stretching meat

In an effort to cut back on grocery bills, I have been investigating ways to stretch meat. We like to make double batches of everything when we cook, so that we only have to cook once, but get to eat twice, but I'm interested in getting a double batch worth's of tacos, say, by using only one pound of ground beef.

Last week, I made chicken tacos. Using only one pound of chicken, I added tons of chopped onions and green peppers (frozen from last summer), made all the tacos up with half of a usual portion of the meat filling, and added a copious amount of mexican rice with diced tomatoes. The tacos tasted great and we were able to make many more than usual because of the addition of rice.

I've found several ideas and recipes online for things that we normally eat where the meat can be stretched:

• 1 chicken, 17 healthy meals--I don't even remember how to cut up a whole chicken, even though my mother has shown me over and over again.
• meatballs with oatmeal, cornmeal or rice
• black bean burgers--meatless but full of protein
• lentil and rice tacos--meatless again but I've never tried lentils that I know of
• sweet potato quesadillas--okay, this list is now meatless meals
• cornmeal everything--and I thought cornmeal was just for cornbread
• making meat into an accent instead of the main ingredient

If you are looking for new affordable meal ideas, you might want to check out this list of the Top 100 Blogs for the Frugal Gourmet.

The Simple Dollar

Over the past few days, I've been devouring The Simple Dollar, a personal finance website. It is not new, but new to me, found through the MSN Smart Spending blog. In my quest to find little things I can do to cut back expenses, The Simple Dollar has been a treasure trove of ideas.

Food:
--make ahead (and make a lot) breakfast burritos
--freezable skillet dinners
--homemade pizza--something I've always wanted to try
--crock pot meals--I have a few in my repertoire, but I would like more.
--individual oatmeal packets
--chicken nuggets--I heard years ago that eating the breaded chicken from the store was especially bad for you, but now that it is so expensive, I am looking forward to trying this at home. And this is totally simple and I don't know why I didn't think about it before.
--homemade bread--I already make bread, although I do not make all the bread we eat, but I may try his recipe for fun.

Home products:
--make your own laundry detergent
--using white vinegar as fabric softener
--making shampoo and conditioner

I haven't quite sold my husband on these four home products, but I want to try them for myself. As The Simple Dollar points out, if I make it myself, these things will not only be cheaper but they will be free of "industrial ingredients"--those chemicals you can't even pronounce. While I am not willing to go as far as he does and buy hormone-free milk and free-range chickens, I am willing to do things that will save me money.

These are just some of the posts I remember. There are so many others on just about every topic of personal finance. This is a great resource for anyone looking for ways both large and small to cut back their spending.

no cookies for 6+ weeks

We always seem to have something sweet in the kitchen--usually cookies, but sometimes cake and brownies, too. We almost always spend at least one weekday evening baking in the kitchen. Lately, to maximize our time, we've taken to making triple and quadruple batches of cookies, meaning that since we don't start baking until after the girls are in bed around 8:30 pm, we are up half the night trying to use up all the dough.

Well, not anymore, or, at least, not for six weeks--I have given up desserts for Lent.

I didn't come by the decision lightly. I remember the last time I gave up chocolate for Lent, in 2006, and had to pass on some wonderful ice cream cake that my mother-in-law had gotten for Valentine's Day dessert. I still remember how hard it was to say no that day, when my pregnant self only wanted sugar and chocolate. But, as my husband pointed out, since we seem to have gone through two (three?) tubs of Crisco (the all-important fat component in our favorite cookie recipe) in as many months, it was probably time to cut back, if only for health reasons. (I just have to say in our defense that a lot of baking was given away around Christmas time, so it’s not like we really consumed all that lard. At least that’s what I’m telling myself.)

And I hope I’m not seeming disrespectful towards Lent with my sweets ban. Since it’s something I need to cut back on anyway, I figured I might as well use this as a major push towards cutting back permanently. I once read something about Lent that said how the whole idea of fasting for Lent is that you give up something you shouldn’t be doing anyway, and that after Lent you should keep abstaining from it. To give something up for Lent just to pick it back up on Easter Sunday is completely pointless. So while I do plan on eating dessert again, I really want this to be a line in the sand that I won’t be doing it every day, that it will be in moderation (something I’ve been lacking for awhile).

In order for me to be successful, I roped my husband into this as well, which he was totally up for, because I knew if he kept baking cookies, I would keep eating them. I also laid some ground rules for myself, so that I could still have a little sugar and not go crazy. For instance, I can still have breakfast sweets like cinnamon rolls and waffles, and I can still drink chocolate milk and hot chocolate, things which I don’t have every day. But I cannot eat cookies of any kind, or any desserts in general.

For the first few days, I was really hungry at night. I had a bowl of cereal one night and some toast another to help me through. At work, I’ve just had to turn from the homemade cheesecake and cookies that my coworkers have brought in. But after the first couple of days, it has been getting better. I’ve been drinking tons of water (a holdover from being sick last week) and am coming to enjoy the hungry feeling at night, knowing that I’m not going to give in.