GONE FISHIN'

Old Mother Frugal likes to take time off from cooking and hang the “Gone Fishin’” sign. 

Well, not literally gone fishin’. 

Figuratively, gone fishin’. 

This episode of "Frugal Bugle" is dedicated to using the oven as my ‘fishing hole’. One strategy to defer cooking is to cook several meals at one time.  Sometimes it’s using three slow cookers simultaneously or the main oven. Today, it’s the stove-top and toaster oven.

Simultaneous cooking is a frugal use of time, energy (both physical and gas/electrical) and keeps money in the wallet by not dining out.

First, there is the time issue.  Plan to cook a minimum of three meals at one time.  Allocate about 2 hours maximum to this endeavor.  You may use only 60-90 minutes. There are only 24 hours in a day but preparing several meals simultaneously in advance gives you an extra 30-60 minutes per day.

Yes, Old Mother Frugal has figured out how to add extra time to your busy day. If you are a full time working person, slot 7-9PM one night when your Little Helpers are busy doing homework or 7-9AM on Saturday.  Maybe Saturday/Sunday afternoon works better for you. 

How are you saving time?  You are not repetitively taking utensils out of drawers and cabinets, not repetitively washing dishes, pots and pans.

This strategy works for dinners and it works for desserts (muffins, cupcakes, cakes, quick breads, etc). Start with your lightest color batter first and work up to the darker color batters (vanilla, banana, carrot, red-velvet, chocolate).

One and done.

Next is the issue of expending energy.  Physical energy.  Cooking can be tiring.  All that walking around the kitchen, back-n-forth.  If your oven is low, all those knee bends and squats!  Bending down to open and close drawers, reaching up to open and close cabinet doors. Cooking three meals in the oven at one time is less tiring.  

This brings up the next energy-drainer, the utility bill.  When you can turn on the oven one time and cook multiple meals, you are saving electricity or gas. Washing dishes one time conserves water and cost.

Dining out is pricey.  If you’re too tired to cook…not in the mood to cook… sick and tired to cook, how wonderful it is to reheat and eat!  No loading up the car with the Little Helpers. No waiting for a table or in a line to be served dinner for two or three or four or five.  No embarrassing public meltdowns by Mom due to hunger. [The Little Helpers never have public meltdowns]. No shocking bill at the end of the meal. No remorse the following month when the credit card comes due for payment.

Now, Old Mother Frugal has no qualms with dining out, but it’s budgeted in the spending plan.  When looking to find ways to save in the budget, look at money spent dining out.  You may be surprised!

There are three new meals in Old Mother Frugal's refrigerator for this week: one for chicken fajitas; one for chicken scampi and spaghetti and one for salmon patties over noodles. Extra meatballs from Sunday's dinner means a meal of meatball leftovers, maybe a meatball sub sandwich! 

What does one do with the extra time? Write a blog entry, of course!

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip:  If possible, make an extra serving when doing your dinner prep. Build up your freezer with these extra meals so that you can periodically have meals from the freezer without having to cook that day’s dinner. Serve it buffet-style and let family members select which entrée they would like for dinner! 

                                                   SALMON PATTIES

ONE-PAN CHICKEN FAJITAS

                                                  CHICKEN TENDER SCAMPI

MASHED POTATOES

THE FORTY YEAR BURNOUT

Old Mother Frugal’s cupboards are full but sometimes the imagination is empty.  Gazing into the panty or the freezer can be daunting.  What is there to eat?

When the youngest of Old Mother Frugal’s Little Helpers was a child, a sign was created and erected onto the refrigerator door. It read “some assembly required” because too often, the refrain “there’s nothing in here to eat” was repeated over and over again. 

Friends would come over and read the sign as if Lego’s had found their way into the refrigerator.  “Some Assembly Required”???? 

The fact is that Old Mother Frugal suffers from “cooking block”.  Yes, as if “writers block” isn’t bad enough, what to cook for dinner has become, at times, a challenge.

Forty years of cooking and burnout eventually set in.  Factor in the budget or the ‘spending plan’ as it’s called in Old Mother Frugal’s kitchen, and well, cooking can be a lot less fun.  

