January Grocery Challenge update: January 4th

 Well, we are just 4 days into January but we are doing great with our $60 challenge. You can read about it here. 

The last time I went grocery shopping was December 15th, and I plan on only spending $60 between then and Feb, 1st. So far we haven't spent any, and if that is the case for the rest of the month, that'll be great! I'll take that money and put it towards our next debt. 

Sunday, we had brunch right before church at about 10:45. Right now we are having services from home, as COVID cases have gotten pretty high in our area. But we had pancakes and turkey bacon. I buy the pancake mix in 10-pound bags and we prefer turkey bacon. I grew up on pork bacon, and my husband and I still enjoy it if we have some from a wild boar we may process, or if a farmer friend, gives us some, but we don't typically buy it. 

$5.98 for 10 lbs from Sam's

Then for dinner, we had Trader Joe's Orange Chicken, a bag of potstickers and a bag of broccoli. We have Trader Joes about 35 minutes from our house, and normally buy about 5 bags of Orange chicken and potstickers when we go. My family loves it! And it's a very special Chinese dinner for only $10 or so, even adding in the broccoli. 

We normally have 1-2 servings of this left for a lunch next week. 

For New Year's Eve, I thawed out some frozen strawberries from this past spring and made Strawberry Shortcake. I still had some of those thawed strawberries left which we had for a snack. We still have milk, and probably 4-5 pears, 5 or so oranges, a few apples and a few clementines as far as fresh fruit. We have a ton of frozen strawberries, blueberries and blackberries. As well as applesauce and canned fruit too. 

The kid's started school today and my husband is back to working ( from home). I have a few more weeks until my new semester official starts ( January 20th) but am doing some things around the house, some things for my classes to be ready etc. 

Do you all have a Trader Joe's? Anything there you LOVE?

Last Financial Update of 2020

 You may recall that my husband and I have been trying to get out of debt for some time now. It started with  $152,852 in debt in January of 2018 which is when we decided that was enough. You can read about that here. 

We have made some progress and had some downfalls, but we are on the right path. As of today, December 30th, 2020 we are down to (insert drumroll in your head) $85,575. That means that THIS year alone we have paid off ( drumroll again please) $38,269. That's HUGE for us. So how did we do that?

1. COVID helped. 

Covid forced us to stay at home, and I tried very hard to stay out of stores, my husband and I both started working from home around March ( my husband full time) I went to work 1 day a week most weeks, but the gas we saved from his commute was fantastic. We weren't of course vacationing or taking day trips or traveling for anything really. We stayed. at. home. And I rather enjoyed it. I have a few posts from our "early" social distancing days here on my blog if you want to see what we were up to:

Social Distancing Day 20

Social Distancing Day 11

Social Distancing Day 10                 

So all of that did help save us money. 

2. All EXTRA money went to debt. 

We had a few "snowflakes" this year- meaning money we weren't planning on. In the past, we might put half to debt and half towards something else, or half to debt and half into a kid's college fund or something. But this year- it was GAME ON. All extra money went towards our debt. That helped of course with the balance quite a lot. 

3. I picked up some extra work. 

Not a ton, as I still have a full time job, and a family to take care of, but the opportunity arose for me to teach an online course for a Christian University and I applied for it and started in October. So I only taught one course for them this past year, but it went to our debt, and I'm hoping ( and praying) that I get more courses next semester starting in January. I'll know about mid-January if they are going to need me or not. I also have been working on another project ( editing some test bank questions for a textbook published) which I won't get paid for until February. But again- that helps. My husband used to fix personal computers for people he worked with for some side money, but since he has been at home, he hasn't been able to do that. 

4. We stayed on budget!

Cute picture of our rooster for fun. 

For most things... Christmas was budgeted with cash we had saved, and we stayed within budget. We stayed on budget with our groceries and our other spending as well pretty much each month. It's amazing what keeping to the budget will do. 

