great gift baskets at Christmas time. I have made several gifts for my family and friends over the last few years. One time I made my daughter and her family a breakfast basket that included the pancake & waffle mix, home made pancake syrup, homemade jams & jellies, hot cocoa mix and precooked shelf stable bacon. Along with the food I included a new cast iron pan because she had been wanting one. I have done dinner theme baskets, tea for two basket, a dessert basket that included a new cake pan and cookie day basket that had new cookie sheets, parchment paper and cookie cutters in it. Everyone who gets these baskets love them and always want to know what kind they are going to get next year. :)

One basket that I am planning on for this year is popsicle baskets. I hope to find popsicle molds this summer to include with the pudding mixes to make their own pudding pops. And maybe some cute sundae dishes for pudding desserts. I think those baskets would go over real well with everyone.

If you have not tried to make your own mixes please give it a try. I bet you will be surprised at how easy they are to make and all the money you can save by making them yourself.  You may find yourself hooked on making your own mixes and go on the same journey that I am on and find that you may never come back from it. :)

Cutting costs of buying meat

Do you cringe in horror each week when you get to the meat counter at the store? I know I do. Lately it seems like the price of meat is going up faster than the price of gas. Below is a few simple tips that I have either learned through the years or learned by watching my grandmother through the years of watching her cook when I was younger. A hour or less of time once a week can help save you tons of money when it comes to buying meat. They can also shorten your cooking time during the week. Another added bonus will be that you will be eating healthier to.

1. Most us eat a lot more meat at meal then is really good for us. Read up on the serving size of each type of meat you cook and package your meat for each meal to meet the number of serving sizes for your family. Less left overs, less money spent and less waste.

2. No one eats the bones that come with meat right? So why cook the meat with the bones on them then throw the bones? When you are throwing bones away from cooked pieces of meat you are throwing out some wonderful flavoring and small amounts of meat that can be used for another meal. Debone the meat (but don't throw away those bones just yet ) and wrap the right amount of serving sizes for your family and either refrigerate or freeze till you are ready to use it. Put the bones in a gallon freezer bag, lable with the kind of meat and place in the freezer. When you have enough bones saved up put them in a roasting pan with a couple of stalks of celery, a couple of carrots and a onion and roast till done. When the bones are done place them drippings and all into a stock pot, add some water and simmer till you have a nice rich broth. Take out the bones and pull off what ever meat might remain on them, set aside. Strain the broth. place back in the stock pot along with the bits of meat. add some veggies of your choice and some potatoes. Add some spices of your choice and let simmer till the veggies are done. You wind up with a rich soup for very little cost. Then you can give the bones to your dog if that is what you normally do with them. Another added bonus of deboning your meat before cooking is that the meat cooks faster there by reducing the time you spend cooking. Deboned meat also thaws faster then bone in meat in most cases. A win/win if you ask me. :)

3. When a cut of meat is on sale for a really good price buy enough to last a few months or until the next sale if it comes on sale fairly regular in your area. When whole boneless pork loins goes on sale here for $1.49 a lb I will buy 4 of them and cut them up to suit our needs. I get thin boneless chops, thick boneless chops for stuffing and pork roast loin out of them. That way for the next 6 months I have my pork chops that I paid a $1.49 a lb for instead of having to pay the $4.49 a lb that the chops are going for at other times.

4. Beef stew meat is going for $3.89 or more a lb in my area right now. So instead of buying it I will wait until a nice beef roast goes on sale for under $2.79 a lb and buy 4 of them. I will cut two of them into smaller roasts and the last two I up into stew meat. I have been able to have stew meat that is costing me $1.99 a lb while others are buying the store cut stew meat for $3.89 or more a lb.

5. Whole chickens are always a better buy then cut chicken. I buy at least 4 whole chickens when they are sale really cheap and them cut them up and package them the way I want. I debone the breasts and take the skin off. I packaged them in meal size protions. For my family of 4, two breast from one chicken makes a meal for us. I cut each breast in half and then pound them flat, flour and fry them and use like chicken fried steak or patties on a bun. I have even stuffed them with HM stuffing and baked them with some gravy over top. I use the backs, first tips from the wings and the bones and skin from the chicken breast to make chicken stock thus giving me a couple of extra meals free from the cost of meat. I save the meat I pick off the backs after making stock to use in soups.

I hope my little tips above will help you on your frugal walk through life and makes things easier for you like they have me.

Fast Food Nation

Or should we say Fat Food Nation? Have you ever stopped to think of the serving sizes fast food restaurants try to sell us each and every day, 24 hours a day? Take a look at the recommended serving sizes of food and you will see that the restaurants are trying to tempt you to eat double or even triple the amounts that you should eat. And to tempt you even further they load their foods with way to much salt, sugar and fats thus helping more and more Americans eat their way to diabetes and high blood pressure among other health issues. Is it any wonder why Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure are on the rise?

And then there is the cost of eating a meal out. Yes its nice not to have to cook and do the dishes but what about all the money that you spend eating out? Could you find something better to use it for if you didn't spend it at restaurants?

Let take a look at the cost of a breakfast bought and a restaurant versus the cost of making it at home. I am going to use prices from my neck of the woods and the ones in your area may be higher or lower than in mine.

Take a typical breakfast of 2 eggs, 2 strips of bacon, hash browns and 2 pancakes. Around here a breakfast like that is going to set you back about $7-8 depending on the restaurant. Now lets break down the cost of what it would cost me to make the same exact meal at home.

Bacon $4.50 a lb, 16 slices to a lb breaks down to about 56 cents for two slices if my math is right.
A dozen large eggs is running $1.49 a dozen which breaks down to 25 cents for two eggs.
Homemade pancake mix will cost you pennies to make per serving size but to you need to add in the cost of an egg, oil and milk so we will say 25 cents of two pancakes.
Potatoes are kind of expensive in my area but still a serving of hash browns should only cost you about 35 cents. So for a grand total of about a $1.50 just for the cost of the food you would save around $6 if you cooked the same meal at home. And if 4 people ate that same meal it would cost you about $28-$30 plus the cost of drinks and a tip so that would bring you up to around $40 and you could fix the same meal at home for 4 people including the cost of the cooking and cleaning up for less than $15. If you cooked that one meal at home once a month of 12 months you would save a total of around $180. That could make small dent in a bill or buy gifts for some of the family members or even be a nice start to a small nest egg. If spent carefully it could even buy about a month's worth of groceries for a family of 4.

One other good thing about preparing meals at home verses eating out is the fact that you can control the amounts of fats, salt and sugar that you and your family are eating. Thus helping yourself and your family live in better health.