WFMW: The Back Up Box

I like free things. I especially like free things that come in the mail. Occasionally, I get wicket insomnia and sit in my computer into the wee hours strolling through the interwebs looking for freebies I can sign up for instead of staring at my ceiling not falling asleep anyway. I only go for the completely free deals ... no "sign up for 2 offers" or whatever nonsense going on here. Sometimes its a foil packet of a new shampoo or conditioner. Other times its a fancy schmancy granola bar I'd never pay full price for. Some weeks the mailman doesn't bring us any free goodies. Other weeks you'd think it was my birthday everday when I go out to get the mail.

Now, my love of free things does not override my love of organized, neat, tidy looking spaces. The stack of freebies almost immediately (and we're talking years ago now ...) outgrew the mail spot, the shelf in the bathroom, the kitchen counter, etc. We were living in a much smaller house at the time, and although I loved getting free goodness in the mail, I did not love having to move it, find it, organize it, search for it, or any other time consuming, sweat inducing, irritation creating endeavor. Alas, the Back Up Box was born.

It started as an empty case of Pepsi with the top pieces of cardboard torn off. It's what happened to be on the floor in my kitchen the day I nearly had a stroke about my freebie abundance and its plan to overtake my house with its foil packets and sticky glue dots. I simply tossed everything in the box, labeled it "Back Up" and started referring people to it (my family, not so many strangers wander in and ask if we have an extra dryer sheet ...) when they needed something we were out of. The Back Up Box predates the coupon stockpile in this house, so when we were out of shampoo on only the 3rd of 5 showers, we were simply out. There was no trip to the basement to find a new bottle on a well appointed shelf like here is now.

The Back Up Box to the rescue!

You could easily root around in the samples for a minute, find a tiny bottle or packet of shampoo, and be back on schedule. This happened when we ran out of bath products, snacks, and sippy cups (thank you, Juicy Juice and your free sippy cup sending). We once happened to have a formula sample (how, I have no idea ... I stay up late ... who knows how these things happen ...) when one of our friends came by with his kiddo and not enough powdered gold (yuck, fyi) for the kid and its enormous appetite. When Be had to hit the laundromat because our washer tried to die, we didn't have to worry about hauling our 1876 lb industrial laundry detergent along (ok, not really, but it is reaaaaaallly heeeeaavvvvy). I dug into the Back Up Box and out came a handful of detergent samples ... easy, breezy, lemon squeezy.

I love my Back Up Box, and time and time again, it works for me.


Simply,

Em.

Menu Plan Monday: Can She Make It A Month? Edition

Have you checked out the menu list at Org. Junkie yet? You should. It rocks!

As promised, I'm back with the menu. I was stuck in "Em Finally Does Her Self-Employment Taxes" world most of the afternoon, and I'm riding the elated high of not owing my first born (yet to be conceived first born, mind you) to the tax machine for the first time in years instead of going to bed like a sane person would. I'm even getting money back this year ... like more than $8 (a 2 year state refund favorite in my early college days). Hooray for extra cash and double hooray for finally getting "Menu Monday" posted before Tuesday!

Now, as my fellow couponer/stockpiler friends will attest, when you get things for free or nearly so on a regular basis, sometimes your pantry (and closets, and garage, and basement, and under your bed, and hidden in your kids' toy chest, and the crawl space, and on ...and on ...) starts to accumulate random stuff. It starts with that one freebie candy bar tucked into the back of a pantry shelf and before you know it you have a years' worth of grocery bits and pieces. This weekend I (finally) got irritated enough with the dismal arrangement that had befallen both the upper and lower pantries (yea ... we have two ... we eat a lot of free food here ...), and got to work putting them back in order. I love to score great deals. I also love the security that comes along with having a grocery stockpile. If we were absolutely destitute tomorrow, at least we'd be able to eat for awhile. Every now and then, though, I get this sticky inkling that we need to downsize a little and use up what we have (and of course make room for MORE great deals ... muahaha!).

