One Crockpot, four dinners.

This week I made a spaghetti sauce in my favorite kitchen tool, my crockpot. I love putting in all the ingredients and letting it bubble away. This week's crockpot easy meal was spaghetti sauce. The ingredients couldn't be more simple; tomato puree, tomato paste, tomato sauce, and diced tomatoes, the large cans. Then our favorite seasonings, green peppers and onions. I drop in balls of italian sausage as well. Cover it and let it do it's thing. How easy is that??

Meal one, Lunch (for 4)

Meatball Sandwiches. Using some left over dinner rolls as my base, I cut open the rolls, lined the cut surfaces with some provolone cheese and spooned in a few meatballs and some sauce, brown the sandwiches a little in the oven and enjoy hot.

Meal two, Dinner (for 5)

Spaghetti and meatballs. Pretty self explanatory.

Meal three, Dinner (for 5)

Lasagna. Thin the sauce with a little water or more tomato sauce, use to layer with your favorite lasagna additives, we like layers of noodles, ricotta, mozzarella, spinach, onions, ground meat, and super thin sliced garlic. I either cook right away or freeze at this point for cooking later. If I freeze it for later, I add a little water to the pan before I put in the oven to help rehydrate the noodles.

Meal four, Lunch. (for 4)

Homemade French Bread Pizza. Using left over dinner rolls I cut in half, spread the cut surfaces with sauce, as desired. Add on shredded cheese and desired toppings, we usually have left over ground meats, onions and green peppers. If i get a fantastic deal on pepperoni, I save a little for this purpose.

The cost breakdown:

Sauce: cans of tomato products 4.00, onion, 22 cents, green pepper 68 cents, italian sausage 1.29/lb = $6.19 Divided into four meals roughly $1.55 each meal worth of sauce.

First meal add in price of Home Made dinner rolls, add in 40 cents (cost me a dime each to make), and slice of provolone cheese each is 7 cents or  28 cents for this meal in cheese. Plus the 1.55 in sauce the meal is $2.23 for four people, or 56 cents each

Second meal start with the 1.55 in sauce, and 1.00 for a box of pasta. 2.55 for the meal or 51 cents each.

Third meal 1.00 in pasta, 1.55 in sauce, .60 in ricotta, 3.22 in mozzarella (most expensive item, no deals this week on that), spinach (from my garden worked out earlier in the year that it cost .05 per plant) .05, garlic (from our garden again) .05, onion .22, leftover ground meat .98/lb-used 1/4 lb about .25 cents. All together this meal was $6.94 or 1.39 each person (there was left over put in the fridge).

Fourth meal, 1.55 in sauce, left over dinner rolls, .40, shredded cheese (BOGO at 2.33 each, coupon for 1.00 off brought this package of cheese to .67 each, use half a bag of cheese, so, 32 cents worth of cheese) .32, left over ground meat .25, this meal cost $2.52 or .63 each.

Not too bad for one crockpot of sauce!

A Frugal Day on our Homestead

Today I am busy making the most out of a snowy day.

So far I have repackaged a five pound package of ground beef into a few different ready-to-go dinners. I precooked two pounds - crumbled- into taco/chili meat. And a pound into ready-to-go sweedish meatballs. I repackaged two more pounds into zipper top bags for easy quick thawing packages for later use also. Do that by taking uncooked hamburger meat, place it in the zipper top bag, smoosh the meat inside the bag into a flat squarish patty. The flat pounds of meat will thaw from frozen in no time at all and the flat packages are easy to stack and store in the freezer. Once the taco/chili meat is cooled from cooking, I will do the same with those. I freeze them using a cookie sheet to allow them to freeze flat in their bags. Once frozen, take them from the cookie sheet and stack and organise as desired.

I made a half batch also of Homemade Bisquick. We use this for everything you'd use the name brand product for, but for a fraction of the price. My local grocer sells the name brand for $8.97 for a medium sized package (five pounds). By making it Homemade I can make it myself for pennies on that! The ingredients are simple and with the quick math to calculate the cost of doing it myself, I spend less than two dollars making it in my own mixer. And better yet, it works exactly the same. Not too shabby really.

I have tended to my Amish Friendshp Bread today as well. It's sitting on the counter, fermenting away. Friday it will become a few loaves of yummy homemade bread. http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Amish-Friendship-Bread-Starter/Detail.aspx my starter was given to me by the nursery coordinator at our church. But you can start some yourself and share with your friends...or keep it yourself.

The children are doing their schoolwork, so I have to go and help them, later on the day's docket is the matter of repairing our vacuum. I certainly can't break it any more than it's current situation, so the plan is to open it up and figure what is the reason it is not doing such a good job as I'd like.

Plans in the making for next years garden.

The hens had better start laying a lot faster if I am gonna make the money to do half of what I have swirling around in my head. Their eggs sell for 3.50 a dozen...which will work out to.... oh say..143 dozen eggs. They'd better get moving!! they'd have to lay a dozen eggs every week for 14.5 weeks to do that. Ummmmm not likely. over 1000 eggs by spring, yeah...um...no.

