I’m still here! I’ve been working on a little project that has been taking time and energy, but I hope to be back soon with quite a few updates.
For today, if you’re looking for modest, affordable clothing, head over to Shade Clothing right away. Quite by chance, I discovered today that they are liquidating and closing their doors. Sad day for modest clothing suppliers, but what a joy for those of us who like and need a good sale! Head over quickly before all the good sizes are completely gone!
Recently, I participated in a financial workshop which had a fun twist: frugal, healthy recipes.
I talked about how to make unsausage burgers. We all know how pricy it can be to eat out at fast food places all the time. With these burgers, however, you can make your own “fast food” at home.
If you are vegetarian, you know that it can be expensive to buy vegeburgers all the time. One link I found online listed Boca Garden Burgers for $5.19 for 10 oz! That’s for only 4 burgers.
This unsausage burger recipe is economical because it is made out of oatmeal, which you can get for great prices. Here’s the recipe for an economical burger that’s also healthy and it tastes good!
Place water and seasonings in a pot and bring to a boil. When it is boiling, add the quick oats and cook, stirring, for about 5 minutes.
Spray a cookie sheet (or two) with nonstick cooking spray. Form into patties, using a canning jar ring (like these) and lid (or spatula) and an ice cream scoop. (The kind with the lever that you squeeze works best.) Here’s how you do it. Scoop the hot oatmeal mixture with an ice cream scoop. Place on the cookie sheet. Place canning ring around the mound of seasoned oatmeal, and press down using a canning lid or even spatula. You may need to wet the spatula with water or spray it with cooking spray to prevent the burger mixture from sticking to it. Continue until you have perhaps 9-12 burgers formed on your cookie sheet.
Bake for 15 minutes, then remove and turn the burgers over, and continue baking for 15 more minutes.
This recipe makes around 15-18 burgers.
I like making bunches of these burgers at once to put in the freezer. It is very easy to take one or two out and microwave them for a quick sandwich. You can also serve these by placing them in a casserole dish and covering them with gravy. It makes a quick and easy casserole.
This post is linked at Frugal Fridays.
1. They taste good. Duh. Isn’t that one reason why we pick up mixes at the store? Whether it’s a cake mix, a box of mac and cheese, or a box of elaborate cous cous with olive oil and garlic, you’d have to agree that if it didn’t taste good to someone in your house, you wouldn’t buy it. You also have to agree that homemade food generally speaking tastes so much better than those boxes at the store!
2. Saves money. When you make mixes at home, you can stock up on whole food ingredients at bulk prices and make a whole bunch of goodies at a time. For example, it’s cheaper per unit to buy a box of split peas or beans at a wholesale foodservice store such as Smart & Final, Costco, or Gordon Food Service.
3. Make food friendly for picky kids. If Joey doesn’t like blueberries in his pancake or Susie doesn’t like mushrooms in her soup, you can leave them out.
4. Structure exactly what types of ingredients you want to add. It is easy to make food mixes for dietary needs and preferences. I do suggest that before making 10 or 12 bags of non-dairy whole wheat biscuits, however, you try them out and make sure your family likes them. If you prefer to add less sugar to your cornbread, you can! That’s the beauty of making your own mixes.
5. Avoid trans fats. Ever read a label and see something that says “hydrogenated” on it? Hydrogenated ingredients are not essential, and they are not good for you, either. They elevate the levels of “bad” cholesterol (LDL) and increase the risk of coronary heart disease.
6. Mixes make great gifts. In previous years, I have given homemade soup mixes to coworkers during the Christmas season, and they have loved them! You know how busy folks are during the holidays. It only takes a couple of minutes to put a soup mix into the crockpot and ta da! They have a meal ready after a long day of Christmas shopping!
7. Mixes are very slow-cooker friendly. Especially soup mixes. Cooking in the slow cooker is already easy. This just saves you even more time!
