A Grissom Trip to McDonalds

Well thought we would share what we do even when we eat out. A trip to Mcdonalds could easily be a bigger expense than we should spend on it, so here's what we do. The kids all pick one thing off the dollar menu, ( a double cheeseburger or chicken sandwich usually). I split one for my two littlest ones, because they can't eat a whole burger.

We all drink waters, which are free and healthier for us. And we split a fry, (and if you had ever watched the movie "Super size me" you would only eat a few fries too).

So a whole trip to Mcdonalds to feed our family of 8 people (not counting daddy) would only cost 10 to 11$. Verses if we were to eat happy meals and the whole shebang, it would surely be close to 25$.

Cloth wipes

We have just recently started to cloth diaper the little kids. And I was given some cloth wipes along with a bunch of free diapers. We wanted to make some more cloth wipes, so here is what we did.

We used two soft receiving blankets and ironed them and put them right sides together. Then we took our example wipe (measuring about 6 inches by 8 inches) and used that as our guide. Then we cut wipes out just slightly bigger than that size. Cynthia sewed them right sides together, leaving a little place to turn it inside out. Then we turned them inside out and flat ironed them. Last step she went around and sewed a zig zag seam around the outside of the top, closing up the whole as she went along.

Cloth diapering has saved me a bunch of money so far. But so has the wipes. I was going through one huge box of wipes every month. Now we just use these soft cloth wipes. We were able to make 12 cloth wipes out of the two receiving blankets. I would definitely say that cloth diapering and cloth wipes saves money. Especially if you are going to use them over and over again for multiple kids. We recommend fuzzi bunz for diapers.

Popcorn Snack

Well of course popcorn is a cheap snack, but we have found this nice handy Whirly pop that makes Kettle corn. This gives us a cheap snack but different too. We found our whirly pop at bass pro shop in the camping area, about 25-29$ is what it cost. But you can find them online http://www.wabashvalleyfarms.com/ or I have seen them at Target around the christmas holidays. Definately makes a cheap fun snack and worth the money.

Kettle Corn

1/8 cup oil

1/2 cup popcorn

1/2 sugar

Salt

Put oil and popcorn in the whirly pop and turn on medium heat. When you start to hear the popcorn pop, open lid carefully and quickly put in sugar and close lid. Stir it around with handle, then wait until it starts to pop again. And stir the handle until it won't stir anymore. Then dump out hot popcorn in a bowl and salt it to your liking.

Lots of Yogurt and Granola

We love yogurt for breakfasts or snacks and this recipe makes a lot.

Grandpa Bears Best Granola (taken from Two Sisters cookbook)

Wet ingredients
1 cup honey
1 1/2 cups unsalted butter
3 Tbls. molasses
4 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. salt

Dry ingredients
8 cups rolled oats
3 cups rye flakes (optional) If rye flakes are not used, add 3 cups extra rolled oats.
2 cups unsweetened shredded coconut
1 cup wheat germ
3/4 cup raw sunflower seeds
3/4 cup raw cashew pieces
1/2 raw sesame seeds

1. Heat the wet ingredients until the butter is melted.

2. Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl.

3. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly.

4. Bake the granola on cookie sheets in a 350 degree oven for 20-30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes.

5. Cool thoroughly before storing.
(I rarely add all the extras past the rolled oats. As this makes the cost go up. So I just replace those ingredients with rolled oats.)

Yogurt Recipe

1 gallon milk
1 8oz. container of plain yogurt
2 cups powdered milk
1 cup honey or maple syrup
1 tsp. vanilla

Pour 1 gallon milk in large pot, put on a lid. Bring milk to 180 degrees. (I am too impatient, so I don't put a lid on it, and crank the heat up fairly high and just stir the bottom of the milk with a flat metal spatula, so it doesn't scald or burn on the bottom.)

