Norristown farm park in august

Just listen to that wind

Poor Man's Puppy Chow

I LOVE puppy chow. Or "muddy buddies" as some may call it. But I rarely make it mostly because we never buy cereal - mostly because cereal is expensive. And a good batch of puppy chow takes an entire box of cereal - therefore we rarely make it. 

But I did make it a few weeks ago, and had tons of left over chocolate bark, peanut butter and powdered sugar. What to do with all these ingredient and no corn checks? Why not use pop corn? It worked beautifully!

After feeling so awesome for making up this recipe, I found out it is actually very popular and known as "poppy chow." So while I can't take credit for inventing it, I can still say I saved money in the long run. 

Say you made puppy chow 4 times during the Christmas season. Thats 4 boxes of corn checks. Corn checks are at least $2.50 per box, which comes to $10 dollars on cereal alone during the holidays. That $10 could be spent on a few new clothing items at the thrift store or a nice big, juicy burito at Chipotle and you would still have plenty left over! 

Making it with popcorn, you get a bag of kernels at Aldi for less than $2 dollars, and a whole batch is made with only a 1/2 cup! This comes to infinitely more batches of delicious puppy chow to share.

Cheapskate cold remedy?

About a week ago I was starting to feel that ominous sore throat, out of breath, achy body feeling that always seems to come right before a major cold. One of the guys who lives in our house had had a horrible cold the week before and he was still recovering. I was worried I was next - last time I got sick it lasted over a week and I was totally out for two whole days!

I did not want this to happen again, especially since I had lots of new students that week. So I did what any grown woman of 26 would do, called my mom and told her all about how sick I was feeling. Here was her list of advice 

1. Take vitimin D

2. Eat garlic

3. Buy some zinc lozenges

4. Rest

I did all three of these things with a vengeance. Took D and garlic in the morning and at night, sauteed TONS of fresh garlic and ate it on everything, and bought 2 boxes of off-brand zinc lozenges from CVS (buy one get one half off!). 

The results - I felt about the same the next day, and then completely better by the second day. I developed a teency bit of what might have become a cough, but it never got bad enough to interfere with teaching. Such a miracle! Thank you Mom for the smart tips!

I think the key is vigilance and taking action right away. When I am sick I tend to lay around in self pity. But these are some really easy and inexpensive ways to help your body fight off sickness.

I also found this interesting article about garlic and other herbs that help stop colds etc. Very interesting!

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/09/23/garlic-health-benefits.aspx

Fall Walk

The world has such a Thanksgivingish look. My heart swoons every time I look outside!

Here are some pictures of our walk at Norristown Farm Park this weekend 

$12 food challenge - pt. 2

The end of the week is here, and we still have enough food in the house to make two more dinners:

eggs with sauteed green peppers and toast

sweet potatoes and Indian dahl 

The only problem is we had eggs with green peppers and toast for lunch, and we are both really sick of eating potatoes. So we decided to splurge and go out to Chick-fil-a for dinner tonight.

As for our grocery budget, we spent only $9.66! Too bad the original challenge was to spend less than $12 dollars on all food for the week. We did not hold up to this standard. Our main failure was eating out for lunch on Tuesday. We couldn't help ourselves! Sometimes eating out is just too convenient and we are really in the habit of doing it. I need some tasty meals we can whip up at home really quickly during the week that will keep us from going out. This is something I will look into.

Breakdown

So our all around food spending for the week (including tonight's Chick-fil-a dinner which I can already say the amount because we both order the same thing every time) is: 

Aldi - $7.66

Pizza Box - $9.50

Produce Junction - $2

Keswick village Fall festival fried Orios and a Pretzel - $3 

Chick-fil-a - $12

$34.16
Still, not bad! It equals a little over $5 dollars per day for both of us to eat. This was a week that fell in between big shopping trips though. Next week we will need to re-stock, so that will cost more.

This is someone else's dinner menu, but it seems like it would be a good idea-inspiration for sticking with it. Also it is cute looking and they ate out on Tuesday too

Take Away
  I learned a lot from planing our meals this week. Here are some things I want to remember

1. when you plan your meals you eat better and more healthy food overall

2. Planing meals ahead of time is empowering! Its like whatever happens, at least dinner is in the crock pot 

3. When you plan meals, you don't feel like grabbing extra things at the grocery store because you know everything you need is on the shopping list. 

$12 dollar food challenge

This week I have decided to try only spending $12 dollars on food for the whole week - Monday through Saturday. In addition to this challenge, I want to start writing down everything we are buying. I think this will help me not impulse buy or stop at any thrift stores.

I was inspired by a meal we scrounged up last night that totaled $1.60 per serving. Here is the recipe:

Fried Plantains and spicy black beans

Serves two (or three if one of the people isn't a hungry man)

-Three plantains

- 1/3 c oil (olive or canola)

- 1 can black beans

- 1/2 c pasta sauce 

- Crushed red pepper

Heat oil in a large pan, cut plantains and put them into the oil

fry until brown on both sides

rinse black beans and mix them in a bowl with pasta sauce and a bit of red pepper

microwave for a minute or so

scrape plantains onto a plate leaving the rest of the oil in the pan

sprinkle a little salt on the plantains

serve with beans on top

It was delish! And satisfying. For about $1.60 each, why don't we eat like this every day?

So I decided to map out our meals for the week with what we have already and try to spend as little as possible on groceries. I chose $12 dollars for my $12 dollar challenge because we need to buy a few things:

1. Chili powder 

2. Pork chops

3. Bread

4. Salad Kit (I love these! Instant salad in a bag with cheese and dressing from Aldi for $1.75)

5. Sweet potatoes 

6. Plantains (I had a request for more plantains and spicy black beans)

With these ingredients plus what we have already, we will hopefully have: 

Breakfast:

oat meal

granola with honey and yogurt

toast with peanut-butter and honey 

Lunch:

mashed potatoes 

frozen peas

smoothies

ham sandwiches 

left overs

Dinner:

Turkey Chili

Tortellini with peppers, beans and chipotle/pumpkin tomato sauce

Flat bread pizza with Ham and peppers

Indian Dahl on baked sweet potato 

Salad kit with pork chops

That doesn't seem like deprivation. In fact, we usually eat way too much without thinking. We'll see how we do with sticking to our plan. 

Etsy - up and running just in time

Finally got my Etsy site back up and running. Just in time for the holiday season!

https://www.etsy.com/shop/marjieshemanski

I avoided my $10 dollar listing/selling fee so long that my account got suspended! So since August I decided that I would not renew it until I had a few new and awesome things to sell.