Frugal Menu Mamas

If you’ve been reading for awhile you probably know what a Frugal Menu Mama is, but if you’re new…this should answer your questions.

A Frugal Menu Mama is someone who values saving money on groceries while eating delicious food.  She or he (I guess he could be a Frugal Menu Papa…the ring to it isn’t there though) is trying to reduce the grocery budget with tasty recipes.     She (or he) may use coupons or sales to save money.  She (or he) is creative in money saving methods.

Starting this blog made me accountable to the practices that make up a Frugal Menu Mama.  Since beginning this blog, I have reduced our monthly budget for groceries, pet food, toiletries, and cleaning supplies by $75 per month!  I am very proud of that!

Money Saving Mom has a great series on 31 Days to a Better Grocery Budget.  Check it out, it is a great start to becoming a Frugal Menu Mama.

My husband rarely asks for anything.  He usually defers to what I want.  I have to encourage him to go shopping and he eats whatever I fix.  On the rare occasion he asks for something, I usually try to make sure he gets it because he doesn’t do it often.  This makes gift giving a challenge for me.  :)  So, part of his Christmas gift his year was a little something I created called “The Dessert of the Month Club”.  I told him he could pick a dessert, any dessert once per month and I will make it.  I encouraged him to pick things I don’t normally make.  So, his first request was “Chess Squares”.  I had never heard of them, so I emailed my mother-in-law to find out what in the world he was talking about.  She sent me this recipe:

Chess Squares

1 pkg. butter cake mix

1 stick butter, softened

1 egg, slightly beaten

1 box confectioners’ sugar (1 lb.)

3 eggs, slightly beaten

8 oz. cream cheese, softened

-Combine cake mix, butter, and egg and pat into 9 x 13 pan.

-Mix sugar, eggs, and cream cheese, and pour on the crust mixture.

-Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes or until browned.

EASY!  The hardest part was patting the first mixture into the pan, it kept sticking to my fingers.  And licking the beater for the second mixture was quite tasty. 

I got it all prepared and popped it in the oven while we ate dinner one night and then surprised my husband with it when he had finished his dinner.  He tasted it, said it was delicious, gave me a kiss, and thanked me for making it.  Then he said, “This isn’t what I thought it was.  But thanks for making it!”  I’m so glad he was appreciative.  :)  Want to know why?  In MY opinion, dessert should always be something with chocolate in it, so I wasn’t too excited about this one.  In MY opinion, the batter was tasty, but I didn’t like the gooey way the second mixture tasted after it was baked.  And in MY opinion, I love that guy and the way he can make me feel great even when it wasn’t the dessert he was expecting.  He was even sweet enough to take the photo for this post (thought it was hard to get a good photo).  I think I’ll keep him.

Hope you all had a good weekend.  I had a fantastic time celebrating the first birthday of my niece who is nothing short of a miracle.  Hailie was born 9 weeks early and she turns 1 in two weeks.  She has 7 teeth and is so much fun to be with.  This weekend I also enjoyed attending the musical “Annie” in a town near my parents’ home.  This was my favorite movie as a kid and it was really fun to share it with my daughter.  Thanks Mom for taking us!

Anyway, my mom made some FABULOUS cookies that the kids and I will try to re-create this week.  You WILL want to try them so keep checking back.  And thanks to great readers I have 2 more potato soup recipes to try and a “tweak” to the cheddar bay biscuits.  I will keep you updated. 

I thought you all might enjoy a post from a blog I read.  It was full of freezer tips, so enjoy!

Freezer Tips

I also plan to try a few new recipes in the coming weeks…so keep coming back.

However, my once a month menu plan is taking me way longer than I thought, so that will be awhile before I share. 

Have a good day!

Yep, its Baked Potato Soup again.  Actually, this one is called Loaded Baked Potato Soup.  If you are looking for other potato soup recipes I’ve tried here is the link.

This one is definitely in the #1 position at this point.  It definitely had the right consistency.  It was thick and that was great.  That probably is because of the roux made with butter, flour, and milk.  The only thing was that it was NOT PRETTY!  That is why there is no photo, you might not try it if you saw my photo.  :)  Also, it needs a little less onion (in my non-onion eating opinion) and more salty flavor.  I did use reduced sodium chicken broth, perhaps that was not a good idea. 

