Monday, November 28, 2011

Weekly Menu Retrospective #51


Welcome to my weekly roundup of the past week's eats. I prefer to report what we ate in the last week, rather than what we're planning to eat in the coming week. Why? The reason is pretty simple: although I usually have a general idea of what we're going to eat in the next week or so, life often unfolds a little differently than planned, and I adjust my menu plan on a near-daily basis to accommodate leftovers and other not-possible-to-plan-ahead circumstances. I find this is the easiest way to ensure that I minimize our family's food waste. I'm also willing to admit that I'm a rather spontaneous cook, given to preparing foods that strike me as the most appealing thing to eat right here and now!

BOOK UPDATE: My book, Cheap Appétit : The Complete Guide to Feeding Your Family for Less Than $400 a Month (While Eating Better Than You Ever Thought Possible) went to press last week. I still don't have an exact date when it will be available for purchase,  so stay tuned - you'll know as soon as I do! I've started putting page references to recipes that are in the book in my menu plans so you'll know where to find them once it's released :)

Breakfasts: French toast, blueberry pancakes, banana chocolate chip muffins (p. 96 Cheap Appétit), cherry clafouti (p. 223 Cheap Appétit), baked oatmeal (p. 91 Cheap Appétit)


Lunches: sandwiches, leftovers, pizza

Dinners:

Monday: Creamy Tuna Pasta with Peas & Carrots (p. 146 Cheap Appétit)

Tuesday: Potato, Cheddar & Bacon Soup (p. 165 Cheap Appétit), tossed salad


Wednesday: Smothered Meatballs (p. 143 Cheap Appétit), rice, green beans


Thursday: Chicken Paprika (p. 185 Cheap Appétit), mashed potatoes, peas and carrots

Friday: Pork Fried Rice (p. 139 Cheap Appétit)

Saturday: Everything-But-The-Kitchen-Sink Lentil Soup (p. 162 Cheap Appétit)


Sunday: Tex-Mex Shepherd's Pie (p. 173 Cheap Appétit), Apple Butterscotch Blondies (I halved this recipe and baked it in an 8 x 8" dish)

For more great meal ideas, check out Menu Plan Monday at orgjunkie.com.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Ten Quick & Easy Homemade Christmas Gift Ideas


It's already less than a month until Christmas - can you believe it? I thought it was about time I shared some of my favourite quick and easy homemade gifts; the ones I rely on year after year whenever I need to pull something together at the last minute. They are sure to please just about anyone on your gift list!

Food:

Candied Peanuts

"Puppy Chow" (for people!)

Homemade Bread

Food Theme Basket Ideas

Christmas Granola

Cracker Toffee and Chocolate Bark

Personal Care:

Lip Balm and Hard Lotion: The newest addition to my homemade gift arsenal; I gave some to a friend yesterday and she was very impressed with it!

Winter Daily Facial Scrub: I gave this to my sisters-in-law last year and it was a huge hit! I make mine with just the rice flour, oats, and coconut and toss in the chamomile and/or calendula if I have some on hand. I like to add grapefruit essential oil to mine, but it's great even without any essential oils added.

Milk Bath: I don't think much could be simpler than this one! Combine equal amounts of dry milk powder and baking soda. Add essential oils if desired. Give with instructions to add one cup to running bath water. (I use this all the time myself; it's a great skin softener).

Do you have any tried-and-true simple homemade gift ideas to share?

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Make Your Own All-Natural Lip Balm for Less Than 25 Cents a Tin!

 Everything you need to make your own lip balm and hard lotion

Every once in a while I try out something new that really rocks my world. This weekend I had such an experience when I made my own lip balm for the first time. It was actually a side project of making my own hard lotion, which I have been promising to make for quite some time now. I finally got around to it, and I am beyond thrilled with the results!