5. I amped up my Swagbucks and Bing rewards. ( read about those here)

I made more concentrated efforts to earn gift cards, which I saved in our Amazon account and used for things like birthday gifts, school supplies, and things we needed for the house ( exciting items like batteries and light bulbs). So that was super helpful in keeping our budget on par. 

I'm excited for this new year and what it holds. We have been blessed beyond measure and are looking forward to 2021. I do want to add ( and please don't think I'm bragging) that throughout this time we have continued tithing 10% and just have prayed for wisdom with our money and have asked the Lord to help us be good stewards. I feel like he has certainly blessed that prayer and our faithfulness to tithing. 

A note about my freezer and pantry and $100 grocery challenge

Yesterday I posted about my challenge to spend only $100 in January on groceries for my family of 5. I just wanted to expand on that a bit. I'm hoping to keep my spending down in January to jumpstart our debt payoff for the year, but also to eat up some of what is in my pantry/freezer so I'll know what I'm running low on for this gardening season and to be able to defrost my small chest freezer as it's time!

1. We live in an area where I have Sam's Club, Kroger and Walmart available. I prefer not to go to Walmart as it is in an area of town further from my home, it's always super crowded and it's kind of shady. I do go to Sam's Club sometimes but do the majority of my weekly shopping at Kroger.

2. We eat meat, mainly venison (deer meat ) and fish that we catch ourselves. We also occasionally get a wild boar and make sausage from that. I do buy turkey bacon and chicken sometimes, but we don't have any at the moment and I don't see myself buying any during January and my low spend challenge.

3. We were gifted a turkey at Christmas from a man in our church, and although we typically don't buy a turkey, we may smoke it during January and enjoy turkey this month.

4. I can and freeze a lot from our garden during the year. I have a pantry full of pickles, relish, jelly etc. It's hard to make a meal though with pickles and jam/jelly even though they are nice. I can other items as well like pasta sauce, green beans, soup etc. but am running low of most of those. I'm sure I'll use those items up during the month.

5. We have blackberry and blueberry bushes and along with eating them fresh last spring/summer and canning some, I have quite a few berries frozen. I'll use that for just eating plain, muffins, smoothies popsicles etc.

6. We have chickens so will have a supply of fresh eggs all month.

January- $100 a month for Groceries Challenge

January Challenge: $100 this month for groceries!

Week 1

We are a family of 5, kids are 14,12 and 8 and both my husband and I work full time. We are trying to pay down our debt, live intentionally and keep some kind of order in our chaos. This month my challenge to myself is to spend $100 or less or groceries. I normally spend $400 a month on groceries. So this month I will be trying to eat out of our freezer and pantries and keep purchases to a minimum. 

The first trip of the year was to Kroger and ended up costing $23.07. 

A few other things about our family- we don't have food allergies- so no restrictions there and no special diets. I'm a Registered Dietitian so we try to eat healthy, but I'm not on any restrictive sort of diet. My kids take their lunches to school each day, as do my husband and I. I cook 99% of the meals, and we are committed to not eat out in January.

So here's what I got:
-6 cucumbers ( in the produce bin for 99 cents) Will cut up to snack on, put in the kids lunches etc. Couldn't pass up such a great deal.
- Huge bag of sugar snap peas on sale for $3.99 from $7.99. Again, to snack on, kids lunches and I might stir fry them with the peppers and ingredients I have at home
- 3 lbs of apples for $2.99
- 2 bell peppers @ 89 cents each
- 1 gallon of milk for the kids because they love milk
- bunch of bananas
- 2 containers of turkey for the kids lunches. One of my children can't have peanut butter and jelly at their school because another child has allergies, so I send turkey with him. The other kids get pb&js
- loaf of bread
- package of sliced cheese for sandwiches and crackers and cheese

Total of $23.07 for week 1

I know I can make bread for cheaper. And I do sometimes. But I bought this loaf for .89 cents and feel that the saving of time is worth the 50 or so cents I save versus making it. To all you that make your own bread all the time- kudos- you are my hero.

