Overnight Honey Nut Granola

My new favorite granola recipe. I can't get over how quick and easy this is to make!

1/2 cup canola or vegetable oil
2/3 cup honey
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 Tbsp cinnamon
2-1/2 cups quick-cooking oats
2-1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup sliced almonds
1 cup chopped pecans

In a small bowl, whisk together the oil, honey, vanilla, and cinnamon. If your honey is too hard to whisk, then place all these ingredients in a small saucepan and whisk it in there over low heat. In a large bowl, combine the oats and nuts. Pour the honey mixture over the oat mixture. Toss until evenly coated. 

Spread the mixture evening in a thin, single layer on 2 ungreased, rimmed, baking sheets. Bake at 300* for 10 minutes. Turn the oven off, but LEAVE THE GRANOLA IN THE OVEN OVERNIGHT! In the morning, remove the granola from the oven and serve with milk or yogurt and fresh fruit.

Mom's Traditional Biscuits (Schnetke)

This recipe is quick and easy. It is the best biscuit recipe I’ve ever used. It also happens to be a “family heirloom”, passed down through generations of good, German cooks!

2 cups flour (You can use whole wheat, though the texture won’t be quite the same – I usually use a combination.)
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup shortening or butter (This is the only recipe I ever use shortening for, and only because I make it so often and butter is so expensive.)
1 large egg
approximately 1 cup milk

Combine flour, salt, making powder and shortening with your hands until it’s all crumbly and blended. In a measuring cup, crack the egg and add milk to yield ALMOST one cup. You might need to experiment with this. I often end up with only 3/4 cup. Add this to the crumbly mixture. Place on a floured counter and roll out about 1/4 inch thick. Cut into squares. Bake at 400*F for 10 minutes.

We eat these for breakfast, or as a bread alongside soup or other main dishes. This dough also makes AMAZING cinnamon rolls! Roll out the dough and spread butter over it. Sprinkle a brown sugar and cinnamon mixture over it. Roll out and slice into 1-inch slices. Bake as above. Drizzle a thin icing over them, if desired. (Just mix icing sugar with a bit of milk and vanilla or almond extract.) Delicious!

Bacon, Avocado, and Cheese Breakfast Tacos

6 large eggs
1/4 cup milk
salt and pepper
1 Tbsp canola or vegetable oil
1 large avocado, sliced
8 burrito-size flour tortillas
8 cooked bacon slices
4 slices cheddar cheese

In a mixing bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, and salt and pepper.

Heat the oil in a large skillet, and place over medium-high heat. Pour in the egg mixture and scramble.

Heat the tortillas for a minute in the microwave, or wrap in aluminum foil and place in a 300* oven for 10 minutes.

Lay out warm tortillas on a clean countertop. Scoop the scrambled eggs onto the tortillas, dividing it equally. Add 1 slice of cooked bacon, 1/2 slice cheese, and 1-2 slices of avocado to each tortilla. Roll up the tortillas and serve immediately, or freeze.

Serve with fruit salad or melon platter.

Better Biscuits

4 cups flour
2 Tbsp baking powder
2 Tbsp sugar
2 tsp salt
2/3 cold butter
2 cups milk

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt. Use a cheese grater to shred cold butter into mixture and stir to distribute it evenly. Add milk gradually, stirring just until dough pulls away from the side of the the bowl. Turn dough out onto a floured surface and knead 15 times. Pat or roll dough out to a 1-inch thickness. Cut biscuits into squares, or if you want to be really picky, use a round-rimmed glass to cut circles. Brush excess flour off biscuits and place them on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake at 425*F until edges begin to brown (13-15 minutes). Serve hot.

Deviled Egg Sandwiches

By far THE best egg salad sandwich I've ever made.