I've been tossing around the idea of a month-long menu for awhile now, mostly inspired by the Happy Housewife's free form 30 Days of Meals. The scheduler in me wants to wait until the beginning of a month so everything fits in nice and proper. The perfectionist in me couldn't get in gear in time to re-organize the pantries for an April 1st launch. The impulsive me just wants to do. it. right. now. I just keep thinking ... it's almost spring time ... that's fresh produce season ... I will need so much more room for putting up veggies and fruit this year ... and then its butcher time in the fall ... and the freezer is almost full ... you can't put a whole pig and half a cow in a full freezer ... not without a mess. Yes, there really are that many elipses inside my head. And so, since I finally got the pantries closer to orderly, I'm caving on schedule perfection, indulging my frugal tree-hugging maniac ramblings and starting in nearly the middle of the month. Eh well, 30 days are 30 days, right? They don't have to all fit on one calendar.

So, without further ado, our 30 Days of Meals based on what we have on hand. I will still be shopping as the deals allow, and we'll need butter (um, now, actually), milk, eggs, and likely lettuce at some point. We're also out of bread, but I have myself convinced that not going to the grocery means I'll be motivated to make some. It might happen. Maybe.

Crockpot Pork Roast x2
Seared Beef Roast x2 (I just bought these last night ... they're $2/lb at Meijer this week ... go get some!)
Spaghetti with Meat Sauce
Spaghetti with Meatball Marinara
Corn Tacos x2
Em Hash (recipe ... er ... well, general concept forthcoming) x2
Homemade Pizza x2
Crockpot Whole Garlic Chicken
Chicken Pot Pie Casserole with Biscuits (from leftover whole chicken)
Ham and Potato Casserole
Grilled and Glazed Ham Steaks x2
Venison Helper
Soup and Grilled Bacon & Cheese Sandwiches x2
Baked Pork Chops
Grilled Marinaded Pork Chops
Grilled Cod/Tilapia
Chicken Mongo (so much fun ... hopefully with pictures when we get to it)
Sausage and Spinach Lasagne
Sauce Your Own Meatballs and Potatoes (you pick: sweet & sour, bbq, swedish, marinara ... I keep the sauces frozen in bags and knock a chunk off to warm up based on what everyone wants)
Breakfast for Dinner: Pancakes, Eggs, Sausage
ItaliSoy Grilled Chicken Breasts (the easiest marinade in. the. world.)
Popcorn Chicken and Fries (from a recipe at the Heavenly Homemaker)
Fried Chicken Salads

Sides and accompianments may get a little wacky as I try to use up the pre-made boxed stuff we have accumulated. We aren't buying anymore once we get through what we have, but I refuse to let freebie food go to waste. Each meal also includes at least one cooked and one raw veggie, but we'll play that by ear week by week based on what's on sale, what everyone feels like, and what we have left in the freezer (ps, Green Giant Steamers are in the 10/10 11th free this week at Meijer ... nearly free if you have doubles and still cheap if you don't).

This week ...

M: Frozen pizza ... which is not on the list, so I guess that must mean the list starts tomorrow.
T: Seared Beef Roast, cubed potatoes, cooked carrots, green salads, biscuits
W: Grilled and Glazed Ham Steaks, boxed au gratins, frozen green veggie, raw carrots
R: Tacos (!!) and Spanish rice
F: Broccoli Cheese Soup with Grilled Bacon & Cheese Sandwiches (guess I'm going to need bread after all ...), salads
S: Homemade pizzas and dinner salads
U: Sausage and spinach lasagne, garlic breadsticks, salad

There you have it! I'm giving this Month of Meals thing a go, and hopefully by the middle of May we'll have freed up some wiggle room for the bounty of summer and early fall bacon. Who doesn't loooooove bacon?!


What are you eating this week?


Simply,

Em.

Menu Plan Monday: Use it Up Edition

For a million more menus, check out Org. Junkie.

