Apron Thrift Girl

Cold Press Coffee Update

Cold Press Coffee Concentrate    

Yesterday as I was reaching for the coffee concentrate out of the fridge, I realized that I haven't really talked much about our coffee since I wrote this post in 2008.

This summer it will have been three years since I wrote that post. Although I stop drinking coffee from time to time when I have fallen ill or I am trying to break up my relationship with half-n-half to this day we are still drinking this amazing alternative to regular coffee.

The thing that I have noticed most is that whenever I drink coffee at Starbucks whether it is a latte or a drip coffee it never taste as rich or as smooth. It certainly taste potent and the slap-in-the-face jolt of caffeine can be useful compared to the somewhat slow but steady dose of caffeine with cold press. But it just doesn't taste nice.

I consider this a healthy coffee because it contains considerably less acid than normal coffee.

Cath Kidston Mug from a Factory Outlet store in England.

When we last went on vacation and didnt' take our concentrate with us I could tell the difference in my body after a few days. I began to get small stomach aches and I became jittery. I couldn't wait to arrive home and go back to our home brew.

We still use our Filtron system but apparently there is a fancy new system on the market.

You can buy this fancy, modern style cold brew system at The Sharper Image for $49.99. The only drawback is that it makes only 8 servings of coffee. My favorite system is the Filtron.

I always take a to-go cup of coffee every Friday and Saturday morning so that I don't have to buy any conventional coffee while I am thrifting. At this point I love avoiding anything but cold press coffee. I never expected to break my Coffee Shop Latte addiction on my own. Not only is cold press coffee healthier but in the long run it is truly the frugal choice.

I realize this sounds completely like a paid advertising post but it's not. It's just something that I truly believe in. If you get stomach aches, painful caffeine spikes or the jitters, consider trying out cold press coffee. It might change your life like it did mine.

I adore coffee and my favorite way to drink it is a half inch of concentrate, hot water, a spoon of local honey and a far too large dash of half-n-half. What's your favorite way to drink coffee?

How to Host a Frugal Party

Traditionally we always have a small party during the major summer holidays. They include Memorial Day, 4th of July and Veteran's Day. We were hesitant this year to have one because we weren't' sure if it fit into our frugal goals or if we were really ready to entertain. We haven't hosted a single party in our rental house and have only had a few dinners here with friends. While Dave was away on business and couldn't talk me out of it, I decided that we were going to have one.

To begin the party prep I used Pingg for the first time after receiving a very sweet invite from Rachel of No. 17 Cherry Tree Lane. Pingg is a free online invitation site that offers paperless options. I chose this Martha Stewart design. It was very easy to use and best of all free.

Our rental came with three long picnic benches and combined with our thrifted patio set $45.00 for table & chairs, we had enough seating for everyone.

I may have been tempted to buy disposable plates and silverware. Instead I stayed green and cheap by using our Ben Seibel dishes (I've collected over 40 of them) & flatware from the kitchen which I placed them in Ben Seibel creamers.

I was inspired by my friend Holly to keep it even greener by using cloth napkins. Here's a small sampling of my Vera collection. Most were purchased for .25¢ - $1.00.

I brought out many of our glasses, a combination of thrifted, won on Reluctant Entertainer or bought from Ikea. The glasses on the right were featured in a Mad Men episode. Well not my glasses, but the same style exactly.

Instead of buying juice for the children I made some herbal iced tea and mixed in some honey.

W used our $5 thrifted vintage cooler to hold the beer. We did buy ice which came to $8.83. The beer we had in our pantry that I had purchased on sale in the last two months.

Although it wasn't planned, costs were kept low when people offered to bring food. Cathy brought a pasta salad and Kathleen brought a potato salad. Wine was also an unexpected gift. The flowers were picked by Cerys from our garden.

