Frugal Friday

This week has gone by in a blur. I don't remember much to be honest. It's been a dreary week in Michigan and I am sooooo ready for nice weather. Just some sunshine and a warm breeze, that's all I want. :)

On Monday, I went diving into our fabric stash to make curtains for the kids bunkbeds. We've had this fabric for years and let the kids pick out whatever kind they wanted.

Three kids in one room and a lack of privacy? Problem solved.

On Tuesday, we were contacted by a farmer friend who had some chickens that weren't the right size for sale. My husband and some helpers processed 45 chickens for free!! On Wednesday, I packaged all of the chicken into family sized ziplocks and we split the meat between three families.

On Thursday, we bought a birthday card at Dollar Tree instead of Walmart. ;) (huge accomplishment, right?)

And today I am making up a menu for the next week so that we are prepared whenever we find a moment to go shopping this weekend. :)

Monday Menu 3/24

Our menu runs from Saturday to Saturday this week so there are eight meals per category.


Breakfasts (with fruit and milk)
Baked Oatmeal
Grits
Cupcakes (Yep, cupcakes)
Eggs and toast
Baked Oatmeal
McDonalds :)
Toast with cream cheese and strawberries
Biscuits and gravy

Lunches (with veggies and dip and water)
Pigs in a blanket
PBJ
Grilled Cheese
Quesadillas
Tuna Salad
Lentil and dumpling soup
Church meal
Fried Rice

Dinner
Red beans and rice with sausage
Taco Bell (This was NOT planned, Sunday was a VERY busy day for my kitchen and I forgot to feed my people...)
Italian meatloaf with tomato basil pasta
Hot pockets (homemade, don't worry!)
Mom in Law's for dinner
Cauliflower crust pizza with breadsticks (We're not a low carb family but I'm all about getting in more veggies!)
Chicken Enchiladas
LEFTOVER NIGHT!!

Snacks
graham crackers
fruit and veggies
iced vanilla chai lattes
popcorn

Frugal Friday

Yeah, I'm jumping on the alliteration wagon that is so common among bloggers. ;)

Frugal Fridays are going to have a post about the frugal things that I have done this week. There are a lot of things that I do that I don't realize are frugal until I mention them to someone else. I am a cheapskate by nature so some things just come to me by instinct. Frugal Fridays will help me to pause and reflect on my habits and maybe they will be able to bless someone else. :)

FRUGAL FOOD
This week we spent $65 on groceries and house stuff. That was mostly dairy and produce. We did buy some ice cream and two bags of chips. The kids love that we have an Aldi so mom can buy the fake doritos or sunchips there without blowing the budget. Our normal budget is $125 per week and includes all of the household stuff and medicine plus diapers and animal food.

I learned how to make a Vanilla Chai Frappe this week, I'll post the recipe next week. It's our new favorite fancy drink.

We made peach tea with the leftover peach syrup from our homecanned peaches. The kids love it. We've been focusing on drinking more water and herbal tea instead of dairy and juice for healthier and cheaper living. ;)

All of our leftovers became lunches for my husband.

I planned to use a venison roast as two meals. We had it for dinner with potatoes and carrots on Sunday night and then for dinner as a venison and barley soup with herbed biscuits on Thursday. I am working on perfecting my herb biscuits. They are almost as good as the cheddar biscuits at Ruby Tuesdays and they have no shortening and are half whole wheat.
 
I made homemade burger buns and french fries to go with our burgers this week instead of purchasing them ready made.

Frugal Cleaning

We use homemade laundry soap on a regular basis and I use bounce dryer sheets unscented cut in half for our anti-static needs. We used to use a bounce bar but I've found that they are not lasting nearly as long as they used to so we switched back to sheets.

I don't use paper towel or paper napkins. I have rags that can be rewashed or thrown out if needed and washable cloth napkins that get tossed in with our towels. We did use my stock of paper plates this week because I have been fighting a cold/sinus issue and standing up hurt.

I am a huge fan of Shaklee Basic H2 for All purpose spray, degreaser, and window wash. It lasts forever. I've had that bottle since NOVEMBER and use it all the time!! This week I ran out of dishsoap and just didn't have the time to get to the store so I did some googling (FROOGLE moment!) and discovered that you can use Basic H2 for dishwashing. I used about a half teaspoon per sinkfull of water and it works at least as well as the cheap dishsoap. I do love the New Dawn Platinum Power Clean soap but it's best saved for the really tough messes. That stuff is not cheap. I went through one bottle in about 6 weeks. Next month, I'm trying out the Shaklee dishwash and I'll let you know what I think.