Who amongst us isn’t constrained by tight finances?  Not seeing many raised hands out there in cyberspace.  Add some dietary restrictions and ‘less fun’ morphs into ‘no fun’.

To keep fresh and engaged in cooking, some weeks have designated cooking themes. Meals are planned around a movie, book or song title, a phrase or a play on words.  Just about anything to keep interest from drying up and dying out.

The idea of a “theme” came from The Little Helpers. For years, birthday parties were constructed around a party theme.  With a theme came direction. With a theme, there is laser-like focus. With a theme came a plan. Like a road map from the week’s topic to the kitchen table.

Some of Old Mother Frugal’s favorite themes have been…

§     -  A Wrinkle in Time – using canned foods with “wrinkles” or dents

§    - Top Shelf – a twist on the TV show “Top Chef”

§    - What Lies Beneath – movie reference to freezer foods hidden beneath other foods

§    - Outside the Box –recipes that have been collected for years in a box but never used

§    - State Fair – eating foods sold at the state fair

§    - You ‘Can’ Do This – using canned food at meal time

§    - Building A Mystery – song title reference using whatever comes out of the freezer

§    - The Cookbook Challenge – all meals for the week come from one cookbook

And there you have it, a focused plan with direction on what to cook for the week. It’s a bit Goofy and Daffy, but hey….that may be next week’s theme! Looney Tunes!

And so, as this entry comes to a close, you know what Porky Pig would say …"Tha Tha That’s All Folks!"

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s Tip: Using websites such as www.allrecipes.com and www.myfridgefood.com can plug you into a recipe by listing the ingredients you have on hand into a meal that your family will enjoy!

                                                 A WRINKLE IN TIME

WHAT HAVE YOU BEAN WAITING FOR

Old Mother Frugal’s shopping strategy consists of couponing, sales, BOGO, Manager or “In-Store” special’s, and marked-down items.  If the item doesn’t fit into one of those five categories, it does not make it to the cash register.

Over time, a stock-pile of canned items has accumulated in Old Mother Frugal’s cupboards.

And over time, those small Ziploc bags of leftovers have become lost in the “Deep Freeze” that is known as the kitchen freezer to the everyday cook.

And who of us hasn’t shoved just one more item into a crevice on the top shelf of the freezer because “it’ll fit”, when it really doesn’t and an avalanche of food topples forward.

All this to say…it’s time for another episode in the series of “Old Mother Frugal’s Pantry Challenge”.

Yes frugal friends, it’s been ongoing for the past six weeks.  Funds are limited on average to $20/wk for perishable items such as milk, orange juice, fresh fruits and vegetables of the season. All cooking takes place from whatever is on hand in the cupboards and freezers.

To keep motivated, each week has had a “theme” because just going with “Meatless Monday”, “Taco Tuesdays”, “Wacky Wednesday”, etc…etc. just wasn’t so to speak, the butter on my bread.

It began with “The Top Shelf” Challenge. 

The self-imposed rule was everything stocked on the top shelf of the freezer had to be used first before leaving that shelf for another.  After two weeks, the Top Shelf Challenge ended and it was time to move onto the next challenge.

“What Lies Beneath” seemed like the obvious moniker for what was to follow “The Top Shelf”.  It’s those little bags that get tossed into the freezer and then other food items get tossed on top of that, and more items on top of that.  “What Lies Beneath” becomes at times, a surprise.  A week was dedicated to that challenge.

With the top shelf of the freezer empty, frozen items that were beneath other items were moved into the empty space. 

A planned road trip found itself wedged into my weeks of pantry challenges.  So, the pantry challenge went on the road too.  Searching through the freezer, any prepared frozen meals were packed into a cooler and taken on the road.  Each hotel had a refrig/microwave making ‘dining in’ welcomed after spending endless hours in the car. The savings were welcomed as well.

After a month of themes and pantry challenges, spending on average $20/wk, could this last any longer?  Along came the “You CAN Do This” pantry challenge!  Each dinner incorporated a canned item from the pantry into the recipe.

The canned items are fruits and vegetables.  After a week of this challenge, there was still a noticeable amount of canned items remaining on the shelves.  Also on the shelves were packages of dried beans.

