BONE-US MEALS

Old Mother Frugal has been making soups for years and they always start with a homemade broth.

Making broth came from a need to save money. Boxed and cans of broth were too expensive given the amounts needed to make soup to feed a family of five.

As the years progressed, a secondary cause for a ‘make you own’ (MYO) broth came to light.

Health.

The amount of sodium in a serving of box and canned broths is staggering. 

When Old Mother Frugal was told to limit salt, reading labels became a new hobby. Lower sodium broths are still high in sodium. Just less high!

Using shrimp tails and water to cover them, MYO fish broth. This adds a depth of flavor to clam chowder or any fish chowder in place of plain water.

Using ham bones, a ham broth can be made for cooking dry pinto beans. Served with cornbread, it’s a favorite meal in the southern states.

Beef bones roasted, then cooked in water, makes a great beef broth. Seldom made in Old Mother Frugal’s kitchen as beef is expensive and so are beef bones!

Oxtails. It’s amazing that years ago, around the time of the Great Depression in the US, they were throw-a-ways or of very little cost. Today, these are delicacies and very expensive to buy. Have never made oxtail soup…but hear it is delicious.

Old Mother Frugal uses pork bones from pork butts/shoulder to flavor her Italian Red Sauce for spaghetti. However, a pork broth would be a great base for gravy.

Broths from chicken bones and turkey carcass are the most frequently made broths in Old Mother Frugal’s kitchen.

Over the years, Mother’s Little Helpers have willingly contributed to the freezer supply of turkey carcasses and ham bones.

Returning from a most recent visit to one of Mother’s Little Helpers, a cooler contained three turkey carcasses and a ham bone for the drive home.

This weekend, two of the three carcasses were defrosted for the slow cookers. Yes, you read that right. There are multiple slow cookers in Old Mother Frugal’s kitchen cupboards.

Why?

Sometimes large ones are needed, sometimes small ones. Sometimes oval shaped when other times round will do much better. They are relatively inexpensive at thrift stores.

The meals that are created from bones are called “bone-us” or bonus meals. They are free meals created from pantry staples in the kitchen.

Let’s break down how two turkey carcasses can feed Old Mother Frugal and her Journeyman hubby.

Meal #1 was Turkey Noodle Soup using 2 cups of turkey meat removed from the carcass and broth made earlier in the month. There were homemade noodles in the freezer along with a sandwich bag of cooked pinto beans. Served with salad and 3 dinner rolls.

There is leftover soup for lunch.

Meal #2 was a Turkey Burger/Patty dinner using 1 cup of turkey meat from the carcass to make two turkey patties. One patty sitting atop a mound of smashed red potatoes with gravy, and a salad.

Two cups of turkey bits and pieces still were in need of a recipe so Cheesy Turkey-Bean Burritos for Meal #3 with leftovers for lunch.

Two slow cookers full of turkey broth for Minestrone Soup and Pasta e fagioli down the road. These are Meals #4 and #5.

Remember, Old Mother Frugal has not had any out-of-pocket expense making 5 dinner meals and leftover lunches. These are created from staples in the pantry.

Five wonderful dinner entrees and lunch leftovers… from what many would have routinely thrown in the trash. 

Yes, it is true.

One person’s trash is Old Mother Frugal’s treasure! It can be yours too!

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip: Ask family members for their turkey and ham bones during the holiday season if they have no plans to use these for themselves!  Larger families may not reap as many meals as feeding a family of two, but five cups of meat and two pots of soup from two turkey carcasses are quite a “bone-us” to extending those food budget dollars!

OLD MOTHER FRUGAL DOES MATH

Browsing for marked downs, “Manager Specials” and clearance items is what Old Mother Frugal does. It’s her “jam” as the current generation of kids likes to say.

Not quite sure when that fruity spread on peanut butter sandwiches became something other than a fruity spread but apparently it did.

Back to the discounted items. This type of shopping does save money which extends the grocery budget but occasionally requires outside-the-box thinking.

Strategy #1 is to think “can this item be deconstructed” to create other meals?

For example, last summer a grocery store was selling ‘gourmet bleu cheese burgers’ at half price.

There were some solid pieces of bleu cheese in that burger. It was one, ample half-pound gourmet burger but Old Mother Frugal needed to feed two adults.

Plucking out the cheese for another meal which required cooking (was not going to eat raw cheese that came in contact with raw ground beef) was the first step.

Bleu cheese used as a stuffing with spinach, asparagus or ham in a chicken breast enhances the flavor of the chicken breast for an elegant yet inexpensive stuffed breaded chicken breast dinner because the expensive cheese was free.

