Whenever I buy new clothes for myself, I cut off the price tag/store tag and set it on my dresser and leave it there until I have worn the item and am sure I want to keep it. If I end up not liking the item, I know where the tag is, which makes it easier to return. (I also keep all of my receipts too, which some stores do not accept returns without a receipt.) And it beats looking through the trash for the tag.
Some shopping deals this week:
Rite-Aid at Sisterly Savings
Walgreens at Deal Seeking Mom
CVS at Coupon Cravings
Target at Attention Target Shoppers Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
Wal-Mart at The Centsible Sawyer
Giant (PA) at Moms Need to Know
There were quite a few changes in our meal schedule last week, so some of my meals I had planned on making last week are now on this week’s meal plan.
Monday: speedy swedish meatballs (Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade Cooking, page 72) with egg noodles and a salad
(I will be making my own meatballs instead of buying prepared meatballs.)
Tuesday: dutch potato soup (The Basics and More Cookbook, page 95) and steamed vegetables or a salad. And if I have time/feel up to it, I will make bread or biscuits too.
Wednesday: speedy chicken stirfry (Food & Family Magazine, Fall 2007, page 21)
On Wednesday morning, I need to take a snack to the mother’s group I go to at my church. I will be making layered pumpkin loaf (Food & Family Magazine, Fall 2007, page 9)
Thursday: ham and green beans (see recipe below) and rolls or bread (probably left over from Tuesday’s meal)
Friday: slow cooker BBQ pork sandwiches ((Food & Family Magazine, Fall 2007, page 34) and a salad
Saturday: leftovers
Sunday: eggs
Meatballs
1 lb ground beef
1 lb ground turkey
milk
1 chopped onion
salt
pepper
rolled oats
garlic
2 eggs
Mix all ingredients together in large bowl, except meat and milk. Then add meat. If you have a hard time mixing, add milk to thin the mixture out. If you add too much milk, add oats to make it thicker.
Make into balls. Meatballs can be cooked in a frying pan on the stove or in the oven. Cook/bake until done.
This is the same recipe I use for meatloaf.
This recipe is from my mom.
Ham and Green Beans
ham (or turkey ham)
potatoes
green beans
water
salt
Cook ham in large pot with plenty of water for several hours, salt to taste. This makes the broth for the soup.
Remove ham from the pot and cut into bite size pieces. Return ham to pot.
Wash and peel potatoes; chop into bite size pieces. Add to pot; cook until soft.
Add green beans; cook until done, then serve.
This recipe is very easy to change. Sometimes I will add more potatoes and green beans if I am low on ham. Depending on your preferences, you can have equal amounts of each main ingredient or you can increase a certain ingredient if you would like to have lots of it in your dish.
8 Extreme Ways to Save Some Scratch is an article I found at MSN.com this morning. The article includes several links to other articles and blogs. I thought the No-Spend Month suggestion was interesting, but I think it would be very hard to do. Of course, saving money is not usually easy.
Here are some great posts I have read recently – I hope you find them helpful or inspiring.
Money:
Could Good Come Out of the Economic Crisis at Being Frugal
Why Many “Alternative Income” Ideas Aren’t Worth Your Time – And What You Might Do With It Instead at The Simple Dollar
How To Long on One Income at Frugal Dad
A Frugal Family is Greener: Easy Everyday Tips at Simple Mom
Food:
Cupcake Pops Tutorial at Vanilla Joy
Homemade Pop-Tarts at Sisterly Savings
Produce Wash Recipe: Getting Rid of Nasty Pesticides at Handprints on the Wall
Shopping:
Where Do You Shop for Clothes? at Simple Mom
Miscellaneous:
How to Make an On-the-Go Emergency Kit at Almost Frugal
Chore Charts at Controlling My Chaos
Nancy’s Spaghetti Sauce is a recipe that is part of my meal plan for this week. I needed 3 cups of chopped tomatoes for the recipe. Unfortunately, my two tomato plants are not doing well. Almost all of the few tomatoes it has yielded were either rotten or splitting apart. I discovered a nearby produce stand with good prices and have been buying tomatoes there, as well as other vegetables. (Recently I made canned salsa and canned tomato soup from the tomatoes purchased from this stand.)