 

The biggest expense of the party was the organic ground beef. We did buy it at Costo which offers 3 pounds for around $12.00. We bought 6 pounds although we didn't use it all. If you were really on a budget you could ask your guests to bring their own BBQ options. I also made a huge serving of Sangria. It included 4 bottles of cheap wine. It went a long way and tasted incredible.

While we only invited a handful of people to test the waters, I'd say doing a party on the cheap was successful. Our next party will be bigger and we will try to keep our expenses even lower. It was a lovely touch the following day when Pingg sent out an automated Thank You note to our guests.

Do you throw frugal parties? What tips do you have to share with us all?

Menu Plans Feb 28 & Giveaway Winner

Thanks to everyone for taking took part in our Sharper Uniforms Apron Giveaway. Also a big thanks to Rebecca from Sharper Uniforms for generously donating a beautiful pink apron for this giveaway.

 

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

14

Timestamp: 2010-02-28 18:33:49 UTC

Congratulations to Katie! Katie, I'll email you for your address and send your new apron off this week. You are going to love this apron.

Menu Planning

Dave is heading off to New York on business this week after having been gone all of last week. I have a million exciting things on my plate including meeting up with Holly & Cathy this week. This leaves me little time to spend making complicated meals. I usually turn to family favorites that don't require a recipe when I am short on time.

Sunday: Shrimp & Rice Parsley pg 22 Everyday Food Magazine (current issue) & Salad w/ homemade Green Goddess Dressing.

Monday: Meatloaf - Fanny Farmer Cookbook & steamed broccoli

Tuesday: Leftovers

Wednesday: Baked Potatoes covered in vintage cheese & avocado slices with Murray river sea salt

Thursday: Egg Fried Rice

Friday: Amy's Kitchen Frozen Rice Crust Pizza ($4.99 from Grocery Outlet)-adding additional toppings

Saturday: BBQ Steaks, Baked Fennel w/ Parmesan & Thyme pg 110 Everyday Food (current issue) & cherry tomato salad.

What's your favorite staple dish when you are tired and need to get something out on the table?

a foodie blog?

My husband Dave knows me so well. He doesn't need to buy me expensive gifts for Valentine's Day. All he needs to do is give me food and a wee bit of chocolate. This was his gift to me.

 
Pancakes with whipped cream and fresh strawberries.

A BLT - being gluten free means these are less common around our house. Luckily we found some new bread that is very wheat tasting and makes the BLT's work.

Steak, mashed pots, broccoli and asparagus. All my favorites.

We finished off the day eating delicate chocolates from Theo. My favorite Ghost Chilie Salted Caramel. Seriously to die for chocolate.

Dave is just so thoughtful when it comes to me and food. Friday evening I went to my first Thai meal in 5 years. I was scared to try Thai because of my gluten allergy. Often wait staff just don't have the understanding of gluten free, they get annoyed by my questions and my need for more information. It can lead to stressful meals. We still have our airmile restaurant vouchers to use though and I didn't want to cook. In the end we had the most incredible meal at Khoom Lanna in Railroad Square, Santa Rosa. They don't use a titch of MSG and were so happy to work with my food allergy. My husband suggested that I order two dishes that most appealed to me and he would take the one I least like. He always does this for me. He thinks of me and my food obsessed stomach and caters toward it. What a sweetheart.

I can't think of a more loving gesture than that for Valentine's weekend.

While I was at Blissdom Cathe Holden suggested that I write an additional blog and focus on food. I said no initially because I'm not really a make-my-own-recipe type of gal. I do share them from time to time but not enough to be considered a foodie girl. Yet she planted the seed and I couldn't let this idea go. While I may not be a chef or exceptionally creative in the kitchen, I do adore food. Food is one of my other passions in life, just one that I kind of take for granted. Could I write about it five days a week? I was so inspired by Rachel at Blissdom and her talk of food from her blog A Southern Fairytale at Blissdom. Her tweets constantly leave me hungry. Maybe I could do this. She makes it look so much fun writing about something she loves.

