Freezer Cooking and Frugal Living Part 4

There are many others way to be frugal other than using coupons every time you go shopping or only buying things when they are on sale or making everything from scratch because it is cheaper. Yes, those are all great ways to be frugal but I believe that true frugal living starts in your heart with being content with what you have and making the most out of what God has blessed you with.

I frequent a blog called “Like Merchant Ships”, the author, Meredith, focuses on cheerful frugality. She also posts at Frugal Hacks on Cheerful Frugality. In one post she tackles some comments that were left by her readers who were telling her that it is easy for her to be cheerful when she had so much. Her response in her own words was, “There are negative aspects to my life right now, but you won’t hear me complain about them often. Be relentless in your pursuit of cheerful frugality, and you may just be surprised at how often you feel cheerful, or how you inspire a cheerful attitude in those around you.”

I believe cheerful frugality and contentment go hand in hand. If we are content with what we have then it will be easy for us to cheerfully be frugal. We won’t care that we can’t buy a Starbucks because we are content with the coffee pot God has provided for us at home. Make sense?

Let’s take for example dinnertime. Oh this was one that I had to work on big time. You make a dinner that is not so extravagant because the pantry is bare and the funds are low. Now, do you plop dinner down on the table and apologize for it? Or do you serve dinner with a smile and thank God for what He has provided? Proverbs 15:17 says, “Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a fated calf with hatred.” I have so found this true when we go to my in-laws for dinner. Don’t get me wrong they are all great people but whenever we are all together there is always strife. My MIL always makes really great meals but it is so hard to enjoy the food when everyone is bickering. Now I could stay home and eat a sandwich for dinner with my family and it tastes wonderful because we are all happy. So don’t apologize for what God has provided for you. He has given you everything you have no matter how much or how little and we are to be grateful.

Hebrews 13:5 says “let your conduct be without covetousness, be content with such things as you have. For He himself has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you’.”
Truly the best way to live a frugal life is contentment. I can’t say that enough. If you are always coveting what someone else has or wanting to improve this room or that room in your house by re-decorating or buying all new furniture, when there really is nothing wrong with what you have or how the room looks then you are not being content and you will go out and spend unnecessary money. Nowhere in the Bible does it say, “Make sure you decorate your house to the nines and it is always up to date with the latest fashions”.

1Timothy 6:6-7, “Now godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain that we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content.” Hear that, we will carry nothing out of this world with us. So why do we need to go out and buy a bunch of stuff? We don’t. Instead we need to focus on being content with what God has given us and again, being happy about it. Cheerful frugality!

Philippians 4:11, “Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned that whatever state I am in, to be content.” Yes, it is easy to be content when we have a fridge full of food, a closet full of clothes, and a house all decorated. But can we be content when we only have enough crumbs to get us by, when we haven’t bought a new outfit in years, or our house is not as pretty as someone else’s?

So while we are being good stewards of our money we need to remember to be cheerful and content and know in our hearts that we are blessed by God!

I hope you have enjoyed reading these posts as much as I have enjoyed writing them. Living frugally is a road that I have been traveling all my life. It has not been an easy road (especially when it comes to the cheerful part) but it has been a road that God has walked with me on, sometimes even carried me on, and He has always blessed me on. I hope that you, too, can find contentment and blessings, cheerfully on this frugal road.

~Caroline

Freezer Cooking and Frugal Living Part 3

Couponing. This is a new thing to me but it is something that I have really enjoyed learning and has saved us a lot of money. Let me start by saying that when you get into serious couponing you need to start small. Once you get the hang of it you can go big. Now serious couponers don’t just cut the coupons out of the Sunday paper and go shopping. No way, there is a fine art to this. You have to figure out where the best deals are for that week and you most importantly have to learn how to “stack” coupons. This is where couponing will make or break you and I have had times where it is has broken me because I did not “stack” my coupons right.

Now instead of trying to explain this all to you here I am going to send you over to Money Saving Mom to read her post on CVS 101. She explains everything beautifully. She also has a post on Making CVS work for you.

If you do not have a CVS near you and but have a Walgreens, then I would recommend reading her Walgreens 101 post to learn about how to coupon there.