So that's where we are. My kids and I are off work/school until January the 6th, so I'll cook and prep a lot of meals and snacks in the next few days.

Frugal Lunches for the week

I'm off work for the holidays but my husband will be going to work this week. One thing that I've been doing for a while now is making sure we have our lunches ready to go for the week before we go to bed on Sunday nights. It's one thing to say " we'll take leftovers" or " I'll come up with something in the morning". But what happens is that did not always happen and we ended up purchasing a lunch here and there and blowing our budget.

This nice little meal consists of a bean and cheese burrito, chicken flavored rice and pickled jalepenos that I put up this past summer. The entire lunch costs less than $1.50 TOTAL. I also had enough left over for about 2 servings of rice that I can eat for lunch sometime this week or we can use it for leftovers or in a soup or something for dinner and 4 bean burritos that I wrapped in foil and put in the freezer for a quick lunch or dinner down the road.

Here we go- five, frugal- yummy lunches that will ensure that my husband has a good lunch and we don't spend money on food we weren't planning to!

 

What are your go to lunch preps?

 

Happy Homesteading guys!

October Financial update- lets talk numbers

It's been a while since I've posted about our debt free journey. You can read about the mountains of debt we have here and here. 

So you may recall that at the beginning of this year we started really trying to get out of debt and pay off our debt aggressively. I'm not exactly sure what happened with that. The first few months went well! Like really well. But then around April we started to slip. I say we, but really it's mostly me, which is another hard pill to swallow. My husband has a debit card, but really only uses it for gas. He does not spend money for anything for himself really. It's mainly going over on our grocery budget, going out to eat, fun stuff like movies for the kids, clothes that we probably don't have to have etc. So we started to kind of started a slow decline of not paying as much as I had hoped on our debt. So the good news- NO NEW DEBT.

That's a start right?

So actually from January 1st until today we have paid off $6,580 which brings our non mortgage debt to $144798.

While my husband has been " on board" with debt payoff I think he kind of just left it to me and did whatever. I pay the bills, I pay for groceries, I pay for the kids stuff etc. So he just kind of didn't know. But we had a long talk and I told him that I really needed more support in this. I needed him to be a cheerleader and be much more present in our budget, our finances etc. He is more than willing- I think I've just never really expressed to him my desire for his help.

So that's where we are. We haven't gone up, but not as much progress as we have hoped.

I really want all of debt paid off by the time I turn 40. I turned 36 last month, so we have about 47 months to work with. Sigh.

How are you all doing on your financial goals? Are you saving for a rainy day? Trying to pay off debt? Have a saving goal for a vacation a car? I would love to hear how it's going for you all!

Productive- Frugal Sunday

Happy September. I am a lover of all the months- but Fall, in particular, is my favorite. It's not quite Fall yet- but it's coming. Summer was pretty much a hot mess for our finances for a variety of reasons, but September hopefully is bringing calmness and more of a routine.

I love Sundays for many reasons. I got up early this morning with some coffee and time to reflect and pray. Then we all got around and went to Church. Our church starts a "new year" the first Sunday in September so the kiddos all went to a new classroom. They were excited to "move up" and were excited about their new teachers. My husband and I are still in the "30- 40" year old couples class and will be there for a bit longer :)

After church we came home and had a nice lunch.  Sunday's are normally a bit lazy for us and we don't go to town if at all possible.

We will have enough leftovers for dinner tonight.

I also made a big batch of Hurst Bean Soup in my instapot- which I love by the way... and put into small batches that my husband and I will take to work next week and maybe even eat tomorrow for lunch.

I need to do a whole post about this because it is soooooooo yummy and frugal and easy. For real like under $4 for probably 8-10 servings. Many people will spend that or much more on one meal out at lunch at work! So I try to make bean soup pretty often as we all like it.

I also made a batch of no bake oatmeal chocolate cookies and a batch of chocolate chip muffins for snacks, lunches , etc.

I know many people see Sunday as a day of rest- and we do in a sense. We try to chill out, hang out with the family, maybe take a nap etc. I do enjoy cooking though and while many times I do some food prep on Saturdays, sometimes I like to kind of do it on Sundays.

