On the ranch

MENUS WEEK #3 VISITING WITH OLD FRIENDS, COOKBOOKS

2012-01-31T22:59:00.000-08:00

February 1, 2012

Last night I went with a friend to a free herb growing seminar. The evening was pleasant and I learned a few new things. When she brought me home we sat and talked awhile about menu planning and Master Mixes. I drug out my stack of make it from scratch cookbooks that I start many of my recipes from. I of course tweak all the recipes to meet my family needs and personal tastes.

That is the great thing about making all your own mixes. It allows you to adjust for allergies and intolerances, special medical needs, taste preferences and much more.

Going through the cookbooks as we talked I saw many delicious and useful recipes I had forgotten all about due to being in a rut of cooking the same few meals over and over.

That is one of the great things about long term menu planning. You can climb out of the rut because with long term planning you can see very quickly what rut you are falling into.

Take cookies, those of us who bake cookies tend to make the same one or two over and over. Chocolate chip, sugar, Snickerdoodles, repeat. But my family loves all sorts of wonderful cookies. It’s just so easy to stick with the same three or so and repeat making them. But with menu planning and striving to stay out of the rut each week is different. In fact I’m trying to see how long I can go without repeating too much. Already in the first weeks Coconut Macaroons have reappeared. My husband dearly loves macaroons, but I very seldom make them. They aren’t hard, it’s just they aren’t part of my basic rut. In the weeks to come expect to see gingersnaps, refrigerator nut cookies and many, many more.

While I do tend repeat the sides of meals often I’m even going to try and switch those up. Instead of plain corn watch for corn relish, corn fritters, Mexicorn, corn on the cob, fried corn, corn nuggets, corn chowder and much more. I will also be working at breaking from the norm on what sides go with what meals.

My mother in law once went on a trip to Walt Disney World with us, during the trip I made meatloaf. She became upset because the vegetable of the night was green beans instead of peas. She said she could not eat the meat loaf without peas. I didn’t have a single can of peas in the camper so she had to muddle through. It’s not that she was being difficult it was she was so set in her rut that meatloaf required peas that she simply couldn’t be satisfied with the meal. I refuse to be in that rut. That’s where long term menu planning can be a tremendous help to get out of the rut and stay out of it.

So here’s the menu plan and recipes for week #3.

WEEK #3: BREAKFAST OPPORTUNITES

Waffles: leftover from the double batch cooking on Sunday

Serve with syrup, molasses, honey, butter etc.

Spread with peanut butter, chop a banana and add cinnamon sugar

Spread with other nut butters

Top with fruit in simple syrup

Hot Cereal:

Rice, reheat leftover rice from the previous dinner menus

Farina

Multigrain packets

Cold Cereal:

Corn Pops (store brand, but a guilty pleasure of mine)

Corn flakes

Fruit:

Kiwi

Dried fruits, bulk purchased or home dried—great in the cereals

Beverages:

Apple juice, from frozen concentrate

Milk

Hot tea

Hot cocoa, from homemade mix

LUNCH OPPORTUNITIES: WEEK #3

Sandwiches:

Egg salad, made from our farm fresh eggs

Toasted raisin bread with cream cheese

Deli ham

Salad ingredients:

Spring salad mix: bulk purchased

Feta cheese

Bacon bits, homemade or freeze dried

Shredded carrots

Red onion

Salad dressing:

Pecan vinegrette, homemade

French, homemade

Soups:

Navy bean, from making the Navy bean master mix

Gumbo

Pasta Fagoli

Fruits:

Kiwi

Assorted dried fruits

WEEK 3 DINNER MENUS—GROUND BEEF WEEK

Monday 1/23/2012

Bacon Cheeseburgers—on homemade buns

French fries , frozen—bought on sale

Sweet Potato Fries, frozen—bought on sale

Chocolate Pudding—made from Master Mix recipe

Pepsi—bought on sale

Tuesday 1/24/2012

Pioneer Woman Chili—use leftovers later in the week

Tortilla chips or Crackers—either homemade crackers, or on sale chips

Cheddar cheese—grate from the bulk purchase block

Onions—from the root cellar

Lime wedges—from the root cellar (bulk purchase)

Milk—bought at Sam’s to save $.50 per gallon

Coconut macaroons--homemade

Wednesday 1/25/2012

Hot dogs—wieners bulk purchased on sale and frozen, homemade buns

Baked beans—homemade from dried beans

Corn on the cob—frozen bought with coupon on sale

Pepsi—bought on sale

Leftover desserts

Thursday 1/26/2012

Sausage Rolls with Marinara—homemade, bulk purchase sausage and homemade marinara

Garlic noodles—homemade noodles from bulk cooking last week.

Green beans—home canned

Iced tea

Apple Crisp—homemade from food storage

Friday 1/27/2012

Indian tacos—use Pioneer Woman leftover chili and sopapilla Master Mix to make shells

Mexicorn—bought on sale

Green Beans--leftover

Flan—food storage from the gift given us by a friend

Tea

Saturday 1/28/2012

Italian Sausage Pizza—more bulk purchase sausage from previous menus, homemade crust and sauce, grated mozzarella from bulk purchase

Jarred Salad—vacuum sealed homemade salad mix to preserve freshness, and homemade dressing

Cheese bread sticks—made with some of the pizza crust dough and bulk purchase cheeses.

Pepsi

Leftover desserts

Sunday 1/29/2012

Pasta Fagioli Soup

French bread, homemade

Snickerdoodles

tea

SNACKING OPPORTUNITIES: WEEK #3

Salty:

Popcorn

Soft baked pretzels

Sweet:

Chocolate pudding

Coconut Macaroons after Tuesday

Apple Crisp after Thursday

Fruit:

Kiwis

Dried fruits

Veggies:

Celery with peanut butter or other nut butters

Carrot sticks

So now the menus are up let’s see what recipes I can share today. The hamburger/hot dog bun recipe can be viewed elsewhere in my blog at:

http://cjpattersonontheranch.blogspot.com/2011/05/playing-catch-up-on-garden-and-house.html

I use the same dough, for the sausage rolls, cheese bread sticks and pizza crust as well. It’s truly a versatile Master Mix.

When I speak of the Pioneer Woman Recipes these are recipes from Ree Drummond’s tv show or website. The chili recipe and those in the future can be viewed on her website at: http://www.foodnetwork.com/the-pioneer-woman/index.html

Last week and this both I used the Sopapilla Master Mix. Recipe can be viewed at:

http://cjpattersonontheranch.blogspot.com/2009/12/christmas-12-years-later.html

So on to the Navy Bean Soup for lunches, Molasses Baked Beans and Pasta Fagoili Soup. All are made using the

Navy Bean Soup Master Mix.

Yield: 12 cups

2 pounds dried navy beans, or other small white beans

10 cups water

1 large onion, diced

2 tablespoons butter, optional

1 tablespoon salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1. Wash and sort beans. Place in a large pot and cover with water and bring to a boil. Boil for 2 minutes.

2. Remove from heat. Cover and let stand for 1 hour.

3. Drain and discard water. Rinse beans and return pot. Add 10 c water and remaining ingredients.

4. Bring to a boil.

5. Simmer for 2 hours.

6. Freeze or can leftovers in 3 to 4 cup containers label and store appropriately.

Once the beans are tender you can eat this as Navy Bean Soup.

Molasses Baked Beans

Servings: 8

1/2 pound bacon, diced

1 cup onion, chopped

1 cup celery, chopped

4 cups Navy Bean Mix

1/2 cup molasses

1/4 cup brown sugar, packed

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

2 tablespoons ketchup

1 tablespoon prepared mustard

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

1. Pre-heat oven to 300 F.

2. In large skillet fry bacon until almost crips. Drain and discard all but 1 tbl of drippings. Put bacon in a lidded 2 qt cassrole dish

3. Saute onions and celery in bacon drippings Add to casserole dish.

4. Add remaining ingredients and mix well.

5. Bake for 2 hours until all moisture is absorbed.

Pasta Fagoili Soup

Servings: 8

1 large onion, chopped

4 stalks celery, chopped

3 large carrots, chopped

2 cloves garlic, Minced OR 1 tsp garlic powder

73 ounces chicken broth

3 cups Navy Bean Soup Mix

14 ounces tomatoes, canned, dieced and peeled, undrained

8 ounces tomato sauce

1 teaspoon oregano leaves, dried

1 teaspoon basil leaves, dried

1/2 teaspoon pepper

2 whole bay leaves

1 tablespoon parsley flakes

1 cup shell pasta

salt, to taste

Parmesan cheese, fresh, optional

1. Spray large pan with non-stick cooking spray. Add onions, celery, carrots and garlic. Cook about 4 or 5 minutes until partially tender, stirring occasionally.

2. Add Broth, Mix, tomatoes, tomato sauce, oregano, basil, pepper, bay leaves, parsley flakes and salt. Bring to a boil.

3. Add macaroni. Reduce to medium heat and cook 15 minutes until macaroni and vegetables are tender.

4. Remove bay leaves. Sprinkle with cheese.

Food Storage add ons for this week is the remainder of the 10#’s was used to brown with celery, onion, garlic and seasonings for future casseroles and soup add ins. Then canned.

The additional Navy Bean Master Mix can either be canned or frozen for future meals.

On a side note: You can make all your Hot Roll mix items up at once and then after the first rise freeze the doughs to use later in the week. I have in the past also held it in the refrigerator for a few days. It did develop a slight sourdough taste, which is not a bad thing.

Jan who is all about doing bulk cooking to save time and money in OK

PAYING FOR YOUR MAGICAL TRIP

2012-01-31T14:13:00.000-08:00

January 31, 2012

So now you’ve got a rough idea of how much this trip will cost you and maybe a little bit of panic is setting in. Maybe the total was more than you thought it would be, but you REALLY want to take this trip, or a trip to anywhere, or maybe you just want to get debt free (just had to slip in a plug for that, because once you live debt free then you can travel all you want) but you don’t want to take out a loan or use charge cards for the dream trip (especially not if you want to live debt free). HOW in the world are you going to pay for this trip, because boy would it be fun to go!

The answer is simple. Two ways, cut the costs and save for it and pay cash for the entire trip. This post is about paying for it. The ideas here will work not only work for playing for a vacation, but for getting debt free, or buying any number of things. My next post(s) will be about ways to cut costs. There are hundreds of ways to do both ways, both on the trip and at home. First the cash, because the sooner you start on it the faster you will reach your goal.

You can start right now. Find a solid heavy jar, or that cutesy bank you picked up somewhere, a tin can whatever and put it where you can easily get to it. Maybe you would want to decorate it, or let the kids if you are letting them help you plan right now, Do something to remind you that any money that goes in this is for the trip (or debt reduction).

Now go to your purse, shake your pants pocket, dig in the sofa cushions, dump the coins out of the car ash tray, frisk the washing machine, look in your coat pockets, look everywhere you know you usually deposit pocket change and put it in the container. The clinking of those coins hitting the once empty container is Tinkerbell’s twinkle sound, do you hear Walt Disney World calling you?

While that doesn’t look like much right now it will grow and grow and you will soon be off on your trip of a lifetime. But just like those of us that are on the Dave Ramsey plan talk about feeding the gazelles, you need to feed Tinkerbell too.

You’ve done the first step, now start paying for everything you can in cash, dollar bills to be exact. No coins, because every coin is going to go into your vacation fund. I’ll call it Tink’s fund for now. Each night, drop all your coins into that bank and listen for Tink telling you thank you. You will be surprised how fast that fund is going to grow as time goes on.

Our first trip to Walt Disney World we paid cash for the trip for four of us, so have a few of the trips between then and the one we are currently saving for now using the methods I’ll be telling you. It took us exactly 9 months to save for the trip just out of pocket change and coupon money for the four of us. The more you do to feed Tink the faster you can get there.

So where are you going to get the cash to feed Tink? Let’s start with a simple one. Coupons. Don’t go running screaming into the woods at the sound of that. I’m not telling you to become an extreme couponer , although that wouldn’t hurt, I’m saying just incorporate a few coupons and discounts into your life. It doesn’t have to be a major production like you see on tv, it can be just one or two here or there. The volume you do is up to you.

Think outside the box, need an oil change, check the yellow pages of your phone book, often there is a coupon there for oil changes. Do you eat out often (we’ll discuss this more later)? Check to see if your favorite places you eat at have an online club or a loyalty card. Because if they do you should sign up for them, and net the benefits from them.

If you read my Week #1 post on menus you will see we went to Ghengis Mongolian Grill for my birthday meal. I belong to both their online club and have a loyalty card. As a result the three of us ate for 1/3 of what the bill would have been normally. I got a free meal because it was my birthday, and we’d eaten there enough that we’d earned another free meal. So our nearly $50 meal cost us $16 including the tip (we paid our server a tip based on the $50 because we had extremely good service). The difference went into the trip bank that night.

Every way you can save with a coupon OR a discount of any type, use the money you saved to “feed Tink”. Save $.10 with a grocery coupon, put it in that bank. Get a discount because of a loyalty card, a student or senior citizen discount, put it in that bank. You will be amazed at how fast that money will add up.

Then once a month, or when you mystery shop your personal bank (I’ll explain this in a minute) deposit all but a few coins from your Tink fund into a regular bank into an interest bearing account. Even if it’s just $10 put it in the real bank. Because the sooner you do the more you will earn in interest and every penny interest is that much closer to your dream trip. The reason I say leave a few coins in the Tink fund bank is because I consider it “seed money” If it’s empty it’s too easy to leave it empty, but if you see coins in there it’s a lot easier to add a few. It’s a mental thing.

Now let’s look at cutting expenses. You saw how much we saved on that birthday meal, but what if we’d all drank water with lemon, which is free, instead of three $2 each drinks? At that one meal it would have been a savings of $6 plus tax for the three of us. That’s roughly $6.50 more to feed Tink with. Or if we hadn’t eaten out at all that night…you get the idea.

Do you REALLY need that double low fat whatever latte on the way to/from work? Could you make it yourself at home, or skip it one day a week even?

Of course coupons are a big saver on groceries too. So is the menu planning I write about in other posts. Don’t forget to mail in your rebates. All that cash goes into the fund. As the fund grows you will find more and more ways to save because you WANT that trip!

Around here when we are saving for a big trip we often equate what we are saving by eithernot buying something, using a coupon or getting a discount with what it will buy at WDW. One of us will often say “that’s a coke at Disney World.” Or if it’s a bigger savings “That’s a burger, a one day ticket, a night’s stay etc at Disney World.” And it all adds up.

My granny always said “mind your pennies and your dollars will mind themselves.” You see a penny in a parking lot, pick it up and feed it to Tink, it only takes 10 pennies to make a dime and 10 dimes to make a dollar. So don’t pass up that penny.

While we no longer use charge cards due to our personal decision to follow Dave Ramsey’s path to Financial Freedom, when we did we had one that paid a cash back bonus. We paid this card off pretty religiously so using it was another way we earned cash for our trips. We paid for everything with that card and then as soon as we had enough “cash back” built up we could withdraw it that money went into the Tink fund as well.

When it came time to take the trip we made certain we had enough money in the savings account to pay off the charge card when the bills from the trip started rolling in and then used that card exclusively for the trip-so we earned cash back for those expenses as well, for the next trip. The Tink’s fund stayed in the bank earning interest until the bill hit, but the minute the bill hit we withdrew from the bank enough to cover the bill in full and paid it off.

This plan works well as long as you don’t get a Murphy hit and can’t pay off the charge card. Then the interest will eat your lunch and you will have the stress of an additional bill. We made the conscious decision to do without the charge card at all. Because we learned the hard way that Murphy is just one knock at the door away at all times. But if you choose to use charge cards that is your personal decision and you can use it to your advantage to pay for the trip IF you pay the bill off in full each month.

A note about using a charge or debit card while at WDW or any out of town trip. Notify the company the card is issued from ahead of time when you are traveling, because if you don’t you might find your purchases denied, even when you have the cash there to cover it.

In this day and age of identity theft many companies will shut a card down if they see it being used outside its normal travel area. We had that happen once while at WDW and it was VERY embarrassing. A simple phone call straightened it out, but that was time away from our vacation and a bit of embarrassment we could do without.

Also, one of my bank debit cards will not let purchases from certain states go through on the debit card because of identity theft period. It’s a small local bank and there is no discussing it with them. Certain states are on their no go list. Another debit card has a daily limit of $1,000 they will let go through, unless you make prior arrangements before your trip or large purchase. So it’s better to find out BEFORE you go if you have a similar situation rather than get several states away and find you don’t have access to your cash. Be sure and check on that daily limit because when staying at the WDW resorts you will be issued a “room key” that will be used like a credit/debit card in the park and resort area and they will run a large total through on your account at once. You can tell them ahead of time how much you to allow at a time and then they will need to notify you of when they are running the amount through.

Due to the problems of identity theft and theft in general we actually have an electronic use only free checking account with a Visa debit at a bank other than our main bank set up. We use this account strictly for our online purchases and travel. Only the exact amount of money we need for the purchase/trip is put in this account prior to the purchase/trip. That way if theft does happened our main accounts are safe and our liability is limited. We keep the account open with just a required small amount in there at other times.

Another big fund raiser is sell stuff. Run a garage sale, list on ebay, sell media items on half.com or amazon.com, Craig’s list, upillar.com, your local cheap cycle the list goes on and on of places to sell things. Someone recently said they “only got $.75” for a book they had purchased years ago. I responded “that’s $.75 more than you would have had otherwise and now your bookshelf is cleaner and you aren’t paying to heat/cool that book. “ If I’d been talking to a family member I would have said “That’s almost half of a Mickey Ears ice cream bar at WDW.”

Older kids often can earn their own vacation souvenir/spending money by babysitting, doing yard work and similar jobs for others. Whatever you do the more you do the more you can save.

Consider mystery shopping and saving all of the income from that, above your expenses of doing so, for your trip. For more on mystery shopping use the search feature on the left here on my blog (between the pictures) and put in mystery shopping. A lot of info I have previously posted on the ins and outs of mystery shopping and merchandising can be found in that way. Remember me saying that I put the Tink Fund money in a bank I mystery shop at. Well I make that deposit when I do a teller shop and use their coin counting machine to count the Tink Fund then make the deposit, as required by the mystery shop. File my paperwork and I make anywhere from $5 to $25 depending on the bank and the time of the month for making that deposit. Then the money I make from that shop goes directly into the bank via direct deposit when I get paid for the shop.

Because I schedule my mystery shops to coincide with my errands I’m not out any extra expenses for fuel to do the shop so the whole amount goes into the Tink Fund. If it was a mystery shop that I had to make a reimbursable purchase, like a nice meal out, for I deduct how much I spent for that meal from the check and only the profit goes into the Tink fund.

Make gift giving time part of preparing for the trip time. It might be the perfect way to tell family members about the trip. Disney or other gift cards, Disney cash, tickets for the parks (you can buy them ahead of time because the time on them doesn’t start until you actually use them). Special clothing for the trip, stuffed animals, Disney movies (often have rebates on them) reservations etc all make good gifts. Plus they are part of your trip budget so you kill two birds with one stone.

Speaking of gift cards it’s time to speak about mypoints and similar programs. These are programs where you click on emails or ads and you get points. These points are saved until you have enough to redeem them. While mypoints does not have Disney gift cards that you can redeem for they do have Wal-Mart cards, fuel cards, restaurant gift cards and various other gift cards that you could use while vacationing OR to use at home and put the cash you saved by using them in your Tink Fund. They are basically free money you can earn in just a few clicks. I personally use the mypoints tool bar and get bonus points every month by using it to do the numerous google searches I do each month anyway. No extra effort on my part once I installed the tool bar (which I got bonus points for doing) and it’s free money. Oh if you shop online you can also get bonus points from the various places by doing the shopping through the mypoints (or similar websites). Not a member of mypoints? I’d love to refer you, I get points for referrals too. Just e me privately and I’ll refer you.