I check with Money Saving Money Mom every week to see her scenarios on CVS deals and Walgreens deals. I also check Mommies With Cents and Centsible Shopper to see if they have any different scenarios. I will also be posting my deals every week so that those of you who live in California can see shat there is here. Oh, you can also check the Rite-Aid deals at these sites. I will have to say though, that you will not find deals like they have at CVS anywhere else!

On Monday I will wrap up our posts on my Freezer Cooking and Frugal Living Talk. Have a great weekend!
~Caroline

Freezer Cooking and Frugal Living Part 2

Now let's talk about frugal living.

I learned how to be frugal from my mom. She made me shop K-mart’s blue light specials when I was a kid! But I’m over that now :o) Whenever I wanted something, she would always ask “do you really need that?” Or, she would say,” how does it feel to want?”. Oh, that would just kill me as a kid. I would try to come up with some way of making it seem like I did NEED it. But it never worked. And yes, now I do that to my own kids :o)
She instilled in me that I only had to buy the things I needed. And now before I buy almost anything I have to be able to completely justify the purchase. It drives me crazy sometimes but I know in the end it does our checking account and I a lot of good.

When I go shopping at stores (not grocery stores, but all the other ones, like T*rget, W*alm*art, etc...) I only shop sales and clearance racks, but mostly just the clearance racks. And I am not talking about the 15% off racks. I only do the 50% off or more racks. When I walk into a store, no matter what store, I go straight to the clearance racks. I have learned to spot them a mile away! I don’t even look at the rest of the stuff. Why would I even want to tempt myself that way?

I also have limits on what I will spend on certain items. For instance, I will not spend more than $7 on shirts for myself. If it’s more than that than it stays on the rack. I will not spend more than $20 on pants, and this includes all my jeans that I buy at Gap (that’s the only place where they make them to fit me). Shorts and skirts will not be bought unless they are under $10. I have set these limits for myself because I know I can find clothes at these prices at the places I shop. They are not unreasonable for me or for our budget. This is just for me I know that other people can budget more for clothing or need to spend more and that is fine. Remember this is just how I do it.

OK, so this just happened to me the other day. I was at Target, surprise surprise, and I was going through the clearance racks in the girls section looking for birthday presents for my nieces. They all love clothes and I can always find great stuff at Target. Anyways, I came upon the cutest shirt that was in Gillian’s size. I knew it would look great with a pair of shorts that she has. Now let me say that Gillian is the only kid I have to buy clothes for. Emma gets all hand me downs and loves it! The problem was that the shirt was $6.50. I put it in my cart thinking I could just splurge this once because it was a cute shirt and then I tried to justify it by saying that since it was sleeveless baby doll type shirt it would keep her nice and cool during thee hot days and it’s important for her to stay cool because if she gets to hot she could have a seizure. Yeah, nice way of trying to rationalize that one! But I kept feeling that nudge to put it back. The kid really did not need a new shirt no matter how cute it was and especially at that price. So I finally put it back. And I did find 2 other great dresses for my nieces and each one was under $5!!
OK, so fast forward a week and I find myself at Target again. A different Target :o) I went to the girls clearance rack again looking for all the 4th of July clothes I knew would be 50% off. Can I just stop here and say that the after holiday sales at Target rock! I always find the greatest things. And if you wait until 6 days past the holiday the stuff goes to 75% off and eventually 90% off! Even their seasonal stuff! OK, back to my story….So I am going through the racks again and what do I spot? Yep, that same shirt and it’s in Gilly’s size again. I was dying. So I looked at the price tag and what did it say? $3.24!!! Half the price of the original marked down price! So I bought it because I knew God was blessing me for being a good steward of my money.

I always say that if God wants me to have it it will still be there when it’s cheaper :o)

I do have one little problem though, I love bargains. I mean love bargains. Finding something that is marked down 90% that will look good in my life is awesome! But this can be a bad thing, because I would buy all the stuff I liked that was marked down. You know how excited you are when you find a great deal and you’re telling everyone about it and you ‘re like I just saved $10 on this thing I bought! Well, my father in law would say, “You would have saved $10 more if you hadn’t bought it all!” Ya, I guess that is true. So Now I have trained myself to think, “Just because it is a great deal does not mean I have to buy it”. Really think about your purchase before you make it. No matter how little it cost, you still need to be able to justify the purchase as a need.