What all have you done today to get you ready for the first full week of  September? Are you looking as forward to Fall as I am?

Spring Break Vacationing while getting out of debt?

We love to vacation. And since I work the same schedule  that the kids go to school we normally always do a full week of vacation for Spring Break. Last year we went to St. Louis- which was awesome. The year before that we went to the Smoky Mountains- even more awesome.

But we are trying to get out of debt and we realize that a full week of hotels or another vacation rental, plus all the food, eating out ,gas, activities etc. will just cost too much.


BUT we do still plan on having a ton of fun this Spring Break. We like to camp and go pretty often, so this year we are planning 4-5 nights in a State park that is local to us and just hike, and play, and cook food that we bring and enjoy some fun time together . We already have the equipment, I'll use our normal grocery budget, and our normal gas budget. The nightly site fee and maybe a tiny bit of other expenses will be all we have to spend.  Nightly fees range between $18-$32 depending on the park and the site.


I actually already have one night credit for camping because we were camping last year when there was an issue at the park and they gave us one night credit to use on our next trip.


We should have our tax refund back by then, but instead of using that bit of money to go on a huge trip, I'm going to budget $200 to go camping on Spring Break.  ( Last year our hotel bill alone was over $1100 for Spring Break- OUCH).

Could we use that $200 to pay down more debt? YES!
Could we get out of debt sooner if we did not go camping? YES!

But my husband and I have talked about it and opt to spend that $200 for a fun week with the kiddos, and since we normally spend SOOOO much more we feel good about the decision.

Anyone else planning a frugal Spring Break?

This is the post I hate to write.... how much debt do we have??

Oh. My. Goodness.

If you have followed me for very long you may recall that we are up to our eyeballs in debt.

I've debated putting out here how much we owe- but I have a feeling someone else may be struggling with debt as well. I hope it's not to the magnitude that ours is- but I have a feeling some of you may be struggling yourself.

So on December 31, 2017 we started with:

$152, 852 worth of debt.

$152,852


This is NON Mortgage debt people. Sigh.

Even though I thought we were frugal  over the last few years - we weren't seeing any progress. So starting Jan 1st 2018 we did a budget ( www.everydollar.com) followed it and did not buy ANYTHING at all we did not need. I have another post coming up about that soon, but just know that as of today January 31st- one month later we have paid off $1662!

$1662

That brings our non mortgage debt down to $151,378. It seems like only a drop in the bucket- but we have paid off more in one month than we did all of last year. That makes me both nauseated and hopeful all at once.

$151,378

It's our first month and I realize that 30 days isn't that big of a deal but it does give me a glimmer of hope.

Some of you may be saving for a trip, or trying to pay off a loan of some sort, or saving for your kids college- but please feel free to join me on this journey. I'll be updating you monthly on our budget, our debt, etc. It is way outside of my comfort zone to put it out there- but I think I'll be more accountable to you guys and also maybe someone will find some encouragement through this blog.

Follow along guys! It's going to be a journey for sure around the homestead!

Prepping Breakfast for the Week: Frugal Breakfast Burritos

A few things are going on here: 

1: we have so many eggs coming in that we can't keep up- I've made and frozen quiches ( recipe here) and we eat eggs of course fried, scrambled, hard boiled etc. But this is another good way to make a good use of them. 

2: we have gotten a few wild boars this year and processed them so we have yummy sausage

3: it's rainy and cold here so I thought it was a good day to make some of these burritos for the freezer

4: My husband loves these and takes a bag of these to work and then eats one each morning after he goes to the gym. Quick ,easy, protein, cheap and ensures he eats a good breakfast

So  I assembled the ingredients to make breakfast burritos. 

Eggs- from our own chickens

1 lb sausage- we harvested and processed ourselves

tortillas

canned jalapenos - from our garden last year

an onion

taco seasoning - ( it's in the clear container) I buy it in bulk from a local Amish store

cheese- from a local farm ( wish we could do our own cheese)

Let's chop that onion up ( I love my Ulu knife, by the way) 

Brown the sausage then add the onion and taco seasoning. 

