The other night while giving haircuts to my 5 guys, I watched the documentary Food, Inc. Have you watched it yet?  Very interesting.  Several times during the movie I found myself riled up and talking back to the commentators. A low-income family was shown walking through the grocery store surveying choices, and declaring that...
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We were always getting ahead of ourselves. Engaged at 18. Married at 19. First baby at 20. The little house caught our eye when we shouldn’t even have been looking. It was January of 1989, 7 months after I graduated from college and three semesters before John graduated from college. We were paying $280...
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A friend of mine who has lovely skin told me that she uses olive oil to cleanse her skin.  She referred me to this article at Simple Mom for the details.   The gist of it is that a natural oil like olive oil works naturally to break down the oil in skin that can...
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In an average month I shop for groceries at 6 different stores, depending on where the sales are. Regular stops for me are: Costco (warehouse store), WinCo (a discount grocery store in the Pacific NW), Wal-Mart, Pauls (locally owned grocery store with great meat prices), and sometimes a dollar store or an ethnic market....
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There’s a great article in The Oregonian this week about frugal shopping. Very fun to unexpectedly see a mention of my book at the end of the piece. Speaking of my book, thanks to all of you (54 people so far!) who’ve weighed in and posted a review on amazon. I am especially thrilled...
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This weekend I’ve decided to join Money Saving Mom and Life As Mom‘s freezer cooking challenge.  I’ve got lots of ingredients in my freezer and pantry.   I just need to translate those into some meals that will come together easily in the next weeks. Here’s my plan: 3 Hamburger Enchilada casseroles (Thursday) 3 dozen...
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Not sure if this is idea is a new one or an extremely obvious one, but I thought I’d share.  Awhile back I was scouring the house for a shipping envelope big enough to fit a book and came up empty. I thought about what I did have– TONS of gift bags in many...
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Ever wondered how much money you save when you opt for dry beans instead of canned?  Well, here’s what you need to answer that question using the prices in your area. 1 pound of dry beans will make 6-7 cups of cooked beans 1 15-oz can of beans contains a little less than 2...
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…with some media people is my mission in New York this coming week.   Should be interesting!   I’d love to hear from people who live in major cities:  how do you save money on food?
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Recently myrecipes.com featured some recipes from my cookbook.  Check them out if you’ve been wanting to preview my book.  It was really fun for me to see what the food stylists did with each dish.  They made the food look sooooo pretty–it made me wish that a food stylist lived at my house! ~~~~~~...
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