More meal ideas with coupons

I make ooddles and ooddles of french toast all at once. I buy 5 or 6 loaves of bread on sale...I just got 10 loaves for 39 cents each at Kroger. I buy 3 dozen eggs and use about 6 cups skim milk, a little cinnamon and 1 stick of butter. The total cost is less than $6 and I make 100 - 120 slices of French Toast . I serve it with eggs, grits, and the toast on the night I make it and I freeze the rest. My kids pull it out in the mornings and pop it in the toaster. I very rarely cook breakfast in the mornings......besides scrambled eggs which we make a few times a week.

Grilled chicken or grilled flank steak.....I am always looking for a sale on these meats because we eat them all the time! My family is a real meat and potatoes kind of family....so these things are staples here! I use Italian dressing and Teriyaki sauce for a marinade.( I routinely get these for free or almost free with coupons) Here are some things I serve with the meat. Frozen veggies....I buy all the time with coupons for around 25-50 cents a bag. Green beans...again I collect them when they are on sale. Some kind of potatoes...I love potatoes I could love on them alone! Therefore we eat them alot! (I get lots of sour cream for free or almost free if I want to use it for these.) Salad....we eat alot of salad and raw veggies so I look for sales. I try not to buy items that are not in season and have a higher price tag. Mac n cheese..(pasta cheap with coupons...cheese on sale.....freeze in the bag for baking)

OK I will think of more later!

Couponing

It has been a busy week! Spoke at the Galleria..that went great! I spoke twice to packed rooms. Boy do I love to be able to encourage women! I read something the other day that said 95% of adults are fearful about speaking in front of people. I am in the other 5% for sure...the bigger the crown the more I feel I can let loose!

Started homeschool this week!!! Great start!

Had an interview with a local newspaper and that went well!

One of the questions I was asked over and over again this weekend was...what meals do I make with my couponing stuff... I have a few meals that I make with almost all couponing stuff but for the most part I use that stuff for supplementing my dinners. Where couponing saves me the most money personally is.....cereal, toiletries, cleaning products, snacks, yougurts.....below are some meals that I regularly cook with couponing stuff.


Spagetti...I wait until I have enough jars of sauce(they go on sale a lot!) to make a HUGE pot...while I am collecting those jars i pay attention to ground beef that goes on sale and I buy it along the way and freeze. I make as much sauce as my largest pot will hold. I usually add some spices to the sauce and also some crushed or cubed tomatoes either from a can(coupons) or fresh from Emily's garden, and the ground beef (tip: rinse the ground beef in a colander to get as much fat as is possible off before adding to your sauce) Freeze in gallon size freezer bags for meals later. Noodles are all from coupons. I add a salad and bread.

Taco's.....Taco kits routinely go on sale and I am always looking for ground beef just like for the spaghetti....When I find a good sale on the GB I bring it home and cook it all at once in a super large frying pan...I rinse it as well in hot water...season it and freeze what I do not use the first night in family serving sizes...make sure that you write on the bag what it is and a date. Now you have another quick meal for another night. I use the taco kits hard and soft...I take the seasoning packets out and store them to use next time I brown meat. I add cheese(which I routinely get on sale and freeze or store unopened in fridge...it has a long enough date to do this)Add lettuce, sour cream(another coupon regular with a long shelf life..... unopened) Any left overs are served the next day as taco salad.

Another post tomorrow...I need to school the kiddo's! Love you guys!Remember some days may feel like an eternity but you only have one shot with your babies and it goes so quickly...don't wish it away....embrace it with gusto!!!!

I LOVE crock pots....I have the one pictured below..it holds 6 quarts and it is pretty.....not that that helps the cooking but it helps me every time I walk in and see it! I use mine all the time. They are relatively inexpensive...I have 2....my other one is small for dips and things like that.

Yesterday morning I loaded it up with boneless skinless chicken breasts......15 to be exact(on sale at Kroger last week :) I filled in all the way up with water. I didn't season these at all because of what I needed them for but sometimes I do this for chicken soup and I season the water. I turned it on low and left it for 10 hours. Oh my goodness...TENDER!!!!

This is the breakdown of how I used the meat.......6 chicken and cheese (remember all that free cheese!!) quesadillas. I would normally use 3 for my family but I was feeding another family of 6. It really doesn't take a whole lot of meat on these.



