Grocery Shrink

Kashi TLC crackers; honey smoked ham from Costo; and Sliced Colby Jack = No tantrums from the 3 year old who slept through dinner and had to go with his older brothers and sisters to their Church club meetings.

Since this was an experiment, I used unbleached flour and followed the directions perfectly in the video here. It turned out great. Crusty outside, soft inside, great sourdough flavor. The kids weren’t all impressed but 3 of them begged for a slice and ate it.

Today, I’m making sourdough starter from a potato.  Hopefully it will work since the girls in my Pioneer class want to try it.  Next I’ll try no-knead bread from 100% whole grain flour.

Lori Viets makes awesome bread, but it wasn’t always so.  Her heart told her that bread should be whole grain and healthy but after turning out loaf after loaf of heavy brick like bread, she knew something wasn’t right.  Instead of giving up on whole grains, she delved into a study of how to work with whole grains and achieve the texture and taste she had always dreamed of.

The result is her book, No More Bricks, a step by step explanation of how to achieve the same results she has with whole grain baking.  She even talks about grinding your own flour, and explains the different types of grinders and mixers and how to choose one.  If learning from a book isn’t your thing, Lori gives live classes.  But here’s the best part:  Her classes are now available on the internet!  Here’s a sample video of what you can expect.

Hi friends, I want to introduce you to Angela D.  She is an inspiring wife and mother adding seats to her table through adoption.  Angela loves all things frugal and has some great ideas to share with us about how to be generous on a tight budget.  I love her ideas and I’m going to implement some of them this year.

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One of my favorite things about Christmas is the spirit of giving, but between Visa fees, travel costs and adoption fees, we definitely have to re-evaluate (with some creativity) how we can give this year.  No complaints though.  Our daughter is the best gift our family could get!

Already I’m thinking up ways to save over the holidays.  I would love to share with you some ways to celebrate the true meaning of Christmas and be able to be frugally generous with others even if your wallet is feeling slim.

STOCKING STUFFERS I’ve recently become a “super couponer.”  For the past six months I haven’t paid for toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, dish soap, or razors.  I buy everything else at prices much lower than I used to willingly pay.  

This year I am using my stockpile to fill stockings with freebies and deals I score:  toothbrushes, chapstick, socks, hairclips, and small toys.  I’ve paid less than 50 cents for every item that wasn’t free, so a few dollars will fill a stocking!  I even have enough of all these items to start filling shoe boxes for Operation Christmas Child.  It’s so fun to see my kids get excited about sharing with children in need, and I know they are going to have a blast packing boxes for OCC this year!

GIFTS Our children receive three gifts from us, just like Jesus did.  It keeps the shopping list short and helps keep the focus on others.  There are definitely some new ways I’m saving money this year. 

Winning Giveaways Through a few blogs I frequent, I have won giveaways that will be given as gifts this year.  (My kids don’t read my blog so I figure these secrets are safe here!)  My oldest has asked for a tea set to have tea parties when our newest gets home, and I won this adorable one a couple months ago.  The Perplexus ball will be fun for my son, the little engineer-in-the-making.

Within the last year I’ve also won jewelry.  I loved each so much that I kept them for myself, but they would have been wonderful gifts!  

The possibilities are endless for what you might win.  If you have a few minutes, google giveaways and see what’s up for grabs!  A fantastic place to start is right here.  I’m giving away a gift certificate for $35 to CSNstores on October 31.

Creating Personalized Gifts The Grocery Shrink is on my blog reader.  Angela has tutorials for making lots of frugal, personalized gifts: some favs are here, here, or here.

Giving of your Time Why not bless a friend or a single mom with a couple hours to do her shopping while watching her kids?  What about blessing a widow with an invitation to have dessert with your family?  Could you help a friend clean her house before a big get-together?  These ideas aren’t exactly pretty gifts wrapped up with gorgeous bows, but they sure are meaningful.  

MEALS One of the best parts of Christmas is spending time with people you love.  Oh, and lots and lots of eating.  Wish I were pregnant this year so I could eat like it  🙂

Giving of your surplus Another benefit to my couponing habit is snagging steals on basics I’ll need for holiday cooking.  This Christmas, I plan to cook more often for friends… hopefully that will translate to more dinner parties and more meals for families in need.  Also, as I find steals on grocery items, I’m going to buy what I can afford within my budget and share.  

Give of yourself It costs nothing but your time to help serve meals at a soup kitchen or homeless shelter.  I am sure there’s a nearby ministry where you can invest in lives this Christmas.  It is a beautiful way to teach your children the joy that comes from serving others.  That’s a priceless gift to yourself too!

Thanks for the chance to share with you!  If you have ideas to share or have questions, please leave them in the comments and I’ll do my best to respond.  

Blessings, angela

Angela blogs about adoption and her family at A Seat at the Table

Thank you for all your comments on the Miloud Home Introduction Post! If you had trouble commenting, I’ve changed the security on the site to make commenting easier.  I’m still makes spam comments nearly impossible to get through, but the rest of you keep your comments coming.  I can’t tell you how motivated it makes me to make the blog better and keep putting out new stuff when you write a little note. 

Rebecca, Comment #34 won our ebook giveaway set.  Stay tuned for a big announcement on Friday and another chance to get your ebooks at a deal.