8 large eggs
1/2 cup mayonnaise or Miracle Whip
1 celery stalk, finely chopped
1 tsp paprika
1 Tbsp fresh chives, chopped
Salt and pepper, to taste
8 slices bread

In a medium saucepan, boil the eggs for 10-12 minutes and remove from heat. Let sit for 10 minutes, then drain the hot water. Place the eggs into a bowl of cold water for 15-20 minutes. Peel the eggs and place them into a mixing bowl. Cut the eggs using a pastry blender or mash them with a fork. Once the eggs are cut, add the rest of the ingredients. Mix well. Spread on the bread to make sandwiches.

Serve with Bean Salad.

Banana Bread

 1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup shortening
1 cup mashed banana's
1 cup white sugar
1 tsp baking soda
2 eggs

Cream sugar, shortening, and eggs.  Add flour, salt and bananas.  Mix well.  Add baking soda last, do not over mix.

Bake at 350* for approx 45 - 50 mins.

Green Smoothies

I have always loved green smoothies. If you go to a store that sells the "greens" powder (It's like protein powder, but it's "greens" instead of protein.), it's actually shocking how expensive it is. Due to various health issues in our home, we have found that the more green veggies we can eat, the better off we all are! Plus, somehow, it's filling! This smoothie is my absolute favorite because I can give my kids VEGETABLES FOR BREAKFAST! And it tastes wonderful - you cannot taste the "green!"

1 banana, peeled
1 cup baby spinach, about 1 large handful, washed and dried
1 cup milk or plain yogurt
1 cup apple juice
1 cup water or ice
2 Tbsp honey
2 Tbsp ground flaxseed

Blend in a blender until smooth. Makes four 1-cup servings.

Coffee Pick-Me Up

I don’t tolerate too much caffeine very well – especially coffee. And yet, I love coffee. It is rare that I have it. The odd time, I treat myself to this Coffee Pick-Me-Up in the afternoon if I know I’ll be up late for some reason. It doesn’t affect my stomach as much with the grains in it, and it’s also more filling, so it’s a full-fledged snack. Or, you could have it for breakfast.

approx. 3/4 cup brewed coffee (I like it STRONG)
about 1/4 cup milk
about 1 tsp honey
a little less than 1/4 cup rolled oats
3-4 ice cubes

Place all in a blender in order listed and blend until well mixed and oats are ground. (If you have a regular blender, they will have a tendency to sink to the bottom, which can be disappointing, but what can you do? If you have a Vitamix, on the other hand, it will liquify those oats and you won’t even know they’re there!)

Cheap Beef

Meat can be intimidating when you're on a very tight grocery budget. I have learned to appreciate the value of a whole chicken by stretching it over several meals, but even then, chicken is still expensive. While ground beef is definitely the cheapest way to get some red meat into your menu, I am learning to think ahead and make other cuts a good value.

Sirloin tip is a large cut of lean beef roast. If you get it on sale, it can actually compare to the price of ground beef! When you see a sirloin tip for a great price, BUY IT! You can cut it into cubes and use it in place of stew beef. Because it is so lean, it's best to cook it slow, so I wouldn't recommend it for stir-fries. Some store butchers might be willing to grind it for you and you'd have some lean ground beef at a great price. However you decide to cut your roast, package it into smaller portions (approximately 1lb. each), and freeze them.

My favorite way of using this meat is to place it in the slow cooker as soon as I get home, then shred it for BBQ Beef On Buns!

What To Do With Leftover... Granola Bar Crumbs

DON’T THROW OUT YOUR CRUMBS!

I dump all granola bar crumbs, or super crumbly granola bars, into my granola bin! Even if a granola bar recipe flops, it’s usually still a perfectly acceptable granola that we can eat with yogurt! And if I’ve made granola bars with chocolate chips, it’s a bit of a treat, too!

