Frugal Friday! Week of January 21-27, 2018

Good Morning Everyone!

So are you still in the deep freeze where you are?  Our weather cannot make up its mind! Frigid cold for a few days, then warms up to maybe the 40's or 50's, and then frigid cold again!

One thing our family has really noticed is an increase in bird activity at our little back yard feeding station.  I think with the cold being THIS cold, the birds are having to burn more calories to stay warm. And with burning more calories comes the need for them to replace those calories.

My hubby has taken on the job of keeping our bird feeders filled. On a normal week, he fills them once a week, as we are getting ready for Sabbath. We cook and clean inside the house, preparing our "Sabbath feast," and he makes sure the birds have full bird feeders so they, too, will have a "Sabbath feast!" Sometimes the feeders get a little low a day or so before he refills them, but when Sabbath comes those little birds can always count on having full tummies!

Well--with all the frigid cold weather, instead of the feeders remaining full for most of the week, every time we turned around the feeders were empty!  And my kind hearted husband was giving in and refilling them! Which I love about him--but at the same time I also do not want to run out of bird seed and need to buy more TOO fast! So I decided if you can't beat them--join them!  Those poor birds needed a little more to help them out when it was THAT cold! It was time to make them some home made suet cakes!

Years ago, I used to purchase those little square suet cakes you find in the grocery stores--and the birds loved them! But they always were eaten up real quick, and the price for each little square can really add up! But then I discovered that you can easily make your own suet cakes, and for much less than purchasing them already made for you. And it is an easy little project to do as well!

First, gather the few supplies you will need.  There are only at minimum three things you must use, but can add in others if you wish.  These are:

1) Some type of fat.  I use vegetable shortening, but you can also use lard if that is what you have in your house.

2) Peanut butter.  While I feed my family the natural peanut butter, for our dog or the birds I keep some regular, inexpensive peanut butter from Aldis.

3). Cornmeal.  In addition to the cornmeal, I usually add in some quick oats as well.  Some people also like to add in some bird seed, but since I have seed in nearby feeders I usually keep my home made suet on the plain side.

First step--measure two cups of the shortening plus one cup of the peanut butter into a microwave safe dish.

Second step--microwave, stopping to stir, until the shortening and peanut butter are all melted together.

Third step--stir in one cup of cornmeal and one cup of quick oats.  If you were only using the cornmeal, you would need to stir in two cups of it.

If your mixture is way too soupy, add in a bit more cornmeal or oats until it is like a very soupy cookie dough.  Then I pack it down into a plastic container to keep in my fridge.  In times past, when I had a little square hanging suet basket, I would pack some of the suet mixture into square plastic freezer containers, and freeze them.  Once they are frozen, you can easily pop them out of the container and into your hanging suet basket.

Since at this point I do not have a square hanging suet feeder, I just keep my home made suet in a plastic container in the fridge, and when I want to serve it to the birds I scoop some out onto a little piece of scrap wood.

Then I place the piece of scrap wood on our bird feeding station.  The birds LOVE this mixture, and it gives them higher calories to help them during these cold days and nights when they are spending so many calories to keep warm.

So there you have it--my Frugal Friday tip for this week!  I hope you enjoy mixing up some of your own home made suet to feed the birds!

And please share--what is one frugal thing that you did this past week to bless someone?  I love to get new ideas from you!

Have a beautiful week!  And don't forget to spend a little time watching our bird friends!

~Susan

Frugal Friday! Week of January 14-20, 2018

Good Morning Everyone!

How is everyone doing? I am not sure about where you are living, but where I am the weather has been just bitter cold!  Add to that cold ice, and we had three days this past week when area schools were all cancelled--not so much from snow, as there was only around one inch of the white stuff, but roads were just a sheet of ice for a few days there.  Even the college where my husband closed, and THAT doesn't happen too often, mainly because the majority of their students are living on campus in the dorms!  But professors and staff could not make it in, so closed it was!

So--with all this cold weather, I do realize our poor furnace has been struggling night and day trying to keep it warm in our house. We have been doing what we can, using our wood stove to help heat, but even the wood stove has had trouble keeping up!  So this week had be thinking about hot breakfasts!  None of that cold pour-out-of-the-box stuff when it is THIS cold outside!

I have made a variety of different recipes this week in my "warm breakfast quest," but my favorite is always my "Breakfast Rice Pudding" recipe. When I shared a picture online of my breakfast right before I devoured it, I had many people request the recipe. So I thought it would be a good one to share for this week's Frugal Friday.  Afterall, it is often less expensive to make yourself a special breakfast at home than it would be to go out to eat--and it is usually healthier as well!