At Blissdom one of the panels suggested that if we start a new blog to ask for name suggestions from our readers. I might end up using a suggested name or it might spark off ideas about a name. It really would be a blog focusing on the quality of taste in our food. Food should tantalize your taste buds and inspire you rather than leave you with the feeling that you could make it better at home. Or that you could have written the recipe better. It will be gluten free food but I would rather have it be about food in general and a place that anyone who loves food will feel welcomed. Gluten Free doesn't have to be in the name. What are your thoughts?  Any names come to mind? What do you want to see on a foodie blog if I write one?

Menu Plans for the Week 2/14/10

I thought I would begin to share my menus for the week for a Sunday post. I normally take the weekends off from blogging to thrift and spend time with the family but a menu-plan post should be pretty quick. Are you interested in this type of thing? What would you want to see besides the basics?

Lately I only shop once a week. I plan my menus on Saturday and shop on Sunday. This has changed around to fit into our ever life over the years. I used to shop on Wednesday and other months on Friday. Because my work week is so limited I try to work rather than shop. We pick up our raw milk from a farm on Tuesdays so we don't have to go to the store twice a week. I hope to eventually move to making our own yogurt, butter and whipped cream using the milk. Which means even less dairy to buy at the store. I do pop into our fabulous local grocery store Olivers on Wednesday to pick up the sales ad but try to avoid buying anything, perhaps picking up some fruit if anything. The ads are also on-line but I'm old fashion and need to look through the ads at the table with shopping list in hand.

No matter how many new cookbooks I try, I tend to fall back on Everyday Foods. It just is so simple, so tasty and I always seem to still find a recipe that I haven't tried before. You'll find that many of my menus includes recipes from this book. If you have a similar book to recommend, I'd love to hear your suggestion.

Menus:

Monday: Bean & Cheese Wraps using these better-than-wheat Food for Life Brown Rice Tortillas. We place on the table; rice (from the rice cooker) , freshly grated cheese, beans and then whatever we find in the refrigerator. This is a great way to eat up leftovers. We serve the tortillas warm.

Tuesday: Chili-rubbed Skirt Steak -pg 294 Everyday Food Cookbook. Romaine Heart Salad with Creamy Dressing (same page)

Wednesday: Easy Spaghetti Carbonara (check back Wednesday for recipe) & bean salad.

Thursday: Chicken Caesar Salad - pg 119 Everyday Food Cookbook  

Friday: Golden Spice Rice with Chickpeas - pg 142 Feeding Your Whole Family by Cynthia Lair.

Saturday: Roast Chicken with Artichokes - pg 162 -March 2010 Martha Stewart living Magazine -accompanied with with Steamed Broccoli.

Off to do my grocery shopping and enjoy Valentine's Day with my family. 

Shopping for Organic Discount Groceries

Years ago before there was the internet as we know it, or blogs or tweets there was something simple called a newsletter. It usually arrived in your mailbox and consisted of eight or so pages of information. Back in the day I would eagerly await the moment that the latest edition of The Tightwad Gazette arrived at my door. I would come home from work, grab a cup of warm coffee and pour over every page. This is a time when I saved every cent and even went too far as to freeze in my little home because of my stubborn pride of striving to keep an $18.00 electric bill. I didn't quite get the whole frugal/balance thing.

I remember Amy Dacyczyn telling amusing stories about going to a canned food store and buying unmarked (mystery) food. If memory serves me correct, she would open one of these .5 cent cans and the contents would be part of their dinner that night. She took frugality to an entire different level. I was in complete awe of her.

I've shopped at the store Grocery Outlet for years. I grew up calling it the Canned Food Store so I'm unsure as to whether they changed their name over time or if that is the name my parents used to call it. Monday afternoon the children and I went there to pick up some dinner. Dave was in Texas and I was still mentally in Nashville. I needed something quick, easy and affordable.