This week we are on a mission to use up the bits of this and that which are cluttering up the fridge. I want to cook/eat everything in there, clean the whole thing top to bottom, and start over with stuff from the freezer. I couldn't even get a frozen pizza into my outside freezer right now, it's so crammed full of awesome deals. Maybe it's the coming spring weather or the fact that I can walk outside without freezing immediately to the core, but I'm getting those 'Clean Everything!', 'Start Anew!' feelings. Now, to be practical about it instead of cleaning like a crazy until 4am only to collapse, exhausted, with more of a mess than I started with ...

MONDAY
Crockpot Beef Roast, Carrots, Onions, Red Skinned Mashed Potatoes, Broccoli

That's it. Haha. The only day I know for sure, simply because it's already been cooking for 5 hours. The rest of the week will be an amalgamation of things from the fridge. What? I have no idea. There's some leftover fajitas in there, some ground beef, cheese, celery and carrots, some onion and bell pepper, a head of broccoli. Hmmmm. I should put some solid time in taking stock of what pieces can go together. Yea, maybe I'll go do it right now ...


Simply,

Em.

WFMW: Condiments Galore!

For more WFMW, check out Rocks In My Dryer.

Photo: zen

In the past, when packing school or work lunches, I would squirt a bunch of the lunch-bearer's favorite condiments into tiny little plastic Tupperware containers and toss them in the bag. Nearly every lunch left the house with a wee fistful of those little buggers since we don't 'dress' sandwiches when packing them to prevent squishy nightmares at lunchtime. It's a good plan in that everyone can have what they want in their lunch, however it has failed us miserably on more than one occasion.

The lunch box gets left over the weekend in someone's desk with remnants of mayo left unused and forgotten ... a joy to clean out on Monday night when it finally makes its way home. The condiment containers have spilled, both because the lids didn't make it on tightly and because they simply bumped up against too many other things and came loose ... another evening spent trying to scrub mustard out of a nylon lunchbag. Or, my personal favorite, the person will not grab the containers, which have inevitably (and magically) wandered off in the middle of the night to some back corner of the fridge to party it up with their full size compadres ... leaving a complainy lunch eater with a dry sandwich or salad.

At the same time, when ever we got take out there would be a massive pile of those little packets of whatever sauce or substance is supposed to go with your food. There were always approximately 843 more of them than any one person needs in one meal, and at the end of the night they would make the trip from the counter to the trash can with the rest of the 'dishes'.

Then, it kind of hit me one night ... wouldn't it be fun to have those little packets in your lunch instead of potentially spilling, woefully oversized, and requiring a utensil to use containers? Ah ha! It's the simplest thing, really. When we get take out, the leftover sauce and condiment packets go in a plastic shoebox sized container on a shelf in the pantry. When I make lunches, they get tucked inside. Easy peasy! Plus, it's kind of fun to have mini-sizes of things you wouldn't think to pack in a lunch ... hot sauce, soy sauce, relish, and the like. It makes lunch more interesting, it keeps the lunch eaters in this house happier, and it saves me from doing extra dishes. Oh, and did I mention that the whole endeavor is free?! Hooray all around!

I mean, really, have you ever tried to scrub mustard out of nylon webbing?


Simply,

Em.

Frugal Ingenuity

The boys (Be and my brother) have long wanted gym/exercise equipment at our house, or a gym membership. Neither of these things are in our budget, nor will they likely ever be. Instead of resigning themselves to be gym equipment-less for life, they went about creating their own while home together last weekend.

One roll of high strength rope, 2 very basic pulleys, a piece of PVC pipe, and a concrete block later, they have created an entire exercise regimen based on basic leverage and strengthening systems. We already had the concrete block and the PVC pipe, the rope and pulleys were picked up at Tractor Supply for $29. They also used the rope to make jump ropes, and have a ton leftover for future endeavors of frugal creativity. I haven't been so impressed since they built an entire wall of shelves in the basement from only the scrap wood from a set of box springs.