With the remaining ground beef, two ‘quarter pounders’ were constructed as dinner for two. That is how Old Mother Frugal solved the problem of how to buy one, marked-down gourmet bleu cheese burger and turn it into four separate dishes. Two stuffed chicken breasts, two quarter-pound hamburgers.

Strategy #2 is to speculate if there are alternative uses for the food item.

Is a box of Earth Mother’s Organic Barley Baby Cereal just for babies? Is its sole purpose just to be eaten as cereal? Can this 59 cent marked-down box of barley cereal be useful in Old Mother Frugal’s pantry? It sure is.

Multiply out the serving size with liquid component and there is no reason why Old Mother Frugal can’t have a bowl of this cereal for breakfast. In most cases, one-quarter cup of uncooked cereal with about ½ cup of water/milk/whey over heat equates to an adult serving of hot cereal.

Other ‘outside the box’ uses for barley cereal is a substitution for bread crumbs or oatmeal in meatloaf. Want different grains in your multi-grain pancakes? Use barley cereal!

Strategy #3 is sorting. Old Mother Frugal looks towards the frozen food section for bargains too and once home, the sorting begins.

Frozen mixed vegetables? Separate out the broccoli from the cauliflower. Those bags of California Blends…separate out the multi-vegetable sliced carrots, green beans, red peppers, etc into smaller sealed plastic bags. It’s a mindless task; you can do it while watching TV. Grab a packet as you need one for your meals.

Frozen pasta meals are good for two different meals. Old Mother Frugal emptied a bag of a chicken carbonara and counted no less than 22 pods of garlic-butter in the bag. Removing half the pods and returning them to the freezer, Old Mother Frugal has instantly created sauce for another pasta meal.

Add leftover chicken or ham pieces to the pasta, one of those frozen vegetable bags mentioned above (green beans or peas) with the garlic-butter packets and presto!

The only technique to make this meal faster to put on the dinner table is to make the pasta in advance and freeze it.

The next time you are in your grocery stores, reflect on these Old Mother Frugal strategies of deconstruction, alternative uses and sorting to see added value to your purchases.

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip: Add, subtract, multiply or divide when you buy an ingredient or an entire entry to extend its use. You will create a bonus meal which in turn extends your grocery budget dollars!

YOU CAN DO IT - PART II

Are you experiencing déjà vu? Are you thinking that you have already read this post?

You are not seeing double nor re-reading an old post.

This is the sequel to last year’s original post entitled “You ‘Can’ Do It”.

The premise of that blog post was to meal plan for a week using cans in Old Mother Frugal’s cupboards.

Old Mother Frugal did it again.

Welcome to the next installment of meal planning using canned goods.  

The accomplice to the cans was a rotisserie chicken. It was a freebie from Sam’s Club making this week of meals very economical and inexpensive yet still healthy.

The canned items in Old Mother Frugal’s cupboard and pantry are numbered with a Sharpie marker. The number indicates the month in which it is best to use the contents of the can.

Stored properly and without damage, canned foods may be used beyond their ‘best use by’ dates. Given two cans from which to choose, Old Mother Frugal prefers to use the older cans first, saving cans with a later ‘best use by’ date for a future meal.

That’s the back story.

Here is the list of cans under consideration…

-       Clams (2) 6.5 oz each

-       White Chicken Chili

-       Red Kidney Beans

-       French – style green beans

-       Mushrooms

-       Asparagus (large and small cans)

-       Cut sweet potatoes

-       Baked beans

Two cans of clams were used with broth made from shrimp tails and fresh potatoes to make a pot of Clam Chowder. This pot was served as an entrée for one dinner and a side dish for a second dinner.

To extend the amount of chicken that was pulled from the rotisserie chicken, a can of White Chicken Chili was incorporated into the Cowboy Beans with Chicken recipe as well as a can of red kidney beans. A can of sweet potatoes and French-style green beans were scheduled to be served but instead it was served over rice with fresh fruit.

That moves canned sweet potatoes and French-style green beans for meals later in the week.

About twice a year, Old Mother Frugal makes a batch of crepes. A batch will yield about 20 crepes. Using five for this meal, 15 crepes are ready to be used for future dinners and desserts. This meal was Chicken with Mushroom and Asparagus Crepes using the cans of mushrooms and asparagus. It was served with free croissants.

Using a larger can of asparagus, classic Chicken Divan was made subbing asparagus for the broccoli. This was a casserole layered with asparagus as the bottom layer, a layer of sliced chicken breast in the middle and parmesan white cheese sauce on top. This was served with the can of sweet potatoes.

Two rotisserie chicken drumsticks were deboned and used to make Chicken Patty Burgers. These were served on burger buns with a can of Heinz Baked Beans, pickles and a cup of soup.

