Foodie Friday - Fast, Cheap, and Easy: Breakfast Options!

So far, every job I've had since we moved here has required me to commute at least 30 minutes (if not more). I HAVE to eat breakfast, and as I value my sleep, I prefer it to be quick to make or reheat and something I can eat while driving. Even better if I can make/prep everything on Sunday night in as little amount of time as possible! Plus the easier and faster I can make a breakfast at home, the less tempting it is to spend money in a drive-thru!

There are a few options I have come up with that work really well for me; I need a healthy-ish carb, protein, and if I can squeeze in some veggies, all the better! I've sorted them between "ridiculously easy", "needs a little prep", and "needs a LOT of prep". Enjoy!

Ridiculously Easy

Pinteresting: DIY Air Fresheners

So as I've mentioned before, I'm *ahem* slightly addicted to Pinterest. Oh, just a total of 22 boards and over 1,300 pins, not addicted at all, I CAN QUIT ANYTIME I WANT.

I say this with a small amount of annoyance because while I have all these great pins, I've yet to try most of them out! So since I have all this free time on my hands for now, I'd like to try at least one new thing from one of my MANY Pinterest boards out.

This week is actually kind of busy; I have some things going on that I need to prepare for, so I wanted to pick something easy to try out for the first round, and with a high likelihood of success. So I found a pin on my Housewifery board for air fresheners made from fruit and herbs.

Source: theyummylife.com via Sammi on Pinterest

I decided to go with the "Williams-Sonoma Scent", which consists of lemons, rosemary, and vanilla extract; I used the miniature slow-cooker method, since I have a handy-dandy Mini-Dipper.

The original "recipe" is for 3 sprigs of fresh rosemary, 2 lemons, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. The changes I made based on cost/necessity/size of mini-dipper: I used baby lemons (2 babies for every 1 regular size) 'cuz they were on sale for 10/$1; I could only fit in 2. I couldn't find fresh rosemary at the grocery store, so I threw in about a half-teaspoon of dried. The mini-dipper only fit about 1.5 cups of water. With all this half-ing of the original recipe, I figured it would be best to half the vanilla extract - and I figured right, 'cuz the extract is STRONG.

My verdict: It's subtle and it's nice! Every time I breathe in deep, it smells like either lemon or vanilla, neither of which is bad! As you can see, mine's not NEARLY as pretty as the website's thanks to using dried rosemary (which isn't really a part of the scent). I also like that it's all natural stuff, so I'm not adding chemicals into the air AND I can still re-use the mini-dipper for food stuff, too (my personal favorite use so far: chocolate fondue!). Plus using the slow-cooker method means I don't have a super-hot stove-top burning all day and posing a possible fire risk; slow-cookers don't burn hot enough to be a danger (although naturally I keep all possibly flammable stuffs away from it just in case, because duh).

Edited to add: Once it gets simmering after about 3 hours, the rosemary kicks in, the scents all combine and it smells HEAVENLY. Oh muh guh. Only downside is that it only really smells heavenly in the kitchen - the rest of the place is very subtle but clean-smelling. So I need to figure out how to make the WHOLE house stink good, not just the kitchen (although I'm not complaining when I walk by the kitchen - yum!).

This was perfect: easy, nice-smelling, and it makes me feel like a housewife. Now to find another Pinteresting project!

Packin' a Picnic

Yay, it's summer! I'm officially out of work (as in, the school year is done and my job has ended), and my first week off has been FAN-FLIPPIN'-TASTIC. Oh man. I know I should be stressed being unemployed and all, but, um, I'm not. I'm too bitter about the teaching market right now to be upset (plus we have $ to get through the summer, which also helps with the stress). So instead I'm going to enjoy my summer (while job-hunting, naturally), and take advantage of the time to just enjoy my life and improve it where needed.

Of course, while we're financially secure through the summer, that doesn't mean we can go crazy when it comes to entertainment. So The Hubs and I are trying to find as much free/cheap entertainment as possible. LUCKILY, we live in the suburbs of a decently-sized city, so there are some decent options that we can do on the cheap.