The Grocery Outlet offers name brands at 40-60% off of what you might find at your regular retailer. There are 130+ independently owned Grocery Outlets in six Western States. I used to shop at the one in Bremerton when I lived up in Washington. My two local stores are located in Santa Rosa and Rohnert Park.

Here's some of the items I found on Monday.

Organic Pineapple Green Tea $1.99,  Romance Tea (4 mini stacking tins) $3.99 (thought it might make a nice gift in a tea basket)

Organic Poppy Seeds $1.49

Scharffen Berger Baking Chocolate $2.49 each.

Wild Smoked Salmon $4.99, Nacho Cheese (natural and gluten free) $1.49, Organic Mango Green Tea $1.99.

Organic Tortilla Chips $1.99, Cruchitos $1.49 and Natural Lime & Salt Microwave Popcorn $1.99 (for 10 mini bags).

Haagen-Dazs Five - Brown Sugar Ice-Cream. $1.50. Have you ever heard of a more delectable flavor of ice-cream? Simple to the point and so scrumptious tasting. I topped it with some Reddi Wip topping $1.49 since I'm still going through whipped cream withdrawals from Blissdom. Have you ever heard of such a thing?

Total amount saved: $45.30.

I could pop into the Grocery Outlet a month from now and not find a single one of these items on the shelf. Their inventory is constantly changing. What I try to do is either stock up if I'm familiar with the product or buy one bag/can/box, take it home, try it out and return to the store to buy more as soon as I can. I'm certainly going to go back tomorrow and buy a few van full of the Haagen Dazs ice-cream. It was beyond mouth watering. Seriously.

I've never had bad luck with an item purchased at the Grocery Outlet. An item might not be as flavorful as I would have liked but that's part of the game of trying any new food product. Overall I've been so satisfied with my purchases. My only disappointment is falling in love with something only to find that they have sold out when I next went shopping. I'd say that is a good problem to have.

Here's an article on Salvage Grocery Stores by Brian Tuttle. It includes a fabulous list of salvage grocery stores in the United States.

Menu Planning

This is a repeat post from a year and a half ago. Since it is that time of the year again when we get that itch to be better organized, I thought I'd share my system for planning our weekly meals. Sometimes I do fall off the menu planning wagon but the minute I pick myself up again I feel so much calmer as dinner rolls around. This entry took place on Bainbridge Island as we were preparing our house to sell. Menu planning was essential to my very busy week. Enjoy.

**********************************************************

I'm a bit guilty of being considered dangerous in a grocery store. I shop with my eyes and if not kept in check I can end up buying anything that looks appealing. My stomach tends to guide me from aisle to aisle if I am left to my own devices without a focus. Realizing the risk in this, unless we want a second mortgage just to cover our food bill, I decided to not only have a detailed shopping list, but a weekly plan of our meals. Otherwise I'd come home with a dinner plan of an appetizer of chocolate covered vintage cheese, reese's peanut butter cup soup for the main course and Pamela's chocolate brownies for desert. Not that I like chocolate or anything.

Seriously though I do need to eat before going shopping or else I buy so many things that just look scrummy. This weekend I sat down and grabbed a few recipe books to plan my menus. My goal was to use three cookbooks only. If I am faced with too many choices my 20 minutes of planning menus for the week can become three hours. Especially if I am hungry and every recipe sounds too tempting.


My small Betty Crocker collection on the far left.

Except for two of these book that were purchased new, the rest are from thrift stores or yard sales.

My fav classic three cookbooks (ignoring the chevy's book).

The reason I rely so heavily on meal planning is that it save us money. If I go to the store without a list, I buy food that I shouldn't be buying. If I get to 5pm and I haven't had a thought toward dinner then we tend to eat something not so wholesome or worse we order a meal to go. And I have such a weakness for chicken korma at the local curry house. 

When I began to plan our meals I wanted to keep them as simple as possible. I adore simplicity. I didn't want to open up a cookbook and have endless possibilities. The more choices that I have, the harder it is for me to choose. I came up with a sort of weekly cheat sheet. I picked one type of dish for each day of the week.

