Simple living by Pat Martin

Catching up!

2015-02-02T17:32:00.002-08:00

It has been a while since I have posted and my goal is to post on here at least once a week.

A Lot has happened with out little family, We bought a travel trailer one of the best decisions of our life.

Our oldest daughter has moved out and moved to College Station and is working in a bookstore trying to carve her mark in this world of ours.

Our youngest, Alexa has made National Junior Honor Society for the 3rd year in a row. Was just elected Vice Pres. It is hard for me to believe that they are growing up so fast.

The Twins had their 16 th birthday masquerade ball and I will post pictures and how we did their whole party on a tight budget.

Carrigan is working hard on her gaming world and loves it. She is inspiring to be a graphic artist designer, designing games for a career.

Savanah is working on modeling and we are working on getting her published.

Robert and I are just holding on and loving life!!

Big Hugs!!

Pat

Breakfast Calzone

2013-08-04T03:02:00.003-07:00

3 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 package yeast
1 Tablespoon Honey
2 cups warm water almost hot.
We use the bread maker
Put the 2 cups warm water, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 Tablespoon Honey, 1 pkg yeast in bread maker turn on dough setting. Set your timer for 7 minutes and let the yeast process.
Add the all purpose flour slowly let the machine do the work for you and then add the wheat flour until it forms a ball in your bread maker. This is the time also that I add garlic powder or tarragon in my dough. We also add cheese sometimes in the dough it is really just what your family wants.
This recipe makes 6, so form 6 balls about the size of your fist and flour your board and take a rolling pin and roll out your dough to about 1/4 inch thick it should come out to a flat circle.

In the mean time chop your vegetables and place the pepper and onions in a skillet to start cooking. I do not use any oil, I use just a little water.
On the vegetables you can use any that you like, you will need about 6 cups of vegetables all together. The only thing I cook down is the pepper and the onion so they are not so crunchy. Once the onion and the pepper are cooked were the onion is clear I put the mushrooms, zucchini in a large skillet and mix together for about 3 minutes on a med High heat.
bell pepper
onion
mushrooms
zucchini
I put my burner on high heat and add 3 scrambled eggs and cooked sausage and cook until eggs are done.
3 eggs scrambled
1 cup cooked sausage
and place aside covered off the burner.

If you flour your dough after rolling into circles it will not stick to your baking sheet and you will not have to use cooking oil.
Place your dough on the cooking sheet and put your filling in half of the dough should be about 2 cups and add little cheese and spinach whatever spices you like. Robert likes pic-ante sauce in his and one of the twins likes broccoli in hers, I like fresh tomatoes and fennel seed in mine. So it is really just your preference on what you want.

Pre-heat oven to 400
Once it is filled to your liking then fold over and pinch closed. stab with fork to make holes in the top and by the way this is the girls favorite part of this.(stabbing with the fork) LOL....

Place in oven and cook for 15 minutes.
Let cool and cut in half serve with fruit and or yogurt. Great for the whole family to do and great to make up on a weekend do not cook them and freeze them and then get them back out and cook later.

Breakfast Calzone Stromboli

Pasta Salad Recipe

2013-07-20T16:20:00.003-07:00

Pasta Salad recipe

1 bag of bow tie pasta
1 de-boned chicken
4 cups of chicken stock or broth
1/2 small onion chopped
1 bell pepper diced
2 cups cherry tomatoes
1 pound of grapes cut in 1/4
1 cucumber diced
1/2 cup zucchini diced
1 small jar of mayonnaise
2 garlic cloves, 1 chopped fine and the other left whole
cubed cheese

We boil the pasta in the chicken stock or broth and add the garlic clove.
In a large bowl, we add the chicken, chopped onion, cut grapes, cucumber, zucchini , bell pepper, garlic chopped fine and jar of mayonnaise. Mix well place in refrigerator.

After the pasta is cooked and drained rinse with cold water until it is cold to the touch remove the garlic clove and set aside. Take your bowl with your mixture out of fridge and add the pasta once it is mixed threw add the cherry tomatoes and the cube cheese along with salt and pepper to taste. I take the garlic clove that was used to cook the pasta and chop it up fine and add to the pasta salad.

2013-07-20T16:01:00.004-07:00

Kroger have their rotisserie chicken on sale for $3.99 each. So guess what yes, I have coupons for rotisserie chicken $1.50 on 2. So yes, we got 5 only had 2 coupons.
So de-boned 5 chickens today.

