THE ITSY BITSY SPIDER

The nursery tune starts out something like this…The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout. Go ahead, sing along. Now add some hand and finger motion. You’ve got it!

Several weeks ago, an itsy bitsy spider went up my leg causing all kinds of havoc to my immune system. Infection set in and medical care was on the horizon.

Being a Sunday, options were limited but I have a favorite urgent care facility that I frequent in times of emergencies. My self-diagnosis was correct; it was my timing that was wrong. Sunday night.

With prescription in hand, the search began for a pharmacy to fill the antibiotic. Over the river and through the woods, DH and I searched every corner pharmacy and grocery store for miles looking for an open pharmacy.

We must have traveled a total of 10 or more miles before finding a 24-hour CVS. At this point, feeling ill and needing to start this antibiotic immediately, I shed my frugal ways and was willing to pay “whatever” to begin the healing process.

“Whatever” cost $52 and change. Ouch. The cure was as painful to swallow as the pain of the spider bite.

Three days and 3 pills later, I developed an allergic reaction to the expensive antibiotic.

My favorite urgent care facility to the rescue once again! The antibiotic was changed and because it was a weekday during daytime hours, I was able to get a better price for my new prescription medication. This one cost $8 and change. What a huge difference.

During emergencies, you are at both the mercy and appreciation of folks who work weekends and “off-shift” hours. Having a small rainy day emergency fund was designed just for such occasions!

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip: For coupons on prescriptions medications, try using www.goodrx.com. Some pharmacies will match Costco prices. You do not need to be a member of Costco to use their pharmacy to get a good price on prescription medication. Keep a list handy of pharmacies that are open “after-hours”. It will save you in time and gas to know where to go in an emergency. Finally, find pharmacies with $4 prescriptions or grocery store pharmacies, such as Publix, which has a list of FREE prescription medications. Keep healthy, stay frugal!

 

 

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED

When Mother’s Little Helpers were younger, there were times when gifts arrived with one of two phrases on the package that sent shivers up and down my spine.

The first was “Batteries Required” and the other “Some Assembly Required”.

“Batteries Required” was straight forward. The package label included the size and the quantity of batteries and as long as batteries were in the house when the package was opened, all was well.

”Some Assembly Required” was not as straight forward. One could spend hours reading, screwing, unscrewing, reading, hammering and pronouncing words that otherwise should remain unpronounced in the process of building the object in the box.

When the youngest of Mother’s Little Helpers was a pre-teen, “some assembly required” took on a new meaning.

He would open the refrigerator door and stare. I’m sure you have someone in your home that does “the stare”.

You see, inside the refrigerator there was “some assembly required”.

Out of sheer frustration one day, I hung a sign on the refrigerator. Yes, it read “some assembly required. I had to explain.

If you want to eat from my refrigerator, “some assembly required”. Cheese and flour tortillas will make a quesadilla. Deli meat and cheese plus two slices of bread will make a sandwich.

There was no drive-thru window on the refrigerator ready with an cordial worker to prepare a meal. In hindsight, Mother’s Little Helpers didn’t need a refrigerator, they needed a vending machine!

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip: Place a list on your refrigerator door of ideas that one can make by using the ingredients in your refrigerator. Sometimes it is hard to come up with ideas on one's own. Meal combos on the door can go a long way to avoid "the stare".

 

GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER

That moment when Mother’s Little Helper asks if a friend can stay over for dinner. That other moment when you get a call from someone you know who is passing through town tonight and you find yourself with an extra dinner guest.

How do you stretch your dinner plans into one or two extra servings?

Amazingly, two chicken breasts can go pretty far with the right extenders. Slice in half, pound flat, stuff with cheese and flavored butter, roll and dip in bread crumbs. That’s an attractive adult dinner with side dishes. If you have leftover vegetables, add them into the stuffing mix as well.

Slice chicken breasts thin, sauté and add to box of cooked pasta with your favorite sauce. This can be a lemon/garlic/chicken stock sauce, a brown butter sauce or a honey/orange juice or pineapple sauce. The honey/orange juice sauce works well with rice.It all depends on what is in your pantry.

