Frugal Menu Mamas

This post is by my friend, Wendy, who has been making one big pot of soup each week all winter.  I asked her to share one of the recipes with us.  Thanks Wendy for the guest post, great photo, and yummy sounding recipe!  Wendy also let me know that on Saturday the roasting chickens were on sale at Wal-mart for $.78/lb.

Chicken, Lentil, Barley Soup

1 & 1/2 cup to 2 cups shredded chicken $2.75 (I buy a whole roasting chicken at Walmart for .88 cents a lb. This one was $5.50 for the whole thing. I roast it with veggies and potatoes for dinner one night and use the left over for the soup. I actually had even more left over with this particular chicken and used it as well to make chicken salads.)

10 cups chicken stock-make your own from the roasting chicken FREE  (POST ON THIS SOON TO COME!)
(if you prefer to buy your stock you will need 2 & 1/2 boxes $4.25)

1 can petite cup diced tomatoes .43

1 small bag mixed veggies .99

1/4 to 1/3 cup frozen chopped spinach leafs .25

1/4 cup lentils .10

2/3 cup quick cooking barley .30

Hot sauce
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tbs onion powder
1 tsp basil
salt
pepper

In a large stock pot, bring chicken stock and diced tomatoes to a boil. Add frozen veggies and lentils, return to boil. Add chicken, spinach, and barley. Reduce heat to medium. Add garlic powder, onion powder, and basil. Add hot sauce, salt, and pepper to taste. (I’m pretty liberal with the seasoning. I actually use a little more garlic powder, onion powder, and basil than the recipe calls for as well) Reduce heat to a simmer. Simmer slightly covered for 45 minutes to an hour, or until lentils are tender.

I made this soup last Tues and have served it for lunch almost every day since and I still have a little left so it really goes a long way.

A few last tips from Jessica….

(Part I and Part II if you missed them.)

5. Other substitutions to consider—

Rice. Use instead of bread crumbs for tuna or salmon patties, or instead of noodles for spaghetti. There’s rice pudding, rice cakes, and rice crackers. And plain old enriched rice contains folic acid, B vitamins and iron for around $1 a bag!

Oatmeal. We use a lot of oatmeal. And it’s so good for you! So I buy those big canisters at Aldi. (I’m looking into buying in bulk, but there’s not a lot to choose from around here.) My standard meatloaf recipe calls for bread crumbs or oatmeal, so we just use the oatmeal. If I make meatballs, I save a little meat for her and use oatmeal instead of the Italian bread. You can use oat flour for breading chicken or fish.

Dinner time. I try to make most meals allergy friendly, mostly because I don’t want to have to cook two separate dinners every night. Sometimes that means cheese on the side. Sometimes I just set a small skillet or pan next to the big family one and modify hers just slightly, chicken broth instead of milk gravy, for instance. Mashed potatoes are usually made with chicken broth instead of milk.

Let me just say that if you’re committed to cooking from scratch, feeding a family member with food allergies doesn’t have to blow the food budget. You just have to think a little outside the usual snack/menu box. We completely forgo the cracker, pretzel, goldfish thing that most toddlers rely on. But we do carry around our Aldi brand Cheerios (oddly enough, the name brand type contains wheat starch), lots of fruit, muffins and occasionally, we splurge on the allergy free snack bars (with a coupon, of course.) I can’t hardly find frozen boxed food that she can eat, so that eliminates the temptation to spend the cash on the processed stuff. You can’t use all those convenience foods anyway. Its really clean eating for the most part. For more ideas on really frugal allergy free eating, I found this article helpful http://www.glutenfreecookingschool.com/ . Just scroll down to the frugal gluten free part.

As you can tell, I love to go on and on about this stuff. If you’ve got any questions or ideas for me, send me a note at petermanj@juno.com.

All about baking from Jessica!  Enjoy!

Part I if you missed it…

2. Bread…The staple of the American diet right? Well, whatever you do, don’t serve that terrible rice bread to anyone you love. In my family, we compare the taste to wet toilet paper. And all for a whopping $5! You have a few choices. There are mixes to make at home that run $3.50 and up, and they taste a bit better. I suppose you could slice it, freeze it, and use it as needed. If you only need this for one person, it wouldn’t be too bad in the long run. You can also find lots of sandwich bread recipes on gluten free websites. Give Gluten Free Mommy a try. http://glutenfreemommy.com/recipes/

Flours for these recipes can be expensive for the initial investment. I found another website that gives a budget friendly flour blend recipe that I use to substitute for cookies, muffins and pancakes. I make the oat flour in my food processor by just whizzing up some oatmeal from the store. http://frugalabundance.com/gfbudgetflourblend.htm

You cannot pull off a regular yeast bread recipe with just these flours though. Basically, that involves buying something called xantham gum, which mimics what the gluten in the wheat does. But I’ll not go into that. Suffice it to say, it’s pricey, so I haven’t gone that route yet. If my daughter’s wheat allergy persists, then I’ll probably start experimenting. At some point she’s gonna want some pizza.