We made chicken spaghetti casserole:
4 cans cream of chicken
1 pkg pasta
1 can rotel
1 de-boned chicken
1 pkg corn tortillas
2 cups grated cheese

Cook your pasta per package directions, we put the left over bones in a pan and boiled them and strained the bones out. We used the chicken water to boil our pasta in.
Pre-heat oven to 400
Once pasta is cooked drain and place in large bowl and add 1 can rotel 4 cans cream of chicken and the de-boned chicken. Mix well
Layer your baking dish with corn tortillas and put the mixture that you have in the bowl on top of your corn tortillas. We add pepper on top and then put the grated cheese on top.
Place in oven for 30 minutes.

We froze the rest on the meat except one chicken de-boned and I am going to use that to make chicken pasta salad. I will put that recipe on here, I am going to look up the actual recipe as I just wing it!! LOL...

Local Farmers

2013-07-14T13:18:00.000-07:00

We usually have a huge garden however this year we had mishaps happen in our family and we were unable to. This being the case we rely on local gardeners or farmers to get our veggies!!

Yesterday we went to our local farmer, Joyce Sanders, and spent $25 and received the following:
Squash
Patty pan Squash
Zucchini
Cherry tomatoes
sugar sweet Melon
dill
watermelon
cucumbers
homemade jam
Acorn squash

I think our girls looked a little funny when we came home with all of it.

We cut the squash and zucchini and froze it; however we took the patty pan squash and scooped out the inside.

Here is the recipe we used and everyone loved it:
2 cups cherry tomatoes
1 cup onions
2 cups rice
2 cups shredded zucchini
approx 2 cups patty pan squash
2 cups vegetable or beef broth.
1 1/2 cups of cheese
2 TBS of olive oil
3 bay leaves
2 garlic cloves
pinch of salt
1tsp pepper

Wash and cut the tops off and hollow out the squash.
Putting the inside part of the squash in a bowl for later.
We took cherry tomatoes and onions and cut the tomatoes in 1/4 and the we diced the onions and put them in a pan with 1 TBS of olive oil. Add chopped up Bay leaves and diced garlic cloves

Pre-heat oven 350

In the bowl of leftover patty pan squash that you set aside, add 2 cups rice add 2 cups shredded zucchini add 2 cups broth add 1 cup of cheese. Mix well.
Once your tomatoes and onions mixture is done, add those to your bowl of rice, squash etc.
Mix this all together.
Get your pan and take your olive oil and grease the pan as well as the outside of the squash cups.
When you are done greasing then take a spoon and fill the squash cups up and place them in the baking pan. I fill the whole thing so it is on the outside of the squash cups and fill the pan with the mixture. Take your remaining cheese and sprinkle on top along with salt and pepper for seasoning to your taste.

Cover the pan with foil and cook in oven for 40 minutes covered and then after the 40 minutes take the foil off and brown for an additional 10 minutes or until brown on top.

Even our picker eater loved this and it had no meat in it. So would be very good for vegetarians out there. Our family did not miss the meat at all. So I was very impressed.

Hugs to everyone and I will keep sharing!!!

.

Look out we are going organic

2011-10-12T20:14:00.000-07:00

OK watched a show on how the benefits of organic products. Now trying to find good deals and coupons on organic products... That is the question, I have continuously feed my family of 6 for less than $100 a month including all toiletries. So my next challenge is to do this but organically........

February Total $69

2011-03-04T03:40:00.000-08:00

February total is $69 for a family of 6. I do realize for March that I am going to have to replinish my staple items. So the first thing that we have done is take inventory again and based our menu for the next 2 weeks on what I already have. Call it a re-grouping of sorts and preparing ahead for Spring which are heavy months for us for extra items on our menus.

Suggestions: Cannot say this enough organization is the key!

February monthly grocery bill at $57

2011-02-24T02:04:00.000-08:00

We are almost to the end of February and we survived Valentine's day and still stayed under our budget. We only have 5 days left in this month including today and we are at a total of $57 for the month. We will go to the store today or on Friday and get some more things, Kroger has banquet dinners for 58 cents and we have coupons so we wll get these for free.... Yea buddy, that is what I am talking about. LOL.......

I am having trouble with finding fresh produce like salad for example for a reasonable price, so any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Suggestions: Spend a little time not a lot of money to save on groceries!

Holiday shopping - is that in your budget?

2011-02-15T02:44:00.000-08:00

How can you shop for a holiday and still stay within your budget?
Do you compromise on what you get or do?
Do you just blow your budget?

