FOF: Week 3 of Nothing-But-Dairy-Grocery Challenge

researching how to fix a water heater on youtube.  All the children now know this valubale skill.  ;-)

snacks

Sunrises on the hill are just this beautiful.  No color adjustments needed.

 

A cabbage stored from summertime... looks pretty gross on the outside, buuuut....

peel back the outer leaves and voila!  Perfect!

Ran out of:
raisins
carrots
pepperoni
green pepper

I was so nervous when, as I was making pizza last Saturday night, I found that I only had about 3 or four cups of all purpose flour left for the rest of the month.  Especially now that I have to bake all our bread!  I often use freshly ground whole wheat flour for our bread products but I usually add some white flour as well (anywhere from about 70/30 to 50/50 depending on the type of bread), to make them softer and more delicate.  I was nervous for about two days wondering WHAT I was going to do.   I was SO THANKFUL when I discovered a packed away bag of flour!  It will still have to be rationed and used wisely for the next few weeks but it won't be quite so desperate.  I guess I'll be using a lot more freshly ground whole wheat flour! I'm thankful for wheat berries, that is FO' SHO'.

Eggs must also be rationed as I only have one more dozen left (and it is a miracle to get an egg from our lazy, cold chickens these days).  No more egg breakfasts- I'll need the rest of the eggs for baking. 

It was sad to see the carrots go, as they were the last of the fresh veggies that can be eaten raw.

Bought:

five gallons of milk @ $2.09 ...........$10.36
4 Aldi cheeses @ $1.99...................$7.96
                                        $18.32


On the Menu: 
(HC=home canned) Snacks were varied.  Homemade beef jerky, granola, popcorn, peanut butter crackers, homemade cookies, dehydrated apple chips...things like that.

15th: Saturday
Breakfast: last of the birthday feast breakfast: sausage gravy on waffles, dippy eggs
Lunch: grilled cheese sandwiches
Dinner: Homemade Pizza Night!  Hawaiian Chicken ( BBQ sauce, chicken, HC zucchini "pineapple", onion) and Pepperoni, Onion, Green Pepper (used the last few pieces of pepperoni  by slicing them in quarters to extend them.  Used the last of the green pepper too.)  Carrot sticks.  (Only four more carrots left for the month!)

16th:Sunday
Breakfast: homemade yogurt
Lunch: sandwiches and homemade beef jerky (on the long way home from church)
Dinner: *Homemade Tomato Soup using HC tomatoes. The leftover pieces of pizza I sliced into strips for "pizza bread sticks" to eat alongside the soup.  I don't like how the leftover pizza can sometimes get forgotten about and then wasted.  I wanted to use them up!

17th: Monday
Breakfast: oatmeal and brown sugar (no raisins because I used the last of them in Matt's birthday Welsh Cookies!  :-(  )
Lunch: Tuna and cheddar in tortilla wraps
Dinner: White Bean Alfredo Sauce (brilliant recipe, btw) over penne with chicken and HC green beans.  HC peaches with a dollop of yogurt for dessert.

18th: Tuesday
Breakfast: yogurt and granola
Lunch: I took last nights' dinner leftovers and made a penne cream soup with beans and chicken.  Served with a few crackers.
Dinner: ** scrambled egg, sausage and cheddar breakfast pizza (I had a bit of dough leftover from Saturday night I wanted to use before it was too late.)

19th: Wednesday (FIELD TRIP TO SCIENCE AND DISCOVERY CENTER!)
Breakfast: whole wheat toast with Hagel and peanut butter
Lunch: McDonalds.  (I usually pack lunches for trips uptown but I had those Valentine coupons books for free hamburgers/juice/apples for the children.  We used these.
Dinner: chicken gravy over whole wheat toast, HC applesauce, HC greenbeans, squash casserole.

20th: Thursday (Company for dinner!)
Breakfast: cinnamon and brown sugar oatmeal
Lunch: bean and cheddar burritos with HC salsa
Dinner:spinach and artichoke lasagna (with collards added for good measure, frozen green beans, 100% whole wheat rolls (oh.my.word.  These were awesome.  Recipe to come!)  Applesauce.  Leftover squash casserole. 

21st: Friday
Breakfast: applesauce and cinnamon sugar toast
Lunch: ham and green beans (I baked a ham to warm up the house!  hehehe)
Dinner: Pizza night!  Pesto Pizza and Ham with Zucchini "pineapple" pizza.  Coleslaw (since, alas, no more fresh carrot sticks!)

Frugal Accomplishments:

~ the water heater stopped working in the house so Matt found a youtube video on how to fix it/replace the element.  An $8.00 element and a handsome handy hubby later, our water heater was fixed!

~ made granola

~ got our tax return back this week.  Didn't touch a cent of it but put it ALL into a vehicle fund.  BOY did that take some serious self-control!  If I can just make this already-paid-for van last for one more year...one more tax return...we will be able to buy a van in cash.  (Probably asking too much at this point...but I can hope anyway!)

~  baked all our bread needs.  Tried this 100% whole wheat bread recipe in order to ration the white flour.  (It was good!)  I'm gonna try this one next.

~ boiled chicken carcass for bone broth

~ roasted the last homegrown pumpkin and a few winter squashes.  (Still a few left of those)

~ * made From Scratch Tomato Soup (tragically) for the first time ever.  Wow!  It's awesome.  It tasted so rich and creamy- so much better than Campbells.  (And I LIKE Campbells!)  Best of all- it was a perfect use for my canned tomatoes and could be thrown together in five minutes!  Methinks this will be a new and wonderful "Dinner Should be DONE by now and I don't even know what I am going to make!" dilemma solver.

~  ** This week I finished the second half of my experiment with frozen eggs.  Over the summer I had frozen bags of lightly scrambled raw eggs (some bags of 2 eggs, some bags of 12 eggs) in desperation because I was being buried alive in dozens and dozens of eggs.  They looked GROSS going in the freezer.  They looked gross frozen.  Seriously gross.  I HIGHLY doubted they would taste like egg.  Well, I grabbed a 12 egg bag this week- thawed it in the fridge (even more gross...some of it was watery and clear some of it was yolky.  ew.) and doubted even more so that they would work as normal eggs do.  Boy, was I pleasantly surprised when I added a bit of sour cream and milk and scrambled them for Tuesdays' breakfast pizza!  It totally worked!  There is a slight texture difference- frozen eggs are a tiny bit more grainy.  But I'll take a teensy bit grainy, flourescent yellow farm eggs over store bought pastel eggs any day.  This was a SUPER exciting discovery for me.  Makes having chickens in winter (the ones that don't lay but still eat) a tiny bit more bearable. I will absolutely do this from now on for winter use.

~ Used the Valentine McDonalds coupon books for a free lunch on our field trip day.

~ children got free gifts from the museum thanks to a birthday club I signed them up for last year!

~ Admission to the Museum was free, thanks to my Mom's grandparent membership.  (I do plan on purchasing a family plan for us at some point.  It is so worth it- I just didn't have the money to do it then.)

~ made homemade toothpaste

~ made flourless peanut butter cookies for snack to ration my white flour.  Twice.

What about you? 

Do you have anything financial to share this week? 

 Link up!  

As always~ PLEASE link to your SPECIFIC blog post, not your entire blog. It could be ways you saved or stretched or strategically spent those pennies...or even inspiration you found or quotes... but please link to a post about SOMETHING financial! Lastly, please link back to my blog and maybe others would like to share!