This project is great on just about every level: it uses only 3-4 ingredients (depending on whether or not you add essential oils), it's very simple to do, and you get a whole whack of high quality, natural moisturizing products for less than ten bucks. I hope you can understand how exciting this is for someone who lives in a part of the world where winter can be very long, cold and punishing to your skin :) And I can promise you, you will never go back to one of those nasty petroleum-based balms or fork over a ridiculous amount of money for a natural balm again after you've tried out this stuff.

What you'll need to make your lip balm and hard lotion:
(My recipe is adapted from the one on the MadeOn Skin Care Products site)

Coconut oil
Cocoa butter (the pure stuff, not a cocoa butter lotion)
Beeswax
Essential oil of choice (optional)

Some type of double-boiler system (I used a small stainless steel bowl inside a small pot)
A kitchen scale to weight out the ingredients
Molds for the hard lotion and tins or small containers for the lip balm

In my area, coconut oil is easy to find and beeswax is available at the health food store. The pure cocoa butter is the most difficult item to track down (I got mine at Well.ca).

As far as the molds go, I used an ice cube tray for the hard lotion and reused a bunch of old lip balm containers plus a few other small containers I had around the house for the lip balm. To reuse old lip balm containers, wipe out any residue with a paper towel, then boil the containers for several minutes - this will help melt any remaining residue off and make sure there aren't any bacteria lurking around in there. Wipe dry thoroughly with a clean paper towel and they're ready to refill!

What you do:

Weight out equal proportions of the coconut oil, cocoa butter and beeswax (I used 4 ounces of each for the batch I made).

Melt the beeswax in the double boiler (This step took quite a while as I had a big hunk of beeswax to melt; you can grate it if you have a separate grater you won't use for anything else as you'll never get it all off, or buy beeswax pellets rather than the solid block).

Once the beeswax is melted, stir in the coconut oil and cocoa butter; they will melt pretty quickly.

Quickly pour the hot mixture into your hard lotion molds, leaving about 1/4 of the batch behind for lip balm (I think I probably used a bit less than 1/4 of the batch for the balm, but just eyeball it - you really don't need much to make a lot of balm!) Let the hard lotion set up for a couple of hours before removing it from the molds.

To the remaining mixture, add a bit more coconut oil (I tossed in a fairly large spoonful). This will make the lip balm a bit softer so it's easier to apply. Put the mixture back over the double boiler for a minute to get the coconut oil melted in and keep the mixture hot so it doesn't start setting up on you while you're pouring out the lip balm. Remove from the heat and stir in 15-20 drops of essential oil (I used peppermint, which gives the balm an addictive mint-with-a-hint-of-cocoa flavour).

Quickly pour the balm mixture into your tins or containers.

This is what I had when I was done:


14 hard lotion mini-bars plus the equivalent of about 12-13 commercial-sized tins of lip balm (I have 10 containers of balm, but some of them are significantly larger than typical commercially available ones).

Note: My hard lotion popped out of the ice cube tray quite easily, but if you have trouble getting yours out of your mold, try putting it in the freezer for a few minutes as I've heard that helps it come out easier.

I calculated that it cost me just under $10 to make this entire batch of lotion and balm. Since I used less than 1/4 of the batch for the lip balm, that means I got 12-13 lip balms for less than $2.50, or about 19 to 21 cents a tin - for the best lip balm I have EVER tried! 

 Hard lotion bars in a fancy dish for my bathroom counter 

For those of you who aren't familiar with hard lotion, the way you use it is to rub the bar over your skin. Your body heat will cause it to slowly melt, leaving a light oily coating on your skin which will absorb in fairly quickly. My husband, who has always found regular lotion too greasy, loves this stuff and may actually NOT have chapped, flaky hands for the first winter in forever this year. The mild cocoa-honey scent makes it perfect for a unisex family-use household product, too.

Not only will my lips and hands be super-happy all winter, several of my balms and hard lotion bars will be Christmas gifts this year, too. If you look closely at the photo above, you can see the container in the top right hand corner has a silver snowflake sticker on it - which is how I will decorate them for giving.