This week, I checked the local park districts websites to see if there were any good free options coming up. Turns out, a nearby park was putting on a free concert, so I thought it'd be fun to pack a picnic and watch the show! The Hubs agreed once I figured out a tasty menu. ;D

The fun part for me was dining al fresco and packing my first ever picnic! (Not going on my first picnic, my first time MAKING the picnic.) The concert ended up being ok; we only stayed about 1.5 hours because sitting on the ground made our backs hurt. We'll need to invest in some folding lawn chairs.

Food all packed and ready to go! (The basket: Free! A student used it and never picked it up, haha - I gave him the whole school year!)

 

The menu (of DELICIOUSNESS): Roast Beef wraps, Pasta Salad (recipe below), Strawberries, Blondies. I also pulled a total "college"-style move to sneak in booze by drinking part of a bottle of cranberry juice and filling it back up with vodka. Hehe. (Turns out there was no need to hide it, there were people drinking wine and beer all over the park!)

The band, called "Lucky Dogs". They played mainly classic rock covers, which was nice.

Kids dancing and enjoying the show

It was a really nice night, and a great park! I'm going to keep my eye on the park's website in hopes they'll be putting on more evening events!

Oh, and the pasta salad was homemade, here's the super-easy recipe: Boil 12 oz. of spiral pasta, drain and rinse until cool. Chop up some salami (the stick, not the slices) and mozzarella stick cheese into bite-size pieces (I used two sticks and about 4 oz of the salami). Add whatever veggies float your boat (I used canned artichoke hearts, quartered, and sliced black olives - drained both before adding). Mix in 1 cup of Italian dressing (I used store-brand "Zesty Italian", and it was DELISH). Let it chill in fridge for at least 4 hours! It was REALLY tasty.

Keeping it Cheap! (I have no clever Alliteration today.)

Ah, the "joys" of being a teacher.

The good news: I got a teaching job! It looks like the school is really nice, too. (So far, the staff has been nothing but friendly and helpful, so I'm taking it as a good sign.) Which means I'll be a leetle busy (but still trying to update at least 2-3 times a week).

The bad news: I don't get paid until the end of September, and we're still waiting for Unemployment to kick in since being let go from my last (temp) job. =/ It's not necessarily PANIC-worthy, we're not BROKE. My hubby brings in a solid paycheck that covers our monthly bills and even covers gas and groceries. The only issue is that it's ALL the paycheck covers. Which is a lot better than a fair amount of people in our country, so I'm not complaining! It's just a change - we've been used to doing things a little less stringently. So NOW the challenge is to keep our groceries bill low and find ways to keep ourselves amused for cheap (preferably free).

So starting Monday night, we've been eating from the pantry and freezer. Due to our tendency to eat frozen dinners or grab fast food, they're both actually pretty well-stocked still! xD I know, so bad. This is actually a good exercise in frugality - even if it's by force. The only things we've bought from the store so far have been soda (The Hubs has quite the addiction - but hey, it beats cigarettes, which he quit this year!), and dog food for Daisy. I had a 2 for 1 coupon for Chipotle, so The Hubs (the accountant of the marriage) let me have one more indulgence for the month since I could stretch it out for 2 meals.

As weird as it sounds, it's actually kind of fun to play "mystery dinner". I mean, we're not INSANE, so I'm not just throwing random ingredients together and crossing my fingers or anything. Last night I used some cooked shrimp, angel hair pasta, and covered it in an Asian sauce that was basically from the recipe I use to make lettuce wraps. It actually turned out good, should've doubled the sauce though. Tonight I WAS going to make meatloaf (using condensed tomato soup), but it wasn't defrosting fast enough so I had to throw something together last-minute. Luckily, my beloved turkey italian sausage defrosts quickly even using the cold-water method, so I grilled those on the Foreman, and boiled some shell-pasta I had leftover that I mixed with some Trader Joe's frozen veggies I have yet to try (cauliflower and romanesco w/ garlic butter). Tasty! Plus I never had romanesco, and it was yummy! Like broccoli with cauliflower-like "flowers" on top. Tomorrow will be the meatloaf, with some sort of dressed-up rice. Like I said, it's kind of a fun challenge! It'll get tricky, though, when work starts in a week and a half and I'm commuting 2 hours a day... we'll definitely have to figure out some quick, easy meals to make (or learn to love PB&J until we can afford frozen meals ;D). I'm actually hoping to spend a day next week making some stuff ahead to freeze, like personal lasagnas - any successes will be shared here, of course!

