HAM I AM

HAM I AM

Old Mother Frugal has a founding frugal principle… never turn away free food. 

Around the holidays, there is an unspoken practice that the leftover ham bone never goes into the trash. It finds its way to Old Mother Frugal’s freezer.

It may take months to get from the cook’s freezer to mine, but as long as it’s been frozen, time is not an issue.

Frozen or fresh, it’s a good practice to scrape as much meat off the bone as possible. With the last bone that was donated to my freezer, almost 2 cups of ham meat was extracted from the bone.

The bone is a jewel of flavor, never to be used just once. The first use of the bone yields the most flavor however that doesn’t mean that future uses won’t be tasty. Oh contraire! Old Mother Frugal has used a ham bone as many as three times to extract flavor in various recipes.

The first round yields a lentil or a split pea soup. The second round is used to cook beans to give them additional flavor. The last round is used as bone broth. The broth can be used to cook rice or leafy vegetables such as collard greens or to soak cornbread that is not as fresh as when it is baked the first day. The broth is also useful when pureed beans are too dry and they need some liquid to moisten them.

Now the meat! There are so many tasty recipes to use ham bits. Need a breakfast waffle? Ham and cheese added to the batter makes a flavorful waffle. As an added bonus, homemade waffles freeze well and can be toasted or reheated in your microwave. Grab and go out the door in the morning on your way to work or to the school bus.

For a brunch, try a ham and cheese potato patty cake and serve with a fried egg. Another brunch menu item is ham and broccoli quiche.

Finely diced ham bits flavor a split pea or lentil soup for lunch or dinner with a grilled sandwich.

When meat is used as the “accent” and not the main feature, you will reduce your food costs and not compromise flavor of your meals while stretching your food dollars.

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip: Need ham but don’t want to buy a whole ham and don’t have a ham bone? Consider a ham steak. With a coupon and a good sale, ham steak can be diced into small cubes to stretch your food dollars. Freeze leftovers for your next meal.

                                                 HAM AND POTATO CAKE WITH

                                                          FRIED EGG

 

 

CRUSTLESS HAM BROCCOLI QUICHE

 

HAM LENTIL SOUP

                          

                                HAM AND CHEDDAR CHEESE WAFFLE

WHAT'S UP DOC

Old Mother Frugal has been on a self-imposed pantry challenge.

You ask, “What is a pantry challenge”?

It’s when you create meals based on what you have in your pantry. No shopping in advance. No big shopping while on the pantry challenge. It requires taking inventory of your pantry and eating accordingly.

You design your own “rules” on when to spend money, if any at all… for milk, eggs, perishable fruit; how much you will spend, it should be minimal in amount, and for how long the pantry challenge will take place.

If your family does not enjoy leftovers, any leftovers that you have from one meal is recreated and transformed into another meal.

Last month, Old Mother Frugal’s pantry challenge covered 18 days. This month, the challenge has taken place all month. The fun part about a pantry challenge is the creative juices that flow from such an event.

An added bonus is the savings that takes place at the end of the challenge. During my challenge, I had a low of $10 spending for the week and never exceeded $13 for a one-week period.

You experience what it is like to have a finite amount of money to spend and having to rely solely on what you have in your pantry for meals.

Until this event, homemade waffles with carrots and cinnamon would never have crossed my mind. They were delicious. What’s up with that? A dish called “cowboy beans” was an epic fail until they were transformed into a bean mixture for bean burritos. There were no flour tortillas in the house. The first successful stack of homemade flour tortillas were made during this challenge without a tortilla press.

At least once a week, a pot of “The Week in Review Soup” was made from broth in the freezer and any meat/vegetables that were left uneaten over the course of the previous day’s dinners.

If there are unexpected bills coming up and you need to find some cash, consider doing a pantry challenge of your own. If you’re blessed to have a large stockpile of food on hand and you have had items for a very long time, use them up with a pantry challenge.  Whatever your reason for doing so, if only for a week, you may just surprise yourself with the results!

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip: There are several websites that will help you in a pantry challenge. One that comes to mind is www.allrecipes.com. Insert your ingredients and the website will direct you to a recipe.

                                                CINNAMON CARROT WAFFLES 

 

HOMEMADE FLOUR TORTILLAS

 

 

 

PINTO BEAN MIXTURE

 

 

FILLED AND ROLLED BEAN BURRITOS

 

BEAN BURRITOS READY FOR THE FREEZER

 

 

FOUR MOTHERS

Old Mother Frugal’s ancestors came from Italy back in the early 1900’s.  The family is now into its fifth generation here in the United States.

Passed down throughout the generations has been the family red sauce or red gravy recipe.

The sauce or gravy, as referenced by some Italian families, has another name. Sunday Sauce.

Before there were blenders, microwave ovens, crock pots and Insta-Pots, there was a gas stove, a pair of hands, a large pot and a wood spoon in a walk-up apartment in Little Italy on Mulberry Street in New York City.