Incorporating dried beans into the diet is good for financial health as well as one’s medical health. It’s “bean” neglected in Old Mother’s Frugal’s diet on a regular basis.  Beans make a guest appearance at the dinner table but not often enough.

Yes, the next pantry challenge is “What Have You Bean Waiting For” and it starts on Sunday.  Beans can be prepared in a slow cooker (of which there are a few in Old Mother’s cupboards), on the stove top, in a pressure cooker or in an Instant Pot.

There’s no excuse.  What have you bean waiting for?

Sound The Bugle! Today’s tip: Beans go on sale around New Year’s as they are part of many New Year’s traditions. It’s a good time to stock up. There are other times of the year when they go on sale as well. A one pound bag of dry beans is more economical than buying a 15 or 16 oz can of prepared beans at the store. You can save a third or a half of the cost by purchasing a bag of dry beans and make your own [MYO]. MYO beans will be healthier when you control the seasoning content.  They can be make low-salt, no-salt or plenty of salt!  If you have not tried dried beans, what have you bean waiting for?

                                     CORN SOUFFLE FROM CORN CHOWDER

                                                   SWEET POTATO PANCAKES

GUMBO SOUP

DICED HAM WITH LIMA BEANS

PORK AND BEANS

A BAG OF GNOCCHI LIES BENEATH 

SLOPPY JOE LEFTOVER CHILI 

TOP SHELF CHALLENGE - A SUCCESS

A PENNE FROM GRANDPA

Come travel back in time with Old Mother Frugal to the 20^th Century as we depart the time tunnel at Station 1964.  

Back when Old Mother Frugal was…well, not old.  Not a Mother but definitely frugal.  There was no money except for any spare change Old Grandfather Frugal would allocate to three kids. He and Grandma had lived through and came out the other side of The Great Depression.

Station 1964 takes us to Mulberry Street in New York City. An area of the city affectionately known as “Little Italy”.

Back when there was a flat, not an apartment.

Back when there was a telephone, not a landline.

Back when the clothes dryer was a rope and a pulley strung outside the kitchen window into an alley connecting to another tenant's kitchen window.

Back when the icebox was replaced with a refrigerator and an electrical cord to keep food cold.

Back when the brown radio was always “on” and there was no television for kids to watch.  You watched your grandparents live in a few hundred square feet of space.

Back when pasta was called macaroni.  It was sold at the Italian store below the apartment and you selected your variety of macaroni from a glass canister.

“Witcha shapa do you want” bellowed Old Mother Frugal’s grandmother.  The store sold all sizes and varieties and she expected three kids to come to a mutual decision.  Bless her heart.

Ravioli wasn’t sold in the glass containers. Silver Star ravioli was only sold in boxes, stored in the freezer of the Italian store.

During some visits, we were given a directive of “no raviol today, only macaron”.  Ravioli mustn’t have been in her budget. She also never pronounced the sound of “ee”. It was always silent when she spoke in English.

The selected macaroni was then wrapped in white, waxed paper and given to customers who then took it and placed it in their shopping bags made of twine. Back upstairs to the kitchen in the apartment where it was prepared for dinner.

Now it’s the 21^st Century. 

It’s taken over 50 years but Old Mother Frugal has scooped into pounds of semolina and all-purpose flour for a MYO ravioli experiment.  Any time pasta doesn’t fall apart in a pot of boiling water is a successful experiment.  Bravo!

So here it is, recipe for pasta…what you do with it, let your imagination run wild. 

This is what you need for each one serving of pasta.  

If you are making two servings, use 2 eggs, 1 cup of flour, so on and so on. 

Double or triple as needed.

·         1 large egg

·         3 ounces (about 1/2 cup) unbleached all-purpose flour ( I used half semolina/half AP flour)

·         1 teaspoon olive oil

·         1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

It has been Old Mother Frugal’s experience that pasta can feed an army.  If you make ‘one serving’ expect to feed “two people”. 

And as my Grandma used to say… “Mangia”.

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip: Ravioli can be made without fancy or special pasta making equipment. If you have a rolling pin, you can make pasta. Ravioli can be made in advance and frozen by placing them in a single layer on a baking sheet.  Flash freeze and when frozen, transfer to a Ziploc bag to store and cook at a later time.