Add the dozen eggs and start scrambling them together. 

Add the chopped jalapenos ( fresh are great here too, we just don't have any fresh ones right now). I use bell peppers when making for the kids. 

Shred some cheese to add to the top. 

Wrap that baby up- then roll in foil. 

And here we go. A nice batch of breakfast burritos to add to the freezer. We use a lot of our own ingredients, and also I buy super cheap tortillas- you could probably make them but I can get 10 for .99 cents at Kroger. I have calculated each one costs about .22 cents. 22 cents for breakfast is not bad!! I do write "breakfast" on these with a permanent marker on the foil, because I do make lunch ones as well and write "lunch" on those so we don't get confused!

What all are you guys cooking, prepping, baking and freezing this week? 

2018 Reading Challenge- Follow along or start your own

I do love to read. And reading is quite frugal  if you do it right. Doing it right for our family includes trips to the county library on a regular basis. Our library ( and probably yours) has a system of reserving books that are popular- so you will be next in line to get it when it is returned. Many times on a Wednesday or Thursday night the kids and I will log into our library account and reserve the books we want for our next trip. Sometimes if they are offered at another branch they will just send them over. Normally by Saturday as long as we aren't on the waiting list for a popular book we will have the books in hand when we go to the library . We just give them my card and they have a beautiful stack of books ready for us. Think about how much a pile of lovely books would cost at a bookstore!!


Anyways a site I like to use ( that's free of course) is Goodreads . You can connect with friends ( connect with me here to read my reviews of my books, see what I'm reading, view my 2018 Reading goals etc. There also is a place under " browse" where you can enter into giveaways of books you would like to read. I've done this often and last year  won between 10-12 books. Can't beat that!

This year I have set my goal to 50 books. I actually set it to 50 last year as well and although I feel like I did read that many books, I didn't keep track of them all. I think I ended up tracking only like 27 or so....


As you track what books you have read they give you recommendations on other books that are similar that you might like. I've found some neat books that way.

I'm currently finishing up a  book called " The Snow Globe" and it will be my first book read of 2018.

The temperature is 8 degrees right now, with a windchill of even colder, so what better day than to curl up in a blanket with a good book!

Happy Homesteading Y'all! What were your favorite books of 2017? What books are on your list for 2018?

January- No Clothes Shopping- complete (almost)

So I have written about our financial distress, and how even though we have nice jobs and nice salaries, we also have a lot of debt. A. LOT. We also got caught up in the cycle of spending money on this we didn't need. I slacked on the grocery budget, I slacked on the clothing budget.
SOOOOO...

January 1 I implemented a NO CLOTHES BUYING MONTH. I actually hope that I can go the whole year without buying myself anything. Not even stuff from the thrift store!!
The kids are a bit different because they are growing. Literally growing like little weeds. So with them I will just try to be extremely frugal with their purchases.

My husband has a super plain wardrobe anyways, and I'm thinking he may need a pair of shoes soon, so he's not going to be in on my little experiment. I do plan on documenting what I actually buy for him though as well.

So even though it's only January 26th so not technically a whole month. But so far this year I have bought NADA. No underwear, no socks, no shoes. Nothing. For some of you that is not a big deal, but for me and my family and me trying to get back into a super frugal habit, it's something. So we'll start with that.

I don't want to be restrictive or have lots of rules. I don't want to wear ugly things that don't fit or aren't comfortable. But what I do want to do is get back into the habit of really examining our purchases. Contentment! Yes I should save money in the mix, but I also want to learn to be content with what we have and not feel the need for more. I want to teach my kids that contentment also.