Blogging is another way to earn bits of cash here and there. See the ads in and around my blog? Every time you or anyone else clicks on one I get a penny. (all clicks appreciated) and that goes into my Tink Fund.

The whole idea is to save for the trip, so every penny you save or earn it goes into your Tink Fund. Our first trip cost right at $3,000 and that was when there were four of us going, now I only pay for two as my son always pays for his own expenses if he joins us. We still pay right around $3,000 thirty years later for our first trip of the year from OK when we purchase our annual pass, and then far less for the remaining 1-3 trips for the year.

That first trip there was one park, the Magic Kingdom, there are now 4 parks, 2 water parks and a large shopping complex. Plus to us the campground, called Ft. Wilderness, is an adventure in itself. There is a lot to do at each of the resorts as well. You can spend a whole day easily just going from resort to resort to see the differences and enjoy the ambiance of each resort. While pool hopping is frowned upon there is a lot to see as each resort is done in a different theme. We particularly like doing this during the various holiday seasons to enjoy the decorations on a “crash and burn” day.

One other thing to consider is what we did one trip we went down. A dear friend had moved from Oklahoma to Mississippi and had left a lot of their stuff in storage here. They paid for our fuel and the trailer rental for us to bring a trailer load of their items from OK to Gulfport, MS. This gave us not only fuel for those first several miles, but a place to stay one night and a nice home cooked meal. This was of course a big savings for all involved. So if you have a similar situation, or you do animal rescue transports on a regular basis you might try to schedule one for part of your journey to help cover the transportation costs. Or plan your trip when a family member has to travel that direction for business and just journey on from their first destination to WDW at a discounted rate.

We did this last one a few years ago when my husband was sent to AutoCad University in Las Vegas, NV in December. We combined the travel time with vacation time and used his travel expense account for paying for the part to and from Las Vegas, as well as lodging and meals while we were there. That left the rest of our nearly four week trip to travel parts of the western US on our private money. Since Vegas was our furthest point west on that trip it covered a good deal of our fuel consumption. If we’d had the time we would have gone on over to Disneyland from there, but alas we didn’t have the time.

Other ideas for saving money, or earning additional income can be found in the Tightwad Gazette books (I, II & III) by Amy Dacyzn, The Total Money Makeover book by Dave Ramsey, various yahoogroups, and various frugal websites. For legit work at home jobs consider checking out ratracerebellion.com and volition.com websites as well.

Whatever you do save your profits and you will have a vacation that you can be proud of without going into debt. Speaking of debt, consider all these ideas and more for becoming debt free because then as Dave Ramsey says if you “Live like no one else now, later you can LIVE like no one else.”

Jan who is using all these ideas and more to not only become debt free, but to take a celebration vacation trip to Walt Disney World when she is debt free in OK

HOW TO PLAN A FRUGAL TRIP TO WALT DISNEY WORLD

2012-01-27T16:16:00.000-08:00

January 27, 2012

This time of year I often get a lot of inquiries about how in the world does my family afford to go to Walt Disney World so often when they know I work on a shoestring budget. Everyone is in vacation planning mode and the “world’ beckons. So I’ve decided it’s time for a blog post on the ins and outs of vacation planning, not just for the “world” but for any vacation.

The main thing is to remember it IS a vacation, don’t over plan your trip. Allow for down time in your schedule. Many a vacation has been ruined because someone in the family is determined they must “do it all.” And that makes for cranky folks old and young alike. Remember, you can always go back and do what you missed this trip next trip.

I am a big believer in pre-planning trips. I feel that half the fun in the trip is the planning, just not going overboard about it. That being said I will admit one of our most favorite trips to WDW was a spur of the moment trip we planned on the fly on one Monday and we left that Thursday.

Another non-WDW trip was a penny hike trip we took to Mt. Rushmore. On that trip we literally flipped a penny each night to see which way we would go and to decide what we would do each day. So there is a lot to be said for not planning as well. It’s just a lot riskier.

But this blog is about planning and doing the WDW trip on a shoestring.

First pick your dates, but be a little flexible on those dates. Often a lot can be saved on the accommodations and transportation by moving your dates one way or another just a few days.

I know on many airlines if you fly out on Tuesday-Thursday the airfare is cheaper than if you fly the other days of the week. WDW resort rooms and campsites are also generally cheaper Monday-Thursday than on the weekend. So if you can be flexible, then by all means be so.

Gasoline and diesel are generally cheaper during the winter months than summer months as well.

WDW also has “off season” discounts on their resort rooms, so if you home school, year round school, or for other reasons can travel during the non-summer and peak season months to WDW I highly recommend it.

Here are the historical peak season dates. Of course, as with all things it all depends on what is going on in the world as to how busy the parks will be on these dates. These dates were supplied by The Mouse For Less website (a great planning tool location for certain) www.themouseforless.com

• Heaviest: Presidents' week in February

-Mid-March through Late April ("Spring Break"); Easter

-Memorial Day weekend

-June through mid-August

-Thanksgiving Day and weekend

-Christmas week through New Year's Day

• Moderate: After Presidents' week in February through early March

-Late April through early June (except Memorial Day weekend)

-The first part of Thanksgiving week

• Lightest: Mid-January until Presidents' week in February (expect attraction & pool closures & refurbishments)

-The week following Labor Day until Thanksgiving week

-The week following Thanksgiving until the week before Christmas

The Walt Disney World travel guides by Steve Birnbaum usually also have peak season dates listed in them. This information seldom changes much, so you could look at a library copy of it for free to get that information.

The Birnbaum books are great for info about the parks and are updated often. Older versions are good for general info, but will often be outdated for the current rides, shops, restaurants and meal prices. So if you are going to use them for your ultimate planning book spring for the issue for the year you are going. However, since they are put together a year ahead of time know that some of the info even in those most current issues may be out of date.

The best price planning info is the free DVDs and info you can get from WDW yourself. If you use mypoints (more on this later in the how to pay for it post) then by all means order it through there and get the points for doing so.

You can also get a lot of the prices from the following websites:

http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/

http://allears.net/index.html

The first is the official Disney website and the second is an unofficial one. I really like both sites. The Disney one gives you all the basic planning costs but the All Ears site gives you so much more. Right down to individual meal prices, no estimates, the actual cost.

All Ears also gives many helpful hints and lists current available discounts. A major plus when you are planning your trip on a shoestring. Two other sites that are great for helping you plan out your vacation are The Mouse for Less, which I previously mentioned and The Magic For Less. www.themagicforless.com

If you like discussion groups then I highly recommend themouseforless@yahoogroups.com I have learned much of what I know on vacationing on a shoestring from the folks on that list. The rest of my knowledge comes from my natural tightwad instincts. Be sure to check out all the files and links at the yahoogroups site. There is a wealth of information there.

A word of warning about the mouse for less group. It is a VERY active group and so if you don’t want to get 100 or more emails in a day I suggest you either read it from the web or go on digest for that particular group. It is well worth wading through all the emails to glean a lot of information from that group though.

Once you get all your research info together and you’ve chosen your time frame then it’s time to pick your resort, your tickets and whether or not a water park is in your future.

Picking the resort is strictly a thing of personal preference. Some folks prefer to stay off site because often at first glance the price is cheaper. There are numerous great hotels and condos for rent in the area and if that is your preference than you are on your own for the planning of that part, or check with the Magic for Less travel agency, more about these wonderful folks in a bit.

You see we have only stayed off site once in over 30 trips to the world and swore we’d never do it again. But that is OUR personal preference I know a lot of people who never stay on site and prefer it that way.

While our room off site was cheaper what it cost us in other ways was so much more expensive. Staying onsite comes with numerous perks. Here’s a list of some for you to consider when making this decision:

1. Once you arrive, if you are not leaving the resort area then you never need your car again until you leave. They transport you everywhere for free, even to their shopping complex called Downtown Disney. If you decide to leave the resort they do have a car rental spot onsite, where they will bring the car to your hotel room for you and you can rent the car for just the days you need it. Oh and by the way, it’s generally a cheaper rate if you rent it at the resort than at the airport due to airport usage taxes and such. Say for going to Universal Studios/Islands of Adventure or Sea World one day. More on these two another time.

2. If you are flying in they pick you up for free at the airport with the Magical Express, collect your luggage for you and deliver it to your room. When you leave they pick your luggage up at your resort and check it in for you at the airport. This leaves you free to go directly to the parks or wherever once you have checked in and to visit the parks on your last day if your tickets are all inclusive. A big plus. It also means you do not need a rental car to get to the resort, pay turnpike fees (which are hefty) or pay for an airport shuttle. Nor do you have the delay and hassle at the airport. While you make a quick potty run after you get off the plane a Cast Member from WDW is collecting your luggage for you. How great is that? The transport is a large comfortable bus that shows Disney commercials and such on tvs to start your Disney experience immediately.

3. Extra Magic Hours are a wonderful plus for resort guests. This is an extra 1-3 hours a day at a different park every day either in the morning before the park opens or after the park closes at night. Only resort guests are allowed in the parks during Extra Magic Hours so the lines are much shorter then. It’s a great way to get to ride the most popular rides without using a Fastpass or waiting in a long line. It’s also a great time to collect a Fastpass for a special ride later in the day.

4. If you are staying OFF site you must pay for parking at the parks that can add up quick on a multi-day trip. However, once you pay for teach day that is all you pay. The current rates are: Automobile, taxi, limo or motorcycle $14, camper, trailer or RV $15 and Bus or tractor trailer $18. There are ways to get discounts like owning an annual pass—we’ll get into this more later or being a member of AAA.

5. If staying off site you must also consider the driving time and gas each day both to and from the parks and possible turnpike fees. If you have little ones, or a person who simply needs to rest occasionally it is far easier to go back to your hotel room/campsite by staying onsite than off site.

6. Amenities, the resorts at WDW have a LOT of them. From swimming pools, to tennis courts, hot tubs and a petting zoo at the campground. And you don’t even have to be staying at the campground to enjoy the petting zoo, just take the free ground transportation over and while you are there consider the walking trails, or rent a bicycle or water craft for a fun afternoon. At night time the campground has free Disney movies and campfire sing-a-long or you can take a special nighttime canoe trip. Don’t forget to watch the Electric Water Parade on the bay while visiting the campground after dark as well, or maybe pay for a carriage ride. At the Animal Kingdom Lodge they have free use of night vision binoculars for you to watch the animals on the savannah after dark. That is always fun to do.

7. Each resort has a place to grab a bite to eat and you can purchase a refillable beverage cup that is good for your entire stay at your resort and it more than pays for itself during any trip. To date there are no refillable cups at the parks, except I know that for awhile the AK did have one that was for the day of purchase only. There is generally pizza delivery available to your room as well.

8. Disney character wake-up calls. If you are staying in the resort, alas not the campground, then you can be awakened each morning with a wake-up call by a Disney character. It’s part of the magic and many an adult likes it as much as the younger set.

9. Entertainment, many of the resorts have free entertainment going on at various times. One night at the Port ‘o Orleans, back when it was Dixie Landings, we stumbled into a live show at one of the clubs. It was a very good show. This was our one spur of the moment trip to WDW and everything was just perfect that trip. Just the two of us and all the pieces fell together just right.

10. Resort guests get first pick at dining reservations.

There are more pluses, but you get the idea.

Next you need to decide on package, or non-package deal. Again this is a personal decision. We seldom go with the packages because we generally take our own food with us for at least part of the meals and we most often purchase an annual pass. So the non-package generally works out cheaper for us. However, that being said, Disney has been running some pretty sweet deals this last couple of years that include free meals. I recently priced out a trip for the two of us to take a long weekend down and found out that the package that included length of stay tickets and meals was only $50 more than without meals. I would have had to pay far more than that for a la carte meals for five days for two! if we had decided to make that trip, it would have been well worth that $50 for the quick service meal plan, or even to pay the additional for the upper meal plans difference. So check your prices closely, sometimes the packages are much cheaper, depending on what you choose to include.

Tickets are another consideration. Our big trip for each year is generally 14 days and we go into the parks for 10 of those days. The other 4 days we go shopping, visit the water parks, go to another park (generally US/IOA) or simply crash and burn for a day. Our shorter trips are generally 4-5 days and we hit the parks all of those days. You can purchase plain tickets that are good for one park per day, Park Hopper Tickets or never expiring tickets. Each ticket has it’s pros and cons. That is a decision you will have to decide.

If purchasing tickets for just that particular trip we choose the Park Hopper, because we won’t stay in an overly crowded park. We have learned if one park is really crowded then another one is probably nearly empty. Certain parks on certain days are crowded, (see the Birnbaum books to determine the days). Or we will want to go to a park for a certain show on a certain day and maybe not want to spend the entire day in that park. But that is our preference, again you have to decide.

Generally we plan on going more than once in a year so we will purchase an annual pass. When I list how to get discounts and such I’ll go into all the pros of having the annual pass. It is the most expensive of the tickets at first glance, generally about $50 more per person than a 10 day pass, but it is good for 366 days from the day of FIRST USE! First use, not January 1 to January 1, not the day you buy it, but when you first enter a park using it for the first time. It also comes with some major discounts for lodging, food, shopping, special events and special products that you can’t get otherwise.

Once you’ve made all the decisions and decided whether or not you are going to other attractions in the area then you will need to figure out your budget and how to pay for it all. Don’t forget to add in meals, snacks and souvenirs at the parks. Plus you need to remember the “other” expenses like pet sitters at home, transportation there, if you are traveling by car are you stopping along the way? Will you visit attractions, where will you sleep each night. There are ways to cut all these costs (well maybe not the pet sitter) and a later post will go into this in detail. As well as a post on where to get the money to pay for it all.

But first, now that I have scared you with all this “planning” part I’d like to suggest a way around a lot of this first step. While I’ve never used their service and have no connection what so ever to the folks there I have heard nothing but rave reviews about The Magic For Less Travel Agency. These are the folks that help with the yahoogroups I mentioned earlier and they work VERY hard to make certain you get the best possible vacation at the lowest possible price. Even after you have booked with them, they keep looking for better deals for you and make certain you get the BEST possible price. If you are from the Dave Ramsey list then you know Jeannette is with The Magic For Less and she’d be more than happy to help you with your vacation planning. She can be reached at:

JConaLarock@themagicforless.com or follow her on facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/themagicforless

I suggest you shoot her an email and allow her to run some comparisons for you.

In a later post I’ll go more into what has to be paid when, refund policies and much more.

Next post: So now you’ve planned it how are you going to pay for it?

Jan who can’t wait to go again in OK

MOVING ON TO WEEK #2 OF THE YEAR

2012-01-27T09:32:00.000-08:00

January 27, 2012

Some have asked about the recipe program I use. I am currently using Master Cook v9. I truthfully do not know all the ins and outs of it. I would love to do all the planning and such in that program rather than in all the various programs I am currently using. I’m thinking of upgrading to v11 so I can get some support and learn how to do it all in one program. Until I have saved enough blow money to do that I’ll keep on the way I am doing it in Word, Excel and Master Cook, which is of course causing some redundancy.

So if you ask for an export of a recipe directly from MC I need to let you know this is one of the features that I can’t get to seem to work right, but I will work my way around that for you.

Anyway, on to the menus for week 2:

BREAKFAST OPPORTUNITIES: WEEK 2

Biscuits (leftover from week #1 Sunday’s dinner) with:

Leftover gravy (see dinner menu)

Sausage patties from the freezer or canned

Bacon, pre-cooked from fridge or canned

Eggs, fried or scrambled, from our chickens

Jelly/Jam/Honey/Molasses

Hot Cereals:

Rice, leftover from dinner’s week #1

Oatmeal packets, homemade

Farina, from food storage

Multigrain packets, homemade

Cold Cereal:

Raisin Bran, purchased with coupon

Rice Chex, store brand

Fruit:

Grapefruit, from bulk purchase

Mango, dried from food storage

Beverages:

Orange Juice, from frozen concentrate

Hot tea

Milk

Hot cocoa, from Master Mix

WEEK 2: LUNCH OPPORTUNITIES

Sandwiches:

Roast beef, from leftover smoked roast of week #1 dinners

PB&J

Toasted Cheese

BBQ Beef, from leftover bbq beef dinner in week #1

Salad ingredients:

Jarred spring mix

Tuna, from food storage

Roast Beef, from smoked beef from week #1

Pickled eggs, from food storage

Carrots

Onion

Salad dressings available:

Ranch, homemade

Italian, homemade

French, homemade

Soups:

Potato, after Tuesday

Chicken Noodle, after Thursday

Gumbo, after Saturday

Fruit:

Grapefruit

Banana

Fruit cups, bulk purchase

WEEK 2: DINNER MENU

Monday 1/16/2012

Chicken Pot Pie, homemade

Tea

Multi-grain dinner rolls, homemade

Gingerbread with whipped cream, made from Master Mix

Tuesday 1/17/2012

Potato soup, homemade

Crackers, bulk purchase

Milk

Gingerbread with whipped cream, leftover

Wednesday 1/18/2012

Sweet ‘n sour Pork, made from home canned pork loin or Master Mix

Egg Rolls, frozen, leftovers from previous week’s purchase

Chicken Fried Rice, use leftover rice and chicken from Monday’s meal

Steamed Rice, cook a jumbo batch

Tea

Peach Crumble, from food storage items

Thursday 1/19/2012

Chicken Noodle Soup-homemade

Peach Crumble, leftover

Tea

Crackers

Friday 1/20/2012

Roast beef Hash, from leftover roast that had been previously canned

Dinner Rolls, homemade

Tea

Brownies, from Master Mix

Corn, bulk purchased can

Saturday 1/21/2012

Gumbo, Zatarain’s Mix bought on sale, and frozen smoked sausage from food storage

Crackers, food storage, bulk purchase

Leftover desserts

Milk

Sunday 1/22/2012

Waffles, plain and fruited, from Master Mix

Milk

WEEK 2: SNACKS AVAILABLE

Salty:

Southern Trail Mix, leftover from the holidays

Chips leftover from week #1

Cheezits leftover from week #1

Sweet:

Gingerbread, after Monday

Peach Crumble, after Tuesday

Brownies, after Friday

Fruit:

Assorted dried fruits, home dried and bulk purchased

Grapefruit

Banana

Vegetables:

Carrot sticks

This week’s addition to food storage was the canning of the excess meat from the 10# of chicken leg quarters that I got for $.69 per pound. I canned the deboned meat as cooked, rather than raw pack. Again following the USDA guidelines. I then made chicken broth by boiling the bones with carrots, celery, onions, garlic, poultry seasoning and parsley. This in turn was canned for future meals.

I’m often asked for the Buttermilk Pancake and Waffle Mix recipe so I will include that one today.

BUTTERMILK PANCAKE AND WAFFLE MASTER MIX

Yield: 10 1/2 cups

2 cups buttermilk, dried

8 cups flour, all-purpose

1/2 cup sugar

8 teaspoons baking powder

4 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons salt.

1. Whisk all the ingredients together in a large bowl.

2. Store in an airtight container in a cool dry place.

BUTTERMILK WAFFLES

Servings: 4

Preparation Time: 10 minutes

Start to finish: 30 minutes

Notes: Make a double or more batch and cool on a rack. Layer them in a refrigerator container with wax paper, or cereal bags in the container. Store in refrigerator or freezer. Heat as needed.

Serving Ideas: Serve with butter, a variety of syrups, bacon, ham or sausage.