Tomorrow I will get into couponing!! So Stay tuned :o)

~Caroline

Freezer Cooking and Frugal Living Part 1

All right, let’s talk freezer cooking and frugal living. The two do go hand in hand. A great way to save money is to cook in bulk and freeze. As many of you already know, I have been freezer cooking for over 3 years now. I have also, up until recently, organized a group of 10-15 ladies every month for a Freezer Cooking Day. That was a lot of fun. But I know that it isn’t easy for all of us to get together with friends and have a big cooking day. That might not be the season of life you are in right now. And that’s OK. You can still make meals for your freezer without really taking any extra time out of your day.

One of the easiest ways to start filling you freezer is to start cooking bigger meals. If you are making lasagna, make 2. It won’t take you but 5-10 minutes longer to assemble that second one, but it will save you an hour another day! Eat one of the lasagnas that night and stick the other one in the freezer. This is truly, one of the simplest ways to fill your freezer fast. Just think if you doubled 2 meals a week, by the end of the month you would have 8 extra meals in your freezer. That means 8 nights next month that you won’t have to think about dinner!

I have learned that even freezing little portions of leftovers is a huge blessing. Even if it is just one serving, don’t toss it, or let it sit in your fridge for a week thinking someone will eat it. Freeze it! Eventually you will have enough one-portion servings to feed the whole family a fun smorgasbord one night. Or you could take the one-portion servings and stick them in your hubby’s lunch. If it is something really good than you can enjoy yourself one day for lunch while the kids eat PB&Js. Like our mothers have always said, “waste not, want not”.

And, of course, you can always do a day of cooking meals for your freezer. This works best when you find meat on sale. That way you can stock up without draining your pocket book.

I often get asked what the best way is to freeze food. My answer? Freezer bags! Freezer bags can be laid flat and you can stack them high. One of the main things you have to remember is to get as much air out of the bag as possible. I also flash freeze my bags before stacking them. To flash freeze them I just lay them flat on a hard tray and stick them in the freezer for a couple of hours. Then they are ready to be stacked and the bags won’t freeze together or freeze into some funky shape that makes it impossible to get out of the freezer.

I once saw a picture of a regular top freezer that had 24 main dishes, 12 side dishes, 10 desserts, and 10 breakfasts all neatly stacked in freezer bags. And they had room to add more! So freezer bags are definitely your best bet if you want to maximize your space.

Unfortunately there are some things that can’t be put into a freezer bag, like lasagna. Oh, that would be messy :o) So lets chat about using pans, any size or shape. There are 2 ways to do pans. First, you could use aluminum pans. They have every shape and size you can imagine at any Dollar Store. They even sell some that come with the lids. If it doesn’t have a lid than you will want to cover it tightly with plastic wrap, or my favorite, Press N Seal. And then cover it with foil tightly.

If you don’t want to go out and by aluminum pans then here is what you do. Take one of your pans, again, any size or shape that you need for what you are making, line it with saran wrap. You want the saran wrap to be over the edges quite a bit. Make the meal in the pan on top of the saran wrap and then stick in the freezer for a few hours; it needs to be pretty frozen. Once it is frozen, you can take the food out of it and wrap it all up in the plastic wrap and then foil. You have basically used your pan as mold. Now when you are ready to eat that meal take it out of the freezer, unwrap it completely and put it back in the same pan you used to mold it and let it thaw. Presto, it’s all ready to go and you didn’t have to waste all your good pans by keeping them in the freezer for weeks!

Another question I am often asked is where do I get all of my recipes. One of the best places to find recipes for your freezer is in your own cookbooks! Just about everything freezes. Seriously! If you are worried about something not freezing well just take a sample of it and stick it in the freezer and see how it does. I have tried doing this many times and have only had a few flops and I can’t even remember now what they were. So try freezing some of your family’s favorite meals. You can also find lots of recipes on line. Just type in freezer meal recipes, recipes for the freezer, etc…. Some of my favorite places for recipes are:

http://www.justslowcooking.com/index.html (all the recipes are for your crockpot and most of them can be put int the freezer before cooking)

http://www.30daygourmet.com/ (the 30 Day Gourmet is chock full of recipes. Some of them you will need a pass word to get to but most of them are free for the looking!)

http://www.recipelink.com/rcpmenus.html (I have not had the time to play around much on this site, but it looks promising!)