We use good ol' hydrogen peroxide to clean the toilet and sinks in our bathroom. I sometimes use bleach but I have an allergy so hydrogen peroxide is my chemical of choice.

Frugal Fun

We spent a lot of time this week playing with scrap lumber and cardboard. My kids can be so creative.

Our "tv" time came from Hulu this week. I watched a couple of episodes of Bath Crashers while I was playing with yarn. We don't have the Hulu plus subscription at this time but I am thinking about it.

We were finally able to get out of the house and walk this week. We went to the library for some fun books on our current studies in reptiles and colonial life.

Frugal Hubby
We're also saving quite a bit this week on car repair, thanks to my husband's ability to fix things. Our bearings need to be replaced and doing it himself will save us at least five hundred dollars. :)


Have a blessed weekend!

More than the Mess

A few years ago, my house was pure chaos. We ran out of clean clothes and the laundry room floor more often than not. We didn't have clean dishes. We didn't have swept floors, sometimes we didn't really have floors. I didn't have company over. I was too overwhelmed with my house...I thought.

You see as I have been walking out the past few years of grief from losing two babies in two miscarriages, working through post partum depression, and dealing with my addiction to bingeing something weird has happened. My house started to get cleaner. I was suddenly filled with a need to purge the extras. Things that I never noticed started to bother me enough that I wanted to get them in order. The house would still get dirty and messy. We have four kids, a cat and two dogs after all but it never got to the chaos stage that it was. Not even when we were sick for months at a time last fall.

I've read numerous books on keeping house. I've tried a dozen methods. I do use a household binder but it's mostly to keep paperwork and to do lists in order. I don't use it everyday like I thought I would but I do use it at least once a week. It's a great tool but it's not what got my act together.

God did that.

You see, a messy house in my case (and I suspect in a lot of homes around America) was a sign of an overwhelmed and broken heart.

I didn't know where to start. I didn't know what to do. But God is a God of order and peace. He made the world, the law of Gravity, the complexity of the human body that scientists are still trying to understand, and the ecosystems that are so intricately intertwined that one teeny missing part can upset the order of life for millions of living creatures. He took away that feeling of being frozen in fear, my inability to see the mess, the scales were taken off my eyes and I could see the mess for the first time with clarity.

It wasn't about having too much stuff though we did have too much. It was about having too many thoughts in my head about not being good enough. Somewhere in my mind was a lie that said "I don't deserve this and I can't do it, so I'm not going to. It will always be this way, no matter what I do." It was a stubborn lie. It took God a lot of rewiring for me to see it as it was.

He taught me through His word that I was made for more than the mess that I surrounded myself with. He called me out on some truths about my behavior. I did it on purpose though I didn't realize it. It's easy to say you can't when people want to come over. It's easy to say you can't when you don't have clean clothes to go out. It's easy to say you can't when you've lost your paperwork again and again... That mess was a security blanket, a barbed wire fence that I used to keep people away from me. So they couldn't see the scared person that I was. The person who wouldn't measure up to their expectations, I was too afraid that they would find out just how inferior I was.

But I am NOT inferior. Neither are you. I am the King's Daughter. I am worth far more than rubies or gems. I do deserve to have a picked up house (it's not likely to be clean but picked up is nice) and I am worth the effort it takes to get it that way.

For the past five years, I have had the same prayer. "God, please get my house in order."
He is. It's not happening the way I thought it would. I didn't have a housekeeper appear on my doorstep but the job is getting done!

Sometimes life just has to happen

Sometimes you suffer from daylight savings time jetlag...

Sometimes your house needs your attention...

Sometimes your kids get sick...

Sometimes your nephew has extensive surgery to repair his cleft lip and your sister is going through something that you've never experienced before and all you can do is pray...

Sometimes your preschooler kills your keyboard with YOUR giant glass of water...

Sometimes you feel like your head is gonna explode because your sixth grader is doing math that you haven't done in a couple of decades...

Sometimes your toddler removes her poopy diaper and all you can do is laugh and be thankful that your floor already looks like poo...

and blogging just needs to take the back burner for a few days.


I stole the kids' keyboard and I'm hiding in my room at this very moment. I missed writing and getting all of the swirling thoughts out of my head and out where I can see them and make sense of them. Some of us think better when we write it all out.

I've had a lot of deep thoughts and ideas swirling lately...

Is the plan that I know God has written out for me working? Yes. There is no fast track to where He wants me to be. I need to trust Him and tell the lies swirling in my head to take a hike.

Are we living life too slow in a lightning speed world? No, this pace is the pace that we thrive in. We don't have to run as fast as the Joneses. I have time to take care of people at this pace. It wouldn't be possible if our life was faster.

 Jesus really does love me for me.

And some not so deep ones...