We have 4 daughters, we are big on holidays of any kind....
We don't compromise, we want our girls to feel special you only have that time in your life...
Our girls are really big into everything and let us know well in advance that there is a holiday coming up.
We just celebrated Valentine's day, and yes my girls are big candy people as well as gifts for their friends. My challenge how to do this on and not break the budget. This is what we did. Everyone got their favorite dish for dinner no matter what it was as long as it was a homemade something. We did a heart shape cake and frosted with pink icing. We bought candy and cards at walmart and then discovered that Kroger had them for a less expensive price. Thankfully we only got one of the girls valentines at walmart and had a coupon for it. Went to Kroger and got the other girls theirs.
We always have construction paper and supplies etc. The girls made their sisters and us elaborate cards and paper flowers... They had Valentines for their friends and the girls did not want for anything.

Challenge One - Shopping for a budget Special Events

2011-02-10T22:19:00.000-08:00

I am a huge list writer, I learned a long time ago that stress can set in and even the best of intentions you could forget! or can forget! When I go out of the normal routine or out of the ordinary for my crazy life in such a fast pace if I do not write it down I forget or it gets put on the B list. The list that you never seem to have the time to get to. So I write everything down and try to think outside the box.

On Special events think outside the box, look at things that are on sale for one holiday and think ahead. Could I use these for a theme? Can I use hearts for example for a mad hatter tea party? Can I use bunny objects from Easter? Can I use flamingo from luau theme?
Take a little time even 20 minutes and think about it.......

Suggestions: keep a notebook and a pen to write things down or a recorder.

Challenge One - Planning a Special Event

2011-02-06T22:49:00.000-08:00

Planning a special event can be challenging especially under a budget. If you are wanting a professional cake however cannot pay the price consider this: Most grocery stores and bakeries will let you purchase their cupcakes or cakes un- iced frozen just like they get them for a very good price. You can buy 24 cupcakes white or chocolate un-iced for $5 let me tell you what a deal!!! Also round cakes can be purchased un-iced. So call your local grocery store bakery and ask.....

Suggestion: Call local grocery store for deals in their bakery... You will be surprised!!!

challenge One - Organization

2011-02-03T18:25:00.000-08:00

I have had lots of people ask me about my database that I created. I created it in Microsoft Works. I am converting it to another format, but I have found that it has a few glitches.

But like I said previously you can do this with notecards to make your list for the month or even break it down to 2 weeks if a month is to demanding. It was a bit overwhelming for me hence the database LOL.

Suggestion: Organization know what you have and what you need. Write it down or print it out, unless you have a photographic memory, in which I do not!!

Challenge One - 26 Cents a Can Del Monte Vegetables can we say savings!!!

2011-01-31T20:48:00.000-08:00

Can you say savings "Hello" and with coupons we got these absolutely free.... 20 cans FREE.......

Suggestions: Coupons and savings....... plan ahead.

Challenge One - The staples, the basics

2011-01-28T19:42:00.000-08:00

The basics or staples.... What you need or what you and your family use every day.

We as a girlie household go through:
Paper products: Toilet Paper - we go through so much TP that we should own stock in a TP company.
Fresh don't last things: Milk, bananas, eggs, salad and bread.
We eat tons of banquet chicken, chicken patties, chicken nuggets, chicken strips......
So these are the things I always look for on sale!! or a coupon for them or any savings at all....
Order things online and have them shipped to you. You would be surprised of online specials or first time or sample offers.
We used to eat a lot of hamburger meat however we have changed to turkey meat besides hamburgers we use turkey meat in almost all of our mixes. Even in my meatloaf, I use turkey and no one can tell the difference. Let's face it we have some picky picky eaters. If they do not see me doing it they do not know. Not that deception is really part of the thing here; however my family does not know the difference until they catch me doing it.
Now I know that there are some recommendations out there to water down the milk or water down the ketchup. I don't do that except in recipes I will water down the milk if I do not have canned milk but only to use in the recipe not to give to my family to drink..... Nor do I mix up evaporated milk to give to my family to drink. Now there has been suggestions to get milk on sale and freeze it. Yes we tried it, but when it was thawed out I did not like the taste of it and neither did my family.
Someone suggested to buy eggs and freeze them. Now it is to my understanding that this is the way they come for restaurants so we are going to try this and see how it works out. Also on the eggs if you know someone who raises chickens you might want to see if they will give you, trade you or sell you eggs. Even at $1 a dozen you are getting a good deal.
Suggestions: Go to your friends and family and see what they do, every little suggestion could be worth a savings!

Challenge One - coupons coupons coupons

2011-01-27T19:28:00.000-08:00

There has been several debates amongst friends about the coupons.