I wanted to freeze some tomatoes to use in recipes during the winter. Last year I froze at least 3 gallon size freezer bags full of tomatoes, that came from my two tomato plants. Since my plants this year and not working out well, I decided just to buy some tomatoes to freeze.
So I picked up 1/2 bushel of tomatoes this week to use for my spaghetti sauce and to freeze. A lot of the tomatoes were bad, so I threw those into the trash. (I paid $3 for the tomatoes, and knew I could afford to throw quite a few away and still get my money’s worth.)
I measured out 3 cups of chopped tomatoes for the sauce and set them aside. Then I washed and cored 9 tomatoes and put them into a gallon size freezer bag. To make my life a little easier in the winter, I decided to chop the rest of the tomatoes and freeze then in quart size bags, so they will thaw faster.
For fun, I mixed up a batch of fresh salsa for my husband. The recipe I used was from Simply in Season – Fresh Summer Salsa, page 163. I can’t tell you if it was good or not, I do not like salsa. And I am not sure if my husband tried it yet…hopefully he will soon,
The tomatoes were not too much work, and it was definitely worth the short amount of time I spent on them. This will save me a lot of money too. I got a lot out of my $3 worth of tomatoes. The lowest price my grocery store usually sells tomatoes for is $.99/lb – so I would not get many tomatoes for $3 there.
I plan to use my frozen tomatoes for stewed tomatoes and soups. Do you ever use frozen tomatoes in recipes?
This weekend you can get $.99 flat shipping at Chadwicks.com with your purchase of 2 items or more.
Use promotion code: CH992
Expires: Monday, September 29, 2008
Vanilla Joy posted information about getting several free children’s audio books from Audible.com. (It seems that the Audible link does not always work, so if it does not, go to http://kids.audible.com, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Free Downloads for Children’s Literacy on the left hand side.)
We have an HP printer and receive emails from HP on a regular basis. Normally I just delete the emails, but today I noticed something – Free Printing Projects with some pictures of a card and iron-ons. They looked nice so I clicked on the link to check out the website.
There are several projects categories such as calendars, cards, scrapbooking, and invitations and stationary to name a few. And there are also some templates for business cards and shipping labels.
If you do not have the time create something yourself, or you are not a creative person, check these projects out! You can easily print out an iron-on for a t-shirt, and you can tell people you made it yourself – or at least most of it. 
On my way home from the book sale on Monday afternoon, I picked up 1/2 bushel of pears for $8.95, which seemed like a pretty good price.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to can that evening or the following day. I decided on the evening, since my husband was around to help with our son and dog. This was my first time canning pears and it took me 4 hours, including cleaning all of the jars and clean up. I had planned to can some pears and then make some pear sauce, but I ended up with 7 quarts of pears, 1 quart of pear sauce, 1 quart of pear juice, and a little bit extra pear sauce and pear juice; I refrigerated the latter two items.
Canning pears is a lot of work. With peaches, the skins come off pretty easily, but I had to use my peeler for the pear skins and that took longer.
I tried the pear sauce the next day, the little bit that I had refrigerated – it was okay. It’s not as smooth as applesauce. Pears are a bit grainy and that is obvious in the sauce, so I am glad I did not make more pear sauce. The pear sauce was brown on the top after it sat for a day, is that normal? It did not taste bad.
Interestingly enough, when I was at the grocery store the day after I canned pears, they were selling 1/2 bushels for $6.95, $2 less than what I paid. I will keep that in mind for next year when I am checking pear prices. It might be a good idea to can some more pears, but I am not sure I really feel like it…