A few ways I save money on groceries

I've talked a bit about the need for our family to be better with our money. There are a few shopping apps that I use in order to maximize the things that I buy. Two things to remember though before I share these apps:

1) Don't buy junk just because you get cash back. There are offers for many items on these apps that I don't buy. Be careful not to buy the sugar sweetened beverage that you normally never buy, just because it's a good deal. On the same spectrum there are always great produce deals on these sites. This week for example on Savingstar you get %20 cash back on bananas.

2) Don't buy something just because there is a cash back coupon for it. Many people may get into the same trouble with normal coupons, just because you can get a bit back for it, doesn't mean it was on your list. Make a list, plan your meals THEN check the following apps to see what you may get cash back for.

Now the apps I use MOST:



Checkout 51. Click above to look into it. I like this one because they always have a "pick your own" type of produce offer. The likelihood that I bought something on the list is always high. This week it is .25 cents back for either oranges, raspberries, grapefruit or bell peppers. I bought a big fat red bell pepper for .49 cents and then got .25 cents back for it. There are other things also such as popcorn, coffee creamer, Heinz mustard etc. Normally there is at least $2-$3 a week of stuff on this app. Again, these are things I normally would buy anyways. So once you hit $25 you request a check and boom a week or so later it is in your mailbox. I cashed out 2 times last year, each time was effortless and that money went straight to debt.

Savingstar

Savingstar always has some neat Buy X of Whatever and get X amount back. For example there currently is a buy $10 of Bush's Beans and get $3 back. I had some $1 off coupons for Bush's Beans, I bought 10 cans when they were on sale for $1 and got back $3. So 10 Free cans of beans for my pantry plus $3. They also have freebies every so often so buy for example a box of jiffy cornbread mix and get the price back in your app. You can cash out for paypal, starbucks gift card or bank deposit. I normally do the paypal, then transfer it to my savings account or whichever debt we are working on.

The last one is Ibotta. 
Here you search by the store you are shopping at and it gives you the items you can purchase. There are some called "any brand" for things like a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread. They don't care the brand, which is nice because I buy a lot of generics. They have bonuses often also for things like redeem 5 offers get $5 extra dollars or something. This really is a great one to use. You can cash out for paypal or e-gift cards. I had $50 worth of Target gift cards I got from here that I used to purchase some extra baking supplies and gifts for Christmas.


All of these can be found in your app store on your phone. They are all free to download. You normally either have to scan the bar code of the item you purchased or take a picture of the receipt, or sometimes both. The apps are all super easy to use and tell you what to do.

There are some others one I use that I'll try to write about soon. Any apps that you guys MUST MUST use you would like to share with me for grocery savings?

Happy Homesteading!

Harvesting around the homestead today: May 30th

The song that comes to mind is " Thank you Lord, for your Blessings on me". 

We are beginning to see some color on our tomatoes so it shouldn't be long on those and we have lots of little peppers. We continue to get 7-8 eggs per day and today I harvested more broccoli and our first zucchinni and poblano pepper. I also got a nice green onion from the garden today.

I would estimate that if I bought these items from town ( organic and free range) I would have paid about $2.50 for the 8 eggs, maybe $3.50 for the broccoli, .20 cents for the onion and lets just say another .50 cents for the pepper and zucchini. That is about $7.00 give or take just today from our garden. Again, Thank you Lord, for your blessing on me!

I'll saute the broccoli, pepper, onion and zucchini up tonight for supper and will boil the eggs for the kids probably for snacks. Or we eat eggs about every morning for breakfast so they may end up in the breakfast plate.

We have one of our chickens trying to set, and she has several eggs under her. This is her first time though and she keeps changing nests so we will see what happens.

I also have one rabbit that should have been bred a while back, although she hasn't started building her nest yet, so it may not have taken.... I'll keep you updated.

Happy Homesteading Y'all!

My pickling came in handy!

If you have been reading my blog for very long at all, you have probably caught on that I'm from the SOUTH. Like super southern. Not so much geographical, but very much cultural south.

So... impromtu fish fry tonight. I love fish, especially when they are caught fresh and fried...

So I needed to get together something to take, as that is just the proper thing to do you know?

