I’ve been meaning for awhile to share a really simple way to make fire-starters for those of you who have a wood stove or fireplace. FRUGAL FIRE-STARTERS Materials: Egg cartons, the grey recycled-cardboard kind, NOT the foamy plastic kind Dryer lint, enough to fill the number of egg cartons you are using An old candle (you know, the ugly...
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My grocery spending for October was $845, quite a bit more than the $600 that I hoped to spend.   September’s super-frugality really depleted my stores.  I was nearly out of flour, sugar, rice, and oats. I bought 25 or 50 lb sacks of each of those things in October. I also had to stock up on...
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A lot of people assume from the title of my book that I feed my mega-family for $75 a week. Um, no. That would involve more beans than I’m willing to serve. The $75 a week on the cover of my book actually refers to a family of four. (Little-known publishing fact: many...
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As I shared the prices I paid for various items in September, often people would say, “_________ is never that cheap in my area.”   For example, apples for 33 cents a pound.  Well, ten months out of the year, I can’t find apples that cheap either.  Most of the time I pay at least...
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MEALS TODAY Breakfast: Eggs, toast (with this bread-yum!), bacon, juice, pears Lunch: Pasta Carbonera (Family Feasts p. 164 ), watermelon Snack: Leftover pancakes (we froze some extras from a different day) Dinner: Lasagna, cucumbers, tomatoes, ice cream ———— I am quite glad to be done with the spending challenge.  This evening during the older kids’ soccer game, John and...
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Friday afternoon John and I took off on a plane to spend a couple days in Seattle, to celebrate our 23rd wedding anniversary. Though it was definitely more of a splurge than the rest of our month, I was still reasonably successful pinching our pennies. Our plane tickets came from frequent flyer...
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This weekend was an incredibly bad weekend for tallying food costs. For several weeks John and I have been planning a mini-getaway to Seattle. We planned to eat out, of course, but I didn’t include eating out in my $300 budget for the month, so I figured it would still work to keep track...
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A very busy weekend of travel, along with some computer trouble kept me from posting as I had planned. I’ll share more details soon, but for the moment I wanted to catch up a teensy bit by telling you about Friday’s food! MEALS TODAY Breakfast: Migas and toast Lunch: Tomato soup, peanut butter sandwiches, apples Dinner: Hominy...
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Are you tired of reading about our meals? Because I am getting a little tired of posting about them. But we’ve almost made it to the end of the month–hooray! Today my hubby stopped at the store after work for the teeniest list ever: OJ, chocolate chips, and marshmallows. Essential...
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I’m too darned busy this week, but am having a hard time figuring out what I can skip.  Am sick of canning, but the tomatoes keep coming– 14 quarts canned today. Soon it will be cold enough that we’ll have to pick the green ones and wrap them in newspaper to ripen in...
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