This was a time when “clean eating” and “whole 30” was a way of life, not a style of eating. It was a time when meal planning during the Great Depression meant having a family member standing on a line for bread or food. It was a time when there was no food waste.

It was also a time when neighbors took care of neighbors.

The story goes that in Old Mother Frugal’s family, Grandma and Grandpa Frugal had jobs so they cooked and fed the families in their apartment building when families had no food. The sharing of food was passed down to the next generation, Old Mother Frugal’s parents. They in turn passed food sharing onto their children. Old Mother Frugal now cooks and shares food with her Mother’s Little Helpers.  Mother’s Little Helpers are now cooking and sharing as well.

Four generations of mothers. Four generations of cooks sharing their love of food with others. The newer gadgets that have been invented since the early 1900’s have improved food preparation. What has lasted through generations are good hearts, a large pot, a good pair of hands and a wood spoon.

SOUND THE BULGE! Today’s tip: There are plenty of recipes on the internet on “how to” make spaghetti sauce. Here are two tips that will make your sauce successful. Allow one hour/28 oz can of simmering time and when your wood spoon can stand on its own in the center of the pot, your sauce is ready to be served. Mangia!

 

 

CAKE TAKES A POUNDING

Now that the heat of summer has gone and the crisp cool autumn days are upon us, all sorts of baking inspirations bombard Old Mother Frugal’s brain. Time to try out those endless recipe clippings crowding the recipe box!

Earlier this fall, all things pumpkin appeared in the cooking repertoire. This included cooking those Halloween pumpkins and using the cooked pumpkin for the Thanksgiving pies this year. Fresh pumpkin has a different flavor than canned and a different coloring as well.

One recipe that has been hanging around the recipe box, front and center, was a lemon buttermilk pound cake. It looked delicious in the magazine picture. It was going to be a bit of clean-up for one pound cake. So why make one? Make two! One for now, and one will be for the freezer.

Being frugal doesn’t only apply to money; it applies to one’s time as well. Filling the oven with as many baked goods at the same time as possible is also a cost savings. A single layer round cake, a tray of cupcakes and a loaf pan will fit comfortably in an oven.

Back to the lemon pound cake…

The recipe called for the cake to be baked for 65-75 minutes. Timer set at 55 minutes, because they say “ovens will vary”. Undercooked at 55 minutes, it stayed in the oven an additional 10 minutes, bringing it to the 65 minute minimum. Through the glass baking dish, it appeared a bit too brown on the sides and on the bottom.

Once cooled and released from the baking dish, part of the pound cake remained attached to the bottom of the greased loaf pan. Burnt. The pound cake was more or less a “half pound cake”, looking very unattractive and unappealing to eat.

Of course, it could not be thrown away because there are now two of these and lots of ingredients. With the assistance of social media and Google, the pound cake was transformed into trifle. Old Mother Frugal’s pantry had the requisite ingredients and having never made trifle, the challenge was on!

This experience does show that one can turn lemon into lemonade. Adding some blueberries and whipped topping just was the “icing on the cake”.

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip: The prices of food and ingredients to cook food have escalated this year. Just look at the price of eggs. Don’t be so quick to toss a failure into the trash. With some ingenuity and social media acquaintances, your dinner guests will delight in your creation!

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING BORROWED TO "MAKE DO"

Old Mother Frugal was recently confronted with a cooking equipment conundrum.

At hand was the issue of converting a solid piece of pork butt into ground pork. That ordinarily would not have been a challenging situation but this was no ordinary situation.

Taking advantage of a pork butt sale, the piece of pork was boneless and slated for five meals. One meal required ground pork to be incorporated with ground chuck and transformed into meatloaf.

Other ideas for this meat was to use part of it for pork stew, part of it to simmer and flavor spaghetti sauce, one part was designated as pulled pork and the last part to go into the freezer to be used at a later time.

With a price point between $1.19/lb and $1.49/lb, this piece of meat came in on the lower end at $1.19/lb. With the right equipment, $7.81 of meat had the potential to cover a week’s worth of dinners. Consequently, having to purchase equipment to transform a solid piece of pork into ground pork would have defeated the purpose of frugal meal dining.

The situation arose as Old Grandmom Frugal’s kitchen was lacking a food processor or blender. Once upon a time, her kitchen was equipped with such a device. In an attempt to find it, an exhaustive search throughout her house was conducted to no avail.

The next best thing would be to grind this meat “old school” style with her old fashioned meat grinder. It was a heavy, steel kitchen tool that screwed onto her kitchen table and with a long handle, she would churn the meat by hand. It had to be somewhere in the house but endless hours later, that turned out to be another unsolved mystery.

Confronted with two unsolved mysteries, it was time to develop a new strategy. One strategy was to purchase a small food chopper or borrow something from someone that could grind meat. Quickly, the idea of purchasing new equipment was eliminated; it would have elevated the cost of my inexpensive meal.  