You can also click on any of the links on my side bar to see the freezer books that I use. I would recommend owning at least one book on freezer cooking that you can use as a guide. The one I would highly recommend is "The Freezer Cooking Manual" from 20 Day Gourmet. They have a lot of charts in this book that will help you convert your recipes into larger quantities. They also have great shopping lists and so much more!

You don’t just have to stick with main dish dinners for the freezer. You can do side dishes(like rice pilaf, mashed potatoes) desserts(cakes, ice cream pies, cookie dough), breakfasts(egg burritos, biscuits with eggs, cheese and a meat) and lunches. The possibilities are endless.

Another frequently asked question, "What is the best way to thaw your meals?". Well, the best way is to thaw them in the fridge. But I rarely do it this way because I always forget to take it out of the freezer in time :o) Most of the time (if it is in a freezer bag) I thaw in the microwave on the "thaw" setting or I put it in the sink and run cold water over it for 5-10 minutes or until it is thawed.

So that is what I have for you for a quick overview of freezing cooking. If you have any questions please feel free to leave them in the comments. You can also browse around past posts to get a lot more info on freezer cooking.

~Caroline

Another Great Resource on Freezing!

I just found this web page and it is great! If you have a bounty of fruits and veggies but don't know how to, or like to, do the canning thing click on over to here http://farmgal.tripod.com/Freezerbasics.html to read all about freezing your fruits and veggies to preserve them!

Frugal Links

As we all know by now, gas prices have risen and so have grocery prices. So now does it not only cost more to buy food, it costs us more to get to the places we have to go to buy it! Don't you just love how that works.
In the past few months I have discovered some wonderful blogs that have helped me become even more frugal. I am already a really frugal person (never buy anything unless it is on the clearance rack. never pay more than $5 for shirts/ $10 for pants/$10 for shoes (for myself and for the kids), etc....) but these ladies have helped me discover how to get things for free! Seriously, free!!!! Check them out.....
Centsible Shopper will show you how to combine coupons on great deals at many places to get them free.

imommies always has posts about getting free stuff and making free money!

Jane is amazing. She shows us how she has given herslelf only $800 for the year to spend on everything she needs! She gets almost everything for free or she makes money on what she buys. I believe she now has over $900 in her account now. She is really amazing.

Mommies with Cents is another great one that shows you where to get free stuff and how to stack coupons.

Money Saving Mom also has great tips on free stuff and deals at CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid and more.

When the kids are having their quiet time this afternoon, make yourself something nice to drink and grab your self a snack (I will be having my daily Dr. Pepper and some sea salt pita chips) and browse through these sites. You will learn alot!

Let me know if you know of any other great frugal blogs that we all might enjoy.

Happy Cooking!
~howiegsal

Resources

Rebecca asked me if I could let you all in on my top-secret resources that I most frequently use :o) I am more than happy to oblige :o)
First, in case you have not noticed, all the resources that I will be mentioning you can find links to on my side bar over there ------->

As I have mentioned before, my whole freezer cooking journey started after I read the book, "Don't Panic, Dinner's in the Freezer", by Susie Martinez. If you are interested in starting your own Freezer Cooking Group I would get this book! It is full of recipes and ideas on how to have a Cooking Day with a bunch of friends. It is a simple read and once you have finished the first few pages you will be ready to call all of your friends and start cooking :o)

Another one of my most treasured resources is "30 Day Gourmet" You can visit their website here http://www.30daygourmet.com/. They have some great recipes and their "Freezer Cooking Manuel" is chock full of great ideas and "how tos". They also have lots of different e-books that you can buy and download immediately!

I have also listed some other Freezer Cooking cookbooks on my side bar. They can all be found at Amazon or you can check them out form your local library. I do that a lot.

I also do go*gle searches every few months to see what's out there. Just search "freezer meals", "freezer recipes", "once a month cooking". etc.....

There is a lot of info out there. You just have to go and fine it :o)

Happy Cooking!
~howiesgal