Monday - Rice

Tuesday - Pasta (gluten-free pasta)

Wednesday - Beef

Thursday - Soup

Friday - Seafood

Saturday - International

Sunday - Roast

When I open up my cookbook and I need a meal for Monday, I have a smaller number of recipes to choose from. I'm only just starting up meal planning after a summer break so I'm not quite sticking to this idea yet. As I get used to meal planning again, I will gradually pick a similar theme for our menus.

At the moment much of our free time is spent painting the inside of the house. This means dinners are usually staple, well loved meals that are easy to prepare and quick to clean up.  With some recipes I'll write down the page number and the name of the cookbook. Thursday's meal is a new recipe so I added the page number and it came from the recipe book The Vegetarian 5-Ingredient Gourmet. Monday and Tuesday meals are staples and I can find them easily so I added only the name of the cookbook.

 

Breakfast and lunch meals are just for me. Cerys eats oatmeal every morning with maple syrup and Keiran eats cereal or boiled eggs. Dave eats something at some awful hour in the morning so I tend not to see him or worry about him. When I am really organized I also plan the children's evening snacks. Here's an example from last spring:

Monday - nuts & raisins
Tuesday - carrots & dip
Wednesday - apple slices w/ peanut butter
Thursday - crackers & cheese
Friday -popcorn
Sat - frozen berries

I had found that the more meals I had planned for the children the less they argued with me. If they made a complaint, I would just say sorry it's on the menu planner. I somehow got away with that explanation and they would eat their snack/meal in peace and I would smile knowingly when they weren't looking.

As we look at our money with a careful eye there are small steps anyone can take to save money in the kitchen. These are my five favorites:

-Start buying in bulk (especially when food is on sale)

-Create a Pantry - this can be anywhere from under a bed, in the garage, in a closet or even a couple shelves above a door

-Start planning your meals week by week. Try to buy what you need for the week unless items are on sale and you can stock up.

-If at all possibly, grocery shop one day a week. If you need to stock up half way through on dairy & fruit, try to run in and get those items only and if you are like me avoid both the chocolate & sorbet aisles.

-Start a price book so that you can keep track of the cheapest prices for your items you normally buy. With food prices changing often it is important to keep the price book current. Take it with you grocery shopping and make changes as you shop.

I love to buy food, I love to cook and I love saving money. These three can be combined and still provide a very pleasant, apron wearing, kitchen experience without too much stress on your wallet.

a frugal birthday

As many of you with January birthdays know, it can be a tough month to have a birthday. I tend to be recovering from Christmas both on an energy level and a financial level when it's time for my daughter's birthday. She turned 10 yesterday.

 

By the time we ring in the new year on December 31st and get the children back to school on the 4th, we are really scrambling to put together her birthday. Add the fact that three of us were sick this year left us with a procrastination mess.

When it comes to birthday and Christmas presents we lean more to retail presents rather than thrifted. They often get something small nearly every weekend from a yard sale. On Saturday I picked up eight pieces of clothing (gap, H&M, Children's Place) for Cerys that cost me $8.00. She's aware of the difference of the thrifted dollar versus the retail dollar so splurging a few times a year in the retail world is a special treat. In order to stick within our budget and our frugal ethics I do try to find quality items on sale. This year I hit the Hanna Andersson sale on December 29th and picked up tights ($8), organic pajama's ($20), a hoody ($20) and some leggings ($12) all for drastically reduced prices. It's not often they receive clothing with original tags attached.

She wanted to go somewhere grand for her birthday like six flags. She was also interested in going ice-skating and even threw in the idea of going to Traintown. Yet with Cerys still on the mend from being sick and the fact that we were very conscious of our money so close to Christmas we asked her what a dream day would be. It turned out that she wished for her best friend Arah (and family) to come over for lunch, eat cake, play board games all afternoon, share a dinner together and finish off with the opening of presents. I loved the simplicity of her ideal day.