You may recall that I pickled quite a bit of goodies in 2015... so I made this beautiful little pickle tray to take.

Starting at the bottom left corner are so delicious dill pickles from our garden last year, then moving clockwise are bread and butter pickles, then pickled whole jalapenos, black olives, pickled okra , then pickled asparagus. In the center are some green olives. The green and black olives were not grown nor were they pickled by me, but I had a jar of each so in they went. 

I thought this made a nice little pickle tray and I made it from items I had on hand. 

Happy Homesteading Y'all

Look what $5.85 got me: Yard sales and book sale

Ah yes, garage sale season....

It has started here.

I'm not one to just go out and shop all day, but every so often I like to go see if I can find anything.

The first stop was a church wide sale in their gym that was raising money to go on a mission trip.

These two dresses are light and airy and 50 cents EACH. My daughters wear the same size right now, so these should make super sweet dresses for this summer. 

There were two books at this stop, one is a cross words puzzle book and the other is titled " A one Room School" and is kind of a historical book.  The books were .25 cents each. 

 These shorts look brand new to me and are an appropriate length. I paid $1 each for these shorts for my daughters.

Total at stop #1: $3.50

The next stop was actually from our local county library. I went to get a few books to read for myself and the kiddos and they were having a book sale. I found the 6 books above and thought they might be .50 cents a peice or something. Oh no, they were. 10 cents EACH. .60 cents total for the books above... Crazy. 

Total at Stop #2: $0.60

The next stop I saw on the way home at an individual home, I pulled in and they had some of the books like my youngest daughter likes, and a book that I thought I might like. These books were $.25 cents each. 

Total at Stop #3: $1.75

The kids were all excited to get their new books, and even about their shorts... 

Total for all three stops for 15 books, 2 nice dresses and 2 nice pairs of shorts: $5.85!!!!

Happy Homesteading Y'all. 

Lentil Soup

I wouldn't say it was cold here today, but there was a slight nip in the air and it was overcast. I felt like a nice big pot of soup with some cornbread.

I had some lentils as well as some veggies so I whipped up this great Lentil Soup. I forgot where I got the recipe, but it's not mine. I found it in a magazine or something several years ago.


Start with about a Table spoon of olive oil in a pan. Then add 2 peeled, chopped carrots, a small white onion and 3 ribs of celery.

Then I added several sprigs of thyme and rosemary. I'm using my little ULU knife I got for Christmas from my parents. It is amazing!!

 Chop chop chop and in no time they are all chopped up. Love that silly Ulu. 

 Once they are all nice and browned, I add them to about 7 cups of broth. I used chicken broth because I had it on hand, but veggie broth would work. Add about 2 cups of dry lentils.

 While that is simmering I made up a batch of cornbread muffins. The ones on the right have fresh jalepenos chopped up in them for me and the husband. The others are just plain for the kids. I let everything simmer for about 30 minutes....

So good. No really, it is very good. I find such good flavor and just a really healthy, yummy, quick soup. 

January 9th-10th No Spend

Super busy weekend.

We have had a Bible Conference at church this weekend, beginning Friday night, then Saturday morning, Saturday night, this morning and tonight. We'll finish with a fellowship of finger foods tonight after the service.

Here is my spending from the weekend:
$32.xx for goat and chicken feed. The chickens give us eggs of course, and are pets for our kids, and I kind of like them.

One of the goats we have was a show goat at the fair last year for my oldest daughter, and we just like having them around. We have three total right now and are hoping for a few more in the Spring.

I can justify this small expense in my head though because we do get so much enjoyment from the animals. The eggs are just a bonus.

 Saturday was quite busy. The morning services at our church, then we went to a funeral visitation and service of a dear Saint of God, my Aunt. She was ready to go and her service was a joyous occasion. We ate lunch together as a family with food that folks provided, then back to church for the evening service.

Today was a brotherhood breakfast for my son and hubby ( plus my dad and uncle all attend our church, so it's quite precious). Tonight I'm making pigs in a blanket with some little cocktail weiners I had bought for a New Year's Eve party and never made.