They often think that my frugal grocery shopping, meal planning, wacky food combos, and preserving efforts are a little crazy. To be quite honest, if I let the boys have their way, I think we would eat $4-5 frozen pizzas and $18 steaks. It would seem, though, even amid their bawking and doubt they have caught the frugal bug themselves. It may be that they've simply resigned themselves to us not having money for excesses, but I like to believe from the excitement and pride on their faces that maybe they are starting to think frugality is cool. I'm grateful for their ingenuity and spirit regardless.

Now, off to dehydrate more tomatoes. Keep your fingers crossed that the 40 or so green as grass in my garden will turn before it freezes.


Simply,

Em.

The Warm Smell of Frugality

Mmmmm.

I so wish there were a way to scratch and sniff your computer screen so that I could share the smells of yummy goodness wafting through our main floor right now. A weekend ago (or so), I acquired some fruit from a friend's family's orchard (thanks again!). We picked peaches, pears, and apples that were a little north of perfectly ripe. This morning, my sous chef (which is what my mother likes to refer to herself as) and I went to work putting up fruit. Oh. My. Goodness. Is there really any commercial air freshener better than cooking fruit in your house? Amazingly good smells are coming from my kitchen right now, unreplecatable by chemicals for sure, and FREE!

So, what to do with an IKEA bag (huge recycled boat tarp grocery bags) full of not quite ripe apples? Applesauce, of course! We peeled, cored, and cubed 25 cups of apples. I added some cinnamon, vanilla, a little sugar to take the edge off the tart and a dash of salt to enhance the sweetness, and put the caldera on to simmer. It wasn't ten minutes before the whole house started smelling like apple-y pie heaven. I just let it cook until I like the consistency it's at.

Then, we peeled, pitted, and thin sliced peaches for the dehydrator. We use all kinds of dried fruits for adding to homemade oatmeal packets, cold cereal, trail mix, or for snacking on straight out of the jar. The dehydrator lives in our mud room off the kitchen because of counter space, but even so the smell of warming peach goodness is travelling all over the main level. You would think you had stumbled into a 100 year old pie bakery if you happened by right now.

Mmmmm. Yum! It smells fabulous in here. Who needs Glade candles when you can permeate the air with yummy goodness for basically free (except the electricity I was going to use anyway)? Best of all, we will wind up with an entire jar of dried peaches and a giant vat of homemade applesauce for free. Add those to the bags of asparagus, bags of green beans, and two jars of dried cherry and pear tomatoes I finished up this morning before the fruit bonanza, and we are well on our way to a local, frugal, organic produce stash that will hopefully hold off our mid-winter urges to buy pineapples that were tracked across the planet.

Do you garden? Do you put up produce for the winter? If not yet, check it out. Buying in season produce from local vendors (which often means it wasn't sprayed with scary gross chemicals) and then storing it creatively for use throughout the scarce months is at the core of our collective homemaking history. Our grandparents did it. Their grandparents did it. Their grandparents likely did too. It's sustainable, responsible, better tasting, healthier, and cheap. What's better, really?


Simply,

Em.

Dehyrating Cherries ... Take Two

After the recent death of my beloved 11 year old dehydrator, I didn't know what I was going to do. We did manage to rescue the cherries it was trying to speed-rot and they're safely in the freezer for some cold winter day when I want fruit cobbler or cafloutie or something. Since then, though, I've been a bit distressed over the possible non-existance of cherry oatmeal cookies in December and cherry oatmeal and about a million other uses I could think of for dried cherries (plus the ones I eat straight out of the jar in the pantry, when no one is looking). I thought we were doomed to a cherry-less year. Booooo.

Then! Miracle!

Be's dad happens to also own a food dehydrator (and a much cooler one than mine, I must say), and has managed to acquire it for the time being. There is hope! I was a little anxious when I pulled the fresh cherries from the back of the fridge (where I put them before the 4th of July ... eek!). I was afraid they would all be soft and moldy and the like. Much to my surprise, they are still absolutely perfect. There were a few in the smaller (older) bag that were a little challenged with soft spots and I believe one with a bit of fuzz. The larger bag (we're talking 10+ pounds of cherries) are still beautiful, sweet, crisp, like they just came off the tree perfect. Since I buy my cherries from a local orchard, I know what I'm experiencing is luck rather than chemical or radiation induced longevity. I'm so stoked!