Turn off heat and set plain yogurt on the counter to come to room temperature. (I never do this either, I do try and take out the yogurt when I first start the whole process)

While milk is cooling, add powdered milk, honey, and vanilla.

As milk gets close to 112 degrees, prepare jars by warming them. (I never do this)

Let milk cook to 112 degrees, add container of yogurt. If the yogurt is still cold, temper it by adding some of the warm milk to the yogurt first. ( I again am too impatient, so I set my pot in a bigger pan with ice in it and stir it. And the temperature gets down faster, then add my yogurt)

Once the yogurt has been mixed into the milk, pour into jars. (It takes 5 quart mason jars at our house) I put lids on my jars or plastic wrap.

Place in slightly warm oven overnight with the oven light on. Not a hot oven, only warm. If you did this during the day you could occasionally go and turn on your oven for 30 seconds or so. I just turn mine on until I hear the burners are on for a few seconds and then turn it off. But if its overnight the oven light keeps the oven kind of warm.

When yogurt is done in the morning refrigerate.

Five or six loaves at a time.

I use my bosch mixer for this recipe. It is big enough to handle it.

This is how I cut my bread. It is just a bread slicer guide. You stick the bread on and it has grooves that show you where to put your knife through. I just bought mine at a thrift store. I have seen many at the thrift stores. I just use a bread knife to cut it, so it doesn't smoosh it. I have seen cheap bread knives like the one I use at The dollar tree, for a buck.

We make our own wheat bread. The recipe we use makes 5 loaves at a time. One recipe and cooking time lasts us all week and beyond. Yes we eat lots of peanut butter and jellies. I freeze my loaves of bread and use them whenever we need them.

I use my Bosch mixer and this recipe:

2/3 cup honey

2/3 cup oil

5 1/2 cups warm water

3TB. SAF instant yeast

1 1/2 TB. salt

16-18 cups fresh whole wheat flour (I never use more than 16 cups though)

3 TB. dough enhancer

Combine the oil, honey, yeast, dough enhancer, salt, warm water and 5 cups of fresh whole wheat flour in bosch mixing bowl. Allow this to sponge for 5-15 minutes while you prepare your pans. Add to the above mixture additional flour until the dough begins to clean the sides of the bowl. Knead for 6 minutes in a bosch mixer. Be careful not to allow the dough to become too dry by adding too much flour at this point. Oil your hands and form dough into loaves, rolls, pizza crust or pastries. Let it rise until doubled in size (30-60 minutes) and bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes. Bread is done when it sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom and the bottom and sides are golden brown.

This is Debbie Bartons recipe and I bought my wheat grinder and bosch from her. She is a wonderfully, sweet homeschool mom and she is always at homeschool convention. You can check out her website at http://www.sonrisewg.com/ I get the dough enhancer, bread bags and wheat from Debbie. I buy my yeast at Sam's though, it is a little cheaper, and you get two big deals of it (though it is not SAF yeast it is Fleishmans).

Cheap snack crackers

Well we find that Saltine crackers are the cheapest crackers around. But we get tired of them just plain, so we modified a recipe and use it on Saltines.

Cheap snack crackers

3/4 cup vegetable oil

2 1/4 Tbls. dry ranch dressing mix

1/2 Tbls. lemon pepper

1 Tbls. dill weed

1 tsp. garlic powder

1 and 1/2 boxes of saltine crackers

Mix the first 5 ingredients together to make a dressing. Place crackers in a bowl, and pour dressing over the crackers. Toss to coat all the crackers. Cover and let sit overnight. Mix again if needed, and it's ready.

The original recipe that I modified this off of, had twice the liquid and seasoning ingredients and used a bag of pretzels, a box of cheese crackers, a bag of oyster crackers, and a deal of goldfish crackers. So you could still make some cheap other variations on this one, if you wanted too, using these other ingredients.