How you get them?
How you use them?
How you get them?
How you use them?

Yes, I did write these questions, twice!!!
Yes, it is a huge debate.........
There are coupon swaps.
There are coupon groups.
There are newspaper coupons.
There are online coupons.

I have to tell you in looking online for manufacturer coupons kind of got me going. There are tons of programs out there or coupons that they will mail you or email you. One of favorite is banquet dinner coupons. You can get banquet dinners for around 88cents, I have found coupons for as much as $1.50 off of 2. This to me is great and worth the 26 cents that I pay for 2. Though I am not generally a big fan of TV dinners for 13 cents a dinner my girls can have these for lunch at anytime. You know for 13 cents they could have these as a snack.
"Just Saying" If you can find a coupon for something that you can get cheaply then why not!!!
Through doing this challenge I have found that nothing is done without looking at something else and detail is the key!

Suggestion: Cannot say enough ask your family what they like, look at what they eat. Just because you are cutting your grocery bill does not mean that there should be a HUGE sacrifice on you or your family's part.

Challenge One - Coupons and Savings Deals

2011-01-26T13:55:00.000-08:00

I created another email account and that is where I get all my coupons and savings to go to. I did not want them to go through my normal email. I found that this is a good idea and you need to sign up for mailing list on your favorite items. Because of coupons my last grocery shopping trip would have been over $200 just alone. With coupons and ad savings I was able to get it down to $23.

Challenge One - Feed 6 people for $100 a month

2011-01-25T18:16:00.000-08:00

We did our last grocery shopping and just spent $23, we are jazzed about it.

This is what we got:
4 - Tombstone Pizza
4 - Hot Pockets
2 - Totino Pizza Rolls
10-Yogurt
2-Milk
1-Eggs
2-Ketchup
3 - Banquet Chicken
1-Lasagna
2-Toilet Paper
1-Salad
1-Sugar
4-Wolf Brand Chili
4-Frozen vegetables
2-Barbeque Sauce
2-Lipton Rice
2-Bag of potatoes
6- Banquet dinners
1-Coffee
3- 8/pk Coca Cola/Sprite
1-Crackers
2-Bread
1-Water

We had $45.62 in Kroger Savings.
We had in $67.50 in Coupons!!!
Our bill totaled $22.90

Bringing our total for the month to $120.00 for a family of 6.

Challenge One - 9 days left $100 for groceries for a family of 6.

2011-01-22T13:03:00.000-08:00

We have 9 days left and still have food in the pantry and in the refrigerator. WooHoo...
I have had people email me and ask if this was truly for 6 people. Our children go to an online school, so they are here, and Robert takes his lunch every day.

So it is truly for 6 people, we do not have small farm animals such as chickens. So we get our food from outside sources.

I scourer the internet for online groceries and my favorites.
http://www.netgrocer.com/
http://www.amazon.com/

We like pasta and I have ordered our pasta online for years. Here is my favorite website for pasta
http://www.edenfoods.com/

Suggestion: Do research, if you have no time to research, ask a friend that is a little geeky for them to help. Most likely they are looking for some of the same things and wont mind in their search.

Challenge One - running out of fresh stuff

2011-01-20T09:12:00.000-08:00

We went shopping yesterday and had a little over $18 to spend. We still have 12 days left in this 31 day month. We spent $7.32 at Ms. Baird's store and $6.76 at HEB for a total of $14.08.
Mrs. Baird's outlet:
hot dog buns
hamburger buns
tortillas
bread
chips
pound cake

HEB
Milk
Ketchup
Bananas
Lettuce
Eggs
chili
cheese

Suggestion: Go in with a little extra to a store that it is out of the way or not in your area, carry a $20 and your list for unexpected sale.

Challenge One - still 12 more days to go in this 31 day month

2011-01-19T09:00:00.000-08:00

We have stuck to our menu and have had no complaints out of our crew. Which is very surprising considering they are very picky eaters. We are out of eggs, milk, and bread these are things that I expected to run out of. So not really surprised, we are also out of ketchup which does surprise me. We had to run an errand close to the Ms. Baird's outlet store, so we are going to get bread there. I am only planning on spending $10 there so this better be good. Going through my list and making sure that there is nothing else we need for the 12 days left in this month.
Looking through our menu, I am noticing that we will need a head of lettuce for the tacos we are having on Monday. Looking ahead at next week even though I still technically have over $100 that we set aside I do not want to go over my challenge of $100 a month.

Suggestion: Be flexible if you have to shuffle things around in your menu, take a little time a do it.