8. They are FAST and EASY to prepare. Whether you’re making soup mixes or baking mixes, you can mass-produce mixes in a short amount of time. Simply get out your ingredients, read over the recipe, and start adding ingredients to Ziplock bags. You’ll be surprised at how fast you can put together some great-tasting, healthy mixes!
9. Mixes invest in your future convenience. I love the idea of investing time today in making life easier tomorrow!
10. They make hospitality easier. We are admonished not to forget to entertain strangers (Hebrews 13:2). I believe that this call to hospitality goes beyond just having folks over. It might mean sharing food with those who have recently lost a loved one or gained a baby. Whether you take over a ready-to-eat pot of soup and steaming corn muffins, or whether you tie up some time-saving mixes and put them in a cute basket, think of how much easier it will be to heed the apostle’s admonition!
Well, have I convinced you? You’re probably either thinking, this is overkill… or show me more! Give me ideas!
I’m going to be featuring some delicious time-saving mixes that you can make in your very own kitchen, coming up in the next few days.
Be sure to subscribe, if you haven’t already, so you won’t miss any great ideas!
This post is linked to Top Ten Tuesday and Kitchen Tip Tuesday.
I love Trader Joe’s hearty vegetable broth. But with the nearest Trader Joe’s thousands of miles away, I figured it was high time to make my own vegetable broth. (Not to mention that I never, ever succeeded in using the entire aseptic container of broth at once and I had to freeze the remainder anyway!) Plus, making my own broth is just so… healthy and frugal!
I looked at a few vegetable broth recipes to get an idea of what to do, and then I ventured out and created my own because I didn’t quite have all the ingredients that you would have access to if you were making this in the U.S. Here’s what I added:
Uncooked veggies that I used to make this broth.
The recipes I was looking at suggested adding:
Basically, you sauté the onions in a little olive oil and add the veggies. Add water and seasonings and simmer on low for 1 – 1 1/2 hours.
The broth after 1 1/2 hours—veggies are all cooked down!
Then you strain the stock through a fine-mesh sieve or cheesecloth. You can either use it right away, or what I’m going to do is freeze mine in ice cube trays so I’ll have it easily accessible for use in future recipes.
This picture may look slightly confusing. I didn’t have cheesecloth or a sieve so I used a produce bag that I got from ReusableBags.com. It had been a bigger bag but I accidentally shrunk it when I put it in the dryer once. So it was almost like a sieve or cheesecloth, until the potatoes began squishing through. 
If you’d like ideas of other goodies you can add to your homemade vegetable broth, visit Lolo’s site. She has an awesome photo tutorial on broth-making!
This post is linked to Kitchen Tip Tuesday and Works for Me Wednesday.
{Flickr credit where credit is due: CCCvrcak}
Last year’s Mother’s Day shopping was a disaster. (Now, I know my mom is probably reading this so I should be careful with what I say.)
I ordered flowers from an online source that shall remain nameless to protect the guilty. Both my mother-in-law and mother live a long ways away so I had to get something nice and either mail it (which, you know, the USPS keeps raising its prices), or order it online.
I decided to order something online using one of those nifty coupons that the company e-mails out on a weekly basis.
But unfortunately, the discount only applied if you signed up for those free-shipping deals that you sign up for AFTER the purchase… which I found out well into the purchasing process. Then I had to print out a confirmation and SNAIL-MAIL it back to this other vendor.
Did I do it? Nope. I forgot about it. And then that “free” shipping company ended up charging my credit card on a monthly basis, and I couldn’t remember my login for the life of me.
I ended up writing a complaint to the flower company six months later, and fortunately for them, they did refund the entire amount that I had been charged on the monthly basis.
BUT my flowers for Mother’s Day were not really discounted, and neither was the shipping free.
That said, I have learned a few things from that experience.
1. Not every discount is what it states at face-value. Many discounts say Free Shipping* and then after the lovely asterisk (*) they proceed to tell you that you have to sign up for something. READ the fine print! Know what you’re getting yourself into!
