Can I comb your hair, Mom?

I was playing with my son last night in his room.  We were on the floor and in usual boy fashion he was banging, pounding, and playing.  Abruptly, he ran from the room, and returned holding a comb. 
"Dis?"  he said to me.
I said, "It's a comb." 
He walked up closely to me, and began combing my hair.  I melted into a puddle.  He combed my hair for several moments and ran out of the room, returning again with a brush.
"Dis?"  he asked.
"It's a brush."  I said.  He starts the same process of brushing my hair.  Then he alternated, some with the comb, some with the brush.  So terribly sweet.

YUMMY!!!!!! Cream of Mushroom and Potato Soup

I've been making soups once or twice a week for my meals at work, and also for supplements to meals.  I've tried to make sure that the soups are from scratch, and include items from meals that I made or that Greg made previously so that we're not wasting food.  We accidentally bought too many potatoes at the grocery store this week, so I made mashed potatoes for dinner tonight, and used some of the leftovers to make the soup.  We also had some mushrooms that were good but wouldn't have made it 2 more days.  So here's my soup recipe made from leftovers, and extras.

Cream of Mushroom and Potato Soup

2 cups of mushrooms chopped
3 cups of mashed potatoes
2Tbl butter, seperated
1 Tbl whole wheat flour
1 cup of milk
1/2 cup of mixed veggies cooked
2 chicken bullion cubes
4 cups of water
1/8 cup of chives

Saute mushrooms with one TBL of butter.  Set aside.  melt remaining TBL of butter in 4 qt saucepan and stir in flour.  Slowly wisk in milk, and bring up temp and let it get creamy.  stir constantly with wisk.  after bubbling, keep stirring and add bullion cubes.  Then add mushrooms, potatoes, and veggies.  Use a handheld mixer to blend.  Slowly add 4 cups of water while blending.  Add chives.  Cook til bubbly again, and serve.

Makes 9 cups. 

Creamy Yumminess!

I plan on using two cups of this soup to make a chicken casserole either tomorrow or the day after that. 

Stove Top Rice Pudding

I was looking for an easy stove top rice pudding recipe to use on the stove (because my oven is broke), and I found a few recipes that looked great but called for HUGE amounts of recipe, and many ingredients.  In order to cook frugally, one must use fewer ingredients.  It saves money.  I wanted my rice pudding to be both great and economical.  Here's what I came up with:

1 1/2 cups rice, cooked.
2 TBL Sweetend Condensed Milk
1 cup milk
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
one egg
1/4 cup of raisins

Turn the stove on to medium heat and add to a medium sized pan rice, sweetend condensed milk, milk, and egg.  Stir until egg is worked into mixture.  Add spices and raisins.  Bring to a vigorous simmer.  Stir VERY often.  Cook for about 8 minutes until mixture is thickened and raisins are soft.

Voila!  Serve warm.  :)

What Soup Was Made For

Somewhere in the last 20 years, with the advent of the Food Network, I think I stopped thinking about food in my pantry as a cumulative to be used together, but as a series of ingredients to fit whatever recipe I had.  If I didn't have what was in the recipe, I either went to the store to get the ingredients, or I didn't make the recipe.  But now that Greg and I are grocery shopping once a week, and not going out to eat, it's forcing me to look at the items in my pantry differently.  Now I look at items to see what recipes I can create.  So here's to the leftover ingredients that I had and the delicious Black Bean Soup that I made. 

(We've been keeping a bag or two of beans in the house, and then we soak them overnight, boil them, and use them for various things all week.  Black Beans were what we used this week.  The baby loves to eat beans which provide him with protein, and we love having more protein in our meals too!  We're also doing this with pasta too!)

Black Bean Soup-- From leftovers.

1 onion sliced (not left over)

1 can of diced tomatoes with green chilies (not left over)

2 cups of black beans ready to use

1 cup of peas

2 cups of pasta

3 strips of leftover bacon

2tsp of Italian Seasoning

1/8 tsp of cumin powder

add pepper to taste

2 chicken bullion cubes

Saute onion, and add tomatoes stir add chicken bullion cubes, then add 2 cups of black beans, and peas and 8 cups of water.  Bring to a boil.  Add cooked pasta, bacon and spices. let simmer for 10-20 min.  And Voila!    A simple soup made from leftovers, and the flavors were wonderful! 

I'm finding that I'm absolutely enjoying trying to stretch every penny out of my pantry!  :) 

Time is money

If time is money, that means that when we chose to spend our money on things/people/stuff/food/ fill-in-the-blank-here that means we're also choosing to spend time away from what we love in order to pay for what we chose to spend our money on.  So if we manage our money poorly, we're managing time poorly.