Challenge One - The shopping is done

2011-01-15T08:16:00.000-08:00

This is what we spent:
Walmart : $76.97
Kroger: $4.19
Bringing our total to $81.16

Ad and coupon saving at Walmart was $23.23
Ad and coupon savings at Kroger was $16.17

On Kroger, we used coupons and on Walmart we took other ads

Now the trick is to make this stretch for as long as we can for the month. Notice I did not spend all of our money, we are allowing for fresh items such as milk things that won't last the whole month and do not feel can be stored for the whole month. But in the guidelines of $100 a month that only leaves us with a little over $18 for the rest of the month.

Suggestion: Try it out and see what you can do.

Challenge One - The List part 2

2011-01-15T07:59:00.000-08:00

Once we had everything listed from our menu for our list. We separated them into categories, then we looked at the stores and we had some forethought in this. For example, we knew that we could get ketchup at Walmart less expensive than Kroger or that we could get tortillas less at HEB. Just a little research and the stores do have different prices such as Walmart has roll back prices.

We have made our list and we are ready to go shopping. We took our entire list,
Our girls are older so when taken them all with us they are not as much of a distraction. I usually send them to get other things don't be in a rush, take your time.
My oldest daughter and I decided to go late at night. We went to Walmart then to Kroger. The stores were not busy and we were able to take our time and browse around. The people that were stocking the shelves were very helpful if we could not find something.

Suggestion: Only buy what you have on the list unless you find an unbelievable price on something. Write down the prices on the list even if you did not get it.

Challenge One - writing your list

2011-01-13T13:14:00.000-08:00

This part was the most challenging for me, I did not take under consideration that when making baked chicken that I usually put barbeque sauce on it before I baked it. Or if I make baked chicken and rice, I usually use Uncle Ben's wild rice and bake together.
The minor details of the recipes that my brilliant children pointed out to me; it gave me the realization that I needed to be more detailed. Saying to myself once I do this it will be simplier the next go around. You realize at this point that I am the mother of 4 and have other obligations as well. So I needed to do something that was not that time consuming but as accurate as possible.
Here is where my family came in to play once again. I gave each one a week of our menu, crossing out the double meals leaving the first week for the oldest and the last week for the youngest. We did a simple database on the computer and did index cards. Now you have to realize at this point that I am very comfortable with computers and so is our family. We did the index cards first and then entered them into a database.
Those of you that have small children or are not comfortable on the computer, you could use index cards and your grocery list compared to your inventory would be your list.
Your index cards need to have down to the last detail if you are having grilled cheese it needs to say bread, cheese, butter, etc....
We did this and placed on a huge foam board and that allowed everyone to see what we were having and be prepared for the next day or even the next week.

Suggestion: Detail, Detail don't be scared!!! If it gets overwhelming take a break!

Challenge One - Money------

2011-01-13T12:55:00.000-08:00

Some suggestions have been made as to how to pay for the groceries so temptation does not enter into play and fees etc. If you have extra money then you will spend extra money. Our choice is the cash method, one of my frugal friends got into a discussion with me about how credit card fees etc.. I needed to count into my budget or my budget was not truly accurate. Trying to be as detailed and accurate, we have decided to use cash.

We have started out with $200 and this does not include any toiletries or paper products which is a good thing for us because we could own stock in a toilet paper factory and still not have enough toilet paper. :)

Now please take into consideration that this is our first attempt at this and this is fairly new to us and we will try our best. Considering our inventory of 40 boxes of mac and cheese. I am hoping that we will be way under our budget.

Suggestion: Make your list and stick with it set an amount and don't budge!

Challenge One - Buying on Sale

2011-01-13T12:46:00.000-08:00

ok grocery shoppers, help me out here!

These are the suggestions that have been made:

Only buy items on sale if it is not on sale dont buy it.
Create your menu around the sales ads for that week
Create a day of shopping geared toward the stores going closest to the farthest and hitting the sales for each store.
Buy in bulk when items go on sale, freeze and store.

This is what we are doing,

We have certain things that our family likes and wants that are name brands or that we use every day. They are going on our list. We have certain meats and produce that we like and only will buy when they are on sale.
We have a list that lists out the brands and the meats or produce that we use. These items we find to expensive to purchase without some sort of better buy or are items that we use all the time.

We have not chosen at this point to center our menu around what is on sale, rather to look for sales and coupons that go to the items that we want or use.

Suggestion: Do your homework now and it will become habit and easier for you in the future. Write a list, writing down makes it real.