5 chicken breasts I used to make Ritz cracker caserole.....we don't eat many caseroles but this one is so good.....1 can cream of chicken soup......3/4 cup sour cream(you can't taste it I promise!) 1 sleeve Ritz crackers(Iuse the whole wheat kind) 1/2 stick of butter

Shread chicken with fingers and put on the bottom of pan...I usean oval casserole dish.....9x5 mix soup and sour cream together and spread over the top of the chicken. Crush crackers over mixture and drizzle melted butter over all. Bake 30 min. at 375 I serve with veggies and a salad.




The remaining 4 chicken breasts I froze covered in the broth and I will use them at another date either for quesadillas or for chicken and rice. Either way the crock pot was already running so why not load it up....now I am partly ready for another meal.

Meals.

One of the hardest things for me to get used to in regards to coupons was meal planning. It took a little juggling but I am pretty good at it now. For the most part I get the same type things over and over again so I can plan based on what I know I will get....for instance I regularly get spaghetti sauce, tomato sauce, tomato paste and pasta. I collect all the supplies and wait for a really good sale on hamburger meat. I get my biggest pot and dump in everything.

One little trick I learned about cooking hamburger meat...you probably know this but I'll tell you anyway....brown meat slowly and stir frequently, this will help it to be tender. I have made the mistake of rushing the cooking time by turning the heat up...not good! I'm not very patient so this is hard for me! :)

I put it all together and then put as much of it as I can fit into my huge crock pot...on low...all day.....this just simmers it all together without burning to the bottom. I simmer the rest on top of the stove for 1 hour and then I use that sauce to make up 2-3 pans of lasagna. I cook these for 30 min..,...which is half way....cool, cover tightly and freeze. I have a convection setting on my oven so I can load it up with all three pans at once...if you do not have this...you can load your oven up as well but you will want to move everything around after 15 min.

We eat spaghetti the first night out of the crock pot and then I divide the cooled sauce into gallon freezer bags for another day. I am not one to have a "cook for the month day," but there are many things like spaghetti sauce that I make in huge batches.....seriously I make about 4 gallons at a time in 2 huge pots...my thinking is that it really isn't much more work but it saves me greatly in time later and if I am going to heat up the oven and use the stove anyway..it saves me there as well.

If you have a small family...you may not want to do 4 gallons :) but you can do 3 - 4 times the amount needed for your family. One of the great things about freezing spaghetti sauce is that if you have unexpected company...you can pull a bag out......set it in a large bowl of warm water and quiclky thaw to have a fast home-cooked meal!

Who's a Turkey?

I bought a few Turkeys after Christmas when they were on an amazing sale and I froze them. This is one that we ate the last week of our "eat on $10" deal. Yummy! I sprinkled it with pepper and garlic salt and cooked it according to the directions that came with the turkey. Super easy!! We ate it the first night with veggies and then I cut the rest of the meat off and sealed it good and tight and we ate turkey sandwiches for the next several days.

Menu week 1

Ok so we are at the end of week one of only spending $10 a week for 4 weeks so that I can help our daughter fulfill an amazing dream. I have had so many people say that I should write more about the things that we are eating. Well we will see how the last week is???? I may be asking for you all to have us over for dinner?? :) But for now there hasn't been a drastic change. I really was so stocked...the only thing that I didn't have much of was toilet paper. There was NO way that I could stay within my $10 budget and buy TP so I burned my CVS bucks on TP...I know...I know.....but I will build them back up again! I saved enough to still get a few items and rebuild without coming out of my pocket!


This weeks menu was:

Breakfast....

*Whole wheat choc chip muffins( you will be seeing these a great deal as my whole family loves them and we have plenty of stuff to make them)
*Cereal....we eat alot of cereal for snacks as well.
*Pancakes
*Eggs and pancakes
*Oatmeal...another thing my kids like to snack on.
*Grits

Snacks....
*Bananas
*Carrots and celery...dipped in ranch of course
*Cheese and crackers
*Blue corn chips and salsa
*homemade muffins

Lunch....
*Cheese roll ups
*soup
*Turkey subs
*PB&J
*left overs
*Ravioli...it might have been the kind in a can?? :(
*salad

Dinner....
*Breakfast...eggs,bacon and pancakes
*potato soup and grilled cheese sand.
*grilled pork,salad, mashed potatoes, broccoli,cauliflower and carrots and rolls
*Chicken and dumplings, green beans and mac&cheese
*Roast, roasted potatoes, green peas and carrots
*Pizza....ice cream
*Quesadillas, chips and salsa and cheese dip