BBQ Beef On A Bun

4 buns
2 cups shredded cooked beef roast
1 cup barbecue sauce

Split the buns and lightly toast them. (Butter them, if desired.) Place the beef and the barbecue sauce in a small saucepan and place it over medium heat. Stir well and cook until the beef is heated through (3-4 minutes. Alternatively, place the mixture into a casserole dish, cover, and bake in the oven at 350* for approximately 30 minutes. Spoon the barbecue beef over the buns. Serve immediately.

Big Beef Roast

1 beef roast (4-5 lbs.)
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
14 oz. beef broth
1 large onion, peeled and thinly sliced

Trim fat from roast. Place roast into a 5-quart or larger slow cooker. Sprinkle with seasonings and rub them into the roast with your hands. Pour the broth around the roast. DO NOT POUR IT OVER THE MEAT! Separate the onion into rings and add them to the pot. Cover the slow cooker and cook on low until the beef is fork-tender (8-10 hours).

Turn off the slow cooker but leave the beef in the pot. Using two forks, carefully tear the beef into shreds. Stir the shredded beef well to mix it with the liquid in the pot. The cooled beef can be refrigerated or frozen for use in future recipes.

Using Flyers To Plan Your Menu

Using the weekly grocery flyers to plan my menu has been a key to keeping my grocery bill down. After first “taking inventory” of what I already have on hand, the next step is to look at what the sales are that week. For me, I get my weekly flyers twice a week – on Thursdays and on Saturdays. My Sobey’s flyer comes on Thursday and my Superstore flyer comes on Saturday. As I’ve mentioned before, I have found these two stores to be the best bang for my buck. There are rare exceptions, and I’m always scouting for better deals, but for now, this is my method.

Flyers can be tricky. Generally speaking, the items advertised on the front and back pages of the flyer are the best deals. Inside the flyer, there are sometimes other sales and good deals, but the front and back pages are the best. Also, flyers often list items with the price, leading you to believe that it’s on sale, when in fact, it’s the same price as it always is! This is one reason why it’s a good idea to keep track of what you’re spending for your usual items. Some people use a price book for this. I have yet to start mine, but I plan to do that in the near future. You can do a search online for pricebooks and come up with a wealth of information.

Anyway, after perusing the flyers and getting a good idea of what will be on sale when I do my grocery shopping, I plan my menu using as many of the sale items as possible. For example, if canned tuna is on sale for a great deal, you can bet we’ll be having tuna sandwiches and probably at least one other tuna meal that week. Also, if you have enough room in your grocery budget, when you come across a really amazing deal, stock up on the item if it’s something you use regularly.

For Canadians, www.flyerland.ca has most of the flyers you would need to plan your grocery shopping wisely. There are all the major grocery store flyers on that website. Make use of them!

Another advantage to keeping tabs on the flyers is that you learn the patterns of the sales. I’ve noticed that many of my regular items are on sale in approximately 6-week cycles. This is helpful because I can then buy 6 weeks worth of the item when it’s on sale, if I have the room in my budget, enabling me to never pay full price for that item. It’s also helpful because I can wait for an item if I know it will be on sale in a week or two. If I’m wanting to buy chicken legs and I know they are on sale in two weeks, I won’t plan meals that use chicken legs until the sale week arrives.

Practice using flyers and save!

How To Make FREE Soup!

There are two methods I use to make soup at no extra cost.

1. I keep a large ziplock bag in my fridge. Throughout the week, all vegetable peelings, vegetable ends, etc. get tossed into the bag. The bag usually has a lot of carrot peel, potato peel, celery ends and leaves, onion peels and ends, garlic peel and ends, etc. (See note below.) I sometimes also have a jar in the fridge that I use to save all the vegetable cooking water from the week. If I cook frozen peas, I drain the cooking water into my “soup jar.”

At the end of the week, dump all your “savings” into a large pot. Cover it all with water and simmer it slowly for a few hours. You could also put it into a slow cooker and cook it for 4-6 hours on high, or 8-12 hours on low. Strain it and save the broth. This is the base of your soup.