2. Don’t sign up for anything after you make your purchase! Those other “partner” companies will get your credit card information from their partner, and proceed to bill you on a monthly basis. Not pretty!
3. You may comfort yourself with the fact that you can opt out and cancel after you request your free shipping. Beware! Not a good idea, considering human nature in most cases leans toward procrastination and forgetfulness.
4. You can find honest gift companies that will send gifts that will enable you to stay within your gift budget.
Anyway. I have nothing to urge for or against any of these companies, and I am not being paid for recommending them. I am just speaking from personal experience. But if you are trying to order online for your loved ones this spring, do be careful to select companies that are honest with their discounts and provide all charges up-front. Know what you are paying for!
One last word: handmade or homemade gifts are awesome. I would do that if I could, but I don’t think it would be financially judicious for me to ship handmade gifts across the ocean to our loved ones for every little day. I might work on that for Christmas, though. We’ll see!
This post is linked to Frugal Fridays at Life as Mom.
Do you have any other tips for savvy/ safe online shopping for gifts? Or online shopping in general?
I recently bought a really cheap brand of nonstick cooking spray. It was $2-something at Smart and Final. That would have been a great find, except it didn’t work. It left gunky residue on my pans and it didn’t keep food from sticking. Ick!
I kept thinking there has to be a greener way… a more frugal way… to keep food from sticking.
THEN. I bought a bottle of liquid lecithin at the local health-food store. I had to have one tablespoon for a recipe. (Don’t you hate it when you just have to have one tablespoon and have a whole bottle of whatever left? I’m just sayin’….)
But that jiggled my memory a bit. When I was a student at a boarding high school, we used some sort of lecithin-oil combination instead of nonstick cooking spray. We used to use wax paper to spread it around the deck pans for the food deck, etc. and I figured that wouldn’t be too green.
What else could I use to spread around a liquid solution? I thought of using a spray-bottle, but then I would have to find a food-grade spray bottle. It would likely be plastic. And I’d rather not use plastic. I googled around, and found a stainless food-grade spray can, but the reviews were mixed. In the reviews, however, I read that “real chefs” use brushes to brush oil. Now, why didn’t I think of that?
I already had a pastry brush. I decided to use an old applesauce jar to store the lecithin solution. But what is the recipe for this nonstick liquid?
One part liquid lecithin + one part liquid oil = nonstick liquid
(I don’t know what else to call it… nonstick liquid sounds boring, to be sure, but that’s what it is.)
Oh, and I used canola oil in case you’re wondering.
Directions: You just dip your brush into this liquid and brush it onto your casserole dish, baking dish, etc. I don’t use very much. I just get it nice and greasy-looking, but not so there are puddles of liquid. Spread it evenly.
I have been using this for a few days now and it works very well on everything that I have tried it on. I can’t vouch for it on all surfaces, but I’ve even tried it in my breadmaker and it works like a charm. (The bread used to stick to the bottom of the machine.)
For more Frugal Friday tips from everyone else, visit Fish Mama’s website.
DH and I have been trying an experiment. He has usually been eating lunches at the hospital cafeteria and just putting them on his ID and the money gets taken out of his paycheck. Somehow in the last few weeks, I convinced him that in order to start making headway on paying off our debts, we should both be taking packed lunches. (I’ve been taking sack lunches to work, for the most part, for a couple years. Every once in awhile I fall off the bandwagon and buy a lunch or two, or I forget to bring mine, but for the most part I’ve been packing my own lunches.)
Well, today I checked to see how his direct deposit looked – and I was so happy at what we’d saved by having him pack lunches, too! I figure I save a lot, too. Most of the places I would eat around my office if I ate out run about $6 per lunch. So that would be approximately $25 for a 4-day week that I’m saving ($50 per pay period). For him, it’s comparable – but maybe more.
So – packed lunches pay off, everyone! For more frugal tips, visit Frugal Friday at Life as Mom.
In a future post, I’ll talk about how I cook for those packed lunches, how I’ve greened up my own lunch-bag habits, and more! (I’ve only been packing BOTH of our lunches for about 3 weeks, so give me a little more time to figure out my schedule on packed lunch planning!)