I love the private Grocery Shrink dsicussion group! Membership is free wtih the purchase of the Grocery Shrink Ebook. I find out a lot of stuff from the members there that I wouldn’t have stumbled across on my own.

One of those things is no knead bread. Thanks, Marcia for bringing this to my attention! With less than 5 minutes of hands on time you can have gorgeous artisan sour dough bread. The next 2 videos show it with white flour, but you can use whole wheat.

There are more recipes and techniques at Mother-Earth News: http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/Artisan-Free-Form-Loaf.aspx

With the wee babe in my womb, I’m eating every 2 hours.  It needs to be packed with nutrition for every calorie since I pack on excess weight easily.  I had a hankering for granola and yogurt, but I didn’t need all that sugar and fat and I didn’t have 2 hours to wait to make it.  So I tried a single serving in a skillet and it worked great!

I put in a seasoned cast iron skillet (yay for more iron!);

1/4 cup thick rolled oats

1 Tablespoon wheat germ

1 dash salt

1 dash cinnamon

7  almonds, coarsly chopped

1 teaspoon each of brown sugar and butter

I cooked and stirred it on medium heat until everything was smelling toasted and slightly golden.  Then I stirred in 1 Tablespoon of craisins.

Then I mixed 1/2 cup Mountain High plain yogurt with 3 drops of vanilla stevia.

And topped it with the granola. 

It was delicious.  (About 350 calories and full of whole grains, healthy fats, protein, calcium, and yummy goodness.)

While doing a search for a peanut butter banana cookie (2 ingredients I needed to use up) I found Rara Bakes.  I’m so excited!  This simple blog has beautiful photos and traditional recipes with common ingredients.  Everything I’ve tried has been fantastic and picky kid approved.

The best yet has been homemade chicken fingers (we cut ours smaller into nuggets.)  All the ingredients were natural.  Nothing is fried and I used whole grain bread crumbs for the coating.  Every child devoured theirs and begged for more.  That’s a rare feat at my house.   And the mustard sauce?  Two thumbs up, even from the kids.

Go visit her and drop her a note telling her I sent you.  Beg her for more recipes.  Her last post was at the end of August and the world needs to hear more from her.  I think knowing we are watching and waiting will give her the motivation she needs :).

P.S.  There’s a few days left to enter the giveaway and right now your chances of winning are really good.  Don’t forget to enter!

I had tacos on my menu last Thursday, but I was out of ground beef. I had several beef roasts in the freezer from a great sale a few weeks back, so I had some options. I decided against the mess of grinding it into hamburger and instead slow cooked it in a crock with some leftover items I had laying around. It was restuarant delicious when it was done and I ended up eating the leftovers the next day with just a fork :).

Here’s the recipe:

1 Beef Roast, 3 lbs (This was an inexpensive arm roast.) Trim visible fat.
1/2 lime–cut itnto quarters and squirt the juice over the roast, then drop the limes in beside it
1 teaspoon garlic salt, sprinkle over the roast now damp with lime juice
1 teaspoon cumin, sprinkle over the garlic salt
1 onion, sliced or quarterd, sprinkled in and around
5-6 fresh jalapeno peppers (We had these from the garden and I left them whole to protect the meat from the heat of the seeds. Alternately you could used canned jalapenos, or green chilies, or chili powder.)

Cover tightly and bake at 300 for 3-4 hours. Or cook on low in the slow cooker for 8-12 hours. The meat should flake easily with a fork. 

Discard the peppers and lime rinds before serving.  Serve on taco shells with shredded cheese, lettuce and salsa.  Yum!

If I didn’t have the beef roasts, I had several types of chicken cuts I could have used instead.  The beef was easier, because there were no bones to deal with, but the chicken would have been a tasty change of pace too.

After our great success with Blender Pancakes and Waffles, I decided to try it out with yeast rolls.  I first mixed all the whole grains I had together in a cereal container.  The mix includes:  brown rice, amaranth, millet, oats, wheat, and rye.

Then I added the liquid ingredients from my roll recipe to the blender.  It was a stick of melted butter, 1/2 cup warm water, 1/2 cup applesauce, 1 cup milk, and 2 eggs.  Then I added a teaspoon of salt, a half a cup of sugar and 3 cups of the grain blend.  I have a vitamix and even then, I wish I had started with 2 cups of grain.  3 cups seems to stress the machine a little bit.  I blended for 2 minutes and then blew the GFC outlet :).  I thought I had broken my blender and was much relieved to find an easy fix.  Everything was blended well, except the amaranth which gave a little pleasant crunch to the outside of the rolls (depending who you ask :). 

After that I poured the batter into my kitchen aid mixer, added a tablespoon of yeast, 1/4 cup of gluten (Since most of my grains were gluten free),  and 2 cups of unbleached flour.  After kneading well in the machine, I let it rise for an hour.  Then divded into 2 balls and rolled each into a circle about 1/4 inch thick.  I used a pizza roller to cut each circle into 16 wedges and rolled each wedge up starting at the wide end. 

After rising an hour on the cookie trays, I baked them at 400 degrees for 12 minutes.  Yum!  I may try them again with whole wheat flour instead of unbleached, but I was out this time.  They still had a hearty whole grain flavor.