Kabobs on skewers and served over rice…another great way to prepare chicken breasts for unexpected company. Fruits (pineapple/melon/) or vegetables (onions/green peppers) are great extenders and much less expensive to purchase than extra boneless chicken.

My mother would assign me the task of making hamburgers from ground chuck whenever she wanted to serve hamburgers for dinner. We were a party of five.

Why me? I could take a pound of ground chuck and make it yield five hamburgers. She never knew how I did it but on burger night, I knew my role. I couldn’t cook, but I could eek out an extra burger from that pound of meat.

Cooked ground meat with onions and chopped/grated vegetables stuffed into large pasta shells covered with sauce makes a small amount of ground meat feed many. Sautéed ground meat and a fun pasta shape mixed with sauce and mozzarella topping makes “pizza pasta” for hungry children or for adults, call it “baked ziti”.  

Your pantry is your friend when it comes to unexpected dinner guests. Combined with the web, a very resourceful tool, you can keep your budget in check without writing a check to your local grocer.

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip: In your recipe box (virtual or physical), keep “go to” recipes that you can make to ramp up “nothing to something” in a short time. Being prepared is another technique to maintaining a frugal budget!

       A BOX OF PASTA, CANNED TOMATOES, A JAR OF ARTICHOKES

                                  PERSONAL MEAT LOAF FOR EACH GUEST

 

 

TWO STUFFED CHICKEN BREASTS YIELDING FOUR SERVINGS

 

SECRETS OF A COOKBOOK HOARDER

There was a time when I could spend hours and hours reading. Summertime was my favorite time. Going back to my childhood of reading novels, I particularly liked series.

My favorites were “Little House on the Prairie” and “The Bobsey Twins”. When one book ended, I eagerly awaited the next in the series.

I thought my children would like reading if I could hook them on a series as well.

For the eldest of Mother’s Little Helpers, there were “Boxcar Children” and “Pee Wee Scouts”.

His first hand in the kitchen was replicating a cookie recipe from one of the Pee Wee Scouts books. I may even still have the handwritten recipe that he wrote for me over 20 years ago.

For my middle helper, it was “Sweet Valley” series and for the youngest helper, it was the “Goosebumps” series of books. The older two were voracious readers; the youngest had more distractions, read as video games. as competition for a good book.

For myself, I discovered another type of book that I enjoyed reading. Cookbooks!

A nice feature to a cookbook is that you can read a section. I was a busy working mom. Unlike a novel that goes on and on for chapters, a cookbook is segmented into topics. You can start at any place in the book, and not always at the beginning. How “novel” is that!

Recently, I discovered that I’m somewhat of a cookbook hoarder. I had not realized this until doing some cleaning and reorganizing just how many cookbooks that I’d purchased over the past three decades.

I made an honest attempt to consolidate.

I had three piles: the 'donate' pile, the 'keep' pile and the 'not so sure' pile. The donate pile was too small. The pile of cookbooks to keep was too large and nothing made it onto the “not so sure pile”. Why? Because every time I touched a cookbook, I’d start reading.

All these books, and yet I still can’t decide what to make for dinner.

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip: With the invention of the internet, there are so many cooking and recipe websites. Save resources, use the web. If you must touch a cookbook, visit the local public library and borrow it. You have already paid for those books with your tax dollars.

                                  THE "KEEP" PILE OF COOKBOOKS

 

 

JUST ESSENTIALS JULY-UPDATE

The month has gone by and as I reflect on my challenge, it comes with mixed results.

My first goal was to spend money on only essential items to restock my pantry.

Except for two cartons (they aren’t gallons anymore) of ice-cream, I stayed on task.

The second goal was to spend only $100 of my $160 budget on groceries, HBA and food. I wanted to see if I could carry over $60 and move that money forward for a future month.

To that end, I rang up $100 worth of goods but missed buying a few items: black beans, red beans, celery and yellow cornmeal.

Had I not bought the ice-cream, I may have been able to use that $5.50 on those items. It would have been close.

Yet, I don’t find that to be a failed challenge. The ice-cream was on sale and I could not find the four mentioned items on sale this month. Waiting another week to incorporate them into the August budget was not austere on my meal preparations. And I have $60 to carry forward.

With that thought, it brought me to my next challenge: Austerity August.