So, this afternoon, I covered my knees with a ratty towel, donned a pair of vinyl gloves (because it makes the hand scrubbing so so so so much easier), and went about pitting my gorgeous cherries. I was planning on doing the whole lot, figuring on softies that I'd have to compensate for, but I decided to put the brakes on somewhere in the middle of the large bag. I put what I had in the borrowed dehydrator and slipped the rest back in the fridge for this weekend's snacky cravings. I now wait with baited breath for the signs that the dehydrator is working correctly. The tricky part is that you don't know it's screwing up until several hot air filled hours have passed. I will be monitoring closely in a determined attempt to salvage what I can of my cherry drying adventures.

Keep your fingers crossed this works. The world is just not the same without cherry oatmeal cookies, and I refuse to pay $4.99/lb for them.


Simply,

Em.

There is but one frugal nightmare ...

... and it's wasting something, especially food.

Now, generally, I try to use every last bit of every single thing in this house. This is not a perfect frugal utopia, though, and sometimes we lose some of the leftovers to the compost pile. It could be that I made too much. It could be that I couldn't get creative enough to make them look less like leftovers the second or third time. It could be that my family hates eating leftovers in general.

Today was not a leftover loss day. Nope, today I got this brillant idea to empty, deep clean, and totally rearrange my upstairs pantry. It seemed like a much better idea when I started than once I had everything emptied out onto the kitchen table ... and counters ... and floor. I enjoy organizing things, grouping them, putting them in little lines, labeling. I'm nerdy like that. I let that love of OCD blind me to the actual amount of work emptying and restocking ones pantry might actually be. Alas, I trudged through, and I must say it's pretty gorgeous looking right now. I haven't done the labels yet, if that's any idea of how tired I must be. Labels are my favorite part. (sad face)

The nightmare part comes in realizing there are items in the pantry that have made it not only past the expiration date (which bothers me less and less) but have also outlasted the 'last possible second I will consider putting this in my or my family's mouths' by considerable margins without me noticing. Those items, of course, have to go in the trash or the compost pile, and that tears a little at my soul. Every can or box that hits the trash is like an actual dollar bill in my head. Goodbye dollar bills. I'm so sorry I wasn't a good enough steward to keep you around.

Before it gets too melodramatically parsimonious in here, I only ended up pitching like six or seven items. That's pretty miniscule in comparison to my huge stockpile of food. I had to part with a can of crushed pineapple that expired in 2005 (um, 2 years before we MOVED it to this house, fyi), two boxes of crappy assemble the pieces oven meals that none of us liked (and which should have gone to the food pantry, but didn't make it), and a handful of oatmeal packets from 2006. I'm pretty sure that oatmeal is still ok, but it had little apple pieces in it and they weren't so great looking and ... well ... for peace of mind, I suppose, in the compost bucket they go.

There is still, of course, expired food in my pantry. There always will be. Do not let this be some kind of educational tutorial on food safety, though. There is no safe set standard for eating food past it's expiration. I've just figured out what I am and am not comfortable with over time. I used to dump the milk two days before it expired, for the record, because the thought of turned milk (which I was convinced happend at 12:01 on the expiration day, if not before) makes me want to hurl. I just try to use my best judgement. I don't risk things that could probably kill us, like poultry or dairy, but I regularly open a new box of cereal or granola bars that were 'best by' 2007 and are doing just fine in 2008. Don't follow my rules, though. I don't want a bunch of comments about how you spent the weekend chained to the toilet because you ate rotten hoisin sauce or some such thing.

Throwing out food will always bother me. It's probably that "There are starving kids in Africa" thing that my parents pulled on us 20 years ago. They were right, though. There are starving kids in Africa, and South America, and Iowa. That's part of why I live the way I do, and blog about it (the other part is pure self indulgence ... lol). I don't ever want to be ok with wasting resources. I want to feel bad about it. That's what keeps me true to the mission at hand.


Simply,

Em.