THE ELEPHANT WALK

Morning walks should be a peaceful time. But Old Mother Frugal’s mind gets bombarded with ideas during this time of peace and tranquility which jolts me into action once back in the kitchen.

A “pantry challenge”.

It consumed my walk this morning.

If you are unfamiliar, a pantry challenge is when one prepares meals only using what is in one’s pantry (that would be dry goods pantry/refrigerator/freezer).  If you must supplement, it would be for weekly perishable items.

In that Old Frugal Mother mind, there has got to be a better way....a more organized way to corral pantry madness.

The refrigerator is a side-by-side so the freezer has 4 shelves.

The pantry challenge will be to only use the freezer items from the top shelf for the 1st week of the challenge.

The next week, create meals from the 2nd shelf of the freezer.

When that is used up, move onto the 3rd shelf, etc.

How do you eat an elephant? 
 One bite at a time.

That is going to be Old Mother Frugal’s approach to my pantry challenge. Create meals from one section of the freezer at a time.

Here is what is crammed onto the top shelf of the freezer:

-  8 chicken wings uncooked
-  Leftover mini-meatballs in spaghetti sauce
-  2 cups of cooked chicken
-  Turkey mini-meatballs
-  3 cups cooked rice
-  1/2 carton vanilla ice cream
-  1/2 package of frozen mixed vegetables
-  12 oz package of frozen pollack fish fillets
- One package turkey bacon
- One package Barber Chicken/Spinach Florentine breasts
- 3 cups of cooked/mashed sweet potatoes

The only thing that stumped Old Mother Frugal during the walk was the ice-cream. What to do with ice-cream?  Well, besides the obvious of eating it as ice-cream but where’s the fun in that?

I'm thinking of waffles. I'm thinking that in place of milk and sugar, using the vanilla ice-cream. It's that kind of creativity that makes a pantry challenge fun...or a flop!

There may be some odd combination of food items being served up on the dinner table at Old Mother Frugal’s house next week.  Bacon wrapped meatballs, anyone???

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip: Periodically go through your freezer and look for those small packages of Ziploc bags that contain tiny remnants of leftover food and create a meal. The easiest meal would be soup. But consider taking a protein (meat/bean); a vegetable; a carb (potato/rice/bean) and mixing them together in a sauce to make an elegant yet economical crepe dinner.  Any leftover crepes can be used as a dessert or a breakfast crepe the next day or stored in the freezer for another meal.

CROQUET OR CROQUETTE

Old Mother Frugal has gotten the word out to family members that she will gladly accept unused holiday ham bones.

What may look like an ordinary bone ready for the trash heap lies within a bounty of meals. It’s no wonder the holiday ham stores sell them for a pretty penny.

After a holiday meal, one of Mother’s Little Helpers saves a ham bone in their freezer. Upon arrival, Old Mother Frugal is informed that the ham bone needs to vacate their freezer for one of my own.  It’s usually large and oddly shaped. It takes up room where something flat and rectangular could fit more comfortably in their freezer.  It’s hard to hide the excitement.

After several months of said ham bone taking up precious space in my own freezer, the time had come to give it a final eviction notice.

The challenge became “what” to do with this ham bone.  Quickly more ideas came to mind than meat on the bone.  First, remove any excess fat from the ham bone.  Set aside, it will be needed to flavor a cup of pre-soaked Great Northern Beans.  One cup of dry beans will yield about 2 and ½ cups of cooked beans. 

Cooked white beans are of great fiber value. Eaten as a side dish or added to soups/chili, it can also be a healthy extender in recipes that call for mashed potatoes.  Mash the cooked white beans, flavor if warranted, and use in place of potatoes.  This tip will come in handy when making ham croquettes aka ham “patties”.

Next, remove all usable meat from the bone.  This particular bone yielded 2/3 lb of ham which when placed in a measuring cup, was 2 cups of cooked ham.  It doesn’t require much ham to make a flavorful dish.  These 2 cups would go far.  But just how far could Old Mother Frugal stretch this ham bone?

With the meat removed, finding the joint on the bone became easier to locate.  Once the bone was divided into two sections, it could be used simultaneously in separate recipes.

