Monday madness

Last night we were going to have pork chops for dinner. My husband went crabbing, and needless to day, we had crab instead. Any plan can be modified, but you need to have a plan. Meal plans keep the drive through gremlins away!
It really helps to have emergency plans for a day when your world seems to fall apart.
Tacos and breakfast for dinner come to mind as the fastest and simplest to make. I always have taco meat in the freezer and eggs.

Taco seasoning and other seasoning packets are expensive. The Dollar Store and Big Lots are good sources for cheap spices. If a spice isn't at those stores, you can get just the amount you need from the bulk isle.
I have a recipe for taco seasoning on an earlier blog. When they cost as much as a dollar, they can really bust your five dollar budget.

If you are not usually an organized person, you will find that little steps will help and being organized takes away a lot of stress in your life.something as little as organizing the fridge so that all of one kind of thing is on a particular shelf or drawer is a good first step. You can tell at a glance what you are short of and what needs to be eaten and incorporate it into your meal plans so it doesn't go to waste. Remember,if you don't live alone, you can always delegate some of the planning to an older child or a spouse.

I can remember when I had an emergency operation, It had been two weeks since we had grocery shopped. I sent my husband to the store for the weeks groceries. He came back with two pomegranates and a case of beer! I sent my college age daughter with a hundred dollar budget, she came back with more than a weeks worth of food we generally eat and spent 98.00. I guess the lesson there is to be careful who you delegate a chore to.

An older child can process bread chunks for bread crumbs if you deal with the blades. Ditto cheese. They can certainly mash bananas and crush crackers or chips for a recipe. My kids used to love to take their aggression s on the crackers or tortilla chips ! I started baking when I was 9 years old. When I was 13 years old I got my First iron. Can you tell what chores my mother didnt like to do? Her thought was that she was teaching is how to be self sufficient. That was back In the days when everything was cotton. You had a laundry bag and wet your clothes. You didn't dare put your ironing off or you had mildew on your clothes.

I digress, back to the topic....

Using up bits of things and all of your food is good for the environment and good for your pocketbook. You can use the peelings from carrots and potatoes to make a stock. I use the tops of celery as a garnish instead of parsley.
If sour cream or cottage cheese is getting to the expiration date, use it in recipes. If you ate stumped, get on Betty Crocker web site and google the item, it will pop up recipes that use that item. I use cottage cheese in lasagna, It can replace cream cheese in a dish. There are a lot of recipes that use sour cream , pound cake is the first one that comes to mind. Vegetable soup and/ or vegetable stock is a good use of buts of veggies. Cream of ...brocolli, cauliflower, or ??? Comes to mind.

This time of the year, zucchini is prolific in gardens. Often times neighbors will share the abundance. Our summer squash has not grown to maturity yet. luckilly, our neighbor has shared hers. There are lots of zucchini based recipes out there, chocolate zucchini cake is my favorite along with stuffed zucchini.

Banana, oatmeal, blueberry bread is another favorite to use up food on the edge. Sometimes bananas on the edge are really cheap at the grocery store. If you have time to take them home and cook them immediately, you can save a lot. Otherwise, the cheapest place to buy bananas is Costco.

Thanks for stopping by

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Jane