Feeding the Freezer

In our house it is hard to cook dinner everyday. So I like to do what I call "feed the freezer." Some people call it batch cooking. It's where you do a bunch of cooking and freeze meals to use for another day. This method works well with making "all of one sort of meat", such as cooking up a bunch of chicken and making meals out of it. Or making a bunch of ground beef meals. I would love to "once a month" cook but find this method works better for me. As my little ones just can't seem to function without me for a whole day while I am cooking.

This week a friend told me about a great sale price on bone-in-chicken. So I stocked up and have made my first batch of meals out of it. I boiled the chicken and made broth, seasoned the broth with sauteed onions, celery, and added some chicken bouillion. Then I deboned and chopped up the chicken. I froze the broth with some chicken in big ziploc bags and made 5 meals of chicken noodle soup. I will just boil some egg noodles on the day we eat the chicken noodle soup and add them to it. Quick and easy meals, ready to go for another day. And I had 3 small ziploc bags of chopped up chicken leftover to freeze ready to pull out for another meal. I will probably use this chicken for quick tacos and just have to make some mexican rice or refried beans to go with it.

I froze the ziploc bags full of soup on a flat cookie sheet so it would be easy to stack later.

So that's 8 meals of cooking mostly done. I plan on making fresh rolls or biscuits on chicken noodle soup day, as that will make a nice fun extra. And maybe experiment with a few new recipes for cornbread for variety.

I am in the midst of trying to downsize our food budget. So in our household for the month of January and maybe beyond, we are declaring 1 day a week as chicken noodle soup day, and 1 day a week as beans and cornbread day. That is 8 dinner meals out of 30 for the month that are extremely cheap. I would say I have cut my dinner food budget almost by a 3rd, just by doing these two things. But I will forge on and try and share other things we do.

***So a great tip to share would be buy meats on sale and plan, make meals out of them.

Bar soap vs. Liquid soap

Well we have tried both, and of course I have to say liquid stuff is fun. But if we are talking saving money... and I am with this one...bar soap is way cheaper. I just bought some bar soaps and they cost only 3 for $1. ( I noticed that dollar tree always has 3 for a buck). One bar of soap will last probably about a month in one of the bathrooms. So 33 cents is cheap for the month. Compared to the liquid stuff that costs around $1 for the pump and then refilling it several times a month with a bottle of liquid refill. Last I remember the bottle I bought was around $4 dollars. Amazingly somehow we would go through a refill bottle every month. That's saving money in my book and it adds up. For a whole year that is over $40 dollars. I just bought 3 soap dishes at the dollar store and we haven't looked back. Remember a dollar saved is "truly" a dollar earned. A 40-50$ savings for us could buy us a pass to the zoo or someplace. And all we had to do was use bar soap.

Muffins on baking day!

Muffins are always another great thing to make, bake and freeze on our baking day. They are an easy breakfast for anyday or snack. We love to have these around easy to pull out and have whenever we need.

Hats and Coats

We have a lot of coats at our house. (Seeing how we have 7 kids.) My mom came up with the idea to get a wall hanger for my bedroom, were Lauren, Sarah and me could hang our coats. That way the boys could have the other hanger and it wouldn't be a mess. We put it behind my bedroom door, so it wouldn't make the room look cluttered.

So the boys know just where to find their hats, mom got a great hat wall hanger were they can all put their hats. And when they want to wear them...snap...they're all on the hanger behind their bedroom door. They all love this idea.

My mom was organising her closet the other day and had to find somewhere to put dad's hats. So she got another wall hanger and put it inside of the closet so dad has all of his hats where he can easily get to them and they are all neat and organized.

~Cynthia

I definitely recommend any "tools" or "organizers" that help make things run smoother in our home. But remember to declutter and get rid of first, or otherwise you are going to be trying to have "organizers" for just too much stuff, which won't work and will frustrate you in the end. These were a few of our latest projects. We definitely needed a better system for coats, as our closets are small and no room for them. And organizing the hats was a little item I wanted done.

~Heather