So here it is--my "Breakfast Rice Pudding" recipe!  Original recipe posted on the Forks Over Knives site--shared here with a few tweaks by me! ;) 

Ingredients:

3 cups cooked brown rice

2 cups unsweetened plant milk--I use soy milk that I make myself

1/2 tsp. cinnamon 

1/4 tsp. cloves

1 cup dates, pitted and chopped

1 tart apple, such as Granny Smith, chopped--I LOVE the tart apple, but if I don't have one I will use any apple that I have and it is still good

1/4 cup raisins

salt to taste

1/4 cup chopped almonds

1. Combine the rice, milk, cinnamon, cloves, and dates in a medium saucepan and cook, stirring occasionally over medium low heat for 12 minutes or until mixture thickens.

2.  Remove from heat and add apple, raisins, and salt.  Mix well.

3.  Serve garnished with chopped almonds, and additional milk if desired.

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And there you have it!  The most wonderful breakfast on a bitter cold day!  I usually have all of the ingredients already on hand, and you probably will as well!  So that is one way that I saved money this week--instead of going out to eat for a hot breakfast, I made a ever so yummy hot breakfast right here at home!  It tasted wonderful, and my body didn't feel yucky after I ate it like it does if I eat something not healthy.

How did YOU save money this week?  I would love to hear!  Sharing helps all of us get even more great ideas!

~Susan

Frugal Friday! Week of January 7-13, 2018

Good Morning!  And Happy Frugal Friday!

I am curious--did any of you try my Cranberry Salad recipe that I shared last week on Frugal Friday???  If so, how did you like it?  Was it too tart for your taste buds, or did you like the tartness??  I know several of my friends are going to be trying it, so I await hearing if they are still speaking to me after taking a bite. . . ! ;)

I have a new project that I have been up to this week to share with you.  This was not something that I was planning on, nor something that I have done before--but I am enjoying using a little bit of time and some materials that I already had to hopefully bless some women and their daughters.  It all started when I went to church this past weekend and started reading the bulletin.  There was an advertisement in the bulletin asking for help with something called "Headbands for Africa."  I had never heard of this program before, but upon reading further I discovered that the local Christian college in our town is going to be taking a mission trip to Africa.  This part is not surprising--I know that many groups from this college--especially groups like nursing students, etc. will take mission trips over Christmas or Spring Break.  Well, evidently, a group from this college has gone to Africa in the past and are going to be returning again this coming Spring Break.  And they want to take headbands with them as they did last year.  Now, I never heard of them going last year, but the announcement said that they did, and that they took with them headbands--NOT for cold, like we might think of, but instead for HEAT.  The women and girls work out in the fields, and they use the headbands to keep sweat from dripping down into their faces.  There was a poster board advertising this in the foyer of our church, along with pictures of different types of headbands that could all work for this project.  They encouraged people to use up different scraps of yarn that they may have sitting around in their homes, as a headband is a perfect project for just a small amount of yarn.

This was one of the pictures that the lady in charge of this project had included on her advertising poster:

She said that they love bright colors, and that they need headbands in small, medium, and large sizes. And only acrylic yarn, no wool yarn, since of course they are using them for heat--not cold.  I am no expert by any means, but I do have some basic crochet skills. . . and I also have some leftover yarn!

And so--I came home and started searching online for a free headband pattern, and found this video tutorial:
Headband tutorial

And following this easy video, I was able to take some of my leftover yarn from another project years ago, and make these:

I am hoping to add a red flower to the yellow headband still.  The red headband is what I am estimating as the size for an adult, and the yellow one for perhaps an older girl.  I want to bring them to church with me this weekend and ask the lady in charge of this project her thoughts on the sizes, before I make more.  After getting her thoughts on sizing, I am hoping to make a bunch more out of all the colors of yarn you can see in the picture.  This project covers several areas, 1) it is an enjoyable craft project for me--I find crocheting very relaxing; 2) instead of cluttering up my home, this craft project actually declutters it, as I use up supplies that I already had in my home, and 3) it blesses someone else with an item that will help them.

And there you have it!  My Frugal Friday project for this week. :)  What did you do this week to be frugal?  How have you or how can you use your talents and what is in your hand to bless others?  I would love for you to share!

~Susan

Frugal Friday! December 31-January 6, 2018

Happy Friday Everyone!

Here we are in the start of a brand new year!  A fresh start is always a wonderful feeling, and the start of a new year is a great time to evaluate our lives and our habits and ask ourselves if we need to change anything that we are doing perhaps without even thinking about it.  Little tiny things done regularly can add up to great big changes!

