Archive for Recipes
Cooking with sour milk
There is a difference between sour milk and spoiled milk. There’s no need to toss milk that has gone past its date or developed bit of a sour smell or taste. While you might want to avoid using it in eggnog or pudding, you can still use it in a myriad of ways. Changing recipes [...]
Ten Frugal Practices I Wish We’d Done from the Beginning
This list is off the top of my head. If you ask me again tomorrow, it will probably look slightly different, and the week after that I might remember something else I think is even more important. There is probably something more important that we do that I learned at my mother’s knee so I [...]
Frugal Eats On Road Trips
I tried to count the number of road trips our family has taken, but I really just can’t. I have no idea. And when I talk about road trips, I am talking about trips we have taken of several days duration, sometimes weeks, and, a couple of times, road trips that lasted over a month. [...]
Flexibility In Your Hand
A while back in a post on my regular blog about drastic budgeting in the kitchen, I shared some links on cooking on a budget from an extension office, and then I shared some ideas on how to use that basic plan and make it even more frugal. The recipes and menus included a recipe [...]
Various and Sundry
Wonderfully frugal way to get clean, soft, lovely skin- I LOVE this method. Green cleaning ideas- these are the things we use to clean at our house- and by green, I also mean the green that’s in your wallet. One tip I don’t think is on there- to clean sinks I use a bit of [...]
Cleaning out the Fridge
Last night my oldest daughter and I cleaned out the refrigerator together (one of the last times before she marries, sniff, sniff), and then made supper based on what we found. This is an old recipe we use when we want something like Quesedillas, but we haven’t enough tortillas left to go around. It’s a [...]
Sour Milk
It is one of the ironies of modern life that kind of tickles me when I think about it, but when we come across a recipe calling for sour milk, we have to actually make our milk sour by adding vinegar, while most sour milk recipes were developed by our foremothers to use up the [...]
Bread Crumbs
A friend wrote to ask if she could make bread crumbs even though she didn’t have a food processor. Yes!! I put dry bread in the blender. I have also put very dry bread (dried out in the oven if I need to) in a plastic bag and rolled it into crumbs with a rolling [...]
Assorted Trifles
A favorite birthday present for two of my girls when they entered their teens is their own email account. I set it up with restrictions and guidelines to match our family’s rules, and then surprise them with the new email account. They were thrilled, and this is free. Other frugal birthday ideas here. For those [...]
Recipes for homemade cleaners: What’s your favorite?
I finally made some homemade laundry soap, and I’ve even tried the baking soda/vinegar substitute for shampoo. Now I want more! What is your favorite homemade cleaner? Is it cheaper, safer, or more effective? All of the above? DISHES: I’d like to find a less expensive replacement for dishsoap – the kind for hand-washing dishes. [...]
Earth Box: is it worth the investment?
I want to have a garden. I don’t especially look forward to the work – in fact, I have to admit that I really kinda hate gardening. But I love, love, love garden fresh produce and it’s worth the work. I think we as a family would learn a lot, and I suspect that my [...]
Fast food dollar menus
There’s a fast food thread over on the forum, and I think it’s confession time. We know it’s bad for us but nearly everyone indulges in fast food now and then, right? So let’s swap notes. Which chains have a dollar menu? Which ones have the best deals, and which have the best (cheap) fast [...]
Over-the-Top Delicious!
Hi, I’m Mother Hen. I blog at Ship Full O’ Pirates where I have fun talking about my five Pirates, and my Princess, and homeschooling, and marriage, and laundry and whatever else comes to mind. This week is the last of my 5 week long Create -a-Casserole series. Here are the casserole categories again. Framework [...]
A Little Here, and a Little There
Hi, Mother Hen here, from Ship Full O’ Pirates. Read all the way to the end after the pictures for info about my giveaway! OK, week #4 of my Create-a-Casserole series is Add-Ons. Here are the casserole categories again. Framework Sauce Meat Add-Ons Toppings Add-Ons are merely an effort to jam a little more nutrition, [...]
Where’s the Beef?
Here we are, smack in the big middle of my 5-week casserole special. Here are the casserole categories again. Framework Sauce Meat Add-Ons Toppings The meat is where you can really blow your budget if you aren’t careful. I use ground meats and poultry and sausage. I seldom even look at more expensive cuts of [...]