Categories: Breakfast Foods

1. Preheat waffle baker.

2. In a large bowl, combine all ingredients except egg whites until just blended.

3. In medium bowl beat egg whites until stiff.

4. fold into mixture. Bake per baker instructions.

6. Variations:

Nut or Berry Waffles

7. Add 1/2 c chopped nuts, or dried chopped fruit to batter.

8. Meat add ins

9. add 1/2 c diced ham, bacon, sausage etc to batter.

BUTTERMILK PANCAKES

Servings: 10

1 whole egg, beaten

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 cup water

1 1/2 cups Buttermilk Pancake and Waffle Master Mix

1. In medium bowl whisk egg and oil together and then whisk in water.

2. Stir in mix. Add fruit, nuts, cooked meats if desired. Add extra water if thinner batter if desired.

3. Let set for 5 minutes.

4. Preheat a griddle , that is lightly oiled.

5. Pour 1/3 c batter on the griddle and cook each side until browned on each side, (the edges will be slightly dry and bubbles will form) Use a spatula to turn them over.

6. Repeat with remaining batter.

7. VARIATIONS:

8. Stir in 1/4-1/2 c chopped fruit, nuts, or browned breakfast meats.

So there is week 2 for your viewing pleasure.

Jan who knows doing the Master Mixes at first take a lot of ingredients, but the payoff in the long term is great in OK

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

2012-01-27T05:47:00.000-08:00

January 27, 2012

So are you ready for the challenge of planning your menus for one year? As promised I will try and post my weekly menus for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks along with some recipes.

Because there are so many recipes that will be involved each week and my time and space are limited I won’t be posting all the recipes for each week. Once a recipe is posted when I use that recipe again later in the year I’ll post the link where it was previously listed. I’ll also go back and add a comment to a previous post if I should add the recipe at a later date.

At all times you can use the search feature at the left (hidden between the photos) and search my blog to see if I forgot to add a link. Hey, I’m human you know.

If you should ever see a meal/snack item mentioned you’d like the recipe for, that isn’t already on the blog, please feel free to contact me.

So on to week one. You will notice that breakfast, lunch and snacks are opportunities, not a set meal. This is because of our varied schedules and tastes in the household. Only dinner is at a set time, 5:30 pm, in this house and has a set menu for certain days (with some flexibility added in)

WEEK 1: BREAKFAST OPPORTUNITIES

French Toast, made from leftover Texas Toast bread from the week before. Used up the remainder of the loaf and cooked it all at once, then refrigerated/froze for a quick grab up meal.

Serve with butter, syrup, jelly, molasses, fruit or other favorite toppings

Hot Cereals available:

Oatmeal, various flavors from homemade packets

Farina

Multi-grain, from homemade packets

Cold Cereals available:

Raisin Bran

Store brand Grape-nuts

Fruit available:

Dried cherries, bulk pack from Sam’s

Grapefruit, fresh bulk purchase

Strawberries, frozen after Wednesday

Beverages:

Grape juice from frozen concentrate

Milk

Water

Hot Tea

Cocoa, master mix

WEEK 1- LUNCH OPPORTUNITIES

SANDWICH MATERIALS AVAILABLE:

PB&J

Toasted cheese

Bologna

SALAD MATERIALS AVAILABLE:

Jarred Spring Mix—vacuumed sealed to keep it fresher

Pickled eggs—homemade

Cheddar cheese—bulk purchase from Sam’s Club

Carrots

Onion

Celery, dried –reconstituted

Frankfurters

SALAD DRESSINGS AVAILABLE:

Ranch, homemade

Italian, homemade

SOUPS AVAILABE:

Tomato—bulk purchase

Beef—homemade and canned

Pinto bean and ham soup after Sunday

FRUIT:

Fruit cups, bulk purchase from Sam’s

Grapefruit

Strawberries—after Wednesday

DINNER MENUS 1/7-1/15/2012

Saturday 1/7/2012

Master Mix meatballs, recipe below

Mashed potatoes, make a double batch to use leftovers later in the week.

Bread machine bread, make a large loaf to use leftover later in the week

Black eyed peas, home canned from dried

Carrot cake, from a mix purchased on sale with a coupon

Tea

Sunday 1/8/2012

Pinto beans and ham, from dried beans and canned Christmas ham

Jalapeno cornbread, uses 1 of the few packages of frozen ground beef

Carrot cake, leftover

Milk

Monday 1/9/2012

Ghengis Grill for Jan’s birthday—a special meal for me! Although my birthday was the 6th ds couldn’t join us until Monday due to his work schedule.

Tuesday 1/10/2012

Smoked roast, leftover from the week before

Corn on the cob, frozen

French Fries, frozen

Black eyed peas, leftover

Garlic bread, made with Sunday’s leftover bread

Carrot Cake, leftover

tea

Wednesday 1/11/2012

Sweet and Sour meatballs, recipe below

Egg rolls, frozen purchased on sale

Fried rice, ham, made with leftover rice from the previous week and Christmas ham that has been canned.

Steamed rice, make a big batch for use in future meals

Tea

Almond cookies with strawberries, homemade cookies and frozen or freeze dried strawberries

Thursday 1/12/2012

BBQ smoked sausage, made with homemade bbq sauce (from last summer) and smoked sausage purchased in bulk and frozen 2 weeks ago. Recipe: http://cjpattersonontheranch.blogspot.com/2009/08/home-again-home-again-jiggity-jig.html

Cole slaw, make double batch for later in the week

Macaroni and cheese, purchased on sale

Pepsi

Lemon Bars, from Master Mixes

Friday, 1/13/2012

Bean burritos, refried beans made from pinto beans earlier in the week.

Mexican rice, use leftover rice from earlier in the week

Guacamole, homemade

Sopapillas, master mix

Tea

Saturday 1/14/2012

BBQ beef sandwiches , use leftover smoked roast and homemade bbq sauce recipe link listed above

Cole slaw, leftover from earlier in the week

Potato salad, made with leftover mashed potatoes

Chocolate chip cookies, from homemade slice and bake cookies

Pepsi

Sunday 1/15/2012

Biscuits, master mix

Gravy, master mix

Fruit cups-bulk purchase

Milk

Juice

SNACKS AVAILABLE FOR WEEK 1

Please limit your snacking

SALTY:

Chips, limited-bulk purchase

Cheezits-bulk purchase

Southern Trail Mix-bulk purchase, leftover from holidays

SWEET:

Carrot Cake

Almond Shortbread cookies after Wednesday

Lemon Bars after Thursday

Chocolate chip cookies after Saturday

FRUIT:

Grapefruit—bulk purchase

Fruit Cups—bulk purchase

Strawberries, frozen after Wednesday

VEGETABLES:

Carrots

So now that you can see what our family basically ate on week #1 of the year of menu planning now how about a recipe or two? The main dinner menu item is the Many Way Meatballs. This is one of our favorite meat Master Mixes. The meatballs can be used so many ways for a variety of meals. They freeze and can wonderfully. Making them a handy “convenience food” for those nights you simply can’t stick to a menu or you need something FAST!

Many Way Meatballs

Servings: 80

4 pounds ground beef

2 whole eggs, slightly beaten

1 cup bread crumbs, dried

1/2 cup onion, finely chopped

1 tablespoon salt

1 teaspoon pepper

2 cups milk

1/4 cup parsley flakes

1. Mix all together well. Form into 1 1/2 inch meatballs. I use a small ice cream/cookie scoop for this. I recommend spraying the scoop with cooking spray before scooping.

2. Place on foil lined and sprayed cookie sheet with sides.

3. Bake at 375 F for 25-30 minutes or until done.

4. Cool and package in one quart containers for freezing or canning. Don’t forget to label and date.

On the night I make these my family likes the meatballs just plain, hot from the oven. In fact I have to watch the guys close or they just might eat far more than they should.

They make their second appearance later in the week as Sweet ‘n Sour Meatballs

Sweet ‘n Sour Meatballs

Servings: 6

Notes: You can vary the veggies to your family's likes. Consider things like snow peas, water chestnuts and other vegetables.

Serving Ideas: Serve over steamed rice and with all the usual sides for an Asian meal.

Categories: Ground Beef

1 tablespoon Vegetable oil

10 ounces Pineapple chunks, drained and juice reserved

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1 tablespoon soy sauce

3 tablespoons vinegar

6 tablespoons water

1/2 cup brown sugar, packed

1 container Many Way Meatball Mix, about 20 meatballs

1 large green bell pepper

1 whole carrot, sliced

1/2 medium onion, sliced

1. In a large skillet, combine oil and reserved pineapple juice that has had water added to it to equal 1 cup liquid.

2. In a small bowl combine cornstarch and brown sugar. Then stir in soy sauce, vinegar and water. Stir this into the pineapple juice mixture in the skillet. Cook over medium heat until thick, stirring constantly, Approximately 5-7 minutesl

2. Add pineapple chunks and remaining ingredients. Mix well. Simmer 20 minutes or until heated through. Stir frequently and add a small amount of water or pineapple juice if needed.

Leftovers from this weeks worth of meal that would then go to food storage would be the remaining meatballs either frozen or canned (add water to the canning jar and then process pints at 15# pressure for 75 minutes or quarts for 90 minutes—please follow all USDA guidelines while canning).

The leftover steamed rice can be dried to make your own “minute rice.” Or refrigerated or frozen to be used in the future for a variety stir fried rice dishes, Mexican Rice, or to be reheated for breakfast and eaten with sugar, milk and butter.

So there you have it week #1 for 2012, and for 2013 because as I have mentioned previously. I am keeping the files I have created for these menus to use in the future. Complete with the full grocery list, so this time next year it will be a matter of point and click.

Jan who hopes this is helpful to someone in OK

A YEAR’S WORTH OF MENUS

2012-01-26T09:09:00.000-08:00

January 26, 2012

Some folks think I’m certifiably crazy. I announced at the first of the year I was going to do a year’s worth of menus all three meals a day and in doing so I would save hundreds if not thousands of dollars out of our grocery budget doing so. The idea grew out of my success with going without a freezer in December.

Learning to plan my menu without depending on a free standing freezer has made it where I can see the big picture of the value of long term menu planning not only for money savings, but for nutrition and food storage.

I’ve been doing it since the first of the year and it is really working out nicely for us. It has pretty well done away with the annoying nightly “What’s for dinner” discussion. A huge plus.

I’ve mentioned on various yahoogroups I’m on that I am doing this and there have naturally been a lot of questions about how to do it. I’ve also been asked to post my year’s worth of menus. After much thinking I’ve decided rather than clog those lists up to post the journey through the year here, along with the how to’s and recipes to do it.

So this first post is about the “HOW TO”, “HOW IT WILL SAVE YOU MONEY” and. “HOW ABOUT WHEN LIFE HAPPENS?”

HOW TO

I have to admit that when I first decided to do a year’s worth of weekly menus for three meals a day, plus snacks I thought it was a huge mountain to try to climb. Then I remembered the old joke “How do you eat an elephant?” The answer of course is “One bite at a time.” So that’s the way I moved forward.

I started with planning my dinner menu for the first week of the year. I did this because then I could schedule leftovers for breakfasts and lunches for the same week.

I also decided with our grocery budget I could only afford to purchase one meat a week. That was a scary realization. As the regular readers of my blog and list posts know we are on the Dave Ramsey Financial Freedom plan and that means we have a zero dollar based budget with a set in stone amount for groceries each week.

Unfortunately we’d got away from our established $100 a week for our family of three over the last few months of the year and in November I spent over $1,000 rather than the scheduled $400. This was a serious lack of control on my part. A mistake that slowed our gazelle way down on its race to avoid the debt cheetahs.

So with the beginning of the new year I was determined to stay at or below that $100. This meant one bulk meat purchase a week, and a lot of planning to keep variety in our meals, especially as grocery prices are escalating.

The idea was a follow up on my previous post of living without a freezer. Buy one meat, use it for 2-3 meals during the week and then can the rest for future menus. This would build up my food storage, while feeding us well on a small budget.

We eat a LOT of ground beef, so I determined that doing a ground beef menu every other week would be the best pattern for us, at least in the beginning. That first week we started with ground beef and our favorite Many Way Meatballs Master Mix.

I put the menu together for dinners first. Then in my Master Cook program I entered the recipes for EVERYTHING we’d need to eat that menu for the week. This gave me the exact measurements I’d need of each ingredient.

I then constructed my grocery list, including the exact measurements needed, from those menus. From that grocery list I then put the same measurements in a spread sheet to be totaled to show how much I will need for the entire year for each ingredient. This is important for the “How It will save you money” segment.

I then repeated these steps with the breakfast and lunch menus. I now had a complete grocery list for the week and it was time to “shop”. I started with my food storage. I checked every single item, not trusting my memory for anything. I verified that I had the required amounts for the week on hand. If not then it went on the “to buy” list.

Once the “to buy” list was built I checked the sales ads and my price book to find where it would be best to purchase those items AND anything that was a true loss leader that I would need for future menus that I could afford in my weekly budget. (more on this later.)

Next stop was my coupon box. Where I pulled the coupons I needed for those purchases.

Armed with the list and my coupons I did all my grocery shopping for the week, my ONLY visit to the grocery store for the week.

Once home things were prepped and stored properly. It was nice to know I had everything I needed on hand for well planned out meals for a week.

HOW IT WILL SAVE YOU MONEY

First of all if you have a menu plan you KNOW what is for dinner and there is no rushing out for fast foods. You can cook far better burgers and pizza at home for less than half the price and with pre-planning you can actually get the meal faster than loading the family up, driving to the restaurant, waiting for them to cook it, listening to other people’s kids screaming and then driving home. Oh and you aren’t tempted to stop and shop somewhere along the way. This can add up to huge savings right there.

By hitting the grocery store only once a week you save fuel, time and money. Yes money because you aren’t tempted to do impulse buying if you aren’t in the store.

Because the meal plan is there for the entire week you can also “bulk cook” a lot and save money and time. Because if you need browned ground beef for three meals, or for canning, you can brown it in one pan all at once. It will take the same amount of energy to do it all at once as it would to do a single meal of it. So you save by not having to heat the stove up for that browning the rest of the time.

You also only have to clean up once, thus you save on water, energy to heat the water, wear and tear on your dishwasher, dish soap, and your time. And we all need more time.

With creating your annual grocery list you can clearly see how many of non-perishable foods you need for the year. So if there is a great sale on that item and your food budget has room in it, grab your coupons and stock up at the lower price, so your overall grocery expenditure for the year goes down and your food storage goes up.

A friend gave a good example of this with a purchase she recently made. She serves Hamburger Helper one day a month to her family of nine. She recently found a loss leader sale that when combined with her coupons made it $.49 a box. This is versus the normal $1.50 to $2.00 per box. She verified the “best if used by date” and then picked up enough boxes for the year. This made her savings huge.

At this point there is usually someone that says “but I don’t have room for food storage.” Having lived in a one room efficiency apartment for a long period of time I can tell you there is ALWAYS storage room, you just need to know where to find it. I’ll do another post later on about where to find the room to store and tips on making sure nothing gets forgotten.

A side note on nutrition. I have found that by writing down a complete daily menu for a week at a time it has allowed me to incorporate more fruits and vegetables into our daily diet. This is a very good thing.

Let’s be truthful, when you eat out a lot, be it fast food or a sit down restaurant or you slap something together at the last minute you tend to eat less than healthy. By taking the few extra steps at first to plan your meals you will find that good for you foods will filter more and more into your diet.

This can lead to future savings on medical and clothing bills.

The same friend who purchased the Hamburger Helper decided it was best for her to do a month’s worth of menu plans for her family and then multiply that times 12 to get her annual menu. This works well for her. We like trying different foods too much to be this limited, but for many families this is the best way for them to plan their menus.

She then followed the steps to figure her grocery lists and when consulting her price book for the best sale prices (which generally rotate about every six weeks) she discovered that by doing the annual grocery list and shopping accordingly she would save 75% on her annual grocery bill based on current grocery prices. That folks is a HUGE savings. What could you do with that 75% savings? How many debts could you pay off? She’s using the savings to pay her house off early. Who wouldn’t want to own their home?

HOW ABOUT WHEN LIFE HAPPENS?

One of the most popular questions is “Do you allow for diverting from the menu plan?” The answer is a resounding YES!

Life happens, Suzy has a school play, it’s Joey’s birthday, Mama is sick, Great Aunt Ethel dies, Dad is going out of town on business for a week, the garden produced a million more zucchini this week than planned on or the loss leader of the week is a great buy for a meat that is not on that week’s menu. These and many other things happen, including your hubby just flat does NOT want turkey this week.

In fact I’m not dead on schedule with my menus right now because I sometimes re-arrange the meals to fit what is going on in our life on any given day. The menu is a guide not a dictate. All meals from the menu eventually get eaten, they just might be done in a different order or on a different week. But they all get used as close to the schedule as possible to help keep the domino action of the pre-planning going.

An example: On a recent week we had a ground beef week scheduled and the next week was scheduled to be whole chicken. Only my husband, who really doesn’t care for chicken, was going to be gone for a week for work on the ground beef week. My son and I love chicken, so I moved the chicken forward a week and we’ll have two ground beef weeks in a row. It took moving leftovers around a bit, and doing a little extra canning to keep meats fresh from the previous week, but it worked out well. We stayed on budget and all were happy with their meals.

Speaking of leftovers, this is another way you can save big. There is currently a series of commercials running where it shows the people throwing away half of the foods they purchase because the leftovers go bad, or the meat isn’t stored properly.

With the menu planning you incorporate the leftovers into your meal plan each week, or you can/dry/freeze them for future meals. By cutting that 50% waste from your grocery budget you save big time. Unfortunately little Suzy won’t have science experiments in your fridge for the annual science fair as a result. But then is food mold REALLY that good of a science fair project?

So that is the plan. Posts on the implementing of it, including recipes, storage tips and much more will follow.

Jan who thinks this is going to be a challenge for her family but can really see the long term benefits in OK

LIVING WITHOUT A FREEZER

2011-12-05T08:17:00.000-08:00

December 5, 2011
I’m not sure why, but our freezers go out on a pretty regular basis. I don’t have trouble with any other appliances dying quickly, but it seems like every 18 months or so our freezer dies. It just did so again, we lost pretty much everything in it.

This time it was the last straw. The proverbial camel’s back was broken. I refuse to replace it. WHAT? You say. A person like me who is definitely into food storage refusing to purchase another free standing freezer? Unheard of, but that’s my decision.

Seriously I did the math and what little we saved on buying and freezing in bulk we lost in having to replace a freezer every time we turned around, dry ice costs to keep the foods safe until the new freezer was delivered and oh the work that went into maintaining that freezer.

So for the first time in my entire life, literally, I am without a free standing freezer. It’s definitely going to make a difference in how things are dealt with around here.

I’ve developed a game plan that hopefully will work out well for us and in the long run save us a lot in money and lost food all the way around.

I’ve gone back to shopping once a week, for just the foods I am going to need for the PLANNED MENU for the week. I’ve returned to couponing. However, I am still very big on food storage. Just not frozen food storage any more. So here’s how the first week went.

Last Sunday I sat down with the sale ads for the local groceries and discovered no one had any meats on as loss leaders. So I chose my main meat for the week to be a roast, knowing that I can often pick those up on Monday mornings at a discount at our local Wal-Mart.