Thanks to TheSimpleDollar.com for pointing this out to me. 

I've also learned that if you don't value your time, you don't value your money or your stuff.  I never thought the two were so closely related. 

If time is money, and I have exchange my time for money, then a penny saved is a penny earned-- and probably a couple of minutes too.  This perspective on time and money management is making me rethink everything I choose to spend my time-- money on.  I'm thinking that I need to make sure that I spend both time and money wisely and focused around what I love instead of frivolous things I think I need.

Here's an example:  Starbucks.  One grande per week.  $4.55 for 52 weeks is literally a day and half of work for me.  I don't want to work a day and a half to drink Starbucks.  I'd rather work a day and a half to go on a great date with my husband or save for a vacation.  Starbucks out.  A penny saved is a penny earned.  Well, $236. 60 worth of pennies!  :)  I've been going through my head and thinking of all the ridiculous stuff that I spend-- waste-- my money on, and those things are out too.

I broke down my entire budget by how many days I have to work in order to pay for certain things-- like the mortgage, electricity, etc.  It's making me rethink how I spend all of my money.  I'd like to be able to spend my money on what I chose to spend it on.  I'll get there.  Baby Steps.  Realization is the biggest part of the battle. 

At this point, I'd like to give a shout out to my Creator for helping me to see all of this and answering my prayers.  You're an Amazing God.  Thank you for caring for me!

Cutting the fat

I've learned many things through the process of nursing my son.  One of the lessons that I learned while pumping was this:  every drop counts.  Every drop of breastmilk works with other drops of breastmilk to make a meal.  So there were days when I'd see drops, and I learned about economics through milk.  I never understood the quote, "A penny saved is a penny earned."  Because to me, it seemed like I had one wasted penny-- and why did ONE penny really matter.  But now I really know.  One penny, put with other pennies makes many pennies, which makes the money of my life.  And if I waste one penny, I'm wasting other pennies and that affects my goals and dreams, because there are less pennies to work with. 

My husband and I have always spent WAY too much money on groceries.  It's food after all, and I need to eat right?  So it's okay to overspend on the budget because it's food.  Wrong.  Although, I did operate for 10 years with this ideology.  And got fat doing it!  I'm now operating under the premise that every penny counts.  Even at the grocery store... and really this is the first time.  Most of my friends know that I've been into couponing, and I've gotten some really great deals!  But I've never made myself stay within budget, and even in couponing, I've wasted pennies. 

TIME TO CUT THE FAT!!

Well no more!  We resolved to stick to a number at the grocery store, and it's significantly less than what we used to work with.  We've cut out things that we used to do slowly.  For example, we used to eat out often, but with a toddler, that's really impossible.  So we cut that out.  Then last weekend, I planted a garden of beans and peas, and basil.  Obviously I could do more, but I'm operating with baby steps.  Next, I'm learning-- so is my hubby-- to cook with what we have instead of using recipes.  Recipes are just springboards for changing them to meet the ingredients we have at home. 

USING BEANS

Next, I'm learning to cook new recipes or use things I haven't used before.... like beans.  I've always used canned beans.  Now it's time to start using dried beans.  Yesterday, Greg soaked them for me, and then I made them the quick cooking method.  We'll now see how they work added to all sorts of meals this week.  I'm really excited to see what we come up with.

Crockpot Apple spice cake

Okay, so my oven's broke, and I badly wanted to make apple spice cake.  I wasn't sure how to make it because I couldn't find a recipe that used fresh apples, and I wanted to use some apples that I had.  So I looked at a bunch of different recipes and made my own Crock Pot Apple Spice Cake recipe.  Here goes:

Ingredients:

7 cups apples of various kinds, cored, peeled and sliced
3 TBL lemon juice concentrate
3/4 cup sugar
2 TBL flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg
Spice Cake mix
1/2 cup butter

materials (among other things)
1 large crock pot
microwave

Melt 1 stick of butter in microwave, set aside.  Prepare apples, toss with lemon juice, sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg.  Bake in microwave for 25 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes.  Cover, but leave a little bit of room for the steam from the apples to escape.  Meanwhile take the butter that's been melted and mix it with the cake mix.  The batter will be more like flakey breadcrumbs than batter.  When the apples have been cooked down to what looks like the inside of an apple pie, toss into a well greased crock pot, and sprinkle the cake "batter" over the top.  Cook on high in the crock pot for 3-4 hours.  And Voila!  Serve while warm.

This picture shows what the "Batter" looks like on the top before it's been cooked.

I took this to a pot luck dinner tonight and it was gobbled up, and several people asked for the recipe... so here you go!  :)