Right now, while my daughter is still young, and doesn’t ask for exactly the same thing as the rest of us, I’ve come up with some alternatives. Once every couple of weeks I make a batch of buckwheat pancakes (buckwheat isn’t really wheat) or oat flour pancakes and put them in the freezer. These are great toasted with margarine, or with soy nut butter (she can’t do the peanut butter). I also try to keep a couple of different types of muffins in the freezer for her. You can try the old southern recipe for cornbread that is made completely with cornmeal, or substitute the wheat free flour mix in your regular corn bread recipe. I also have made banana muffins, cranberry orange muffins and blueberry muffins for her. Just be aware that without the wheat, anything you make is going to be a bit on the crumbly side. She’s gotten to the point where she begs for bread when she notices the rest of us eating it.

Other than the price of the rice flour, putting these together is easy and cheap. And most of all, I know it’s nutritious for her.

3. Cookies—Many of you may not consider this a necessary thing. But I just can’t help it. My poor little girl can’t enjoy gooey cheese or many other things we take for granted, and if the kid wants a cookie every now and then, who am I to deprive her of yet another thing? That said, here’s my approach so far. I found an oatmeal cookie recipe in the Better Crocker cookbook that is mostly oatmeal and not much in the way of other flours. What little extra that is called for, I just substitute that GF blend. For the butter, I use shortening, or sometimes buy a soy margarine that Kroger sells. Its more expensive than butter at Aldi, but if I’m only using it every once in a while, its not too bad. The last time I made them, I added dried cranberries. The entire family loved them!

4. General baking substitutions—I’ve pretty much covered the wheat thing. For dairy, here’s what works for us. I like using unflavored rice milk when milk is called for in a recipe. It doesn’t have the strong taste that soy does. We used to buy Smart Balance spread to use on muffins, veggies, rice, etc. But I discovered that Blue Bonnet makes a light spread that sells for under $1 and is completely dairy free. (Most spreads and margarines still have some type of dairy product. So know the lingo and read carefully.) For baking, though, those spreads just won’t do it, so we go back to the shortening, soy margarine, or sometimes just plain old canola oil is great for muffins.

Here is Part III.

I have a great article written by my friend Jessica about being frugal when your family has food allergies.  It is great!  I’ve divided into 3 parts so look for it throughout the week.  Enjoy!  Thanks Jessica-you’re awesome!

I’ve never been one to spend willy-nilly at the grocery store. I’ll admit I get a certain thrill when I manage to feed my family for a small amount of cash. Oh, I remember those early days when my husband and I could eat for a week on $40. And a lot of that was from the health food store. Of course, one would expect with the arrival of two kids, plus inflation, that we’d have to increase the budget quite a bit. But I still managed most weeks to come in under $60.

Fast forward to baby #3. We sort of expected that she might be prone to some food allergies, so we waited until she was 13 months old to even give dairy a try. Our first experiment yielded a red, hot rash from ear to ear. There was no question; she had food allergies. So I started buying soy milk (at $2.50 a half gallon). About six months later, however, testing revealed allergies to peanuts and wheat too. Wheat!! I was more than a little frustrated since all her favorite crackers and cereals contained wheat, not to mention the bread I had been making for the family specifically because it was dairy free.

Now, if you happen to take a stroll down the natural foods section of your local grocery store, you might just suffer from severe sticker shock. Wheat free bread for $5, wheat free pasta for $4, cookies, crackers and snack bars no less than $3.50 a box. I’m a dedicated Aldi shopper, and I had never spent that much on basics in my life! But my daughter needed to eat. (What really drives me nuts about these products is that many don’t have much nutritional value at all. So why shell out the money?)

So here are some of the strategies I’ve come up with, so I’m buying the least amount of those high priced specialty products:

1. Time is money. If you want to save money on allergy free shopping, you’ve got to be willing to do some work. Find recipes online. Read up on the differences in the wheat and dairy substitutes. It’s like taking a chemistry class, but I sort of like the challenge. Just start with something easy, and you’ll eventually develop a good repertoire of choices. And of course, you’ve got to invest the time in the kitchen. I hear people say all the time that they would love to save money at the store, but they just don’t have the time to cut coupons or bake from scratch. Well, it’s one or the other. You either pay in cash or time. But I’d rather spend the time in the kitchen myself.

Here is Part II and Part III.