I then made my dinner menus for the week. Here is week #1’s menu:

DINNER MENU PLAN 11/28-12/4/2011

MONDAY 11/28/11

Baked fish fillets (Gorton’s or Mrs. Paul’s)--coupon

Baked potato—from food storage

Green beans—from food storage

Leftover pies or cake for dessert

Tea

Crescent rolls—coupon and sale combo

TUESDAY 11/29/11

Roast with vegetables-large discounted chuck roast

Homemade bread

Leftover pies or cake for dessert

Tea

WEDNESDAY 11/30/11

Grilled Montreal Seasoning chicken breasts—food storage from fridge freezer

Chicken Rice a Roni—food storage

Asparagus—dried from food storage

Homemade Dinner Rolls

Homemade Brownies

Tea

THURSDAY 12/1/11

Stew made with leftover roast and vegetables

Cornbread( leftover from making stuffing for Thanksgiving) or crackers—food storage

Cookies—from fridge freezer

Milk or tea

FRIDAY 12/2/11

Pinto bean soup—food storage

Cornbread--leftover

Fried potatoes—food storage

Tea

Leftover desserts

SATURDAY 12/3/11

Beef and Bean Burritos using leftover beans and roast

Mexican rice with corn in it

Homemade Sopapillas

SUNDAY 12/4/11

Potato Soup or leftovers

Crackers—food storage

Homemade Gingerbread

Milk or tea

As you can see I purchased very little on that Monday morning trip. It’s a basic menu and what happened with the leftovers is what changes the system.

I started out the week, like most everyone in the nation with leftover turkey. This was deboned by Sean then sandwiches and turkey salad were eaten by all family members early in the week for lunches.

Then the leftover turkey went a few different directions. Some was pressure canned in turkey broth made from double boiling the carcass for future sandwiches, salads and casseroles. Some was dried for jerky treats for the dogs, some was fed to the cats, except Lizzie B. who doesn’t like turkey. The rest was made into a week’s worth of dog food for our three 50# dogs mixed with rice, vegetables and turkey broth.

As you can see we ate three dinners off that one $19 roast. What you don’t see on that menu is the lunches the next week made with the ground up leftover roast made into sandwich spread for Gary’s lunches.

Nor do you see that the vegetable beef soup/stew made such a large amount I canned up several jars of it in lunch size servings for the food storage.

The pinto bean soup was a LARGE pan full. The leftovers were divided up. Three cups went into making the refried beans for Saturday night’s dinner, which had leftovers that will go into bean burritos for lunches for next week. Two cups were placed in the refrigerator for Beef and Beans that are on next week’s menu using ground beef as the main meat for the week. The remaining beans were canned for food storage.

There was still room in the canner, so I dug packages of frankfurters out of the small refrigerator freezer (thus freeing up room) and made homemade Beans and Franks, which I canned for Gary’s lunches as well.

Two things came out of the refrigerator freezer and only one thing went in this week. That one thing was a single fish fillet patty that went in because we only needed three and the packages contained two each. My goal is to get away from using the two and ½ (camper) freezers for anything other than freezing items that cannot be safely canned or frozen, such as eggs.

While I used several things out of food storage I also added beef soup, canned beans, canned beans and franks and canned cooked turkey to the food storage. A total of 2 pints and 25 ½ pints of food went into the food storage.

On my grocery list now are replacements for the non-freezer food storage items I used. I will purchase two for every one I used to build the food storage system up. Because I’ve been doing that pattern for awhile I can afford to wait for those items to become loss leaders, have a good coupon, or grow in the 2012 garden.

I plan on running the canner and/or dehydrator 1-2 times a week to can/dry up leftovers. I will also run it full each time by canning things like dried beans, beans and franks and other “convenience” foods for those days I don’t have time to do a major cooking job. Or by drying things like rice, or dog treats to fill the dehydrator to max.

This next week, unless tomorrow’s ad has a great loss leader meat product, will be a ground beef week, I’ll purchase a 10# chub at Sam’s club, because it’s cheaper that way and then do similar to this week. Planning my leftovers for future meals or for canning or drying for food storage. Since we won’t eat anywhere near 10# of ground beef in one week I’ll also make up taco filler and can that as well as plain browned ground beef for the food storage.

It’s a system that I think will eventually get my food storage to a decent level and reduce food loss to a bare minimum.

Jan who thinks that living without a freezer is going to be just fine in OK

A WINTER MORNING WAKE UP CALL

2011-11-27T09:37:00.000-08:00

November 27,2011

As I rolled over in my warm bed trying to figure out what had wakened me I listened to the sounds outside my window. The cold late November air was pierced again with a sound I’ve became use to over the years.

“Aaaaaa” like rapid machine gun fire, something had the guinea fowl’s in an uproar, but it didn’t concern me. Anyone that has ever raised guinea fowl knows that all the guineas in the world share one brain cell and it is never your birds day to have it. Something as simple as a leaf blowing in the wind can set them in a tizzy.

As I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep the guineas continued sounding their alarm cry and soon Piper Peacock joined the chorus “Onk heee, Onk Hee” as the rooster crowed and the geese joined in honking their intruder alarm. The cacophony of startled bird cries was soon joined by Sir Oliver Inkwell sitting on the bedroom window sill meowing loudly.

Okay, so now the critters have my attention. Freeing myself from the bed covers I fumble for my eye glasses on the night stand and go to the window to see if I can see what is going on.

For several seconds I stood watching the birds to get a clue as to where the intruder was. The birds had the big cedar tree outside our bedroom window encircled. They definitely had something trapped under there, occasionally I could see rapid movement fleeing from one side to another under the skirts of the large tree’s ground touching branches.

Whatever it was it was fast, but moving as if possibly injured. Cat maybe? No I only saw two legs. Guinea after guinea would charge under the huge cedar at whatever it was and then dart back out as the quickly moving shadow would alternately run at the guineas and flee from them.

Piper Peacock paced nervously around the tree honking her dismay at the whole procedure. Piper doesn’t care for any changes in her world what so ever (well except for maybe wanting a male added to the flock). She honked and voiced her opinion loudly. The geese stood back watching the whole display cheering the guineas on honking their approval as each guinea charged under the tree. Repeat Rooster stood on the back porch railing crowing, but offering no real help as tiny Turk the Turken hid under the back deck.

I continued to watch as I reached for the clothing I had laid out the night before. Just then the shadow charged after another guinea foray and stepped out of the shadows of the tree.

A small young brown hawk ran limping from the tree to over by the house. The guineas soon cornered it near the compressor as it flapped its wings and charged back at them.

He was fully puffed out his speckled feathers standing on end and looking quite stressed. He made an effort to fly away from his tormentors, but hit the fence of the garden and landed in the flock of geese that had been watching the whole spectacle. The geese separated and looked at the small bird like “yeah right, You’re a chicken hawk, but we’re not chickens.” They didn’t even bother to run off because the bird was so small and obviously injured.

I turned and told Gary what was going on. He was quickly dressed and out the door. To see what needed to be done. While hawks aren’t welcome around here, we don’t want any animal suffering. The guineas were determined they were going to pay this young hawk back for every keet other hawks had ever carried off.

I kept an eye on the hawk from the window until I saw Gary going toward it. Then headed out to help him.

When I arrived in the side yard Gary was watching the sky. He said that the hawk had recovered from bouncing off the garden fence and in a panic when it saw him had gathered enough strength it had swooped skyward and flew off over the trees to the west of the house.

He said the flight was labored and it seemed to be dangling one foot a bit, but it had gone far enough the guineas couldn’t get to it and it had landed in a tree that he was pointing at. The tree was several acres away from our location, so we did not try to follow.

Of course the guineas strutted around for several minutes after that telling the world how they had beaten the mean old hawk, as the much wiser geese just looked at them indulgently.

Little Turk, who is the smallest of our free ranging birds finally came out from under the porch and snuggled up with Repeat as if to say “My hero.” Apparently the inexperienced young hawk had tried to get her not realizing he would not fit through the lattice of the porch like she would and had crashed into it injuring himself.

We surmised this by the hawk feathers near where Turk had been hiding. Earlier this week Turk had been running around with two chicks, they of course had disappeared. We figured this hawk is probably how they disappeared and he came back thinking he was a good enough hunter to get Momma bird too. Boy was he wrong.

I doubt that particular hawk will ever be back as long as the guinea crew is on duty.

Jan who is up for the day and ready to decorate for Christmas in OK

WHERE DO I BEGIN?

2011-10-04T22:58:00.000-07:00

October 5, 2011

Once I finally decided I do this last week I started searching for information on modern couponing. The very first thing I did was set up an email address that would be used strictly for couponing, rebates, freebies and sweepstakes(yes I do sweepstakes too, and when I was doing them on a regular basis I won a lot of small prizes). Very little personal information was listed on this email and the subsequent facebook and other websites I signed up for.

I’ll write another time about the freebie lists and doing sweepstakes, for right now couponing and rebates are my main theme.

My reasoning for this was that this project had the potential to create a lot of junk mail. I did not want my personal email account to be flooded with such junk mail. But then I tend to have separate emails for all my different activities (genealogy, mystery shopping, chat groups, bill payment etc). I find keeping the different activities in separate emails with sub folders in each email address for automatic filtering makes my email reading a LOT easier. I can do a bulk delete on themes I’m not interested in very quickly that way. Gmail is great for creating various email accounts.

Once that email account was set up I started to do my research for help in getting into modern couponing.

First I went to the ever trusty yahoogroups looking for a “how to” group. For the first time yahoo failed me. Oh there were lots of groups, with 1-5 members and little to no activity. I joined one, posted my intro as requested and was never even acknowledged.

Next stop facebook. JACKPOT, the very first one I found was Couponingtodisney.com . Boy did this one strike a cord with me. After all part of my need to coupon is to get back to Walt Disney World as soon as possible. I signed up for this group and found their website to contain everything I needed to know to get started couponing.

Another great site I found was coupondivas.com . They too had a lot of great info. Between these two I found so much info I stopped my search right there and started studying all the steps to be a successful extreme couponer.

Before I had a chance to study both sites as much as I should it was time to purchase a Sunday paper and an All You magazine, which I did. I read later I should have purchased the paper in multiples of two and on my first trip saw why they said to. But last Sunday I only purchased one. It was a jackpot of a coupon mother lode. Between that single paper and the one magazine I acquired over $300 worth of coupons. I know from my past experiences that it won’t always be so, but for me it was the perfect Sunday to buy my first paper.

I spent much of Sunday on the sofa reading the newspaper and magazine so they could be cut up. The paper then went down for my “no-no” kitty who misses the litter box all too often, but always hits the paper or feed sack if we have a clean one down by the box. From what I saw in news content for the paper that was a very appropriate use for it.

The magazine, once butchered, went into the recycling sack. By the way this magazine was also an excellent source of how to information, complete with recommended websites and a $1 coupon for a truly how to magazine by them that I plan to pick up as soon as I locate a copy.

Then I filed the coupons I had cut from the two to familiarize myself with what ones I had.

Once that was done I started on reading the various sale ads and trying to decipher what would be my best purchases for my $100 budget allowance for the week.

I slowly made out a list of what I thought would be my best buys for the week, but I wasn’t pleased with how little I was going to save at first. Remember my long term goal is to have a decent, but not extreme, food storage system, paid for with as little money as possible and to be debt free in as short of time as possible. I am very impatient about those goals, I’m not getting any younger.

Back to the web and more studying. The girls on both of the afore mentioned websites had match ups listed and explained how certain stores allowed a stacking of coupons of sorts. This lead me to internet coupons, which I consider to be my most likely source since I cannot subscribe to just the Sunday paper in my area and I have no desire to have newspapers stacking up daily in my corner. That just might be too tempting to Amy Jo, the no-no kitty.

So next I went to my mypoints account to print coupons. This is a bonus place to print internet coupons. If you aren’t familiar with mypoints it basically is an online company that you get points for clicking on ads, doing internet searches, answering surveys, doing purchases on line, and printing and using internet coupons to get points to redeem for gift cards.

My personal favorite gift card is a $50 Wal-Mart gift card, which we in turn use to get $.03 off per gallon (sometimes up to $.05 off) to purchase fuel for my truck. Mypoints is free to use, if you would like more info please leave me a message and I’ll send you a referral (you really don’t need one to join, but I get bonus points if I refer you). I like saving $50 out of my fuel budget!

Back on facebook I have started “liking” various companies, restaurants, and product webpages of places we normally visit or items we normally use. These will often net you money off or free item coupons. Again I use the coupon only email address for all of this.

Not all the stores I was considering using had inserts in the Sunday paper. So using my mypoints tool bar I google searched for the webpages of the various stores I was considering for shopping. This helps get me toward my goal of x amount of searches per month for more points. The number of searches required for the varied amounts of bonus points vary from month to month.

I discovered some of the online ads had where you could click a box and create a grocery list of the items you wanted, then click “print” and a nice neat list prints out for you for that store. Talk about convenient. Wal-Mart was one such store, just make sure you have plenty of ink in your printer when you do it. I later got to a store and discovered I had ran out of ink in the middle of my list. LOL! I had to grab a sales ad at the store and wing it as a result.

As I read each sale ad online I also looked up that store’s coupon policy and printed a copy for my files. This can be an important step for everyone. I once had a store refuse my, really good one time one use only for an item I went there specifically to purchase with that internet coupon. I found out via their website the store was suppose to honor it. So now I will have the corporate policy with me in case there is ever another discussion.

I also found out that the 3 shoe boxes of “no expiration date” coupons I own may or may not be honored at various stores—ones with bar codes, no problem, ones with no bar code it is up to the individual store.

With all this basic research completed I felt I was ready to go on my maiden shopping trip.

Jan who says “next entry please” in OK

RETURN OF THE COUPON QUEEN

2011-10-04T21:07:00.000-07:00

October 4, 2011

As fuel costs have soared the amount of mystery shopping I do has been curtailed severely. Since we live so far from town I need a minimum of $25 worth of payout to even leave the driveway to cover the cost of the fuel and to make it worth an hour or so of my time to do a mystery shop.

OR I need to combine it with already scheduled errands. So I’ve gone from several shops a week to maybe 4 or so a month. This has slowed down our gazelle for being totally debt free greatly too. This has bothered me hugely.

I want Gary retired as soon as possible. I do not want to end up like my parents, always waiting to do something some day. My parents always said they would “go to such and such and do such and such some day”, but they both died young, without ever doing it.

Gary and I have big travel plans and we don’t want to wait for some day. Right now if all goes according to schedule we should be totally debt free in 2 years 9 months and 3 weeks—that is too long to wait as far as I am concerned. So having extra “gazelle feed” to get debt free is very important to us. I needed a way to stretch more money out of our budget or make more money, but what?

I had been mulling that over for weeks.

For a while Gary was traveling for work, so I ended up watching a lot of late night tv. I guess I watched 20 “Extreme Couponing” shows before a light went on in my dim little head. I could go BACK to couponing.

Yes “back to”. You see in the late ‘70’s through the mid ‘90’s I was what was called back then a “Coupon Queen”, now called an “Extreme Couponer”. The best I ever did in a grocery store was $650 and they paid me around $9.50 to exit the store. I then went home and did rebates on almost everything I had purchased. For years we seldom paid for groceries, but it was a lot of work.

Our first trip to Walt Disney World was paid for by couponing in 1981. We really want to make another major trip to Walt Disney World within the next year, as well as speed up our getting debt free.

Then I closed down my baby sitting service, and both kids moved out. With just Gary and I and me being a scratch cook I slowly drifted away from couponing. When we moved I pretty much stopped completely.

Life got busy and I just never got back into it, until now.

It’s been 14 years since I was the coupon queen and things have changed tremendously. 14 years ago there were no internet coupons, rebates were the order of the day, and grocery stores had coupon/rebate boards readily available. Plus stores doubled and sometimes tripled my coupons.

Now there are store loyalty cards, register rewards, each store chain has a different set of rules, no doubling/tripling of coupons in our area and we no longer subscribe to a paper.

I had no idea where to start.

I do know from my past experience that doing this is a LOT of work. I also know it can get out of control very easily. I do not want or need to end up with storage closets full of items we never use, or could never use up. I want to continue to do scratch cooking for health reasons. Nor do I want to spend all my time clipping coupons and searching ads. Therefore, I need a happy balance.

The next few posts on my blog will be my journey back to being a coupon queen, but not an extreme queen. I’d like to invite you along for the ride.

Jan who hopes her following posts will help others get started into couponing as well in OK

WHO IS THE 9/11 CEREMONY FOR ANYWAY?

2011-08-24T16:56:00.000-07:00

8/24/2011

On 9/11/01 terrorist attacks ended the lives of 2996 people. Many more might have died if it hadn’t been for the brave firemen and policemen that voluntarily went in to save them, many of those brave souls lost their lives doing so. Yet on the 10th anniversary of that tragedy first responders are told they are not invited to the ceremony and to NOT come because there is NO ROOM for them.

A steel cross that formed naturally in the rubble of the World Trade Center gave peace and hope to the survivors and the many of the nation. Now there are those who have decided there is no room for it, or a Star of David made from the beams, at the memorial. Yet plans move forward for a mosque and cultural center at the World Trade Center site.

Today it has been announced there will be no religious leaders of any faith included in the ceremony. Those who excluded those first responder heroes have now decided there will be no prayer service at the ceremony.

In a nation that has been built on the lives of our heroes and the faith of those heroes I for one find all of this appalling. In my opinion it is a slap in the face to everyone in the nation who was touched in any way by the tragedy that will forever be known as 9/11.

POPCORN THE “MOM-GOOSE”

2011-05-11T15:44:00.000-07:00

May 11, 2011

“Kerwhack!” The loud sound broke the relatively quiet evening air. Whirling from the late evening watering and feed chores Sean asked “What was that?”

“It sounded like it came from the shanty.” I replied. Sean rushed over and shouted ‘Oh my gosh there’s a snake in Popcorn’s nest!” I rushed to the end of the nearly collapsed barn tin building that the white half Embden/ half Tufted Roman goose had built her nest in. She’d been broody for nearly 30 days, which made us both think “Gosling?!”

Shining the flashlight in I could see the four foot long king snake strike at the angry bird. What I saw next surprised me. Popcorn is normally a very docile bird. The least sound will make her run from the nest, so we’d been extra cautious when working around the area to not disturb her. The bird I saw now was an entirely different acting and looking bird.

Her beautiful blue eyes that are normally so patient and loving were filled with fire and hatred. The sleek, well groomed sleek white feathers were ruffled and fluffed out making her look twice her size. The slight knot on the top of her head seemed to have grown in size. She looked to be a very large, menacing bird. She was ANGRY! How DARE this snake even think about trying to get one of her eggs!

When the snake struck the twelve pound bird dodged agilely and then grabbed the snake behind the head as hard as she could then she shook it viciously, slung it against the side of the coop and then charged at the snake. “Kerwhack!” the tin building rattled again as the bird struck at the snake with her hard serrated bill.

The snake struck at her again. She grabbed it again while I called my husband to bring the snake removal equipment. By this time Sean had a long pole he was poking in from the other side of the shanty to try and drive the snake away. The snake was totally ignoring the poke of the stick. The goose did not back off and let the human defend her eggs. They were HER eggs and no snake was going to get them!

Popcorn flung the snake against the wall again, then charged “Kerwhack!” The entire shanty vibrated with her full body hitting the wall as the snake dodged and struck! Popcorn hissed so hard the snake backed up, as if he had just “heard” a much larger and therefore threatening snake. Popcorn charged again as Sean stabbed at the snake with the pole.

This time her grab was more secure. She whipped the snake back and forth making a low guttural sound as she flung the snake completely out of the coop. The determined snake, who was actually too small to eat a goose egg or a gosling, made one more advance. He was met by a mad Mama goose and a human that had, had enough of his nonsense.

As Popcorn charged again the snake quickly decided survival was more important than trying to eat a too big egg. Slithering out backwards as the goose charged the snake slid under the coop just as Gary arrived to try to help get the snake.