So, have I convinced you to give this a try, too? I'm willing to bet you'll be as hooked as I am on this homemade balm!

Monday, November 14, 2011

Weekly Menu Retrospective #50


Welcome to my weekly roundup of the past week's eats. I prefer to report what we ate in the last week, rather than what we're planning to eat in the coming week. Why? The reason is pretty simple: although I usually have a general idea of what we're going to eat in the next week or so, life often unfolds a little differently than planned, and I adjust my menu plan on a near-daily basis to accommodate leftovers and other not-possible-to-plan-ahead circumstances. I find this is the easiest way to ensure that I minimize our family's food waste. I'm also willing to admit that I'm a rather spontaneous cook, given to preparing foods that strike me as the most appealing thing to eat right here and now!

I have some exciting news! My book, Cheap Appétit : The Complete Guide to Feeding Your Family for Less Than $400 a Month (While Eating Better Than You Ever Thought Possible) is going to be coming out very soon! I still don't have an exact date, but it should be sometime right after American Thanksgiving. I'm going to start putting page references to recipes that are in the book in my menu plans so you'll know where to find them once it's released :) 

Breakfasts: bagels with cream cheese, peanut butter toast, waffles, banana blueberry muffins (a variation of the Banana Oatmeal Muffins, p. 96 Cheap Appétit) 

Lunches: grilled cheese, Toad-in-the-Hole (p. 180 Cheap Appétit), sandwiches, leftovers, Pizza (p. 133 Cheap Appétit)

Dinners:

Monday: Potato, Bacon & Egg Hash (a variation of Make-It-Your-Way Potato Hash, p. 140 Cheap Appétit)

Tuesday: Pork & Apple Stew (p. 156 Cheap Appétit)

Wednesday: Everything-But-the-Kitchen-Sink Lentil Soup (p. 162 Cheap Appétit), Garlic & Cheese Biscuits (p. 213 Cheap Appétit)

Thursday: Indian-Spiced Honey Garlic Chicken (p. 188 Cheap Appétit), Coconut Rice (p. 199 Cheap Appétit), carrots

Friday: Leftover Buffet

Saturday: Spaghetti with Creamy Tomato-Vegetable Sauce

Sunday: Roast chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, carrots, peas, Chocolate Mousse in a Minute

For more great meal ideas, check out Menu Plan Monday at orgjunkie.com.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

The (Sorta) Secret Second Lives of My Stuff



It's standard operating procedure for us frugal types to reuse things as many times as possible - it's an ingrained part of our lifestyle! While we often reuse items for their original purpose (e.g. hand-me-down clothes, washing and reusing baggies), I tend to get more of a kick out of the times we use things for an entirely different purpose the second (or third, or fourth) time around.

Some examples that come to mind:

1. Our jack-o'-lantern: Obviously, its first life was as a Halloween decoration. While most people simply discard their pumpkins once trick-or-treating is over, we bake ours up and make pumpkin puree.

2. My husband's hockey stick Muskoka chair: Assembled from busted hockey sticks and an old futon frame, this project gets top marks for ingenious use of scrap materials!

3. Random clothing reuses: Our clothes tend to go through several lifecycle stages; first they're "good" clothes, then once they get too rough around the edges, they become work clothes (for messy jobs like painting) or play clothes for the kids. Many times pants that are worn out at the cuffs or ripped at the knees become shorts. After that, things start to get more interesting. Really worn out stuff becomes rags, T-shirts may become T-shirt yarn, and old wool sweaters can be felted to make a variety of items. I even made my no-sew menstrual pads from an old polar fleece top and some old washcloths. My sewing skills are pretty limited, but if I was a bit more competent, I'd make quilts with old clothing scraps, too!