It's the kind of birthday that I could handle both financially and energy wise. She asked for a chocolate cake and I gave her this based on our favorite pancake mix; Pamela's.

This caked is just smothered in the richest icing that I have ever tasted let alone made. The entire cake was incredible and the recipe very simple. You don't even realize that the cake doesn't have a crumb of gluten in it.  I used three cups of her pancake mix for this recipe. I buy Pamela's mix at Amazon and have a 6 month subscription which lets me buy 3, 64-ounce bags for $11.33 each. This automatically arrives every six months. This is the best price that I have been able to find. For those in Sonoma County, Pamela is based up in Ukiah and I would consider it local.

For lunch I served seaweed wraps with wild smoked salmon (from Costco), avocados (organic and on sale for .99 cents each) with olive oil & sea salt. To accompany the wraps I made a large bowl of coleslaw.

While we were planning to play games all afternoon, the children decided it would be more fun to kick around the soccer ball and rollerblade for a couple hours. The adults didn't mind this one bit as we sat around the table drinking wine and enjoying conversation which led to quite a bit of laughter. (post holiday stress release maybe?)

The cake was so filling that our dinner plans changed to a simple bowl of brown rice, green onions and tamari sauce. Cerys opened her gifts and we said our "thank yous" and "goodbyes" to our friends. Cerys was all smiles when she went to bed. A truly happy girl having experienced a soulful and unbeknownst to her, a frugal birthday. I found with Cerys merely being around people who cared for her was equally as good as renting a bouncy castle or heading to an amusement park. And as a family we saved a lot of money by keeping it simple. 

***thank you for all your comments on Friday's post. I plan to spend part of my workday going through each one and taking note of your preferances and sending you each a reply with my thanks****

meal planning

I'm a bit guilty of being considered dangerous in a grocery store. I shop with my eyes and if not kept in check I can end up buying anything that looks appealing. My stomach tends to guide me from aisle to aisle if I am left to my own devices without a focus. Realizing the risk in this, unless we want a second mortgage just to cover our food bill, I decided to not only have a detailed shopping list, but a weekly plan of our meals. Otherwise I'd come home with a dinner plan of an appetizer of chocolate covered vintage cheese, reese's peanut butter cup soup for the main course and Pamela's chocolate brownies for desert. Not that I like chocolate or anything.

Seriously though I do need to eat before going shopping or else I buy so many things that just look scrummy. This weekend I sat down and grabbed a few recipe books to plan my menus. My goal was to use three cookbooks only. If I am faced with too many choices my 20 minutes of planning menus for the week can become three hours. Especially if I am hungry and every recipe sounds too tempting.


My small Betty Crocker collection on the far left.

Except for two of these book that were purchased new, the rest are from thrift stores or yard sales.

My fav classic three cookbooks (ignoring the chevy's book).

The reason I rely so heavily on meal planning is that it save us money. If I go to the store without a list, I buy food that I shouldn't be buying. If I get to 5pm and I haven't had a thought toward dinner then we tend to eat something not so wholesome or worse we order a meal to go. And I have such a weakness for chicken korma at the local curry house. 

When I began to plan our meals I wanted to keep them as simple as possible. I adore simplicity. I didn't want to open up a cookbook and have endless possibilities. The more choices that I have, the harder it is for me to choose. I came up with a sort of weekly cheat sheet. I picked one type of dish for each day of the week.

Monday - Rice

Tuesday - Pasta (gluten-free pasta)

Wednesday - Beef

Thursday - Soup

Friday - Seafood

Saturday - International

Sunday - Roast

When I open up my cookbook and I need a meal for Monday, I have a smaller number of recipes to choose from. I'm only just starting up meal planning after a summer break so I'm not quite sticking to this idea yet. As I get used to meal planning again, I will gradually pick a similar theme for our menus.