Popcorn followed it out of the coop to get in one last blow as the snake’s head disappeared out of sight. As my flashlight followed it I saw the snake was definitely injured. Popcorn paced back and forth “on patrol” for a long time before she went back inside the coop to count her eggs that are near hatching. None were broken. She quietly checked each egg, rolling it over and placing it properly for “bedtime” then settled in to keep those precious babies warm and perhaps bring another gosling into this world.

A short time later I was outside the coop Iwith the can of sulfur and was generously spreading it around the coop area, leaving only a small exit area away from the eggs soon to be goslings on the far end. My grandmother used sulfur as long as I can remember to keep snakes out of her coops. I can’t believe we didn’t remember to do it earlier this year.

The snake did not get away, we “smelled” its demise coming from under the coop this morning. No goslings have hatched yet, but Mama Goose, with the mongoose instincts, is carefully guarding her unborn goslings.

We’ve taken to calling her Mom-goose as a play on words. She has quit hissing at us when we get near her nest, as if to acknowledge that she realizes we were helping her protect her young.

Jan who has seen chickens, guineas and peacocks battle small snakes, but she’d never seen a goose battle a snake before in OK

2011-05-02T10:46:00.000-07:00

PLAYING CATCH-UP ON THE GARDEN AND HOUSE REPORT

May 2, 2011

All three of us have been working hard on the garden when it isn’t raining this last few weeks. It’s still not all planted, and in fact probably never will be completely planted—at least according to Sean.

Every day that we can work in the garden we do. Each of those days we take rest breaks and admire what all we’ve already accomplished in the building of our “ideal” garden. In our mind’s eye we see it lush and green and productive. Each day takes us closer to that vision. We also, every day, see one or more places we could plant, either in the ground or in flower pots and planters.

Our discussions as we work tend to be toward where we could put this trellis or that and what could go on them. After all we have unlimited air space, and if we stay in the garden cage we have limited ground space. So up is good.

Needless to say, we’ve also been looking at bird safe areas outside the garden cage as well. How does yard long cucumbers and green beans hanging from a balcony the birds don’t go sound? Picking might be interesting, but we are considering it.

I’ve been cruising the web again, a very informative thing to do. For inspiration on what all can be grown in a limited space I visit websites such as:

http://urbanhomestead.org/about

If you want to get inspired about what YOU can do even if you live in the heart of the city this is the website to visit. This family raises an average of 6,000 pounds of food a year on 1/5 an acre on their city lot in Pasadena, CA.

I’ve followed their progress over the years, yet I still go there to “steal” ideas for watering, trellising and much more. Their videos on utube, along with other homesteading videos are informative as well.

Speaking of those other videos another good website is:

http://www.gardengirltv.com/

While both of these websites are basically for urban dwellers and I have 90 acres I like the space saving ideas of both. Working a smaller area works well for us.

I’ve also, since I last wrote, ordered seeds from Baker’s Creek Heirloom Seeds http://rareseeds.com/

So far I’m very pleased with the order, it arrived within 3 days, the seeds are whole seeds, not broken ones as I have sometimes got in the past from other companies, and each packet has contained more than the minimum guaranteed number in it. Their shipping was very reasonable as well. They have a great variety of heirloom seeds from all over the world.

I can’t say enough about their paper catalog. Big beautiful worth framing photos of many of the plants. Another big plus with me, customer reviews of the different seeds and what they produce, I particularly like that they are in the same planting zone as I am, so their test farm will show basically the same results I could get.

We’ve just started planting those seeds, so I’ll let you know how the germination rate goes.

A dear friend has given me an abundance of produce she has obtained through her work. As a result my dehydrator, freezer and pressure canner have been getting a good work out. This makes me happy about the cooler weather we’ve been having, because I’ve been really heating the place up with all the work in the kitchen.

So far I’ve put up large amounts of bananas, yellow summer squash, jalapeno peppers, bell peppers, and many other things. It is reassuring to see my pantry slowly filling up again. We have been truly blessed.

Another thing I’ve been doing is making up a lot of bread and cookie doughs for the freezer. This I have reported on the various yahoogroups I am on and many have asked for the hamburger/hot dog buns recipe. So here it is:

I make the Master Mix—as posted previously in this blog :

Hot Roll Mix

5# or 20 C all purpose flour OR 9 C whole wheat/rye/other specialty grains + 8 C all purpose flour

1 1/4 c sugar ( you can substitute some honey if desired on baking day)OR 1 c packed brown sugar

4 tsp salt

1 cup powdered milk (or approx 1/2 c dry non milk substitute-rice, soy potato etc)

Mix all ingredients well together well, I use a wire whisk. Store in an airtight container, label and date. Best if used in 6-8 months. Makes 20-22 c mix.

Then I use it to make the hamburger/hot dog buns:

HAMBURGER/HOTDOG/SANDWICH BUNS

2 TBL (or 2 ¼ oz pkgs) dry active yeast

1 ½ c warm water

2 eggs, beaten

¼ oil

5-6 cups of the mix above

2 TBL melted butter

Dissolve the yeast in the water. Add oil and eggs, mix well. Add mix until you have a soft, pliable dough that is not sticky. Kneading well this should take 5-10 minutes. Grease a bowl, turn the dough over in the bowl to coat the side with the oil/butter you greased the bowl with. Cover with a damp cloth. Let rise until double in size approx. 1 hr maybe longer depending upon your current weather.

Punch down and let rest 10 minutes. In the meantime grease your baking sheets—2 of them. Now you shape your buns. You can either roll the dough out ½ inch thick with a rolling pin and use a 5 inch diameter can to cut perfect circles. Or like I do. Roll the dough into a ball and then flatten it to be ½ inch thick and 5 inches in diameter with your hand. OR if I’m making hot dog buns I roll it into a tube and flatten it.

Once all the buns are shaped you can either leave them to rise 10-15 minutes before baking or freeze them at this point. I generally take out enough for that night’s supper and set those to rise. The remaining ones are placed on the baking sheet and then immediately in the freezer.

Once they have frozen hard (generally overnight) I remove them from the baking sheet and put enough for a meal for the three of us in a vacuum seal bag, seal, label and date. Then when I need them I thaw them on a baking sheet until they are double in size. Then continue to bake as in the basic recipe.

To bake:

Preheat oven to 425 F. Bake for 10 minutes until golden brown. Remove from baking sheet to cooling rack. To keep the buns soft I brush them with the melted butter listed in the ingredients list and them cover them with a dry cloth.

YIELD: 12 5-inch buns

VARIATION:

Seeded buns; just before baking brush the tops with 1 beaten egg white and sprinkle with sesame or poppy seeds (or seed of your choice. )

Another thing we’ve been working on recently on the line of feeding our family is going back to cooping some of the birds. The same friend as the produce gave me three lovely Leghorn hens, two Barred Rock chicks and three Dorking/Brahma cross chicks to get back into the chicken egg production, just for our family. Hopefully within the next year we will have enough fresh eggs to provide for our family year round.

During the peak laying season we will freeze any excess eggs. To do this I do it a two egg serving at a time. A two egg serving around here is as follows:

3 guinea or banty eggs= 2 large

1 goose= 2 large

1.5 duck= 2 large

We don't eat the peacock eggs because when we had a male to fertilize we wanted all possible peachicks we could.

Except for the duck eggs I do this "two eggs" at a time, ducks I do three and then divide.

Beat your eggs with a fork or whisk like you were going to scramble them. I personally add a pinch of salt or sugar, others tell me they don't even do that, but I think it help preserve them and helps keep the yolk from getting grainy.

Then pour into a container you want to freeze them in. Some will say to use ice cube trays. I will say I've had NO LUCK in getting the egg to pop out of them without being a huge mess. I use a snack size Ziploc. The Ziplocs I lay flat on a cookie sheet to flash freeze. Once they are frozen good either pop them out of your ice cube tray and bag up or take your Ziplocs and put them in a freezer bag or vacuum sealed bag and return to the freezer.

To use: either thaw in the refrigerator or if in a hurry stick the bag in a bowl of cold water. It will thaw rather quickly. Use immediately after thawing.

I use them in omelets, scrambled eggs, meatloaves, meatballs, egg wash for batter frying anything you need beaten eggs in for meals or baking. I've also been known to add them to dog and cat food if I'm making those and need a little more protein for the critter chow.

You can also separate the yolks from the whites and freeze them separately. I do this often when I’m cooking and need either yolks or whites for the current recipe. The remaining half of the egg is put in a container in the freezer, with the number of the contents on the container written on it., Then when I have enough for Hollandaise sauce, or an Angel Food cake they get used.

ON THE HOUSE BUILDING FRONT: Sean has his plans pretty well finalized and has purchased the cement, cinder blocks and re-bar for the first two footings/pillars. We had hoped to already have those two in, but we’ve, like a big part of the nation, have been hit with rain storm, after rain storm, which while good for the garden slows the house building down.

When he’s trapped in doors he’s worked on tweaking the house plans, researching different appliances, pricing materials and much more. Progress is being made, just slower than we’d hoped.

So now you are all caught up with us.

Jan who is off to pickle more peppers and caramelize onions to can in OK

KATIE

2011-04-19T12:55:00.000-07:00

Spring 1998

He looked down at her lifeless body. What how could this happen? Just minutes ago Katie had been walking with Eric and him to the mailbox. It had been a pleasant walk in the late fall morning. They loved living on this new piece of land.

Eric and Katie had ran ahead, he’d smiled watching their small forms full of curiosity and wonder. They had lived there nearly a year, so there was no fear in his mind as they ran ahead and disappeared in the trees around the pond.

Suddenly Eric had been running toward him, his small face full of silent terror. Before he could wonder what was wrong, he heard Katie’s terrified anguished screams, and THE DOGS.

Terror gripped his heart as he ran toward the sounds of a pack of dogs after Katie. Frantically looking into the dark shade of the trees he saw her and THEM.

There were four or five near grown hound mixed with chow type dogs, they had Katie on the ground, she was fighting the best she could her small compact frame useless against the starved animals who with foaming mouths tore at her legs and buttocks. Working as a team to pull her to the ground. She was their prey and they meant to have her. He could see their ribs showing through their fur. Judging by their size and physical shape he could tell they were litter mates. Unwanted puppies who had been dumped, and who had some how survived to adulthood, but now they were starving and vicious.

The fence between Katie and him was several strands of barbed wire, too tightly strung for him to duck through. He ran to the gate, LOCKED, as he climbed the barbed wire that formed the gate tore at his clothes, puncturing his skin. But he did not notice. “Katie, he had to save Katie.”

Shouting and waving his arms he ran at the dogs, all but one ran off. The Alpha male, bigger than the others, was still biting and tearing at her, she had gone silent. Stooping the man grabbed a softball size rock and threw. It landed just short of its’ target. But its’ message was clear and the wild dog tucked tail and ran.

Katie lay before him, not moving. No sound. “Katie”, softly he called her name, no response. “Katie, their gone. “ He knelt fear filled his heart. Then he saw a flutter of eyelids. Her beautiful brown eyes, full of pain looked back at him. She was alive!

Now he had another problem. He had to get her the two tenths of a mile back to the house and medical treatment. He wasn’t sure he could carry her that far, plus how could he get her over the fence? He couldn’t leave her to go get the car and help. The pack of wild dogs might return and kill her.

As if to answer his unspoken questions, Katie slowly, unsteadily rose to her feet. Together with Eric they started the slow painful walk back to the house, and help.

Examination of her wounds showed medical attention was definitely needed. It was a weekend, and the type of medical help she needed was forty-five minutes away. Together with his wife and Eric, he loaded Katie in the car and headed for the emergency medical facility.

By the time they arrived, she was going into shock. The doctor told them immediate surgery was needed. While luckily she seemed to have managed to protect her vital organs and face. There was muscle and tissue damage to her legs and buttocks. In agony the three waited while the surgery was performed on the little one they loved so much.

Eric, a normally vivacious blonde, was quiet and withdrawn, not making a sound. He sat with his head hanging down, forlorn and lost without Katie. The attack had definitely done emotional damage to him. What about Katie, what residual damage would she suffer?

What would they all suffer? They had no insurance to cover this, the surgery would be expensive. But there was nothing else to be done, she had to have it, if she was to survive.

Anger slowly swelled in the man and woman. This was through no fault of their’s or Katie’s. The blame laid in the selfish people who had dumped a litter of puppies because they were an inconvenience. People who would go to a fast food restaurant rather than pay the small fee to have a pet neutered or spayed. Then when the unwanted puppies appeared, who thought it too big an inconvenience to try and find suitable homes. Nor would they pay the small fee to place them with pet adoption services, again they would have to give up some minor luxury for themselves to do that. Or as a very last result, have the puppies humanely put down. No it was far easier and cheaper for THEM to just dump the puppies. After all they were cute, people in the country would take them in and adopted them. At least that’s what they tell themselves and their children.

But instead, of those who do manage to survive many turn into vicious feral dogs. They form packs with other dumped and stray animals and together they hunt. First living off of small game, and then family pets, poultry cattle and finally attacking small children and the elderly, becoming more aggressive and vicious with each attack. This was evidenced by the attack on Katie.

It was apparent from the condition of the dogs that had attacked Katie that they were starving, making them a very dangerous pack. Although they had not completed their attack on Katie, others were in danger. Now the farmers and ranchers would have to ban together and do a job they detested. Destroy the pack. Katie was suffering, and others would too, all because some irresponsible pet owner, dumped a litter of unwanted puppies. Never considering the domino affect of their actions. Because some pet owner hadn’t spent less then $50 to have that litter’s mother spayed they would be out hundreds of dollars for Katie’s medical treatment, not to mention the emotional stress and pain it had caused. Nor did that pet owner think about the burden it put on the families in the country that would now have to deal with vicious, possibly rabid feral dogs. It was easier to just dump that litter of puppies, go out to eat and tell themselves it was perfectly okay.

Suddenly the doctor was standing before them. The surgery was successful and the damage was far less than they had thought. As long as no infection set in she would be scarred, but healthy. She had been lucky the man had been with her. She would not have survived otherwise. Katie could go home and be with her family, but she must be watched closely for the next 24 hours.

The man and woman took turns monitoring her condition all night. In the light of the early dawn hours he went to check on her again. Eric was with her, his small body curled protectively against her. He looked up as the man entered, sad worried eyes. “She’s going to be okay, boy.” He told the three year old yellow dog.

Katie looked up with pain ridden eyes and he reached out and petted the soft ears of the blue heeler. Thankful once again that both animals were fully vaccinated. Katie would not get rabies, if the dogs had been rabid, because of their foresight in not only spaying and neutering the pets, but in keeping them fully vaccinated. If only he could undo the damage and pain his pets were suffering now, because of others.

Giving Katie her antibiotic and pain pill he thought to himself. “There are those who would say, ‘Why be so upset, Katie is only a dog?’ “. He knew that statement would anger him, she was more than a dog, she was family. In the same instant he knew what his response to such a remark would be. “But what if she had been a small child?”

April 19, 2011
I wrote the true story above in the Spring of 1998 after our beloved Jealous Katie Katrina Quit! was viciously attacked with my husband just a few yards away. I repost it in various places periodically and especially this time of year when the dumping of household pets becomes a major problem for those of us who live in the country.

I had actually forgot about posting it this year until an event last night. My husband and I had just gone to bed for the night when Sean called out from the living room asking if I could come help him. Grabbing our robes we both ran, we could tell from his voice something was definitely wrong.

There in his lap was our beautiful white Tufted Roman goose, Wendy. Wendy and her mate Casper are some of my personal favorite geese. The two of them have been with us for about six years. She had finally gone broody on a large clutch of eggs and was desparate to hatch them. She and Casper are obvious in their love of goslings and she's only successfully hatched one gosling in years past--Lumpy, who a stray dog got when he was a teenager.

Last night it was Wendy covered in blood. Sean had heard her screams and rushed out to chase away a LARGE black stray that was trying to drag her to the woods from her nest right in the light from our living room windows!

Sean screamed and chased the animal off and rescued Wendy, but her long graceful neck was tucked under her main body, she was upside down on her back and she wasn't making a sound. When he picked her up her neck hung loosely, but she struggled to get away, thinking he was the dog come back.

Once in the house we doctored her wounds--one is really bad on her cheek and she bled a lot. Once I got the bleeding stopped I held her in my lap to keep her warm and hopefully from going into shock while Sean fixed the nursery up for her. As I spoke to her of how she had to live because her goslings needed her she raised her bloodied white head and peered at me with an understanding blue eye. I reminded her that Mama Rose had suffered similarly and had gone on to hatch and raise Beauty. While her head wobbled on her neck it was wonderful to see the neck was not broken. She leaned against me for comfort as we waited on Sean.

He built her a deep nest of hay and carefully moved her eggs to the totally enclosed structure in the big coop that we normally use for either a nursery of parentless baby birds or wounded hens and their clutches of eggs, then he gently carried her to it.

As we passed her old nest she struggled to get down to go to her "babies"--she's only been broody for two days, but her need to protect her eggs was strong. Sean held firm and talked softly to her, telling her the eggs were safe and he was taking her to them. As we passed Casper and the main flock who honked softly to her she struggled again, but not near as hard as she struggled when she saw her "babies" safe in a cage with deep soft hay.

Once Sean set her down she washed the blood out of her mouth in the medicated water he'd fixed her, nibbled a bit of the food supplies and then wobbled to her "nest". She carefully counted the eight eggs and tucked them under her bloodied wings. We told her good night and left her in God's hands.

This morning she actually hissed and spread out protectively over her eggs when Sean tried to re-arrange the water bowl in the wire and wood enclosure that will now keep her safe. This is a VERY good sign.

I have to say we all went to bed angry last night, which is not a good thing. Someone has dumped this starving dog and we are dealing with it. We think it has already got Miss Pugsley and Butterfly, (we keep hoping they are hidden on a nest somewhere--but we are doubting that is so) and none of us wants to kill an animal. But it's coming right to the front door and something will have to be done.

While no one I know would ever consider dumping of an animal, some of you might know someone who might. Please tell them the stories of Katy and Wendy and how much harm their selfishness can cause.

Jan who is sad to see Wendy in so much pain and still being so protective of the goslings she wants to hatch so badly in OK

THE THEORY OF ANYWAY

2011-04-17T18:11:00.000-07:00

April 17, 2011

I’m currently reading a book called “Independence Days: A Guide to Sustainable Food Storage and Preservation” by Sharon Astyk. I’ve actually just started it, I saw a review of it online and decided it might be worth a read to gear me toward the food storage I hope to achieve.

Early in the book she speaks of the “Theory of Anyway.” From what I have read it is basically the reason we should be putting food by, become debt free, and be good stewards in life in and other aspects of our daily life in general. Simply because we should.

Not due to some coming crisis, a fear of the government controlling food, the end of the world or anything else, just simply because we should. I like this thought. It rings so much of the truth above and beyond anything else I have read.

So many books, articles, late night radio talk shows, disaster movies harp at the “impending doom” and how we must be “prepared” for it. The plain and simple truth is the things these media sources tell us to do we should do anyway.

The book got me to thinking, about all the times before I’ve needed food storage and was glad I had it. Over the years my husband has only been unemployed twice and both times we had ample food stored it was not a problem. We simply ate out of the food storage and we ate well.

A third time was when my father-in-law was in his last days. During that time we had up to 30 people staying at my home for one to three weeks. Due to food storage, my master mixes on hand and the co-operation of those involved we all ate 3 square meals a day and did so without having to spend a lot of time in the hospital cafeteria.