As for cheap entertainment... well, he likes TV and I like the internerd, and we have iPhones to play on, also. We'll get out of the house, too, to go see a free movie in our local park this weekend! I'll be checking our local weekly for other free events, too. Any suggestions for two young-ish people to kill time out of the house for cheap?

How do you keep things cheap when belt-tightening is absolutely necessary?

Thrifty Tip Thursday - Buying meat in bulk

I don't know how often I'll do a "Thrifty Thursday", as thriftiness is something I'm not so hot at. I mean, I have my thrifty ways (Most of my wardrobe is from ROSS, I have no shame buying stuff secondhand), but I could be a whole lot more frugal. Then again, Frugality is its own weird cult online sometimes, so I don't know how much more frugal I want to get. Regardless, I do have a few tricks up my sleeve that work well for me.

One thing that I like to do is to buy meat in bulk and freeze it. Now, if I were REALLY hardcore about it (and had a freezer that could handle it - damn you, apartment living!), I'd go to Costco once every two months and stock up, wrap up, and only have to buy my meat then. As it is, though, I can actually stock up for about a month at my local grocery store (SaveMart is the one we frequent). I buy the "Max Packs" of what we like to eat, or if what we like is on sale. My usual purchases are boneless chicken breasts/thighs, boneless pork chops (The Hubs has a weird thing against bones in meat O__o), and ground turkey and turkey italian sausages when on sale.

Now see, this saves money but it's still not frugal because I would spend less if I bought the bone-in versions or beef/pork versions of the stuff I buy. BUT it still saves me a decent amount. I also spread out the ground turkey a little farther by doing the following.

See, ground turkey (for whatever weird reason) is sold in 20 oz packs. I don't understand it, but I'll still buy it. I used to use an entire 20 oz pack in a recipe, which was usually just a little too much, and seemed wasteful. Now, I automatically break them in half. (Or, if I buy a bigger pack that has 32 oz, I'll break it into fours). Most recipes don't need much alteration to use the half-amount, and it stretches the meat a little further. (I tend to use the ground meat for burgers, hamburger-helper style skillet meals, taco meat, etc.). To freeze it in the individual portions, here's what I do:

Lay out some plastic wrap (and if you have a way to keep it from sticking to itself, PLEASE SHARE OMG IT DRIVES ME NUTS

Plop the meat down (I cut it with a knife, eyeballing it -a scale would probably be more efficient, but, MEH.)

Wrap the top and bottom around it like you're wrapping a gift (Give the Gift of MEAT - sounds like some good copy for Sterling Cooper, eh? ;D)

Wrap the sides around it - I usually wrap the left in front, and the right in back. But I'm weird.

Throw them all in a big ol' ziploc bag to hold them! Defrost as needed. 

I wrap the meat in plastic wrap to help prevent freezer burn a little more. As for the other bulk purchases, I actually pre-portion those out, too. Usually two chops, breasts, or sausages per sandwich sealable bag. Not the greenest option, I realize, but it's quick to do right after a grocery store trip. My mom uses freezer paper (which I need to do) and labels them.  But she also has a separate freezer and goes to Costco, so neh. ;p I pre-portion so I don't need to cook more than necessary (which might tempt me to eat more than necessary!).

Anyway, that's one of my little tricks I do to be a LITTLE more economically savvy. What do you guys do to save a little money on what you like to cook with?