Only needing a cup of ground pork, borrowing equipment for a few pulsations was the answer. From a good neighbor, a mini-chopper was there, in the kitchen, in short order.

The mystery of the missing kitchen equipment was never resolved but resolve produced a very tasty pork and beef meatloaf dinner!

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip: Before spending money on a new kitchen tool or piece of equipment, borrowing the item is a good way to determine if it is worth your while to purchase the item.

RAIN IN THE SPENDING

There have been times when Old Mother Frugal had food in the cupboards but little money in the wallet for groceries. During these periods of reigning in the spending, one succumbs to the “pantry challenge”.

A “pantry challenge” is using whatever is in your cupboards and pantries to cleverly create and serve a meal to your family.

What better time than a rainy day to “reign” in the spending and take inventory of what is on hand in the pantry. Actually, it is during the rainy times that make for an opportune time to reorganize the pantry too.

This particular pantry challenge came about because the month had almost five full weeks and that particular fact went unnoticed until the last two weeks of the month. Spending as if there were only four weeks between grocery deposits of money into the bank account, quickly came the realization that there was going to have to be some concessions.

It may be time to use those 14.5 ounce cans of tomatoes in the cupboard instead of the more desired 28 ounce cans of tomatoes to make spaghetti sauce. Canned corn may have to substitute for ears of fresh corn on the cob; canned peaches and canned sliced apples in place of fresh. After all, one purpose of the stockpile is to use it during periods of the figuratively spoken of “rainy day”.

During a recent period of rainy days, two main objectives were accomplished.

First, menu planning from the cupboards and pantry; then reorganize the hall pantry.

The hall pantry was intended by the builder to be a coat closet. Old Mother Frugal had other plans for it. College dorm wire-rack cubes came home with one of the Little Mother’s Helpers and well, let’s just say they never returned to a college dorm room.

By the time the rainy days were over, there were cooked meals in the refrigerator and freezer where once there were only ingredients. And the coat closet? It looked every bit of an organized pantry that it was intended to be.

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip: Find an ingredient and make it a theme. During this pantry challenge, ground beef was the ingredient and the theme was Italian and Mexican dinner meals. In about an hour, using many of the same ingredients and tweaking an occasional spice, a 6-serving tray of lasagna, stuffed shells for two adults and cheesy enchiladas were the main menu items for the week.

                                    STUFFED SHELLS AND LASAGNA

 

 

FILLING FOR CHEESY MEAT ENCHILADAS

 

 

                                                 THE HALL PANTRY

                                            

 

 

 

 

 

HERE KITTY KITTY

Old Mother Frugal is old. Just how old? A testament to old age maybe that you can remember a time before credit cards.

It was an era when one either paid in full by cash or by check at time of purchase. There were some retail establishments that had an in-house payment plan. The concept was called “lay-away”. It may have been the precursor to credit cards.

The buyer would make a deposit towards a large purchase, take it home and pay it off over a period of time, with interest as determined by the retail store. A monthly bill would arrive in the mail and payment was made to the store. This practice still exists today.

Old Grandmom Frugal was a bookkeeper and not a fan of the lay-away program. She and Old Granddad Frugal were children of The Great Depression. If they didn’t have the cash on hand to make a purchase, the purchase waited until there was money “in the envelope”. It was a time in history when "you just make do”.

Ah, the envelopes. They were yellow in color and were housed in a brown vinyl pouch. The hand-held device was aptly inscribed “Envelopes”.

Every yellow envelope was given a name and a dollar amount. It was their “kitty” or “petty cash” that contained the money for all things being purchased or utilities to be paid. Each month, the amount of cash grew in the envelope or was emptied when a bill was paid in full. To this day, Old Granddad Frugal still uses his yellow envelopes.

Old Mother Frugal used a jar system for her Mother’s Little Helpers. The concept was to save for an item that was “wanted”. There was a time in our family when cell phones were a “want”. Today, they appear to be a “need”. Establishing one’s needs from one’s wants was lesson number one.

A middle-aged Old Mother Frugal did not “want” to be chasing down teenagers for cash to pay their bills. They had to save in advance and then they could make their prideful purchase.

Lessons from The Great Depression have much to teach a new generation of learners. If you have the time or desire, you can read online stories from “The Greatest Generation”. There may be some tips and ideas from yesterday for handling your frugality today.

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip: Do you still occasionally get hardcopy bills with an envelope to return your payment? If you are paying online (tip: saving money on a stamp!) use the envelope and begin your own kitty system. Mark each envelope with a purpose (movies, gym, vacation, dry cleaners, fun, etc). After you have paid your mandatory monthly bills, deposit any remaining money as cash into your envelope/jar/Excel spreadsheet. The tech savvy readers may want to try YNAB at www.youneedabudget.com. Some months, there may be no money to deposit but the feeling of relief when you can pay in full will be priceless.