I had planned for none of those events to occur in my life, yet they did. Putting food by, just because I should anyway, showed to be a true blessing each time. This is why I need to build my depleted food storage back up now. I do not think the world will end in May as some say, or on 12/12/12 as others say. I do see food prices escalating in the stores and that may or may not be a meter of things to come. None of these are the reason for preparation. The reason is because I should “anyway.”

Not managing our finances as well as we should have put us in a bit of a bind during this most recent bout of unemployment. If we’d previously managed our finances as we should my husband would still be “retired”. I am striving to get him back to retirement. I miss him being home.

No matter what stage of your life you are in I suggest you cease using credit immediately and become debt free, not because it is the fad thing to do, or because major inflation is headed this way. But because it is something you should do “anyway.” As I have often said before we are following the Dave Ramsey “Total Money Makeover” book plan and it is working well for us. I know of hundreds of others it has done well for too. But you need to do it for yourself not because I said, but because you need to do so “anyway.”

Helping others is another thing we should do “anyway” not just because a disaster hit, but because it is who we should be as a nation. Oh it feels good to give to the Japanese Earthquake Fund or whatever the latest disaster is, but how about the elderly person down the road who has trouble just getting a ride to the grocery store? Or the newly widowed man who has never cooked a day in his life and now has no one to cook for him.

You don’t need to do something huge to brighten their day, sometimes just stopping by to say hello is all they need. Maybe the neighbor’s child is having a horrible time with math and you are good at it. Visit the parent around homework time and drop small “hints” about the easy way to do that math problem. Charity comes in all forms and it is something you should do anyway, not just when a disaster hits.

Back to the book Independence Days, the author touches on much deeper issues as she quotes her friend who developed the “Theory of Anyway,” Pat Meadows. Me I like to think that by simply bringing it up and adding it to my blog it will perhaps get a few more people thinking about the things they should do “anyway” without me pushing any political buttons. Because after all I do not agree with all of Ms. Astyk’s political statements, but I do believe in what we should be doing anyway.

Jan who is trying to read at least one non-fiction a week in OK

VALUABLE LESSONS LEARNED--A BLAST FROM THE PAST STORY

2011-04-13T16:05:00.000-07:00

April 13, 2011--I've been posting on various yahoo lists my latest adventures with baby birds. Those stories reminded me of this blast from the past one from 2004.

July 28, 2004

First of all let me say to those of you that don't know me personally that despite my towering height of 5'0" I am not a petite person, I am quite round, so scurrying quickly is not a thing I do. Nor is bending over, crawling around easily or any other such aerobic activity.

Today, so far, has had a series of valuable lessons that I thought I would share for those of you who may or may not be new to homesteading:

1. While leaning a board inside the coop for guineas to nest behind may sound like a good idea consider how you will retrieve eggs from behind said boards if they extend well behind the roosts for the birds. We didn't and today I had to. On hands and knees with my Gopher Grabber reaching tool and basket I crawled under the roosts it was not pleasant. The Muscovy duck, Lady Rachel, who had decided she liked the guinea accommodations better than her own small coop and thus had gone broody next to the nest of guinea eggs I was robbing was not amused at being disturbed. I became very thankful for the Gopher Grabber which kept my arms away from her hissing bill.

2. When you have a guinea hen broody in the coop on 66 eggs REMIND your dh that when he puts the birds up at night he should MAKE SURE Mama hen is on her nest and not locked out of the pen for the night. The eggs are in the 'bator now, but it was a very cool night for OK, we'll see. They were near their hatch date.

3. Day old baby Muscovy ducklings can march right through chick wire. This lesson was learned when I was preparing my lunch and heard baby ducks in distress. Running outside I saw 4 ducklings marching straight out to guinea hens who thought they were pecking material.

4. Day old baby ducklings are EXTREMELY fast!

5. All larger duck backsides look the same to baby ducklings.

6. Older sibling ducklings DO NOT want their younger brothers and sisters under their backsides and will peck the newly hatched ones HARD!

7. All older ducks will flog you if they think you are going to hurt a duckling.

8. Even the best trained dog will get excited when Mom is chasing a small tasty morsel and the bigger ducks are chasing Mom. While they didn't eat one they barked and snickered at it all a lot not great for Mom's ego or ears.

9. When blocking all the bottom wire one should remember the chick wire that runs BEHIND the feeder and ramps.

10. Once baby ducklings get under a coop that is surrounded with chick wire on all 4 sides you better figure out a way that you can get Mama duck out of the coop and away from the other 10 to call those other two. Because they are faster than you and you aren't going to get them out on your own.

11. The only way to put additional boards behind the feeder and ramps once the other two are back to Mama Duck is to do it from inside the very messy duck coop. ON HANDS AND KNEES. YECH!

12. Once you are certain you have blocked all exits for the baby birds one will climb a corner and go out above the boards just to prove it can, it too is extremely fast.

13. Once you are certain AGAIN you have all exits covered and you are now ready for a scrub down and have lunch another will escape just as you take your first long swallow of Pepsi.

14. The third time you are certain you have them all blocked safely in you thank God that it is a cool day and you can keep the windows open to listen for more escapee sounds.

15. You contemplate bird netting on the outside of the run wired up tight to the chick wire, all the way around and very high up.

16. You cancel a much needed shower until reenforcements arrive to help you untangle the bird netting and get it up for fear they will escape again.

17. You now know you MUST enlarge the duck housing facilities immediately . Those older siblings might hurt the younger ones when it comes time to settle down for the night in the too small coop.

18. You develop a headache when you realize that you have a broody duck in the guinea coop and you get to play this game all over in three weeks when she hatches her dozen out.

19. Cedar needles in the hair and under clothing hurt.

20. You better learn to laugh at yourself because everyone else is.

These are valuable lessons learned today, hope they save someone else my scurrying around trying to nab little and yellow and black ducks as they flee under the low lying cedar trees. Jan who is most certainly glad no one had a video camera going today in OK

WEEK TWO OF THE GARDEN AND HOUSE ADVENTURE

2011-04-13T15:51:00.000-07:00

April 13, 2011
Since I last wrote we’ve all been very busy moving on with our plans for the spring and summer.

Gary worked a little overtime at his job this week so he couldn’t do much to help in either endeavor until Friday afternoon. Once home though he really pitched in and the gardening went a lot faster.

Monday Sean went to pay off his truck and while out he found some Canadice red grapes, Tuesday he planted those in the grape garden. I then planted Bloomsdale spinach between the grapes and the strawberry plants. I’ll probably add a few marigold to this garden as well since we have a lot of rabbits in the area.

Prior to Friday Sean worked on building another 24 foot row in the garden by himself as I worked on the potato garden. In this long and narrow bed I planted Russet white potatoes, and Norland red potatoes. Then I companion planted Copenhagen Early Market cabbage, Spring broccoli raab, and Green Sprouting broccoli.

Normally I wouldn’t plant three Brassica in the same garden, but I only want a few heads of cabbage because none of us like sauerkraut that much and the smell of cooking cabbage can run you out of the house—although I do love a good cabbage roll. So we decided we’d grow only a few head this spring (if the rabbits don’t get them) and then go for a bigger crop in the fall of a long keeping cabbage, with possibly trying to grow a few heads in the greenhouse.

I misplaced the broccoli seeds on Friday (found them that night) so the broccoli raab got planted in that row instead.

Once the broccolis and cabbage were planted two Victoria rhubard were planted at the opposite end of the bed from the already well established horseradish. This left a little space for a short row of something else. Got to check my companion planting chart to see what.

That leaves the area between the fence and this garden where we will add marigold seeds, if ever there was a garden that would need it this would probably be it. Last year we got very little lettuce and NO cabbage due to Peter Cottontail.

By the end of Friday Sean, Gary and I had finished building the second row in the big garden. In this we planted Adirondack blue potatoes. I will be adding a few other seeds to this garden as well this next week.

The three of us started building the third row in the big garden and have it nearly completed.

Along the same line, but different…while purchasing feed on Thursday I noticed they had a sign up they had freshly harvested asparagus up for sale. While my husband won’t eat asparagus Sean and I love it and my asparagus hadn’t started sprouting yet (first shoot appeared the next day). So I inquired about the price. I had to have them repeat it.

The last I had priced at Wal-Mart was nearly $7 a bunch and a bunch wasn’t quite a pound. I later called our local produce place where I buy a lot of bulk produce and was told their 1# bunches were $3.99 each or 3 for $9. The feed store price was $2 a pound for firsts and $1 a pound for seconds. I purchased a pound of each.

For those of you who don’t know a second where asparagus is concerned is usually those super skinny stalks that despite how they look are tough just past the tip. I had a plan.

The first night I fixed a nice mess of asparagus on the charcoal grill to go with our grilled chicken for dinner.

GRILLED ASPARAGUS

I make this vegetable numerous ways, but this is one of the simplest asparagus recipes. I used a small loaf pan and placed some of the tender spears of the firsts after I had cut off the tough ends and fed those tough bits to the greedy geese. Over the tender spears I poured a mixture of lemon juice, garlic salt and black pepper (all mixed to taste) then topped it with pats of butter. A foil lid was added to the loaf pan and then it was set on the edge of the grill where it would get heat, but not boil dry. Simple, simple and delicious!

If you are using an indoor grill, like a Foreman grill you can let the asparagus set in the liquid for a while then remove, drain and grill it until tender crisp on the indoor grill.

That left a LOT of leftover raw asparagus. As anyone who has dealt with this divine veggie knows it has a short fresh shelf life and I knew we wouldn’t eat it all before it went ugly.

The next morning I filled the dehydrator with the remaining asparagus. ALL of it, including the tough parts. No I’m not insane, I’m a tightwad that is gazelle intense about getting out of debt.

After following all the usual cleaning standards for the veggie I trimmed the tender parts separate from the tough parts. The tender parts were put on two trays of the incubator in about inch long pieces-give or take.

The tough parts were also trimmed to that length, but the thicker pieces I also sliced in half length wise. From the remaining bundles of that $3 investment I filled a cheap round five tray incubator to capacity with asparagus. It ended up being three trays of the tough parts and two of the tips and tender pieces.

The reason I separated them is once they are dry it’s really hard to tell the tender pieces of stem from the tough pieces. Like I said, I had a plan.

I learned years ago that you can dry the tough parts of things like broccoli, asparagus and similar plants (as well as the peels from fruits and vegetables) and then pulverize them using either a mortar and pestle, a blender or a food processor into a nice powder.

This powder can then be added to any number of things to get the vitamins, fiber and other nutrients of the produce to whatever you are cooking from what many people throw away.

The tough ends of the asparagus are destined to become part of soups, omelets, soufflés, side dishes and many other things. I’ve added recipes for a few of these uses below.

As I cut up the beautiful CHEAP asparagus I thought about the BIG dehydrator I’ve saved the money for, but have not yet purchased. I decided it was time, but I was still leery of letting go of that much money. Gary, being the practical and loving husband he is, told me he thought I should order it that day.

He pointed out that even if the garden doesn’t make well there are always produce markets, u-pick farms and other places we could get a wealth of good healthy foods to dry. So I ordered it. I ordered the Styx Dehydra 800w with the bread/yogurt drawer from a gentleman on ebay. I also ordered some fruit leather sheets for it.

I much prefer dehydrating over freezing or canning of many fruits and vegetables for several reasons. The top ones being:

1. Ease of preparation, you seldom need to blanch, ice water dip or exact time.

2. Storage space is minimal for dried foods.

3. Shelf life is extremely long.

The unit is due to arrive here on Thursday. If the feed store still has good cheap asparagus on Thursday I will go get more asparagus. As long as it is that cheap and my asparagus bed isn’t up to producing enough for a year’s worth of mine and Sean’s need for that lovely green I’ll purchase and dry all I can comfortably afford. After all when it’s dried it will keep forever! (well almost).

BTW, drying foods is super easy. I’m self taught on doing it, canning and freezing were the way my mother and grandmother did things. Gary says he remembers his grandmother spreading clean sheets on the roof and drying apples up there when he was a kid, but that was the only experience he’d had with food drying as well.

I highly recommend two cookbooks on drying your own foods (and you can dry almost everything). They not only tell you how to dry the foods, they give you recipes to use the dried foods!

Those two books are:

Mary Bell’s Complete Dehydrating Cookbook by Mary T. Bell

Making and Using Dried Foods by Phylis Hobson

I also recently stumbled across some interesting websites

http://everydayfoodstorage.net/

http://www.countryconsultant.com/

http://cookmyfoodstorage.blogspot.com/

There are numerous ones available and I really suggest you cruise around on them.

ON THE HOUSE FRONT:

Sean’s tax refunds came in so he is now a debt free (except for Sallie Mae) man. So he was anxious to get started on his place this weekend. Right up to and including going to the home improvement center and figuring out exactly how much each of the 16 pillars was going to weigh in just the raw materials (cement, cinder blocks and rebar) and that we would have had to unload it the minute we got home because of rain in the forecast. When the weight topped 1,000 pounds it was more than he thought the three of us could handle that late on Friday night. So the purchase was put on hold.

Good thing it was, the next day I found two coupons mixed in some mail that will save him $35 on the first $300 of his purchase. Around here that’s a lot of money. So if the weather is good we’ll get started on the footing pillars next weekend.

THE PROMISED RECIPES—all serve 4

To simply cook as a veggie:

Pour 1 c boiling water over 1 c asparagus spears or pieces. Cover and simmer for 30-40 minutes or until tender. This will yield 1 ½ c cooked asparagus

Cream of Asparagus Soup—using dried/powdered asparagus

In a soup pot melt the butter and cook the flour

4 tablespoons butter

4 tablespoons flour

Season with:

Dash of nutmeg or mace (optional)

1 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon pepper

Dash of cayenne pepper

Stir in:

¼ cup asparagus powder

1 1/2 cup milk

2 cups chicken broth or stock

1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt

1 teaspoon onion powder or a small chopped onion

Heat over a medium heat until heated through thoroughly.

Asparagus Souffle

2 tbl butter

2 heaping tbl flour

1 ¼ c milk

¾ grated cheddar cheese

¼ c asparagus powder

Salt and pepper to taste

Pinch of nutmeg

5 eggs, separated

Melt the butter in a saucepan and then sprinkle in the flour. Remove from heat and whisk together well. Stir in ½ c of the milk and mix well again. Add remaining milk, whisking all the time a little at a time.

Return the pan to a low heat and cook until the mixture thickens, whisking as you go. Remove from heat and add all remaining ingredients except eggs. Let cool. This is your base.

Preheat oven to 400 F. Heat a six inch souffle dish, or four ramekins, in the oven to heat as it preheats just long enough to warm it. Then butter the dish/ramekin.

In a bowl beat the egg yolks well and then add them to the cooled base using a whisk.

Beat the egg whites until the form stiff peaks. Pour half of the base mixture over the whites, fold in gently. Repeat with the second half. Do not overblend.

Pour either into the souffle dish or ramekins

Bake:

Souffle dish 30 minutes

Ramekins 25 minutes.

Marinated Dried Asparagus (basically a pickled asparagus)

Place in a jar and then shake together well:

½ c oil

4 tbl. Lemon juice

1 tbl minced dried celery

½ tsp minced dried chives

1 dried bay leaf

1 sprig dried thyme

½ tsp salt

½ tsp ground paprika

Pour over 12-18 dried split asparagus spears that have been placed in a serving dish. Refrigerate overnight. At serving time remove bay leaf and thyme sprig.

SIGNS OF SPRING AND SUMMER PLANS

2011-04-04T14:40:00.000-07:00

April 4, 2011

As the wind blows heartily outside I think of how our spring has unfolded so far and our plans for the summer ahead.

We are determined to have a large, productive garden this year. Hopefully productive enough to fill our pantries and freezers for at least a year and to share heavily with family members and friends.

It has been slow going so far, but we are determined to do this. Just as the three of us worked so hard together to survive when both men were unemployed we are now working together on our spring and summer projects.

Yes, the “s” is suppose to be on the end of project. Because we have two BIG projects planned. The first is the garden of course. The second is the building of a small home for Sean to live in.

Some of you may remember how hard we worked three years ago clearing the land, putting in a drive way and utilities for a much bigger house than the one he is now planning. Then of course the big layoff and those plans had to be put on hold.

It is now three years later and he is still unemployed after working for a short while in the middle of those three years. Only there is a huge difference. By being VERY careful with his money, a la the Dave Ramsey plan he has paid off all his bills except his student loan, which is mortgage size.

So now he’s going to consider the student loan a mortgage and split his monthly snow ball between his loan payment and building a small house with cash only.

Since both men are excellent drafters and designers they have been designing the “tiny house” as it started out. Basically it will be a 24’ x 24’ two story structure. Quite similar to the portable buildings you see at many home improvement centers. At that size it will be on the upper end of the term “tiny house”, but it was the smallest he could work out and get all his basics in for his needs.

He is also designing it so he can add on to it easily in the future when he has a family.

So that’s our two projects. You can guess what a good lot of my posts will be about as the spring and summer go forward.

In fact here’s the first update on both.

IN THE GARDEN:

Here at the Rock ‘n Tree Ranch we garden organically via the “Lasagna Gardening” method. (ref: Lasagna Gardening: A New Layering System for Bountiful Gardens; No Digging, No Tilling, No Weeding, No Kidding by Patricia Lanza) and we plant intensively. This year we are planting in rows rather than doing square foot gardening (ref: All New Square Foot Gardening; Grow More in Less Space by Mel Bartholomew.) We also companion plant for natural pest control (ref: Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening by Louise Riotte.)

Because we didn’t get around to adding the layers to the garden this winter, or building the fourth garden, we are doing so as we go now.

Over the last two weeks we have built from the ground up a new grape and berry garden. This raised bed is three landscape timbers high and 24’ x 2’ in size. We used some old timbers we had on hand for most of the construction, but we did have to purchase spikes and some timbers to do it. It is located in the extra wide walkway we had between the other three gardens.

Once the structure was built we lined the bottom with paper feed sacks to block any possible weed growth. The bottom layer was pine straw/needles, this we topped with a thin layer of peat moss, followed by pond mud, then compost, peat moss, pond mud, poop coop, peat moss, and finally pond mud.

About that pond mud. My mother swore that the best garden soil came from the bottoms of rivers and ponds because all the good top soil washes into these watery holding spots. Our ponds are currently very low. So that’s where we’ve been digging trailer loads of mud from.

Not only do we get that top soil, but we get fish emulsion and we help keep our ponds from filling up with dirt doing this.

We finished up building the new garden and into it we planted the first two Thompson Seedless grape plants. Two Red Flame Grape plants will also be added to it as soon as we find some at a reasonable price. (I paid $2.50 each for the white grapes). We are after all on a budget and have to keep our garden costs down.

Around the base of grapes Sean planted nearly 50 Ozark Everbearing strawberry plants. Later this week we will add spinach and carrots to that bed, along with marigolds to help keep rabbits out of the garden.

Once we put in the grapes and strawberries we moved on to the first row in the 24’ x 24’. Again we built layers in the same method. This row we made four landscape timbers high, and about 12-18 wide and runs the full length of the garden. In this row we planted Laxton green peas, Triumphe de Farce bush green beans, mixed lettuces, Touchon carrots and marigolds. I’ll be adding a photo of the first row to this post shortly.

Next will be a lower walkway lined with paper feed sacks to block weeds. This is where we will start on our next part of the garden. It will be another raised row built in the same method. I’ve not decided what is going in this row yet.

I’ve not seen any asparagus growth in the big garden yet, I’m hoping it’s simply because it’s been too dry, but I think the gophers may have got most if not all of my asparagus crowns over the winter. The garlic bulbs we missed last fall have sprouted wonderfully and there are numerous garlic plants growing well there.