Another entrée created from the rotisserie chicken was Chicken Paprika. This was served with egg noodles and the unused green beans from earlier in the week.

The final meal made from the chicken but required no canned ingredient was a Fruited Chicken Salad.  Old Mother Frugal was able to cull enough chicken scraps from broth made from bones and chicken wings. This meat, combined with diced celery and chopped grapes, made just enough chicken salad to fill two croissants served with fresh fruit and leftover soup from the prior week.

A free chicken valued at $4.98 and 10 cans of food from Old Mother Frugal’s pantry fed two adults for a week. The price of the cans ranged from a low of 27 cents to a high of 99 cents. These meals for a week would have been budget-friendly even if Old Mother Frugal bought the rotisserie chicken!

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s Tip: Check the mark-down and clearance areas of your grocery store when stock-piling your pantry. You can see a savings as much as 50% in your grocery bill by taking advantage of merchandise that has been priced to sell. If can beans are not available, consider dry beans as a cost-effective substitution.

A NEW DECADE WITH AN OLD CLASSIC

Yes, followers, it's been awhile.

Since last we met here in the blogosphere, Old Mother Frugal's family is growing up. 

Mother's Little Helpers are having little helpers of their own and formulating their own tastes and opinions.

In the role of Old Nona Frugal, there are many more concessions yielded to the Grand Little Helpers than, let's say, there were to their parents...aka Mother's Little Helpers.

When Mother's Little Helpers didn't want to eat a meal, there really weren't many options.

When Grand Little Helpers don't want to eat a meal, it's more like bring out the menu of possibilities from which to choose.

Such was the case recently when serving Grand Little Helper a favorite lunch item.

Tomato soup and grilled cheese. This classic combination has been enjoyed by many for generations. It's nice to see it carried into the next generation and a new decade as well!

Being old-school, Old Mother Frugal grabbed the index box of recipes and a can of diced tomatoes from the cupboard shelf and went to the stove to make some soup out of the can of tomatoes. 

The kitchen smelled wonderful. Grand Little Helper was busy playing and paying no mind to the aroma wafting through the atmosphere.

Time to make the grilled cheese sandwich. 

A slice of mild cheddar, nothing too strong to be offensive to the young palate. Two slices so bread. Onto to stove to get all melty and gooey.

How would Grand Little Helper like the sandwich cut? No cutting required.

Good to know!
Time to plate the lunch. 

Soup ladled into a personally selected bowl. Uncut sandwich on a plate. A plastic cup with milk. Old Mother Frugal enjoyed lunch that day. 

Grand Little Helper enjoyed a sandwich of peanut butter and grape jelly. 

Favorites, tried and true as they are, can only be lovingly served up by mom. The ladle has been passed to the next generation in the new decade.

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today's tip: Homemade tomato soup is easy and economical to make and a great base for other soups. With the leftover tomato soup, add white beans such as Great Northern Beans/Navy/Cannelloni and a pasta for a complete meal. Tomatoes, beans as your protein and pasta for your carb. Another option: toasted bread and with a cookie cutter to cut-out a heart shape (you can cut-out any shape: shamrocks, bunnies, pumpkins, etc) and place it on top of the soup. The possibilities are soup-mendous!

                                              BASIC TOMATO SOUP 

PASTA AND BEAN TOMATO SOUP 

CAN TWO DINE FOR $17.99?

How about $17.88?

Old Mother Frugal went into the store to pick up a prescription from the pharmacy.

It was free! 

The pharmacies in our area and maybe yours as well, offer certain drugs at no charge to the customer. If you were to check their website, you may even find a list of those “free” medications.

However, being a grocery store, the temptation to browse was too strong.

By the time the groceries were bagged, the total cost was $17.88.

Here is what was purchased:

-3 bags of Kroger pork rinds

-Kroger whole grain bread

-Kroger mini shredded wheat cereal

-Kroger frozen crinkle cut carrots

-Kroger frozen broccoli cuts

-Michelina frozen shrimp and pasta

-DKSD Lobster cakes (package of 4)

-Kroger ground beef 80-20

-Kroger turkey patties (4)

-Ice cream sugar cones

-3 Kroger no salt added black beans (15 oz cans)

-Kroger Basil and Tomato Sauce

-½ lb ripe bananas

-Wedge of brie cheese

-Sun-Dried tomatoes in olive oil

½ gal Heinz Distilled white vinegar

Can two adults eat 21 meals for $17.88? Old Mother Frugal did some meal planning to find out.

Paying attention to serving size

For two adults, there would be 14 breakfast servings.

