I just cut $1000 a year of “fat” from our budget. And it wasn’t horribly painful. I’ve let a few fun “me” things slip into the budget that I absolutely love and use. But my husband has been unemployed for nearly 2 months now. It’s time to tighten the belt a bit more, because I…
Archives for June 2015
Roasted Sticky Chicken Legs
Sticky chicken. Mmmm. It’s really amazing. This has been a family favorite of ours since I found the recipe online over 17 years ago on Mimi’s Cyber Kitchen. It was also one of the first recipes in my Once a Month Cooking Chicken Plan, which I’m working on revising for the new site. You can…
Pineapple Mint Smoothies
Introducing, the “other” green smoothie. While I love smoothies full of kale, spinach and other greens, there’s nothing like a smoothie made with handfuls of freshly picked mint. It’s easy to grow, and once you have it, you usually have more than you can handle. This is a very good thing if you’re crazy about…
Meals & Deals: Week of 6/28/2015
Meals: Do you have one paycheck a month that is squeaky tight? Or all of them? The one that especially gets us is around the end of the month, when our mortgage comes out. The payment isn’t bad, but when you add in daycare for two kids, gas and groceries, there’s not much left over,…
The Someday Garden Part 2: Baby Steps and Micro Gardening
Ah, baby steps. Do you remember them from the movie “What About Bob”? Bill Murray plays Bob, a dependent mental health patient who stalks his egotistical psychiatrist (Richard Dreyfuss) down on vacation because he couldn’t get through even a couple of days without him. The psychiatrist had written a new book about “baby steps” that…
Watermelon Vodka Coolers
Some days just blow all of your best laid plans out of the water. Like when you come home to find out your hyper, bored, unemployed husband has eaten half the fridge and thrown the other half away. And “fixed” the printer so it doesn’t work any more. And shrunk half your clothes in the…
Homemade Breakfast Pizza
At my last job, we had a “Breakfast Club” where everyone would take turns bringing in breakfast on Fridays. This was fun, because everyone had different favorites and brought in whatever they liked. Some did homemade meals, others brought in bagels from Panera or Krispy Kreme doughnuts or even Bob Evans fare. It was something…
Meals & Deals: Week of 6/21/2015
Here are the meals I’ve got planned, along with my shopping trip. It’s a less ambitious plan than my last one. I made a lot of the recipes last week, but there were a few that I forgot about. I’ll save them for later, since they’d been rescheduled a couple of times. If they don’t…
Gluten Free Pizza- Try #1
Here is my first attempt at gluten free pizza. I used my regular pizza recipe here, and simply substituted “Live G Free” flour from Aldi. which was on clearance for $1.99 a box. One 1.5 lb box makes two pizzas.
Cheap Thrills @ Goodwill Part 2
Houston, we have a problem…. After finding my great deals yesterday, I had to sleep with the fact that there was an amazing array of Fiesta-ware still sitting on the shelf in Goodwill, calling out to me. “Kim, buy us! Take us home!” So I found myself back today. Somehow my car drove there all by…