Over in the 24’x 8’ garden Sean discovered we hadn’t dug all of our potatoes properly last year and we have several volunteer potato plants with tops nearly a foot high already. We will probably finish filling this bed with potatoes and things that can be companion planted with it. The horseradish is of course growing well still in that garden.

This last weekend we planted two blueberry plants and two thornless blackberry bushes in huge flower pots as well.

ON THE HOUSING FRONT:

Sean and Gary have worked very hard on the house plans and nearly have them to the point construction could start soon. This weekend we went to the building site to get an idea on where to start construction and how much effort is going to be needed to make sure the house is level.

While we were at the site Gary mowed the area to give us an idea of how big Sean’s house will be. Not huge, but just perfect for a single man. As soon as the plans are firmed up all add floor plans and artist renderings of what the house will look like when completed to the blog as well.

So that’s what is going on in my world right now. Happy Spring everyone.

Jan who thought she was going to blow away in these high winds yesterday in OK

MY LIFE ON 3 X 5 CARDS

2011-02-10T19:25:00.000-08:00

Feb 10, 2011

Back in the late 1980’s I was striving to organize my home and life, much like now. While at the local bookstore I stumbled across a book titled SIDETRACKED HOME EXECUTIVES ™: from Pigpen to Paradise written by Pam Young and Peggy Jones. It’s been re-published since then, but the concept is still the same. S.H.E. was about to become part of my life.

I took this bright blue book home and read it cover to cover. Highlighting the ideas as I went. The entire concept made a lot of sense to me. Everyone has certain chores they need done daily, weekly, monthly and annually so why not be organized about them. But we all get sidetracked.

You know the old joke/story you probably live it at least occasionally in your life—me it tends to be a nearly everyday occurrence.

You get up in the morning fully planning to getting a certain chore done and at the end of the day, although you have worked hard all day it’s still not done. Some people call it the “but first” syndrome.

Here’s an example for you: Today is laundry day, I’m going to get all the laundry done. As I sort the laundry I see a button about to come off of a shirt. Granny taught me “a stitch in time, saves nine.” So I decide to sew the button on before it gets lost.

I go to the living room for my sewing kit to take care of it. Once in the living room I see bills that need to be mailed that day. It’s 9:30 am and my mail carrier runs at 10:30 am. The mailbox is 2/10 of a mile down the drive. It’s a pretty day and I need exercise.

So I decide to walk down to the mailbox to mail the bills. I grab the camera “just in case”. Whistling for the dogs I head for the mailbox. Stopping along the way to snap photos for the greeting card business and throw sticks for the dogs.

The mail carrier arrives just as I got to the mail box. We chat and exchange envelopes. On the way back I realize I’ve not fed the dogs and other animals yet.

As I feed the dogs the geese honk at me wanting “treats”, I know the garden needs some weeding and they love weeds. I find ripe produce in the garden and decide to pick it… and thus goes the day. By the time I remember the laundry it’s too late in the day to hang them on the line.

All were things that needed done, but the scheduled laundry didn’t happen. Then I felt guilty for not getting it done. Guilt does not look good on anyone.

The two ladies who wrote S.H.E. broke all these much needed chores down into 3 x 5 color coded cards. The system was quite easy. Certain chores on certain days, on easy to spot colored cards. There are days scheduled for relaxing, for bill paying and much more. Each day includes “me time.”

It also talked about how to get help doing those chores. After all why can’t your kids empty all the trash cans in the house? How to organize storage and much more.

The most important part was it was as flexible as you wanted it to be. Little Johnny comes in and needs three dozen cookies for in the morning and baking day isn’t for three days no problem. You simply move your 3 x 5’s around and work out what works best for you at the time. NOTHING is set in stone. You just rearrange the cards. The card is kept in the queue until it’s done and then it’s moved to its next scheduled time.

I’m not sure why we quit using the S.H.E. but as time went on we moved away from it. Over the years we tried other organizational systems and some worked, others didn’t.

I tried the flylady system, which works well for some people. For me it did not, too structured, too unflexible. Quite frankly, those dogs need me to throw sticks for them more than I need to make sure my sink is absolutely shiny every second of the day. Once a day is plenty if something important like LIFE comes up. Nor do I want all the emails that come in from the flylady group nagging me to do certain things at certain times each day. I never did well being nagged at.

Slowly I developed the Princess Plan for my complete decluttering of this ranch. You can read about the basics of it at: http://cjpattersonontheranch.blogspot.com/2009/12/princess-plan-basics.html

I had just got it going good when the two men lost their job and was making real progress. Then we hit the road. We’ve been home for several months now and I’m having trouble being sidetracked again.

As some of you have read I’ve been working on getting our menus and foodstuffs organized. I decided to do this on 3 x 5 cards. Doing this I remembered I still had that big 3 x 5 storage box in the closet upstairs. Imagine my surprise to find the complete S.H.E. system still inside it, all these years later.

As I looked through the cards I enjoyed memories of my kids school days because of the cards for different events in the box. Suddenly it dawned on me. Part of my problem around here is I have more irons in the fire than a blacksmith. I was tackling each section of my life in a separate way. Lack of organization was undermining my efforts to get organized.

Digging through that 3 x 5 box an idea started forming. Many of the cards were no longer appropriate for our lifestyle or home, but most were.

First step was to sort through those cards and get them set up for the proper days, weeks, months and year.

Next I worked on plans for the Walt Disney World trip this next winter. Because I’m having trouble finding an assortment of different colored cards I’ve been using 3 x 5 different colored cardstock cut to the right size. Luckily I have a greeting card business ( webfoottubdesigns.com) so cardstock is easy for me to find.

WDW is bright pink. On these cards I broke down all that needs to be done to be entirely ready for an easy getaway when the time is right, including fund raising ideas to make it a cash only trip. These cards were divided up between the months between now and then. Viola’ no last minute rushing to pack, make reservations and more importantly no sheer exhaustion that leaves me in tears on the day we leave.

Once I put the things that needed to be done before the trip on those simple 3 x 5 cards the planning didn’t seem so overwhelming.

Garden Planning on bright green cardstock came next. We want to go to a year round gardening system. Again I broke it down, divided it up, including daily and annual for these cards. Again, simplicity.

Menu planning, became white cards with divider cards for the main protein ingredients of my menu plans. Recipe cards in another section alphabetized for easy locating.

Working my way down through the Princess Plan on lavender cardstock I broke the year down exactly the way I had it on the Princess Plan, tying it to the original S.H.E. plan where it fit, adding cards in each time frame where needed.

Mystery shopping and merchandising schedules went on daily cards.

Continuing on through other aspects of our ranch life I added more and more cards. It’s a big card file. But the number of daily cards is not overwhelming, because it’s all broke down and simplified.

I’ve only been back to setting this up during the last month, but I am seeing progress already, of course I still get sidetracked, but when I move the current cards to the next day I don’t feel guilty. I know that all things will come together eventually. I keep finding more things to add to the 3 x 5 system, a few I’ve decided we don’t really need.

My husband smiled when he saw the big file box and realized what I was doing. He knows what’s coming is a return to an organized and clutter free home.

Combining systems is working well for me, maybe it will for you too.

Jan who says for further reading check out not only the book Sidetracked Home Executives but the following websites:

http://www.shesintouch.com/

http://www.thebratfactor.com/

http://www.flylady.net/

http://cjpattersonontheranch.blogspot.com/2009/12/princess-plan-basics.html

More Muffin add ins

2011-01-02T11:50:00.000-08:00

January 2, 2011

Back in October of 2009 I posted te Muffin Master Mix and add ins recipe I use. This recipe can be viewed at: http://cjpattersonontheranch.blogspot.com/2009/10/productively-distracted.html. Since then I have found other variations at other locations, plus dreamed up a few more myself. So here are some suggestions to stretch your muffin variety even further:

Surprise centers. A great way to use up that little bit of jelly or jam that is leftover in the bottom of the jar is to fill your muffin cup 1/2 way with batter, add a teaspoon of the jelly or jam and then finish filling the muffin tin with batter.

Or add a bit of leftover cooked bacon and egg, scrambled sausage and egg or any other leftovers for a surprise.

OR add a bit of canned pie filling, nutella, or other similar foods. The variety for surprise fillings is endless.
Carrot with currants or raisins. Shred 1 cup of carrots and them along with 1/2 cup dried currants or raisins after you add the egg. Want to go 1 step further for even more carrot flavor and value? Substitute half the milk in the recipe for carrot juice. Want more of a carrot cake recipe? Add 1 tsp of cinnamon and perhaps throw in some chopped pecans. Warning the more ingredients you add the more muffin tins you will need.
Seasame Muffins: Add 2 tablespoons of toasted sesame seeds with the dry ingredients. Use oil when making and replace approximately 2 tablespoons of the vegetable oil with sesame oil.
Toasted Coconut and Chocolate Muffins: Toast 1 1/2 cups of shredded coconut. Grind 1/2 cup of the coconut in a food processor until the consistency of flour. Reduce flour to 1 3/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons. Fold both the shredded and ground coconut into the flour mixture. Add 1/8 teaspoon almond extract when adding vanilla. Fold in 1-cup mini chocolate chips at the end. before baking.

Vegan Apple-Walnut Muffins: Combine 1 tablespoon ground flaxseeds with 3 tablespoons of water and whip until well combined and gelatinous. Use this mix to replace the egg. Use walnut oil instead of melted butter. Fold one peeled and grated Granny Smith apple (about 8 ounces) into the wet mix. Fold 1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts into the dry mix and bake.

Varieties for the Apple-Walnut Muffins substitute just about just about any fresh fruit and nut combo that suits your fancy for the apples and nuts. adjust your oil accordingly too.

Chocolate-Cherry Chunk Muffins: Soak 1 cup dried cherries in milk until tender; drain reserving milk. Fold cherries, 3/4 cup chopped chocolate and 1/2 cup chopped cashews into mix at end.

change up the Chocolate-Cherry Chunk Muffins by using any dried fruit, nut and "chocolate" combo. By "chocolate" I mean, white chocolate, butterscotch chips, peanut butter chips, cinnamon chips again the variety you can achieve here is endless.

Peanut Butter Muffins: Replace butter with 1/4 cup creamy peanut butter and 2 tablespoons peanut oil, whisking to combine. Increase sugar to 1/2 cup. Fold 3/4 cup of coarsely chopped lightly salted peanuts into the batter at the end.

Triple Berry Muffins: Prepare batter and fold in 1/2 cup dried cranberries and 3/4 cup each fresh raspberries and blueberries. Sprinkle tops with granulated sugar before baking.

Farmer's breakfast on the go: Add 3/4-1 c of any combo of breakfast meats and cheese you like to the dry batter. If the meat is a little greasy cut your oil/butter slightly. You can also saute onions, bell pepper or any other veggie to fold in as well. Remember to cut the oil/butter if you are using oil/butter when you sautee.

Leftover hot cereals? Add that cold oatmeal or mush with the dry ingredients and cut the liquid just slightly.

Spicy cheese muffins: fold in a cup of shredded cheddar or jack cheese and your favorite chili powder/chipotle to taste (usually about 1/8 teaspoon to 1/4 tsp) with the dry ingredients.

As you can see the way you use the muffin mix is entirely up to you!

Jan who is off to make a big batch of muffin mix in OK

AND OUR NEW BUSINESS IS…

2010-12-31T22:06:00.000-08:00

1/1/11

About four years ago I became addicted to scrapbooking. Actually I’ve been doing some form of scrapbooking all my life. Whether it was just a few souvenirs glued in an old photo album or intricate pages with hidden journaling, I’ve scrapped, long before we worried about acid free items. We of course should have, but who knew?

As the spoiled, pampered princess my husband had made me I was given just about anything I wanted for my new “hobby” including a Cricut cutting machine, a Xyron adhesive machine and all the papers, stickers and tools I wanted. I played and had a great time.

I was just really getting into using all this equipment, learning the ins and out of it, along with learning Sure Cuts a Lot, and Inkscape. I had BIG scrapbooking plans. Then as you well know life changed drastically.

Oh I packed up my scrapbooking stuff and it traveled all over with us for 18 months, but I never seemed to have the time to scrap. We were either busy working or enjoying all the free sites we could visit. I just never seemed to drag that heavy black bag out of the camper closet.

Well the first week in October I drug that black bag out of the camper and back into the house where my son moved it back upstairs to what had previously been my scrapbooking room.

The reason I say previously a scrapbooking room is because now it has evolved back into an office, as it was when we first moved in. The business has changed, and so has the room. All the scrapbooking stuff is being set back up because it is now part of the business.

On the various lists I have mentioned repeatedly how we were working hard on a business plan, figuring out concepts, domain names, logos and everything else. I’ve kept to myself what the business is. Basically because I wanted to research to see if there was even a niche market for it. I like building small businesses to fill in the areas that some how have been overlooked by others. Especially when it works around something I like to do.

So what is the business you ask? The name of our new business is WEBFOOT TUB DESIGNS. Huh? You might say. A little background here. Many of you from the lists over the years have read many of my animal stories. I have been often encouraged to turn them into children’s books. So we are. Buddy the Bathroom Duck has evolved into Buddy the Bathtub Duck. Thus the Webfoot Tub (see logo photo at the left—designed and scrapped by my son). As time goes on our website will have Buddy and friends in a series of cartoons, drawn by Sean. We plan on self publishing the Buddy and other animal stories as well. But the children’s stories are only a tiny fraction of the business.

The main component will be greeting cards and specialty scrapbooking pages for sale. I know, I know there are hundreds of hobbyists out there selling greeting cards and such and they are not big money makers. We’ve researched the numbers, but we’ve also researched those webpages and that is where the niche comes in.

While we will, of course, make and hopefully sell all the normal greeting cards, birthday, Christmas, etc we are also going to try and provide a great variety of those hard to find cards that we all look for at one time or another.

One of our first “niche” cards will be adoption related cards. It has been brought to our attention (thanks Chrissey) that there is a shortage of cards not only to announce adoptions, but to celebrate Gotcha (the day the adoption became final) cards. We will also include cards for those who want to thank the birth parents for loving the child enough to give it up.

We plan on this and numerous other niche areas being highlighted as time goes on. So if you have a special card or scrapbook page you would love to see made available for sale please speak up.

We plan on covering ALL holidays for all religions and groups, not just the main few, as well as cards for hobbyists, sports enthusiasts and much more.

We will also be having a group of Buddy cards and merchandise as time goes on.

While some of our cards will be your basic folded cards we will also have shaped, pop-up, slider and other unique cards.

While all three of us love to scrapbook and create we realize not everyone has the time or the inclination to make their own. So we’ll create them for you. Our scrapbook pages will be made where all you’ll need to do is add your photos for those special moments in your life, as well as just day to day events.

This will be a family business, my husband Gary is the main IT person, plus he’ll help with design aspects. Sean is our artist. He can take even my roughest design sketches and turn them into gorgeous items. Me well I’m the budget keeper, one of the three designers, Buddy author, public relations and all other niche filler.

We are aware that a family business can be tough, we’ve had a few before. We are also aware that Dave Ramsey says stay away from partnerships. So we are working hard to make sure everything is, as recommended down in black and white, and no one person is making all the decisions. As for the last two years everything is done by family vote here. Please wish us luck,

The first few photo cards are now up on the website: webfoottubdesigns.com

One more thing: HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Jan whose family is working together once again to move forward in life in OK

BRINGING THE COST OF GROCERIES DOWN

2010-12-26T12:18:00.000-08:00

December 26, 2010

As a roast simmers on the stove and the air fills with the delightful smell of bread in the bread machine my thoughts turn to what I consider “the cooking season”. The weather outside is below freezing, so what better way to warm up the house than to cook?

Only cooking can be the biggest part of any household budget, beyond your house payment. It is also the easiest one to go over budget on, therefore special attention needs to be paid here.

There are numerous ways to cut grocery costs and there is absolutely no way I could even begin to list all the ways to cut those costs, but I can list several. It is my hope that you will add more cost cutting measures to what I’m listing.

So let’s get started:

LOSS LEADERS, as I explained in the previous post on the blog loss leaders are an incentive to get you into the store. It is also one of the best ways to cut your grocery costs.

The best way to use them is to first learn what day your local grocery puts out there weekly sales ads. In some cities it’s Sunday’s others it’s Wednesday, your town may be entirely different. It is important to know how long a sale will last, it could be very frustrating to go to a store on a Sunday and find out the ad you planned your shopping around ended at midnight the night before.

I personally do not subscribe to a newspaper, and I live rurally so I seldom if ever get sales flyers in my mail, especially since I have registered our address on the no junk mail website. So I must be a little more creative about getting my ads. It’s a simple tool called “the internet”. Yep, just about every store known to man has a website with their weekly sales flyer on it.

Once I’ve located where these ads will be for the stores I’m doing cost comparison at I bookmark the site and/or subscribe to their email ads. I do this not only for grocery ads, but for hobby stores, and my husband gets notices and fuel coupons from Murphy fuel stations in his email on a regular basis.

Once you get the sales ads take time to sit down and really look at them. Just because it’s in a sales flyer does not mean it is on sale. Read the ads closely. Even better get out your PRICE BOOK (more on this in a moment) and do some serious comparison of not just price, but sizes.

Now make a list of the things that your family will truly eat that is truly on sale. Store by store, it’s always better to compare various stores loss leaders. Here’s one trick you may not know. Many major stores like Wal-Mart, Target and others (not just grocery stores) will do price match for IDENTICAL items. So if your local grocery has say a name brand frozen food on sale that you want, but it’s not worth the drive to pick up just that one item, take the ad to one of the price matching stores and get it for the same price there. Not only do you get the item for a lower price, but you don’t burn extra fuel or time to pick up the item.

Once you get the list made, you can possibly plan a menu for the week around these loss leaders. You can also consider stocking up to help cut your food costs for future meals. Ideally this is what you want to do if you are trying to meet the $1 a day challenge. Some stores will limit you on how many of what item per person per purchase you can get.

There are, of course, ways around this limit. Shop more than one time, more than one store, or take a shopping buddy with you. If the store is out of an item request a RAIN CHECK. This can be a true help in cutting costs. Because it allows you to spread out the cost of those more popular items. It is simply a coupon to purchase X amount of that item at the loss leader price when the store once again has it in stock.

Now about that PRICE BOOK. What you put in a price book is entirely up to you. My personal one is a spread sheet. The rows are the items ie: Chicken, leg quarters per pound; chicken, boneless skinless breasts per pound; Green Giant green beans 14 oz can. Being who I am it’s alphabetized for speed in locating an item.

The columns are the stores ie: Wal-Mart; Target, Dollar General, Aldis etc.

Then I start filling in the columns with the non-sale (every day) prices for each store. This can be quite time consuming at first. I recommend using grocery receipts you have at home to start out doing this, you can gather a lot of information and fill in the spreadsheet as you watch tv. Then each time you go to a grocery gather a little information while you are there. Just spend five minutes or so on a single aisle making notes and after a while you will have all the stores done with little effort.

Another way to save money is couponing. I am a former coupon/rebate queen. In the 80’s I was like those ladies you read about. I did not pay for groceries, in fact a grocery store once paid me because they doubled the free food coupons I had. Back then I ate only name brands, worked hard at rebating and our stores doubled and sometimes even tripled.

Those days are gone for me. I use very few ready made mixes or convenience foods. I clean with basic cleaners and like I said I do not purchase newspapers or magazines any longer. What I do have is a large box of non-expiring coupons from those days on basic items. So as the loss leaders pop up I will use those coupons until they are gone.