-    Shredded mini-wheat cereal box contains 9 servings. Add 1/3 banana to each serving and 6 bowls of cereal will have bananas and 3 will be plain. No milk? Munch on cereal without milk and a piece of banana.

-    Five mornings could be a slice of toast, leaving 15 slices of bread for lunches.

Two adult lunches and 15 slices left in the loaf of bread.

-    One slice per adult, with sun dried tomatoes and Brie cheese for a few days.  This uses 6 slices of bread, 9 slices remain for other lunches.

-    Can of black beans is 3.5 servings, two cans are 7 servings or three days of lunches for two adults. Serving the beans over a slice of bread/toast, leaving 3 slices of bread for another meal.

-    Using ½ cup of black beans (the 7^th serving) and one pork rind bag processed into crumbs make black bean burgers as the 7^th lunch.

Dinner…what’s left?

There is a can of black beans, 3 slices of bread, 2 bags of pork rinds, #1 lb of turkey burgers, #1 lb of ground beef, lobster cakes (4),  Michelina Shrimp and Pasta, Tomato and Basil sauce, frozen broccoli and carrots, vinegar and ice-cream sugar cones.

-         Sunday turkey chili 1 burger, sauce, cup beans w/2 bread or sugar cones.

-         Mon/ Thurs nights remake 4 oz burgers into 3 oz burgers with broccoli.

-         Tuesday night beef meatballs made with 1 pork rind bag, sauce, broccoli

-         Wednesday night beef meatloaf with 1 slice of bread filling and carrots.

-         Friday would be lobster cakes and carrots.

-         Saturday would be any leftovers and the Michelina shrimp/pasta dinner.

Final Thoughts…

For sure, it would be a lean week. It could be augmented if one had staples in a pantry. With an additional $2.12 to bring the cost for the week to $20, one could add an inexpensive fruit (2 bananas), and if money remains, any food item of your choice (milk, eggs, pasta or rice) to further your meals.

SOUND THE BUGLE! Frugal Tip: Old Mother Frugal recommends shopping the perimeter of the store and in the bulk food area. Compare costs. If bulk is less than the processed food in boxes in the middle of the store, buy bulk. Old Mother Frugal likes bulk purchases where you can control quantity of food that is needed based on the money in your wallet!

A "RADISH"CAL EXPERIMENT

Old Mother Frugal is fascinated with how women during the Great Depression fed their families. In some cases, as with her own Old Frugal Grandma, fed other families as well as her own.

Old Frugal Grandma fed her family of four and other families in her apartment building. It was a walk-up in New York City and legend has it that she had her son as the runner up and down the stairs delivering food.

Her son is now 91 years old. If prodded, he will tell stories of his youth during the Great Depression.

From various readings, dandelion salads using dandelion leaves were common during those days. While staring at a bunch of radish on the kitchen counter that little bit of information posed the question in Old Mother Frugal’s mind…why are radish leaves tossed as trash? 

Dandelion greens are edible. Some greens gathered from foraging are edible. Beet greens are edible. Why are radish greens being tossed as trash?

A little bit of research and recipes pop up en masse for radish leaves or radish greens. The most popular of which appeared to be a sauté of olive oil and garlic, then adding greens.

With a sale on radish bunches, the radish experiment took off. Each bunch had 10 or 11 radishes to it with a bounty of leaves. This week, three bunches for $1.00. Not a heavy investment for a culinary experiment.

The leaves filled an 8-cup bowl. But as with any greens that cook, they shrink in size. In this case, 8 cups yielded a half-cup of cooked greens.

The culinary challenge began!

First experiment was adding the cooked radish leaves to an English Muffin breakfast sandwich with an egg and a slice of Baked Forest Ham deli meat. With such success, more radish bunches were purchased.

The next experiment was adding the leaves to soup. Old Mother Frugal found a bag of homemade gnocchi in the freezer. A meatless soup of cannellini beans, gnocchi and radish greens made for a delicious and eye-appealing entrée.

The last experiment was adding the leaves to a pasta recipe with cooked salmon, capers and olives in a marinara sauce.

So give that radish leaf a second thought before tossing into the trash. What you discard are valuable high concentrations of vitamin B6, magnesium, phosphorus, iron, calcium, and vitamin A. There are also antioxidants, protein and dietary fiber in radish greens as well as potassium and folic acid!

Apparently, Grandma knew best!

Sound the Bugle! Today’s tip: While the focus of today’s blog is the greens of the radish, the radish itself should not be overlooked as a source of wonderful nutrients.  A light summer salad of sliced radish coins with salt or with a vinaigrette dressing is a refreshing accompaniment to a meal and economical as well!