4. Assorted food scraps: I try to keep our food waste as close to zero as possible. This often involves recycling little bits of leftovers into a variety of new food forms. My Everything-But-The-Kitchen-Sink Lentil Soup comes in handy for using up a wide variety of items. And the inedible food bits get tossed into the compost bin and reused in our garden. I also sprinkle coffee grounds around my acid-loving plants such as the rhododendron, or use them to whip up some Mocha-Frappuccino Face Mask for a little spa treatment!

5. The wooden planter boxes on our deck: These were built using scavenged wooden pallets (a great free source of wood!).

Does your stuff have a secret second life, too? I'd love to hear some of the clever ways you reuse your household goods.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Weekly Menu Retrospective #49


Welcome to my weekly roundup of the past week's eats. I prefer to report what we ate in the last week, rather than what we're planning to eat in the coming week. Why? The reason is pretty simple: although I usually have a general idea of what we're going to eat in the next week or so, life often unfolds a little differently than planned, and I adjust my menu plan on a near-daily basis to accommodate leftovers and other not-possible-to-plan-ahead circumstances. I find this is the easiest way to ensure that I minimize our family's food waste. I'm also willing to admit that I'm a rather spontaneous cook, given to preparing foods that strike me as the most appealing thing to eat right here and now!

Breakfasts: banana blueberry muffins (subbed blueberries for choc chips in this recipe), bagels with cream cheese, pancakes, bacon/eggs/hash browns/toast

Lunches: sandwiches, leftovers, pizza

Dinners:

Monday: grilled cheese (quick dinner for Halloween night!)

Tuesday: Everything-But-the-Kitchen-Sink Lentil Soup

Wednesday: Sausage and Apple Saute

Thursday: Lemony Chicken & Spinach Pasta

Friday: Sloppy Joes, carrot sticks, chocolate chip squares (birthday dinner requested by my son)

Saturday: Leftover Buffet

Sunday: Baked Pasta, tossed salad, Pull-apart Garlic & Parmesan Breadsticks, apple crisp

For more great meal ideas, check out Menu Plan Monday at orgjunkie.com

Saturday, November 5, 2011

A Look Back at My "No Spend" Month

At the beginning of October, I issued a "No Spend" Challenge for the month. My plan was to buy nothing except the absolute necessities for the entire month, and to keep my grocery bill below $325 as we'd gone over our grocery budget the last couple months prior (mostly due to purchasing surplus in-season produce for canning and freezing).

I'd planned to give you an update on this a bit sooner, but what can I say? I feel like I'm a bit behind in just about every area of my life right now! So, here's how it went:

Our grocery bill came in at $312.61 for the month, so we squeaked in at $12.39 under my goal. YAY!!

I had identified a few items that we would probably need to buy in October: a winter coat for my older son, winter gloves for both boys, Halloween treats, a birthday gift for my older son, and some coconut oil.

My husband found a great winter coat for my son at Value Village for $11.54 (I was *very* happy about that, as I was beginning to think we were going to have to break down and buy him a brand new one, which would have cost a heck of a lot more!). We didn't end up purchasing my son's birthday gift until the beginning of November (his birthday was yesterday, so yes, it was a bit on the last-minute side). We also didn't get around to buying winter gloves yet as it's been a relatively mild fall so far. We spent $33.31 on Halloween candy and $6.99 on coconut oil.

So far, so good, right? Well, we also had a few unexpected expenses thrown into the mix. Hubby had to go stock up on wood screws to fix my younger son's bed when it broke ($7.45), and he bought two new inner tubes for his bike after he got a flat ($22.58). We also needed some new bungee cords ($10.16 for a multi-pack) and I forgot to bring my yoga mat to class one day and needed to rent one ($2). My husband and son both needed new hockey water bottles ($6.76) and we splurged on a top hat at Dollarama for my younger son's hobo costume ($2.26).

That brings the grand total for our "no spend" month to $103.05. It's not quite "nothing", but it's a heck of a lot less than we've been spending on miscellaneous expenses the past few months. 

I think I might just have to have another "No Spend" month in January! Maybe some of you will care to join me?
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