I plan on more containers, which will mean more soil, more raised beds...again, more soil. More trees, more varieites of our successes this year. I want to add more varieites of trees including nut trees, more fruits...more more more.

I will start my plants inside again, but have the benefit of the little greenhouse next year as well. I can spread out a little more. I am planning on moving the hens to a new area that will give them a better run area also.

Before the fall hits too cold, i need to finish off the last little bit of the fencing...the drive gate. Then our entire yard will be enclosed. No more crazy cat lady feeding her cats in my yard, no more stray dogs in my yard. No more deer grazing...

A Busy Summer

Between guests, housework, work on the house and all, I haven't posted much at all.

Because I am scared to bits to go under the house to take photos, you'll have to imagine the work going on under there. The ground is drying out nicely, but it's slow going. The house will be releveled as it can be...when the muddiness ebbs and we have a more solid surface to work on. heat fans do a little to help, but can only do so much to combat the weather...and the neighbors house. The unoccupied neighbors house had a pipe break...and sent water into the drying crawlspace. One step forward, two steps back. I am just disgusted about it all. But Captain Hardwood assures me all the work will be done before I know it. We also discovered some disconnected vents under the house, and the floor in the master bath, by the toilet needs replacing. Moisture from below has damaged the floor. And the furnace might need replacement. Hoping that issue can be dealt with by Captain Hardwood's tool box instead though.

Onto less stressful things.

The garden is producing, thus far I have harvested around forty pounds of vegetables. Tomatoes, squash (yellow summer, zucchini, white scallop, and delicata), kale, cucumber, chard, peppers, carrots, onions (bunching and yellow), eggs and such have all been plentiful this year. And the squirrel is fighting me for the corn and sunflowers. More about him later. Here are the kids with some of the harvest...

The squirrel. Sneaky little garden ransacking vegetable stealing all around nuisance. While Melody and her family visited, the squirrel stole a ball from the childrens playground. Took it and ran it to the neighboring property and up a tree. Little thief. Then he came back and chewed the twine holding my apple sign, and when I heard the racket I saw him trying to take the sign out through the gate. I re tied the sign's twine and replaced the sign. Little snot. This week I saw him skitter to the top of my sunflower and as his weight bent the flower sideways, he hung like an acrobat from the newly forming seeds and began filling his face with the tender flesh of my mammoth yellow. Grrrrrrrr. Then yesterday he shucked and ate half an ear of corn...while still on the stalk! I could have gone ballistic.

The more polite wildlife has been out and about as well. Deer, bees,  skunks (we noticed them by smell, not sight!!), and Hummingbirds have been about lately as well. I tried out my zoom and while the picture quality hasn't been the best, here's a few shots of the more refined wildlife visitors.

Doe, a deer...a female deer...

see the bee? at about 1 o'clock using the sunflowers face as a  clock

the hummingbird kind of blends in to the background. He's on the left sitting on the little ring perch that encircles the base of the feeder. There are probably more than this one as I see him (assuming) flit about angrily around the bushes as if to fend off a rival for the feeder.

Peanut butter dog treats, closet cleaning, and plans for today

Today I have the wafting smell of peanut butter in the oven. It's not for us, It's part of the kibble type treats I am making for the dogs. We ran out of kibble and it's a good standby recipe to know. Dog food often is full of filler and preservatives, so breaking it down to the nitty (or in today's case - nutty) gritty isn't too hard. First, it's made like a cookie, minus the sugar and levening. So start with flour and egg. Add your flavoring, be it broth, watered down left over gravy, peanut butter, a fish chowder, whatever.Mix together to form a stiff dough. Roll out. cut however you want. My dogs could care less about the shape so I just cut it into even squares. If I am making more than one variety I might dye the dough so it's easy for me to see what's what. I left the Peanut butter ones natural, and dyed the beef flavored (left over beef stock) reddish pink. If i make the chowder one today I might dye it blue or something so I remember what it is. You can cut these with big cookie cutters if you wanted, even ones shaped like dog bones, but the small, by- hand, roughly cut squares works for us. I rolled them to about 1/4 inch thick. Bake in a 350 oven until dry, about 30 minutes or so. Don't burrn them. Keep an eye on them. Each oven is different, and my times are ina high altitude setting. If the Eyeballing the ingredients method doesn't work for you, google some homemade dog treat reciepes and try those. You may have found your dogs favorite treat this way, and what's better, it only costs some flour and leftover items you probably already have int he fridge. If y ou wanted to get all fancy you could even baste the treats while cooking with some bbq sauce, so they look like the expensive ones sold at the national pet store chains! And what's also wonderful is you can add or eliminate items as desired.

The kids closet floors need to be emptied out. Captain Hardwood has a carpet roll to use up. So they will have new bedroom carpeting really soon, depending on his work schedule. Doing this gives us a chance too to see the subfloor and evaluate any damage to that. The bathroom floors in each batroom need repair and so it's good to check the rest of the floors as well. Might as well as long as we are at it.

After and in between all that, laundry needs to go onto the line, more into the washer, trash needs to get out, and the kids rooms need a good cleaning. Dishes are in the machine right now, and I have dinner int he crockpot (Pork roast), I need to get into the garden and get some things to go with it...carrots and squash maybe.