At the moment much of our free time is spent painting the inside of the house. This means dinners are usually staple, well loved meals that are easy to prepare and quick to clean up.  With some recipes I'll write down the page number and the name of the cookbook. Thursday's meal is a new recipe so I added the page number and it came from the recipe book The Vegetarian 5-Ingredient Gourmet. Monday and Tuesday meals are staples and I can find them easily so I added only the name of the cookbook.

 

Breakfast and lunch meals are just for me. Cerys eats oatmeal every morning with maple syrup and Keiran eats cereal or boiled eggs. Dave eats something at some awful hour in the morning so I tend not to see him or worry about him. When I am really organized I also plan the children's evening snacks. Here's an example from last spring:

Monday - nuts & raisins
Tuesday - carrots & dip
Wednesday - apple slices w/ peanut butter
Thursday - crackers & cheese
Friday -popcorn
Sat - frozen berries

I had found that the more meals I had planned for the children the less they argued with me. If they made a complaint, I would just say sorry it's on the menu planner. I somehow got away with that explanation and they would eat their snack/meal in peace and I would smile knowingly when they weren't looking.

As we look at our money with a careful eye there are small steps anyone can take to save money in the kitchen. These are my five favorites:

-Start buying in bulk (especially when food is on sale)

-Create a Pantry - this can be anywhere from under a bed, in the garage, in a closet or even a couple shelves above a door

-Start planning your meals week by week. Try to buy what you need for the week unless items are on sale and you can stock up.

-If at all possibly, grocery shop one day a week. If you need to stock up half way through on dairy & fruit, try to run in and get those items only and if you are like me avoid both the chocolate & sorbet aisles.

-Start a price book so that you can keep track of the cheapest prices for your items you normally buy. With food prices changing often it is important to keep the price book current. Take it with you grocery shopping and make changes as you shop.

I love to buy food, I love to cook and I love saving money. These three can be combined and still provide a very pleasant, apron wearing, kitchen experience without too much stress on your wallet.

***todays the last day to join the Aqua & Red swap

What's in your pantry?

Dave's been working a lot in LA recently. Last week he flew to LAX very early on Monday morning and arrived late home on Wednesday evening. He has plans to work there for a few days every week for the month of August and possibly into September. We're not used to this type of thing. Usually his commute is down the stairs to a home office in the basement. We see him at lunch, we see him for coffee breaks and we see him at 4pm when he comes "home" from work. I am very spoiled to have him around so much and every day I am grateful at the amount of time I spend with him. Oh he does like a tidy house, and he needs a schedule for certain things while I am little less tidy and am pretty free spirited when it comes to schedule. But we love him being around. I always tell myself that the reason I most would like to be dripping with money is so that I could spend as much time as I wanted with him. Not every second, but just having that choice to spend time with him. We get along so well and our marriage is full of laughter, jokes and good companionship. There are lots of other nice things thrown in as well but this is really a post about food and not Dave. I'll try to stop now. When he leaves us for a business adventure I have a strange reaction. I lose my energy and I feel a strong pull of sadness in my whole body. I don't know why this happens. Does this happen to everyone? The kids especially wear me out and my weakest part of the day is from 5pm-8pm. That includes dinner, snack and bedtime. The big bad three. When Dave is here, we take turns making dinner and he usually does the snack and bedtime routine. I am very lucky.

Last week while he was away I found myself at 5:45 pm trying to figure out what to cook for dinner. While I usually follow a weekly menu, somehow I haven't accomplished this since returning home from vacation. I'm still fighting the idea that we have actually returned home and must get on with real life.

At the point in the day when the children are hungry and a little whiny I I start to feel urge to go out and eat at a restaurant and just get dinner out of the way nice and easy. Living on the island though means that we don't have a lot of cheap restaurants as options. Our favorite is an Indian restaurant with the most delicious chicken korma ever but one single korma cost us $12.95 and that doesn't even include rice. If the four of us eat there with three kormas (as we rarely eat anything else) and a rice, our bill is over $50.00. If it was free I would honestly eat there at least two times a week. maybe four times.  I have yet to replicate their recipe. If anyone has a favorite korma recipe for me to try, please send it my way.