I want new curtains in my dining room. Something light and colorful to replace the blue that has been there for ages.

We're only buying milk and produce this weekend for groceries because I did a massive stock up last week.

I want winter to end. This has been the longest winter in Michigan that I can remember. I am ready for the snowpants and snowboots to be put away. I have even complained to my sister. I was whining and saying that this season will never end. She reminded me of Genesis and God's promises. I'm holding on to this particular promise in a full-on-toddler-on-parent-leg-death-grip on this 21 degree March day.

 In case you were wondering, that's not the ocean. That's what farmland looks like through the fog in southern Michigan at sunrise while you're cruising down the road running late for church on Daylight Saving Sunday. :)

Leftover Pork Roast Papusa

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am a lover of Latin American foods. My favorite comfort food of all time is the humble tamal. I have always been intimidated by the thought of making tamales though because most of the recipes that I find are very intensive and make over fifty tamales.

While on pinterest the other day, I discovered something called a Papusa. It's kind of like the fast food version of a tamal. Instead of being steamed in a corn husk, papusas are lightly fried in a pan kind of like a pancake.

 A skillet full of chopped pork roast with one chopped chipotle chile in adobo, chili powder, cumin, garlic, and salt. It was spicy in the pan and that's good when you are going to encase it in masa.

 I used equal parts of water and masa with garlic powder and salt to taste. Let it set for ten minutes or so.

 Roll it into an egg sized ball. (It should feel like playdoh but with a bit more texture to it.)

Shape into a bowl and fill with cooked pork. You can also fill these with beans or cheese or anything that sounds yummy to you.

 Pinch the edges over the filling until you can no longer see any of the stuffing.









 Play Pat-A-Cake.  You want them to be less than half an inch thick. If the filling starts to leak out just pinch off a bit from the edges or form the bowl and cover it up.

 These are ready to be fried and waiting on a piece of parchment paper so I don't have to clean a pan...I'm lazy like that. Wax paper would work and I will use that next time because it is way cheaper.

 We put a drizzle of coconut oil in our pan over medium high heat. Cook each side of the papusas for about 3 minutes.

I actually like them more than tamales!!

I wanted to make a curtida (cabbage and vinegar slaw) to go with them but I was distracted by my other kitchen projects so that will have to wait for another day. We had them with sour cream, cheese, salsa and rotel. We also had peaches on the side because I don't like having a meal that is only protein and carbs.

Isn't it lovely? :D

Carnita Nachos

My husband and I have a decided weakness for Latin American flavors. In fact, our favorite taqueria, El Taco Loco, is less than three blocks away. This is a dangerous place for our budget to live. ;)

We love carnitas, anything choriqueso, tortas...tamales...mmmm....what was I typing about again?

We could easily eat at El Taco Loco EVERY night and never get bored with the food. However, we simply can't afford to take all six of us out to dinner every night, no matter how inexpensive El Taco Loco's menu is!

That means that I needed to learn how to make some yummy craving satisfying food in less time than it would take to pack up the kiddos and walk the three blocks to authentic flavor heaven.

 One of the laziest easiest ways for me to bring the flavors to life is in the form of a pork roast. I buy a good sized pork roast (NOT loin) and toss it in the slow cooker with onion and garlic until it's done. Everything in the crockpot gets dumped into a Tupperware container and stored in the fridge. We could eat part of the roast as a meal with carrots and potatoes and we do sometimes but sometimes I just want the meat made ahead for other meals.

Last week, I made Carnita Nachos. We had an opened bag of tortilla chips that needed to be used before they were stale. I was feeling particularly lazy and didn't want to spend more than a few minutes at the stove.

I took a bowl full of cooked roast and cut it into bite sized pieces. I tossed the meat into a pan with salt, cumin, and chili powder and cooked it until it was heated through and crispy chewy. The reason I don't use loin in this recipe is the lack of fat content. I don't want to have to add fat to fry the meat so I use the naturally more fatty cuts to save time.

My cute spice containers

Repurposed Parmesan lid

I layered tortilla chips onto my baking sheets, added cheese and cooked pork for the big kids,

 
green peppers and pork and leftover choriqueso for my husband, and lots of red onion and green pepper and leftover choriqueso and pork to mine.

 Our toddler doesn't chew tortilla chips very well yet so her nachos are made on whatever random crackers that we have in the house. That way she can eat the same thing that we do but it's not a choking hazzard.

The trays of nachos were popped into the oven at 400 until the cheese was bubbly. I served them with our usual taco night choices. Homemade salsa and rotel, guacamole, lime juice, and sour cream.

  My taste buds were quite content by the end of the meal. That only used about a quarter of the roast. Stay tuned for more recipes!