The Great Northern Beans went into the pressure cooker along with the ham fat for flavor.

One cup of diced ham became four ham patties with the addition of smashed beans to replace mashed potatoes in the recipe.

The drained liquid from the beans was about 10 cups of bean broth which was reserved to make a pot of Ham and Bean soup using one of the two bone pieces and ½ cup of ham.

A box of Pillsbury Pie Crusts was donated to Old Mother Frugal’s kitchen by another family member.  Half of one crust became the top crust for two individual personal-sized ham pot pies. A roux of butter, flour, broth and milk formed the gravy for which ½ cup ham and frozen mixed vegetables would co-mingle in a ceramic pie dish.

Once the Ham and Bean soup was cooked and the bone piece was removed, it was transferred into another pot with the other bone piece for a pot of Split Pea Soup.

What resembled a trash heap of ham scraps remained on the cutting board.  Old Mother Frugal’s eyes turned to a pile of Russet potatoes.  Loaded baked potato soup was the next recipe for which to use the ham scraps.  In lieu of bacon as the starter, ham scraps and diced onion were sautéed to begin what became a very flavorful pot of soup.

At the end of the morning, five entrees blessed the kitchen table from one free ham bone.

1.       Great Northern Bean and Ham soup

2.       Ham Croquettes (4)

3.       Personal-size Ham Pot Pies (2)

4.       Split Pea Soup

5.       Loaded Baked Potato Soup

The soups will freeze well if they aren’t consumed before they reach the freezer. 

The two pieces of ham bone still have meat affixed to their bones and full of flavor.  Back into the freezer they go for another eviction notice. Smaller in size now, they may not have the intense flavor as when they were first used, but they still can lend flavor to beans or soup.

Those holiday ham bones are a gold mine of flavor and meals for your family beyond glazed ham slices.  Croquet may be an outdoor game.  But croquettes, they are delicious ham patties inside your stomach!

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip:  Soup can be a year-round meal that is economical, nutritious and satisfying to eat.  Whether saving meat bones or vegetables scraps and corn cobs, use soup as a first-course or as a meal to fill your family’s hungry stomachs. 

BEND AND STRETCH

Old Mother Frugal is so old that occasionally there is a flashback to an old favorite TV show called “Romper Room”.

The show comprised of a hostess and she had lots of children on her TV show.  There were props like Mr. Do-Bee, Mr. Music and the Magic Mirror. There were lessons to learn, songs to sing, activities to play with the hopes that your name would be announced at the end of the day.

At some point during the show, the children would all get up from the floor as the hostess began to sing “Bend and Stretch”.  Kids at home would also get up off the floor and participate in the activity too.  “Bend and stretch, reach for the stars….There goes Jupiter, There goes Mars”.

This was a time before Sesame Street.  Yes, Old Mother Frugal is just that old.

So how does ‘bend and stretch’ fit into our lives today? 

If you are frugal, like Old Mother Frugal, you bend to be flexible.  You stretch where you can to save money.

Recently, the local Kroger grocery chain was offering a free box of Annie’s Organic Pasta and (Made with REAL) Cheddar Cheese to loyalty card customers.  

When preparing this boxed macaroni and cheese, only half the cheese packet is used for the recipe.  The remaining half is transferred into a snack-sized, Ziploc bag and returned to the box. This stretches the macaroni and cheese into two meals.

“Bend and stretch, reach for the sky, standing on tippy toes oh so high”… grabbed some elbow pasta from the pantry pouring 12 oz or a generous cup worth of elbow pasta into the box to complete the ingredients for the second meal.  Taped shut, it is returned to Old Mother Frugal’s pantry.

Stretching one meal into two and having two meals for the (free) price of one. Then stretching leftovers into a third meal.  

The leftover ham with mac-n-cheese dinner transformed into a Cream of Potato-Cheddar Broccoli soup to be served with grilled cheese sandwiches.

Bend and stretch!

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip:  It’s never empty when it’s empty.  Before you dispose your plastic container of coffee creamer or laundry detergent, get all that you can out of it.  Add a little water to the coffee creamer and laundry detergent bottles and shake the bottles.  You’ll get more cream for your coffee and more detergent for your laundry. It may be diluted but still good to use.