As I evaluate my pantry moving into August, I seem to be in good shape to start the month. No meat or fish were purchased in July as my freezer pantry was well stocked. Heading into August, that inventory still looks good.

As a weekend shopper, August is going to be a big challenge for austerity. There are five weekends of shopping. If anyone is up to the challenge, that would be me! Stay tuned!

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip: For parents that are preparing children for back-to-school, August can be an expensive month. Set aside a designated amount of money for your back-to-school shopping whether it is clothing, mandatory school supplies, snack items or after-school activities. If you live in a state that has “tax-free” shopping weekend before school begins, it may be a good time for savings. If you can endure the crowds!

                                 MAKE YOUR OWN BEAN SOUP MIX

 

THE UNBRIDAL SHOWER

The concept of the unbirthday, as immortalized in the Disney movie, “Alice in Wonderland”, is something I can wrap my head around and run with.

So much so, that I spun it into an “unbridal” shower.

When Mother’s Little Helper was about to marry Prince Charming, she wasn’t too keen on the traditions of pre-marital celebrations, such as the ‘bridal shower’.

Marrying at Disneyworld, what better place than Orlando to host her “unbridal shower”!

Borrowing some ideas from “Alice in Wonderland”, the theme for the “unbridal shower” was a tea party. Goodies and beverages were marked “eat me” and “drink me”. Gifts were labeled “open me” and it was a wonderfully relaxing way to spend the morning hours leading up to the early evening wedding.

Being on the frugal side herself, she seemed to enjoy the low-key festivities of her “unbridal shower”. It took a little imagination and a lot of risk, but the “unbridal shower” was a success.

Several hours later, she was a beautiful “Princess Bride”.

Years have passed, Prince Charming and his Princess Bride continue to live happily ever after. They have even added an heir to their royal family who is now an inquisitive and adorably charming little boy. Such is the circle of life.

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip: To save energy and time when baking, make a cake using layer cake pans or bake cupcakes. If making cookies, consider making one large cookie in a pizza pan or 8x8 square dish and divide the cookie into bars when the baking is done. Your dessert will be ready in 15 -20 minutes with minimal effort on your part!

                                       ONE LAYER CAKE DIVIDED IN HALF

 

                                         BAKE TWO: ONE NOW, ONE LATER

 

EGG PLANTED ON MY FACE

The moment you realize you have that ever embarrassing, most humiliating “egg on your face”.

Those moments [yes, more than once] seemed to come most often when Mother’s Little Helpers were teens.

It’s not enough that I was perceived as not “all knowing” but I had a reputation to live up to.

I don’t think my teens were much different from other teens. Trying to pull one over on one’s parents is a rite of passage of all teens, regardless of the generation. With technology, I think it will be a little harder for Grandmother’s Little Helpers though.

I must admit, I was pretty good at figuring out their little ploys and kept the “egg on my face” moments to a minimum.

Except for those lost DMB tickets. For non-millennial readers, that would be Dave Matthew Band.

What began as a nice gesture turned into a calamity in the amount of time that it takes for a coat of paint to dry on four walls.

The tickets were on Mother’s Little Helpers dresser when the project began so they had to be moved or they would get ruined by paint. At the end of the day, the bedroom was coated in fresh paint and I was coated in “egg on my face”.

You see, the tickets were gone. I mean, as in “nowhere to be found” gone.

To this day, the tickets never turned up. Anytime an item goes missing, I now refer to it as GWDMB. [Gone With Dave Matthew Band].

I had to make good on what I lost. Do you know how expensive purchasing DMB tickets are at the last minute through one of those scalpers, I mean ticket brokers? Let’s just say, not one of my more frugal moments. 

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip: A large tray of eggplant parmesan will yield more servings if side dishes of pasta or bread go along with it. In my “cook once, eat twice” philosophy; I bake the eggplant slices so that the oven does the work and not my aging feet. Plus, it is a healthier version than fried eggplant. Part of the tray is served with pasta; leftovers as a sandwich for dinner another night. Eggplant parmesan freezes well, so give this one a try!                                                 

                                       BAKED EGGPLANT SLICES

 

 

ASSEMBLED BAKE EGGPLANT PARMESAN

 

LEFTOVERS