Now you have a few options:

-Freeze the broth to use as a base for soups that you have recipes for, or make up your own.

-Turn it into a soup immediately by adding in cooked rice or lentils or beans or WHATEVER, and chop up some fresh veggies and add some seasonings and make a whole new soup.

-Use this liquid for the second Free Soup option below…

2. I have two or three empty ice cream buckets in my freezer. These are the big ones – 4L, I think. One is for chicken, one for beef, and if I have a third, I use it for ham or veggie. Whenever there are leftovers at the end of a meal, I put them into the appropriate bucket. If we have chicken stir fry and there are leftovers, they go into the chicken bucket. If we have shepherd’s pie with ground beef, those leftovers go into the beef bucket. Whenever I add new leftovers, I make sure they are covered with water or broth or leftover cooking liquid from veggies. Then the bucket goes back into the freezer. When a bucket is full, I let it thaw and pour it into my big soup pot. We reheat it and taste it. Sometimes we need to add some salt or other seasonings to give it more flavor, but usually, it is the most delicious soup ever!

These soups are different every time. But it’s like a taste adventure! And the best part is, it’s FREE! You’re making soup out of things you would have normally thrown away. For us, these soups are usually enough for two meals each. TWO MEALS FOR FREE!

Waste not, want not!

NOTE: It is recommended that you make sure your trimmings and leftovers are washed and relatively dry before putting them into your storage bag or container. This ensures that they stay as fresh as possible and don't go bad before you're able to make your soup. 

Also, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts generally do not make a good stock.

Outsmarting Grocery Pricing Trickery

- Pay very careful attention in the produce section. Notice the difference between prices listed as $_/each and $_/lb. Today, I had one leek on my grocery list. In the produce section of the store, leeks were all bundled in groups of three. Most people assume that the price posted above the leeks is for the whole bundle. NOT SO! The price posted was per pound! I only needed one leek, so I took apart a bundle and placed only one leek into my cart. And so I paid for only the one leek that I wanted! And I paid much less than I would have for the whole bundle, which I probably would have ended up forgetting about in my fridge and wasting! And one of my key mottos for keeping the grocery bill down is “Waste not, Want not!”

- Make notes on your grocery list about what the exact sale item is (while looking through the store flyers). There are two main reasons for this:

1. At the store, you might find that what you thought you could buy on sale, is not always as it seems. For example, this week’s store flyer told me that Primo brand pasta was on sale for $1 per 454g package. With careful planning, and on a super tight budget, one might put one pasta package on the grocery list. However, when I arrived at the pasta aisle, there was not a single package of pasta smaller than 900g. The price of the 900g package WAS $2.00, which works out to the same thing as $1.00 per 454g, but the flyer was deceiving.

2. Sometimes, if you get to the store before they have posted the sale prices, you won’t know which brand is the one advertised at the sale price. Today, cans of tuna were listed in the flyer for $1 each. When I got to the store, they hadn’t posted the sale prices yet. There were three brands of tuna to choose from. I have been paying close attention to this store and its sales for a long time, so I had a pretty good idea of which cans were on sale,  but sometimes they get tricky. Other times, it might be only a specific type of product. One week, canned tuna was on sale, but it was only the cans that had garlic and herbs in them! Sneaky, sneaky!

How To Cook Dried Beans

This is so simple.

1 part dried beans (black, pinto, kidney, etc.)

3 parts water

Put in your crockpot and heat on low overnight. Approximately 10 hours. Done. It’s that simple. Once you’ve got these beans cooked, you can use them in any recipe calling for beans!

You never need to buy canned beans again. This one thing alone can save you a LOT of money over the course of a year. I have often found very large bags of dried beans and legumes in the ethnic section of the grocery store for a lot cheaper per unit than the regular size bags in the bean section.

I like to make a massive batch and then freeze them in smaller portions in ziplock bags.