I got married a little over a year-and-a-half ago. So the process is pretty fresh in my mind still. 
I am sure that there are other ways to be frugal with weddings, but here’s what worked for me.
I picked up a copy of How to Plan An Elegant Wedding for $5,000 or Less. Seriously. (I probably should have just googled ideas, but that’s where I started.)
corsages. The groomsmen and child boutonnieres were made from mini calla lilies and the bridesmaid bouquets were 3 calla lily stems wrapped and pinned. My bouquet was a clutch rose bouquet with stephanotis throughout with little pins in them. Looked like it was out of a bridal magazine but for MUCH cheaper!
cosmos, wild Queen Anne’s Lace from the fields around our house, and grapevines. Then the next morning, my cousin (another wonderful decorator!) blessed us by making the pew arrangements. We had pre-wrapped cones with leftover material from the bridesmaid dresses. So we had “pew cones.” Once again, it was a look like out of a bridal magazine… but for a fraction of the price!
Have a friend bake your cake! One of our family friends came all the way from Hawaii on free military travel (her husband is in the army) to bake our cake. And it was beautiful! I wanted a vegan cake. It was delicious – even our friends who aren’t vegan thought it was wonderful! It had a lemon “cream cheese” raspberry filling and was very moist and tasty.I uploaded a couple of our wedding pics here.
Anyway. Here’s a list of how you can start out your marriage on a happy financial note! For more frugal ideas, visit Frugal Friday.
I never knew how expensive cereal was until I started my own home. My husband loves cereal, and some of his particular favorites include Weetabix (which averages $4-something-a-box for the organic biscuits), Grape Nuts, and Raisin Bran. Yeah. They’re not what I call cheap. (And he goes through it quickly!)
On the other hand, I love granola and I can make it at home and it lasts me awhile.
But I had to think of something QUICK and EASY that I could just throw on the table in the morning before running out the door to work. Oh, and it also had to be economical/ frugal.
So I figured out that hot cereal is a great way to go. Here’s what I do for my “hot cereal special”:
Combine 1/4 cup each of the following options:
I usually put about 1 1/2 cup worth of the above options in my slow cooker (my slow cooker isn’t very large). Add about 6 cups of water (depends on how fast your slow cooker cooks and if your grains will dry out) and set it on “low” and let it cook overnight.
The next morning, about 1 hour before serving, I add a handful or two of raisins and the same for sweetened coconut. (You can add other dried fruits like small dried pineapple but watch the cost because it can add up!) Sprinkle a little salt and mix everything up.
Then, in your blender, add 1 -2 cups water, 1/2 to 1 cup date pieces, dried milk powder, and a little honey. (I use nondairy milk powder. Use whatever works for you.) Blend it until it is smooth. Taste it. It should be pretty sweet. This is your sweetener for the hot cereal.
Stir most of the blended date sauce into the hot cereal, and let the slow cooker cook for another hour or so. Serve! It should be pleasantly sweet.
See, now you saved some money, you avoided sugar which lowers immune systems, and you had a quick and easy breakfast!
For more ways to save, visit Biblical Womanhood.
I have been contemplating what kinds of goals (er, resolutions – but I like calling them “goals” much better) to make this year and have come up with several.
Hi! I'm Joelle. Welcome to my home on an island. I am a missionary's wife, and I have fun homemaking. Hubby and I are Americans. On the island where I live, I have access to many American foods. However, they are quite expensive, so on this blog you'll find the ways that I try to get around and live frugally. You'll find my reflections on faith, frugality, femininity, and of course food.
I love cooking healthfully. I cook vegetarian food and I focus on making food that is easy, healthy, and inexpensive.
This blog started back in 2007, and was called Healthy 'N' Happy Home. I have since imported many of the posts to this blog and hope you will find them useful.
Please browse around my blog and subscribe so you'll know how my homemaking adventures are going!