You can also download coupons from the internet, but be aware many stores will not take internet coupons, so before you waste the time, ink and paper check with the stores you will be shopping at.

There are also several individuals who will, for a fee, send you sets of coupons via the mail. I personally have not used any of these services, so I have no idea if they are cost affective or not.

Remember, a coupon is only good if it is an item you will truly use normally and it brings the price down below similar items that are equally as good. Ideally you want to match your coupons to the loss leader sale ad for the best deal. Also if you shop at places like CVS they have special store credits they hand out for certain purchases that can be used to bring your prices even lower.

If you are blessed enough to live in an area that still doubles coupons, by all means read their rules closely and then take advantage of it.

STORE BRANDS. Quite often a store brand is produced at the exact same factory as a name brand. It is in fact the same item, just a different label. But not always. Know what your family will and won’t eat. It’s not a good deal if your family won’t eat it.

Example: My family will eat the store brand instant oatmeal just as well as they will eat the Quaker of the same flavor. The store brand is of course much cheaper (but not as cheap as making your own instant oatmeal—a recipe to post at another time). However, we find the store brand raisin bran cereal tough and unpalatable, so we stick with our favorite name brand.

BULK COOKING. I’ve already wrote volumes on this in the past, simply do a search in my blog using the search feature at the left using key words/phrases like bulk cooking, Once a Month Cooking, OAMC , OMC and you should be able to pull up the posts on it.

GARDENING. I’ve done a few posts on this in the past and as spring approaches I will be doing more. Anyone can garden, no matter where they live. Many a garden is grown in window boxes and flower pots. Remember even one tomato plant gives you garden fresh tomatoes year round (yes they are a perennial) even in the coldest climates if you bring the plant inside when the weather turns nippy.

PORTION CONTROL. My last post had a lot on this, but it needs to be pointed out again. Control the portions, control the cost.

PLANNED LEFTOVERS. Instead of trying to figure out what to do with a leftover after the fact, plan for it before you even cook. Then once the cooking is finished set that leftover aside before serving up the meal. I’ll do a post in the future on the numerous ways you can use leftovers you may never even have thought of.

This has ran on too long, so I’ll close for now.

Jan who is looking forward to your suggestions on cutting grocery costs in OK

$1 PER PERSON PER DAY FOOD CHALLENGE Q & A

2010-12-24T14:24:00.000-08:00

When Ashley first mentioned her challenge to herself I never dreamed how it would snowball. Why I don’t know, I mean everyone is wanting and needing to save money these days so I shouldn’t have been surprised. But I was.

Of course a lot of people had a lot of questions, which is a good thing. It helps us sort through our planning process as well. So in this addition to my ongoing blogging I’ll try to answer a few of those questions.

The number one question asked was

Q: Is that $1 per day period, $1 per meal or $1 per person.

A: Ideally it would be $1 per day per person in your family. I say ideally because costs on various items differ in different parts of the country. Plus each of us has different likes and dislikes, AND allergies or sensitivities so you may have to go slightly higher.

Q: What is a “loss leader?”

A: A loss leader is a sales ad item the grocery store will run to entice you into their store in hopes that while you will pick up that on sale item you will also pick up several more things that are more expensive. It is ran at below their actual cost for a limited time only. Often there will be limitations on how many you can purchase as a result. It’s a sales gimmick, but you can make it work to your advantage if you resist that urge.

Q: Besides loss leaders how can you get food items down to a more manageable cost?

A. There are numerous ways, including coupons, price matching, rebates, gardening, raising your own animals and bartering. I’ll expound on this more on another post.

Q: If you raise animals either for their meat or their eggs, or you garden are you going to include those expenses in your $1 per day?

A. There are currently four of us doing the blogs and many more who have accepted the challenge and we are each answering this one in our own way. I myself am not including those, nor am I including the cost of food storage or cooking because I’d be doing those things anyway. I have a budget for animal feed for my birds, they are our pets plus they are great organic pest control and supply fertilizer for the garden. I also have a gardening budget because we garden normally as well. Others consider the animals are being raised for food and therefore must be included in the overall cost. So you will have to make that decision for yourself. I personally would never eat Magellan and the gang, but I will eat Mama Sarah’s eggs, they are a bonus of having some great characters to write about. The cost of those eggs will be listed as $0 in my cost portion of menus as a result.

Q: How do you calculate the cost of per serving/meal?

A. That is going to be a blog all unto itself, because it will require a long explanation. I will post it soon I promise.

Q: How about nutrition and eating healthy?

A. Some people think you cannot eat healthily while eating cheaply, but actually you can. It has to do with proper portioning and good choices. I’ll go into more detail on that now.

Eating healthy while eating cheaply can be a challenge, but it can be done. The first step is to realize what eating healthy truly means. Let’s start with the Food Pyramid. http://www.lifeclinic.com/focus/nutrition/food-pyramid.asp

When you really look at this it seems surprising that it actually suggests you eat more breads and grains daily than other things. Breads and grains are generally some of your cheapest groceries. Ideally you would want those to be whole grain items.

Moving on up the pyramid you have fruits and vegetables, followed by proteins, dairy and lastly fats and sweets. Unfortunately we as a nation tend to have those fats and sweets down with the breads and grains proportionally.

But say you do follow the pyramid to some extent and do eat the foods in that order, what size are your portions? Ahh therein lies the rub. When you go out to eat if your plate at the restaurant is not full you feel cheated. After all you are paying for a full meal right? Who doesn’t love an all you can eat buffet?

I know when we visit Walt Disney World on vacation Gary and I usually will split the meals and still have excess on our plates.

At home you are told to “fill your plate”. Plus we tend to comfort food eat.

However, if you look at the food pyramid you will see the portions are far smaller than you think. Heavens there are even commercials that tell you that you can’t eat as many fruits and vegetables in a day as needed so it’s better to “take a pill”, but they are wrong.

For a vegetable it is suggested you eat 3-5 servings per day. Wow! That sounds like a lot doesn’t it. Until you realize that a serving is:

1 cup of raw LEAFY vegetables (seriously who eats just a cup of salad?)

½ cup of all other raw vegetables. Which all cooks will tell you will cook down to about ¼ cup in size

Or ¾ c vegetable juice.

Spread that over 3 meals and 2 snacks (as recommended for your daily food consumption) and it’s not a lot. That’s ¼ of hash browns for breakfast, a SMALL salad for lunch and a small V-8 to drink during the day.

On to fruits now.

1 medium apple, banana or orange

½ cup of chopped, canned or cooked fruit

¾ fruit juice.

Again over the day that’s a fruit juice for breakfast, an banana with our lunch or for a snack and ½ cup of applesauce with dinner.

If you study the pyramid you will see that the portions in each section are actually pretty small. You spread those portions out over your day and you can eat healthily at a reasonable price. Again it’s all in the way you go about it.

If you don’t hit the food pyramid perfectly each and every day you will not die. We are all living proof of that already, but if you do try and get reasonably close you will be better off for it.

I know my family for one would lose weight (remember we like our sweets and fat). So in my section of the challenge I am going to try to find a balance between following the food pyramid faithfully and keeping my family happy with the down home cooking they so dearly love.

BTW, as of this morning there are now four of us blogging on this challenge. Angela has joined, Ashley, Alyeen and me in the challenge and will be blogging from another part of the country.

Here’s the location of the other three blogs:

Ashley’s http://dateam365.blogspot.com/

Alyeen’s www.athomewithally.com

Angela’s www.frugalcookingcorner.blogspot.com

Please join us as we work on this challenge during the next year.

Jan who is off to make Pecan Pie Bars (w protein servings—nuts and egg, too much sweets and fats, one grain--or more) for tonight’s dessert in OK

WORKING ON THE FOOD BUDGET

2010-12-22T13:14:00.000-08:00

December 22, 2010

I’ve previously posted about how I am on the Dave_Ramsey_Debt_Beaters@yahoogroups.com email list. Recently a discussion was brought up by Ashley that she would like to try working her food budget and meals for the year, while laying in a year’s supply of non-perishables based entirely on loss leaders.

I asked if she would like a partner in this challenge. She thought it a great idea not only because things go better if you have a partner, but because we live on the opposite sides of the US and each has a family of 3 to feed. While living in two different areas with different stores to deal with and different economic basis to work with in our areas.

We have agreed to write about our journey through 2011 in building our one year’s worth of food storage by purchasing loss leaders as they become available, while maintaining a very, very strict budget.

Ashley posted her first blog entry this morning, with her challenges to herself at: http://dateam365.blogspot.com/

This, of course, is my first entry on this challenge. With the cost of groceries going up the $1 a day may be a mite stringent for us, but I am definitely going to do all I can to try and meet her challenge.

The first thing to do, as Ashley pointed out, is to educate yourself. I too am reading various blogs by people who have done this. I’m also checking online information for all types of good basic information to aid me in the challenge.

My first stop on the information train was: http://frugalliving.about.com/od/bargainshopping/tp/Best_Time_To_Buy_Everything.htm

This website lists month by month what items are normally on sale, not just food, but various things. Of course for the task at hand the food items are what I am most interested in. Knowing ahead of time what “loss leaders” will be coming can be a real help in planning the menu.

Meeting the challenge at $1 a day with two meat and potato men in my household is going to be a HUGE challenge. I can get them to eat meatless occasionally, but not all the time. My husband, is NOT a huge fan of vegetables.

Doing so healthily is another challenge, especially when you include my son’s allergies to deal with and our true love of food.

So the first menu planning basic step for me was figuring out the entrées and dealing with them while also maintaining my busy schedule as a merchandiser and mystery shopper. All too often it is too tempting to eat out.

This means not only do I need to plan my meals on the $1 a day budget, but I need to plan on refilling my freezer with homemade “convenience” meals. Knowing we have foods in the freezer we could quickly thaw and eat will eliminate the temptation to stop and grab a calorie laden fast food item or six.

So following Ashley’s theme here is what I want to accomplish this next year:

1. Bring our food budget down to as low as it can possibly go.

2. Lay in one year’s supply of non-perishable food

3. Make up ALL of my Master Mixes, this in itself is a HUGE challenge.

4. Fill the freezer with homemade “convenience” foods

5. Raise a large organic garden and go to year round gardening.

Going back to the entrées listings. I started out trying to figure out an exact order of what types of entrees I’d serve and in what order for a month alternating meatless meals and leftovers in as often as I thought I could get away with it. That became hugely complicated and failed miserably.

So then I tried to do it for every two weeks, same results, I wasn’t getting the rotation I wanted. Plus when you do a very set in stone menu plan it does not allow for spontaneity and this family doesn’t do well with that. We want the foods we want when we want them.

So I finally decided on the following seven categories:

1. Beef

2. Chicken

3. Pork

4. Variety meats (hot dogs, smoked sausage etc)

5. Meatless

6. Leftovers

7. Fish

Gee look at that seven days worth of entrées with one meatless and one leftovers day built in simple, simple.

So I now can plan a week’s worth of meals with those items as the main ingredients, prepare what I can ahead of time and we can eat them in the order we want each week. One week must be completed BEFORE we start the rotation for the next week. That way if we score a free meal out with the mystery shopping (read free meals—great for the budget) then I still have a meal in the roatation to eat before moving on to the next rotation.

So then I started making a list of the various family favorites for each of those seven. An example of this is below.

Meatless:

1. Biscuits and gravy

2. Vegetable soups (I have a bunch of recipes for these)

3. Pancake suppers

4. Salad suppers

5. Macaroni and cheese

6. Cheese and/or veggie pizzas

7. Bean meals

My list included a lot more than this, but you get the idea. I did this for each of the seven categories. Guess what I came up with a year’s worth of meals without duplication quite simply.

Using the same example of the meatless meals I can also prepare a lot of this ahead of time.

1. Biscuits and gravy

a. Make up biscuit Master Mix (recipe is listed in my search engine on the left) while flour is on sale this month. Then for a quick dinner I only need to add oil and water and bake.

b. Make up gravy butter balls ahead of time and freeze. I’ll post this recipe when I do this.

2. If we do well in the garden the fresh produce will be used for this as it grows and the dried produce will be used when it is out of season.

3. Pancake suppers

a. Pancake Master Mix (recipe is listed in the search engine at the left as well), add oil, our home grown eggs and water as needed.

4. Salad suppers can be the green leafy type, or made with homemade pasta, or a combination of the two.

a. Make up pastas ahead of time

b. Homemade salad dressing Master Mixes (which will be added to the blog as time goes on)

5. Macaroni and Cheese

a. Homemade pasta

b. Freezer cheese sauce mix, recipe will be added at a later date

6. Cheese and/or veggie pizzas

a. Pizza dough Master Mix (recipe to be added later)

b. In season veggies from the garden, frozen or dried veggies from the garden off season

c. Loss leader cheese (April purchase according to link listed above) purchased and frozen.

7. Bean Meals

a. I have a bean cookbook, and there are numerous recipes for beans of all sorts on the web. Beans freeze tremendously well. So this is an item that will be cooked in bulk and frozen for quick meals as time goes on.

Add to these entrées loss leader fruits and vegetables, and keeping portions at a reasonable size should enable us to eat cheaply and healthy. Homemade breads will also add to the meals.

I’m now in the process of listing those various meal ideas on color coded 3X5 cards. Ie: pink for beef, white for chicken, green for meatless etc. This will allow me to mix and match menus each week without having to figure it out each week.

The 3 x 5 cards will also list the ingredients for that entrée so I can watch closely for the loss leaders for it. As I lay in a supply of the loss leaders I will then mark each one as I have it in inventory.

Having the menus all figured out in this manner will also let me see how much of what I need to lay in a supply of.

Can I do it on $1 a day like Ashley, in truth it seems pretty hard, but I’m going to do it as closely as I possibly can. Even if I spend slightly over that, I am definitely going to come out the financial winner on the grocery budget.

So will you join us to eat our way to a better state of health both physically and financially?

Jan who thinks the plan will work in OK

LONG RANGE PLANNING AND A CHALLENGE

2010-11-27T13:44:00.000-08:00

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Anyone that has ever been me around very long knows I am a planner and a list maker. I’m big on planning things out. I’m not always great at following the plan, but generally I’m within the neighborhood of it by the time a project is finished.

For the last month or so I’ve been drifting. Simply mystery shopping and merchandising, letting others steer my path in this sea of life. As a result Thanksgiving was okay, but not the meal I wanted and my timing was way off on it. Let’s just say not everything finished at once like it normally does and cold mashed potatoes are not a big hit.

I could give the excuse I had a horrible head cold, but that would simply be an excuse. Granted I spent all of Friday in bed trying to kick the worst part of it and still managed to sleep almost until noon today. But it’s still just an excuse. It was lack of on organization on my part.

Well, I didn’t really sleep that late, the last hour or so I laid there thinking rather than getting up. What I was thinking was I needed a plan, a goal, something to get me back in gear on everything.

While I’ve been working hard at working I’ve let other areas slide. Areas we can’t afford to slide. I had fallen slack on cooking, keeping the budget up to date, cleaning the house and have not been carrying my share of opening the new business.

So as I laid there mulling it all over I decided it was time to get back to a plan, but what plan would spur me on the most. After all a plan has to be a goal you really want to achieve. Everyone plans on doing chores, but because they really don’t want to do them they often don’t get done if something better comes along.

I’ve got the Princess Plan and it’s good, but I needed more. I needed to have a carrot dangling in front of me, something I REALLY wanted. Then I realized that one year from today we want to be in Walt Disney World for a 2-3 week vacation. Only there were several barriers (mainly bills) in our way for this. So that is when my plan started forming. How to make that goal become a reality. So…

This next year you will be receiving reports on the goal and how we as a family are going to achieve it.

First I need a title, hmmm something catchy, but not to silly. Since the Princess Plan is included in this goal I think I will call it. “The Royal Getaway” or RG for short.

Now I need to decide what I want in the plan, what must be achieved to make this vacation not only possible, but relaxed and enjoyable. So sticking with the format of the Princess Plan I broke it down to 12 categories.

I. Finances, after all this is to be a cash basis only trip, that’s the number one rule.

II. Incorporate the Princess Plan

III. Actual Vacation Planning

IV. Menus, for the year and the trip (also part of the Princess Plan), but it needs its own category for this plan.

V. Sticking with the budget (I know this falls under finances too, but you’ll see why it gets its own Roman Numeral as time goes on.

VI. Mystery Shopping and Merchandising

VII. Getting our business up and running, as well as keeping it going while we are gone.

VIII. Gardening, a day to day plan. You’ll see why this is important for the coming year.

IX. Weight loss. If you have EVER been to Walt Disney World you will know why being in good physical shape is a major plus going there. That place is HUGE!

X. Wardrobe, ours is starting to look pretty ratty and a new one requires cash only. Plus if we lose weight…

XI. Animals, we have a lot of plans for them for the coming year. Plus there are two to go with us and the rest will remain home and all sorts of plans and actions have to be made for this.

XII. Miscellaneous needs prior to the trip. In other words, everything else I forgot to list.

This all sounds pretty general I know, but that is the way a good plan starts. You start with the general categories and then develop the sub-categories right down to the daily plan as you go.

Take #VI. Mystery shopping and merchandising. After doing it for around five years what planning should I need for that right? Actually a lot of planning needs done.

Sean and I have been taking it on a day to day basis and as a result we have ended up working weird hours, rushing to finish jobs, overbooking ourselves, wasting gas and then having days where we have no work. Trust me the reason Sean and I were both so sick for Thanksgiving was because we let ourselves get run down because we didn’t plan.

Plus now we have this business we are opening up and we need to allow time for it or it will never get off the ground. The problem is mystery shopping and merchandising are guaranteed money, the business is a maybe. So MS/M must be the priority of the two at this time. This could easily change in the near future, but for now we must get in as much of the first two as we can and squeeze opening the business in around the edges. That takes planning.

So on the overall plan it would look like this:

VI. Mystery shopping and merchandising.

A. Locate jobs to do

a. Check daily on the self assign websites for mystery shopping

b. Try to contract for as many weekly/monthly/quarterly merchandising jobs as possible.

c. Always take the higher dollar jobs first

B. Print the week’s paperwork as much as possible on Sunday

a. Print additional paperwork as soon as available

C. Try to stack jobs when scheduling as close as possible on locations, preferably in the same building.

a. Limit out of town trips

i. Only do out of town trips when there are numerous jobs for both parties to do and make a full day of it.

ii. Incorporate household and business errands into the daily ms/m schedule to save time and fuel.

D. Study all paperwork the night before so there are no surprises (this has been a big problem for us lately—too many surprises)

a. Gather any necessary tools or supplies the night before

i. Make a ditty bag of tools used often and leave it in the truck.

E. File paperwork immediately upon arriving home, no late nights allowed.

F. Store documentation immediately.

a. Assign a set place each set of paperwork must go as soon as it is filed.

G. Cull old documentation when the need to keep it has expired.

H. Keep a calendar up to date as to any long range jobs to avoid double booking.

I. Arrange for merchandising jobs to be done while we are gone on the trip ahead of time.

J. Set as many accounts up as possible for direct deposit or paypal.(This one is pretty much done)

K. Wash our work wardrobe as soon as we have worn it for the week in preparation for the next time it is needed. (Too many late nights of doing a hurry up load for the next day’s job).

So you can see that by the time I do this full list of 12 this is going to be a very long plan. Then I will take that list and turn it into a monthly, weekly and daily list like I did the Princess Plan.

Making a plan is pretty simple. AND once you have a plan it’s easy to follow.

So I challenge each and every one of you to make a plan and let’s work on our plans together. Why wait until New Year’s Day, why not start now? I’ve got my plan started, what’s yours?

Jan who says if we work together we can accomplish anything in OK