*NOTE: Different types of beans have different cooking times. I find chickpeas cook longer than kidney beans, for example. Check your beans after 8 hours, if you can. If you end up cooking them too long and they're really mushy, never fear! Use them for your own homemade refried beans!

Saving On Snacks For Kids

Cut It Up

Whenever I serve my kids snacks, I always portion it out. If I’m serving something like trail mix, I put it into little cups that hold exactly 1/3 cup. If I’m serving fruit, I always cut it up and divide it between the kids. This is a huge savings because, if I send them to get an apple, they each take one, and two of them leave at least a third of the apple around the core and then throw it away, believing it’s done! That’s two-thirds of an apple wasted! Instead, I slice two apples and divide them evenly between my three kids and add some cheese or nuts or a glass of milk. No waste and everyone’s satisfied!

This probably sounds like a lot of work, particularly if your kids are all still really young. Believe me. I’ve been there! Here’s another idea for you:

Sort It Out

Get a plastic platter with compartments and an airtight lid. I got a nice, big, round Tupperware one from a garage sale. Actually, I think I got mine for free. On the day you do your grocery shopping, take a few extra minutes to fill each compartment with something different – chopped veggies, cheese cubes, fruit (cut it up and soak it for several minutes in a water/lemon juice mixture), nuts, dried fruit, granola bar bites, pita chips, etc. If you want dip, you can make veggie dip or yogurt fruit dip or Happy Apple Salsa or hummus or whatever. Store this in the fridge. When snack times roll around during the week, give each of your children a small bowl or container and let them choose what they put into it. Then close the container up and put it away immediately. Don’t refill the container until it’s totally empty. My kids love the weeks I do this. And they get a nice variety of snacks and they are all healthy! It’s also super easy.

Make It A Combo

I have also found that my kids don’t get hungry as often when I combine their snacks properly. If we’re having fruit or veggies, I always pair it with some sort of dairy or protein. Apples and cheese or a glass of milk, dried fruit with nuts (trail mix), raw veggies and yogurt dip or hummus, etc. If I give them just an apple, or just a bunch of carrot sticks, they’re hungry 20 minutes later!

Be Sneaky

If your kids are asking for a snack and it’s really close to mealtime, give them some raw veggies. They’ll eat them because they’re so hungry, and you don’t have to worry if they don’t eat their veggies at supper! It’s a win-win!

Save Your Butter Wrappers

I never throw away a butter wrapper. I neatly fold it into a rectangle about 2.5 inches by 1.5 inches. I have a nice stack of these in my cupboard. I use them to grease cookie sheets, pizza pans, bread pans, or cake pans. It’s a little awkward using them to grease muffin cups, but it is possible. I just prefer to grease my muffin cups with nonstick cooking spray, or just using my fingers and oil or butter. No butter is wasted in this house! Not even the stuff stuck to the wrappers!

I Love My Rubber Spatula

A frugal cook must own a rubber spatula. A frugal cook must use the rubber spatula faithfully. When I began to use my spatula, I was fascinated by the amount of extra food I was able to come up with! Take muffins, for example. I used to make a muffin batter, scoop it into the muffin cups, and just scrape the batter bowl as best I could with my wooden spoon. Little did I know, that even when I did my most thorough job with the spoon, there was still often enough batter left for one more full muffin, or at least enough to make my muffins a little bigger. The same holds true for cookie dough, pancake batter, and any number of things you might concoct in your kitchen. It's amazing with big jars of peanut butter or mayonnaise. Take out your trusty rubber spatula and develop a new and lasting friendship!

Reviving Limp Celery

For years I have thrown out celery when it got limp and rubbery. NO MORE! It’s so simple. Place limp celery stalks into a sinkful of ice water overnight. In the morning, your celery stalks are like new! It really and truly works!

I have found that washing, taking the ends off, and cutting my celery into shorter sticks (about 3 inches in length) the day I get them at the grocery store helps them last longer. I put them in a ziplock bag after I cut them.