That is it through Friday night. It will help my meal planning because Eric will be in Haiti all next week....he eats a whole lot! :)

Salsa

Everyone in our family loves salsa I will post at some point how I make my own...so yummy but for today I want to share a little tip for you. If I buy it at the store...I buy Pace Picante....we do not like the chunky kind.....I was noticing that my kids were just dipping their chips and shaking off the chunks....wasteful. So I put the whole jar in the blender and give it a whirl....this solves the problem....no chunks...no waste...same great flavor! We eat salsa almost daily with baked or organic blue corn chips(from Aldi).......sometimes I put them on a plate with a little cheddar cheese over the top...run them in the microwave just until the cheese melts and serve them with salsa and sour cream....very yummy indeed!

Questions 2

What made you decide to home school your children? My motivation for schooling my kids is very different today than it was 12 years ago when Lindsey was 4. Lindsey's birthday is September 24 so she was going to have to wait a year to enter school. I usually tell parents that it is best to wait especially with boys....and I have with some of my other kids.....but Lindsey was so mature for her age....I couldn't imagine having her wait. We decided to home school so that she could start school when we thought it was the right time. I am so glad that we made that decision all those years ago...the fruits are immeasurable!

Who taught you to cook? My mama!!!! She is an amazing cook. She hardly ever uses are a recipe and she makes wonderful home cooked meals all the time. Because she gave me the confidence by giving me a good base....I have learned to throw all sorts of things together. I enjoy cooking very simple meals.....lots of fresh vegetables and fruit with a good grilled, baked or broiled meat!

Do your sisters like to cook? Both of my sisters are good cooks. One enjoys cooking but as a single, working, homeschooling mom......she is really busy. My other sister..HATES to cook! She does it because she has to but she can't stand to be in the kitchen. I seriously do not understand this!!!

Inexpensive meals

I am trying to spend even less than normal at the store this week because we have some extra expenses......when you coupon you usually have a good extra stash of food so this is not really difficult. I found ground beef on sale for 1.49 a pound and I bought 6 pounds. I usually do not eat this much ground beef in a week but this week we did...are! I browned half of it and used part for tacos the first night with shells I already had on hand from a previous coupon stocking, cheese stocked from Kroger sale 2 weeks ago and free lettuce from Kroger...coupon came in the mail.... yeah!!.....the other half of browned meat I put in the freezer after I rinsed it for soup on Saturday. I rinse all browned ground meat with hot water in a colander to get all the extra fat off.


I will add Frozen mixed veggies, free last week at Publix.... Hunts Tomato sauce.... almost free from Publix a month ago and the ground beef in my freezer from the beginning of the week and some spices and make a big pot of soup tomorrow. YUM!!!

With the other half of meat I made hamburgers and we grilled them on Tuesday...Oh so good!

We also made: #1 breakfast this week...eggs, toast, hash browns, grits....I already had all this. #2 Grilled chicken veggies and baked potatoes we had this twice...all stuff I already had and I only added milk, bread and a few things that I got for almost free!

Simplify

Did I already title one like this?? I must need to do it more!!!

First I want to thank my sweet friend Hollie who took time and told me how to put in a link to other places from my blog! So I will try it now!! You can check out her blog right here.
Let me know if it works!

My life continues to be full..too full so I began to think about more ways that I can simplify. I love to cook and I tend to be an all or nothing kind of gal. I find myself dreading cooking sometimes because of the time issue. I plan everything so I always know what the weeks dinners will be so I can prepare some things during the day and not wait to do it all at 5:00. I also try to think ahead and double up on somethings to save work for later.....grill chicken for one night but make enough to cut up and serve over salad the next night, or make triple amounts of spaghetti sauce or taco meat and freeze it for later.

And still I needed to reexamine! :) I am posting my menu for you to see. I tried to look at the time it takes to make each meal and save meals that take more time for days that I have more time.

Monday....Grilled chicken, salad, baked potato and sliced apples (I would normally bake these but I am simplifying!)

Tuesday..Salad with cold grilled chicken, cold carrots(with Ranch..of course), whole wheat rolls.

Wednesday...Breakfast...Eggs, grits, toast and fresh fruit

Thursday...Tacos, refried beans, chips and salsa

Friday...Flank Steak, corn, green beans, buttered potatoes, steamed mixed veggies, rolls

Saturday...Leftovers

Sunday...crock pot....beef and noodles

Love those babies