Shopping Sales & Looking Beyond The Coupon — The Thrifty Gourmand

Couldn’t agree more with this post.

Growing up with a mother who couponed like a fiend made me forever averse to creating a grocery list centered exclusively upon sale items. Not only is the process tedious and time-consuming, but it also forces you to buy larger quantities of food than you need. All of these extra items then must either be […]

via Shopping Sales & Looking Beyond The Coupon — The Thrifty Gourmand

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#groceryshopping results for the #menuplan for the weeks of 7/17/2016 and 7/24/2016

This shopping trip for the weeks including the Menu for Week Starting 7/17/2016 and  7/24/2016 really turned out great, this time we included the middle weekend for a total of 11 evening meals for 4.

This week we finish up using the last of the ham from last week. We really like ham but it is really easy to over do it. So knowing that we left plenty of trimmings on the ham bone and froze it. This week we will be using it to season some beans. That makes for a really inexpensive meal

Given that and other meals of that type we had a really successful shopping trip. 

Did you know we are on Yummly? #recipes

Have you ever heard of Yummly?

Have you ever wanted to save a link to a recipe you wanted to try? It’s kind of a hassle to do it in your browser. With Yummly it is really simple just look for the ‘Yum button’ on the post and click it and save it to your own collection. I just installed a button  on my site. You’ll find it at the bottom of each post. Even if the site doesn’t have such a button you have the option of installing a button on your favorite browser too. This allows you to capture links to just about any recipe you find on the web. NICE.

Its a really great application for capturing recipes you find on the web, actually one of the top. I’ve been using it for some time to capture recipes from all of the web. Other sites exist to do similar things but Yummly is purpose built for recipes and has a great community to go along with it. It is the only one I have found that allows you to include or exclude specific ingredients and perform searches according to your particular diet preferences.

Recently, though I found out that it is possible to become a ‘publisher.’ Hopefully by doing so it will make it easier for those outside the WordPress community to find the recipe’s you and I have found so enjoyable.

 

 

#groceryshopping results for the #menuplan for the weeks of 7/4/2016 and 7/11/2016

We did our shopping a little different this week. There are a couple of new ‘cost plus’ stores that have opened near by. So far we haven’t seen any ads ran for these stores so while we were out one evening we stopped by to see what they were all about. In the end those stops decided what we put on our menus for the weeks starting  Menu for Week Starting 7/4/2016 and  7/11/2016

Grocery Shopping while #budgeting

As mentioned in several of our recent blog entries we have started altering our cooking methods to try and adjust to the inevitable rise in our electric bill as summer gets along.

Altering our cooking methods though, is only one way we try and budget for those inevitable rises the electric bill. No matter what we do inside the house the temperatures will rise outside and so will the electric bill. This is a known seasonal happening and must be properly dealt with to stay on our household budget.

With this inevitable seasonal increase how can one stay on the over all budget?

The Right Spice — Your Kitchen Prescription

When we first started cooking we received a wonderful give of a spice rack fully loaded (actually a couple of them).

They were a loving and wonderful gift. Albeit, completely mysterious. It might as well have been an alchemists chemistry set.

As nice as it was it didn’t tell us what spice goes with what cuisine.

Take a look at this wonderful article for a nice beginners guide to spices

Tomato Soup Emergency! #cooking

Saturday night we were going to have grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup.

Admittedly, this is one of those areas where we ALWAYS cheat. Who can argue with the ease of condensed soup. Just dump the contents of the can in a pot add a can of water or milk or some of both depending on your preference, heat and wait.

It is so easy, in fact, after we made sandwiches Saturday we told our kids to make their own soup, as we were heading out to do our grocery shopping.

Well by now you probably have already figured out, yep something went sideways. When we got home the kids told us the soup was bad. The expiration date hadn’t expired. We had bought it just two weeks before. So didn’t even consider it could be bad. Now the biggest problem was that we only had 2 boxes of the prepared soup.

What to do?

Turns out we had 5 8 oz cans of tomato sauce in the cupboard.

Could we do something with that?

Why yes, in fact it is quite simple

Tomato Soup

Amount: 10 3/4 ounce can

Substitute: 1 cup tomato sauce plus 1/4 cup water

Season as desired.

Tomato Basil Soup from recipe.com

2 8 oz cans tomato sauce
1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes
2 tablespoons dried minced onions
1 tablespoon sugar
3 cups water
1.5 teaspoons beef bouillon
2 tablespoons basil chiffonade (or 1 teaspoon dried basil)

In large saucepan, combine water, undrained tomatoes, tomato sauce, dried onion, dried basil (if using), and beef bouillon granules. Bring to boiling; reduce heat. Simmer, covered, for 20 minutes. Stir in sugar and fresh basil (if using). Serve hot. Makes 8 side-dish servings.

What else can you do with tomato sauce?

What about tomato juice?

Tomato Juice

Amount: 1 cup
Substitute: 1/2 cup tomato sauce plus 1/2 cup water

#groceryshopping results for the #menuplan for the weeks of 6/20/2016 and 6/27/2016

Our menu plans for this two weeks includes our Theme weeks for Latin Theme Week and Asian Theme Week.

So how did we do this week at meeting our goal of staying under $200 for 2 weeks dinners, the Week Starting 6/20/2016 and the Week Starting 6/27/2016? 

It’s almost here, 2 days left to submit your recipe for Theme Week

Don’t miss out.

Saturday (6/18/2016) at noon Central Time submission closes!!!

Submit your recipe before its too late.

In need of Chinese 5 Spice? #cooking

During our “Theme Weeks” one of the weeks we chose to do was an “Asian Week.” As we started looking at many of the recipes I noticed several used Chinese Five Spice.

We occasionally have this in our pantry but not at the moment. The closest good Asian market we have is upwards of 15 miles away and we don’t make it over there often. So it would be nice to find out what is in Chinese Five Spice.