I’m not a big fan of my own rating system, so I’ll just give you the bottom line.  This one is close, really close to what I am looking for.  The kids still did not like it.  It took longer to make than I expected. 

Here is the link for you:  Loaded Baked Potato Soup

I also made Cheddar Bay Biscuits the night I made the soup.  They were okay.  This is the second recipe I have tried for this and it still doesn’t compare to Red Lobster. 

More soon!

I think cold weather (aka winter) equals soup weather.  I have several favorites that we make often.  And did you know, soup freezes well?  When I make soup, I usually double or triple the batch and freeze the extra in a Ziploc freezer bag.  I also read that you can freeze individual portions in cups and cover with foil or plastic wrap and a rubber band.   Looking through my archives, I found a soup I made last year that we like, but I haven’t made yet this winter.  So, Hubby, you’ll be seeing it soon.  It is for Chicken Tortellini Soup.  Delicious!  I hope you enjoy it, too!

So, I thought I’d look for some recipes to try in the soup department.  So, I google “everything soup”.  A few hits came for recipes called “everything soup”.  I didn’t even look at them because as you know, I am a picky eater.  It is doubtful that I will eat or like most of the items in a soup called “everything soup”.  However, I will be scanning All Recipes website and the Food Network site today for new recipes to try.

I will also make Green & White Lightning Chicken Chili this month because it is still one of my FAVORITE soups.  Which is odd, considering it contains green salsa and jalapeno peppers….two foods I would never try on their own or maybe ever again.  Speaking of chili, if you are thinking of whipping up some fantastic chilis this month, why not invite some friends, neighbors, or co-workers over for a “Chili Weather Get Together”.  Hubby and I did that a few years ago and it was a lot of fun.  Hoping to do it again this year.

And the last thing I need to mention is that we tried a new Potato Soup this week for my Quest.  The verdict to come next week.  I hope you can stand the anticipation.

Have a great weekend!

Interesting reads from around the blogosphere:

**I love this post on  iheartpublix about saving money on produce.  I learned so much from this post and even if you don’t have a Publix, there are still good tips for you too.

**Once a Month Mom referred to this in one of the parts in her series on Creating You Own Once a Month Menu Plan.  It is a chart of the sales cycles.  I’ve seen these before, but this one has a link at the bottom that sends you to a forum with monthly detailed lists.   It is a great resource.

**Tip about storing food in the freezer from Cents to Get Debt Free.

**Ever heard the term “food storage”?  I stumbled on this site and thought it was fascinating!  It’s all about emergency preparedness and creating a storage of non perishable food that could last you awhile if there were a catastrophic event.

Happy Reading!  Let me know what you think!

I really will be posting more recipes up here soon.  Trying to use up what we have in the freezer and like I said in my last post I am working on a menu plan for February so I can do once a month cooking for February!  :)  I am soooo excited!  This will include new recipes that I can post for you!

For you today though is a list of our family favorites.  These are the recipes I have decided we will have once a month for the next two or three months and then we’ll try some other favorites.  This will make things a little bit easier, because I plan to have the ingredients on hand for these all the time.  I have asked my husband and my kids and that means that we ALL will eat these recipes.

Here it goes:

Crispy Parmesan Chicken Strips-These taste great when made with garlic & cheese croutons and the dipping sauce has to be Hidden Valley Ranch dressing (coupon available right now for it here).

Chicken Fajitas-Hubby’s favorite and easily adapted to a freezer meal.  Kids even like them!  (Mission Tortillas on sale this week at Kroger, plus coupon here.  Got them for $.49 each, can you freeze tortillas?)

Chicken Casserole-So, easy if you already have cooked, shredded chicken in the freezer!  Also great for using up the end pieces of loaves of bread!

Tacos-Simple, easy, and tasty.  Do you really need a recipe?

What are some family favorites you keep on hand?

I think I am going to start working on streamlining our family’s menu plan.  I love menu planning, if you remember, and highly recommend it in order to save money.  I typically write a new plan each month based on what I have in the pantry or freezer and what we have a hankering for.  :)   I am thinking about a new way to do it to make life easier.  Right now, I would like to have 6-8 recipes that we have every month (for a few months and then switch them out).  I am already asking my family what recipes they love.  We have a short list so far and will add a few more.  Hopefully, this will include some freezer and crock pot meals.  My plan is to keep the ingredients for these recipes on hand.  You know, buy the ingredients at rock bottom prices and keep them on hand.