For instance--I have been carrying around some not needed extra weight on my body.  Last year I felt like I really needed to place my health as a priority.  There were no huge, drastic changes--but the consistent small changes that I put into practice ended up resulting in a weight loss of 24 pounds over the calendar year.  Only two pounds a month--not exactly anything that gets "noticed" or that you announce to your friends on Facebook!  Yet, over the course of a year, those little two pounds a month added up and I am much healthier at this point--one year later--for having taken those small changes.  And being healthier, I am sure, will result in at least a few less doctor visits, so will be helping out in a frugal way as well! In addition to health care costs, I am making some better purchasing decisions when I am at the grocery store--sure, I am buying LOTS of fresh fruit and veggies and whole grains, but the cost of those things is being offset by the unhealthy foods that I am NOT purchasing.  Anyway, so I just want to encourage you to not be afraid of taking tiny, baby steps towards your goal!

But on to this week!  So what did you do to live in a frugal way and bless your family this week?
With Christmas spending behind us, this is a great time to evaluate budgets and get yourself back on track with where you want to be!  One frugal thing that I did this week did involve spending some money up front--but knowing the regular price on something can help you to know if you are REALLY getting a good deal when you see it on sale.

So, keeping that in mind, one frugal thing that I did this week to bless my family was I purchased this:

Yes, that really IS a case of fresh cranberries!  I don't know about where YOU live, but around here fresh cranberries are usually around $2.00 a bag.  At Thanksgiving time I saw them go on sale for $1.00 a bag, and a lady in the grocery store commented to me about what a good price that was!  So you can imagine how I felt when I went to my local Aldi's store and found them for .49 cents a bag!!!  Be still my beating heart!!!  And cranberries freeze really well, so many of these bags will find themselves in my freezer real soon.  And--I admit--I bought fresh cranberries at this price three different times!  So WHY do I want to eat fresh cranberries, and HOW in the world do I eat them since they are so very sour?  I'm glad you asked that! ;) 

Why:  Because cranberries--fresh cranberries to be specific--are SO very very healthy for us! I am not a medical doctor, so cannot give any medical advice.  But I do read a LOT and research into different areas of health, and here is a short video that IS done by a medical doctor, explaining a bit about the health benefits of eating fresh cranberries:  

Cranberries VS Cancer

In addition to the health benefits, I must include in the "Why" that I LIKE them!  Actually, I LOVE them!  No, really!  When I used to eat junk food, one of my favorite candies was the sour lemon drops!  I also grew up eating yummy grapefruit--that's my parent's fault--so I developed a taste for sour things. . . 

However, even I will admit that straight, fresh cranberries are a bit TOO sour even for me.  Which brings me to the HOW part:

How: I eat them in THIS Cranberry Salad recipe. Most fresh cranberries are eaten with loads of sugar to sweeten them up.  But this recipe uses the sweetness of fruit, which is not robbed of fiber, vitamins, and minerals. 

Place one cup of dried dates, chopped if you are using the whole kind, into a food processor.

Add in the zest from two oranges.  Then peel the oranges, and add in the orange sections as well.

Here are my two oranges after they have been zested.  I use a little orange zester tool that I got somewhere years ago--maybe Pampered Chef?












After you have your dates, zest, and oranges into the food processor, pulse them a couple of times just to mix them all up.  Then it is time to add one package of rinsed, fresh cranberries.

Pulse the mixture after the cranberries are added in, stopping to scrape down the sides if needed.  You will be left with something that looks like this:

Remember, you want to pulse the mixture, not blend it all up.  One of our favorite ways to eat this Cranberry Salad is on top of oatmeal for breakfast.  It adds just enough sweet--and tart--to make plain, boring oatmeal kind of interesting! ;)  And remember, I DID warn you--it IS sour!  But with the dates in it, there are also pockets of sweet, and I love the combination!  In addition to topping oatmeal with it, our family will also simply eat a serving of it as a dessert after a meal.  Yes--even my hubby who is normally a very picky eater now loves it.  In fact, he finished up the last of it this morning at breakfast, which forced me to make up another batch so my daughter and I could also eat some for breakfast. . . .I remember the days when my hubby thought he didn't like grapefruit, so I got to eat ALL of them myself. . . it took several years, but he now eats just as many grapefruit as I do.  Which, I suppose, IS a good thing since I do want him to be healthy as well. . . .

I hope you enjoy this Cranberry Salad as much as we do!  Please share with me one frugal thing that you did this week.  I love to get new ideas!

~Susan