So instead of grabbing the children and going out, I walked down to the basement in search of food. Since our 1927 house doesn't have adequate food storage upstairs, I created a basement corner pantry when we moved in. My ideal goal is to create a root cellar which can be done in a basement with a bit of work and ventilation. You might remember these photos here. When I am giving people advice on how to cut food cost, one of my favorite things to share is the beauty of having a pantry. Here is what I found for our dinner.

 
Stocking up on a pantry means staying out of the grocery store. I don't know about you but as I said in the pantry post, I can go to the store for a half gallon of milk and come home with $40.00 worth of groceries and chocolate and possibly even a magazine. The less time I spend in a store the better. We try to shop once a week for our main groceries and we pop out midweek for milk and fruit. Luckily we had a new store open this last spring that sells organic fruit, vegetables and dairy products at wholesale prices. This has helped our food bill immensely and since it is a pretty small store, I am not lured into buying lots of other enticing foods.

From the basket of food above I made a bean salad, sliced cucumber, sliced avocado sprinkled with lime juice and celtic sea salt and to finish the meal off I had some Tuna Guys Spanish Yellowfin Tuna. It is a little spicy so I gave the children some Trader Joe's Tuna. A few years ago my friend Jennifer and family sent us a Christmas gift from Tuna Guys. I've never heard of them but when I tasted their spanish  yellowfin tuna I knew there was no way I could go back to regular plain tuna. I was hooked and had to find more. This last February a health food store that was way out of my frugal budget closed down. Before they locked their doors though they offered everything at 75% off. The line was an hour long but our cart was stuffed full. Included in this booty was a 24 can case of this tuna for a ridiculously cheap price. The meal was simple yet delicious.

Here is how to stock a pantry on a budget:
-buy in bulk, and this doesn't mean a 30 pound can of ketchup. Honestly I tried that and it didn't work. How would I ever use a 30 pound can of ketchup except as a door stop? Buying in bulk means if something is on sale buy as much as you can. I try to consider when an item  will next be on sale and how much I can use before it might expire. I recently discovered Organicville's Agave sweetened ketchup (by the bottle) was on sale. If I bought a case, it was much cheaper than one bottle on it's own. My pantry now has 12 bottles of ketchup to last me through the year until it is next on sale.

-Buy from a delivery food co-op. Often you can buy items by the case and for a discounted price.

-Buy from other discount stores where again you can stock up because the price is so low. We buy lots of items on Amazon Prime, a west coast discount store called Grocery Outlet and the dollar store has on occasion.

-Keep a small notebook in your handbag with your pantry list so that you don't buy more than you need.

-Learn about canning. Fill your pantry with jars of homemade apple sauce, jams and apple pie filling.

Remember that the best way to save money on food is to stay out of the store. But at the same time, make sure you have enough food so that you don't go out a half an hour after dinner should have been on the table to buy food when you are hungry.

Here's the simple yet yummy bean salad recipe:

1 can garbanzo beans

1 can kidney beans

4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar (or to taste)

2 tablespoons chopped basil

1 tablespoon olive oil (optional)

Drain beans and rinse with water. Place in bowl and add vinegar. Mix well and add basil and oil. This is one of those salads that taste better the longer it marinates. This is my favorite potluck dish that I can stir up in three minutes. I don't even have time to put on my apron for this dish.

It's supposed to be 84 degrees today so the children and I are going to walk down to the beach with the dogs (we are looking after Charlie the corgi this week) and a picnic to soak up some sunshine.

ps. thank you for all your sweet comments about Keiran and his sewing. He was excited as each one came in. He went around telling his dada and sister that he is famous now. So precious.