No spend except for the animal feed on Friday!

I just got finished making a big pot of Taco Soup and more veggie stir fry for this upcoming week. I'm out of fresh produce now except for onions, potatoes and a few apples....

I'm pretty pleased about how we have been doing this month so far. We are a third in and we haven't spent anything on non necessities and have had a fine time spending time around the house.

I have the lunches made for me and hubby for all next week, and the girls will have lunches with leftover biscuits from breakfasts, pb&js, yogurts, fruit cups, home made treats, and maybe some muffins if I make any tonight.

I went overboard at an after Christmas sale and I bought 10 cans of organic pumpkin puree. I need to make some pumpkin muffins!!

I hope everyone is doing well, we had expectations of a light dusting of snow, but woke up to a cold drizzle rain. I hope everyone is nice and toasty.

Add some color to your homestead!

I think we all like a little color don't we? I always try to plant some wildflowers and other flowers in a really no nonsense fashion each year in our garden. By that I mean we till up a row and I just spread the seeds. Nothing fancy, I normally don't keep them weeded once they get a few inches tall etc. It's really there for several reasons:

1: Beautiful right?

2: Butterflies and Bees like them ( good for pollination too)

3: The kids like to pick them

Here is a butterfly I caught this morning enjoying the flowers.

 Here is kind of a view from the front of the row, you can see that they are not in any order or fashion. Just nice and lovely. They honestly don't take much work at all. I planted $11 worth of seeds this year.

 And with my $11 worth of seeds I get countless bouquets. I'm talking a lot. The kids normally pick a nice bouquet for our house and my mom about every third day. I also keep some vases in the bedroom and our guest bath as well, which they keep fresh. The kiddos have also given bouquets to neighbors and my grandma when we visit her in the nursing home. We've taken them as hostess type gifts as well when we have been invited to dinners or parties. They are always appreciated.

 And while I don't plant them for the money savings ( I probably wouldn't buy them at the store anyways) a nice bouquet like this from a supermarket would cost $15-$18 EASY. So I have already made our money back probably 50 fold.

 

So next time you are doing your garden plans, include a row ( or two!) of some nice flowers you can cut for bouquets. They really do brighten up the homesteading!

Frugal Zucchini Sausage Soup

I'm trying to clean out the freezer and pantry a bit, keep my food budget low , and prepare some yummy stick to your ribs type meals during this ice storm. So what do you do?

Zucchini Sausage Soup. I kind of just made it up. I'm sure there are actual recipes for something similar, but here is what I used.

1 lb wild boar chorizo sausage

1 lb wild boar Andouille sausage

1/2 an onion

2 cloves garlic

3 zucchini

leftover brown rice ( about 1.5 cups)

2 pints of canned stewed tomatoes

1 pint tomato juice ( not pictured)

My husband and brother in law go boar hunting and you can make some great sausage out of it.

 So I browned up the sausage, then sliced the Andouille into bite sized chunks.

 I then added my 2 pints of canned stewed tomato sauce from last summer. Tomatoes are so versatile and easy to use in many recipes. I never can enough.

I ended up only slicing up 3 of the zucchini, I found that 4 would have been too many. I also ended up adding a pint of home canned tomato juice, as I needed more juice.

Throw all the goodies in the soup pot...

 Add a loaf of homemade bread from my trusty breadmaker....

 And we've got supper. I sprinkled a tiny bit of parmesan cheese I grated on top. The recipe made enough for plenty of leftovers as well.

Although there was initial cost in the jars, the hunting equipment to go boar hunting etc. Really this was a super frugal meal. The 4 zucchini were $2 total, so it would be about $1.50 for the zucchini, maybe .30 cents for the onion and garlic...The rice was left over from another meal, but even then I used about .20 cents worth. The bread is about .90 cents per loaf. So the ENTIRE meal including leftovers for tomorrow's lunch and maybe dinner would come to less that $3.00

Until next time..... Happy Homesteading