Now, what I would like to do for the remaining recipes is to do once a month cooking.  It still REALLY scares me.  :)  However, Once a Month Mom makes it look so simple.  She puts out a new menu every month with all the instructions, couldn’t be easier.  But, we are picky eaters…so when I look at the menus it never seems that I could do all of the recipes in a given month.  Fortunately for me, Tricia just came out with a series to help folks plan their own once a month cooking menus.  Yippee!  Thank you Tricia, you are motivating me to try this!  So, check out the article here.

What do you think? I would love to know how you stream line your menu plan!

Though you haven’t seen much of me lately, I am still working on my quest.  Oh, why does the best potato soup recipe elude me?  I have tasted it at two restaurants…Garfields’ in WV and Crispers’ in FL.  It is creamy and thick, salty and starchy, with chunks of potato and carrot and the top is sprinkled with cheese and bacon.   Well, I never did propose that it was healthy okay?  If I could just find the perfect recipe, then potato soup would be a big winter comfort food for me.  Plus, potatoes are cheap, er I mean, frugal.   Anyone reading able to get me the recipe from Garfields’ or Crispers’? I would be forever indebted to you.

Moving right along…Remember I tried one recipe already that my sister loves.  It was tasty, but not what I was looking for.  So, today I will introduce you to the recipe we tried last week.  We tried Potato Bacon Chowder…and I forgot to take a photo….story of my life!  The soup was pretty good.  It wasn’t thick, so I mashed up some of the potatoes, but I still couldn’t get it thick.  I eliminated the celery since we really don’t like it and I must say, the bacon in this recipe really makes it great.  I did feel weird however, pouring bacon grease into the soup!

Here are our ratings:

Let’s put them on a scale of 1-10 (1 is yuck, 10 is I FOUND THE PERFECT RECIPE!)

NUMBER OF INGREDIENTS:  8

EASY TO MAKE:  8

TASTE:  8

# of family members (out of 4) who liked it:  2

I found the recipe on AllRecipes.com.  Surely, you have heard of All Recipes already, right?  If not, check it out!  It is a great site to search for recipes by ingredient or to submit your own.  Users rate the recipes and can leave comments on how they altered the recipe.  There are also email newsletters you can subscribe to, which I do and I enjoy them.  The lastest one I received was full of time saving recipe links like make ahead recipes and slow cooker recipes.  You can even create your own “recipe box” and save recipes to try.

Let me know what you think, if you have tried any of the potato soup recipes I mentioned! Here is the link to the Potato Bacon Chowder.

Have a great week!  See you soon!

So, I have sort of taken a vacation from bloggying the past few weeks.  I’ve really been evaluating how much I enjoy this, if it is worth my time, how valuable it is to you all, etc…  I have discovered a few things:

#1-I enjoyed taking a break and not having to worry about what I was going to post.

#2-A few of you miss me. 

#3-I do not want to put as much time into my blog that some of the bloggy moms do whose blogs I love to read.

#4-I do not want to quit blogging all together.

It was important to me to figure these things out for myself.  When I first started blogging last year, I thought I needed to have a post every day and possibly more than one a day.  I thought that would get me a HUGE following and I woiuld make load of money.  :)  Instead of working on quality posts, I hurried through everyone, just to get something posted.  NOT GOOD.  So, this year will be different.  I would like to think I am an okay writer and somewhat interesting to read, so I will be focusing on quality posts.  That means good writing.  That also means though that I will NOT be posting every day.  You may only get 1 or 2 posts a week, not sure yet.  But what I am sure of is that it will be worth reading when I do post.

So, I hope you will still follow me on this journey.  And if you have noticed…this blog is called, “Frugal Menu MamaS”, plural.  I would love guest contributions, be it a recipe or a money saving post.  Please don’t think that your one little idea isn’t helpful.  Perhaps, some of us NEVER thought about it!  I look forward to hearing from you at chadsjoy at gmail dot com.

See you soon!