The Story of a Frugal Dinner

By Elizabeth Prata

I scored this week on the Free Friday Download.

Kroger grocery store has a program where they have one item for free every Friday. Usually it's a small bag of candy, or chips or other snack food. Occasionally it's real food like yogurt, or this week: Queso Fresco, fresh cheese.

Queso blanco, with similar cheeses including queso fresco, is a creamy, soft, and mild unaged white cheese, commonly used in the Iberian Peninsula, several Latin American countries including Mexico, and many parts of the United States. The name queso blanco is Spanish for "white cheese", but similar cheeses are used and known throughout the world. ... It is similar to (if slightly more acidic than) pot cheese and farmer cheese.
Queso blanco is considered one of the easier cheeses to make, as it requires no careful handling and does not call for rennet or a bacterial culture. Wikipedia

Hmmm, what can I do with fresh cheese? Googling this query brought me to a recipe for cheesy enchiladas.

Being gluten free, I've tried corn tortillas before but they always taste so bad to me. Then a few weeks ago having dinner at a friend's house, corn tortillas were part of a make-your-own taco bar. I added really juicy tomatoes to my plate and when the juice mixed with the corn tortilla, it was transformed.

Seeing the recipe for enchiladas, the explanation section called for heating the tortillas, which I always did, and then giving the tortilla an oil bath or dredging it in enchilada sauce! Remembering the tonato sauce transformation, I thought Bingo! Let's do this!

I followed the recipe and added enchilada sauce to the bottom of my baking dish while my tortillas were heating on the griddle. I dredged both sides in additional enchilada sauce, and added the now crumbled fresh cheese. I placed these babies seam side down, and added chopped onion to the top, then the rest of the cheese, topping with the remaining enchilada sauce.

Bake at 350 for 25 minutes or so. You can top with avocado and sour cream, both ingredients I had on hand. A gluten free, inexpensive dinner! Win-win!

The take-away: I started with the free ingredient and made it the main ingredient. I built the dish around the cheese. Then looked for recipes featuring that ingredient where I also had most of the other indgredients on hand. The avocado, sour cream and onion were in my pantry and fridge. I only had to buy the enchilada sauce. It took a minimum of effort and time toput it together. I did it on a school night. It took 20 minutes to assemble and 25 minutes to heat through in the oven.

Cost:

Fresh Cheese: $0.

Tortillas: A packet of 30 of them is $1.50, so 6 tortillas would cost 3 cents each, or for the 6 I cooked, 18 cents.

Enchilada sauce, $1.50. I used the whole can.

Onions: negligible. I  used a bit of one large onion. Shavings, really.

Avocado: on sale for .77 cents each. I used half of one with my meal.

Sour cream: on sale for 99 cents.

My serving was three enchiladas. So the cost for this meal was roughly $1.50. You can add Mexican rice to the meal as a side dish, but I figured the tortillas with the cheese and avocado were rich enough, and I had a pot of tea going on the side, so, I cut it off there. For Friday night's meal of the remaining three enchiladas, I might add rice to the festivities, but for now, it's time to eat (frugally)--

Buon Appetito!

Errands are fun when you have scenery like this

By Elizabeth Prata

I am no fan of errands. When I finish work or school, which are the only regularly scheduled activities that draw me away from my home, I like to scuttle back ASAP. But being alive means you have to sustain yourself, and that means an occasional trip to the bank, mechanic's, hairdresser's, Dollar Store, grocery store and so on.

It's been raining non-stop here for a good few weeks. And cold. A cold rain with temps in the forties is just chilling. But I see that the rain is helping the blossoms grow. We have forsythia and dogwood and some fruit trees blooming already. We also have greened-up grass and some buds on the trees.

As I was driving home yesterday after school, I had to stop at the Bank. Although the day was a bit gray, the scenes around weren't. I love my little town and the county I'm living in. Here are a few charming scenes. I got a huge kick out of the no trespassing signs. Looks like they mean it!

Frugal Cooking: Cherry Tomatoes, the Tightwad Gazette style

By Elizabeth Prata

I've mentioned before that Kroger has a policy where they reduce some produce items and put them in a special spot for sale. Anything in the red mesh bag will be 99 cents. These items might be a bunch of oranges that are a tiny bit soft, brownish bananas, eggplants with one wrinkle, or a sealed pint of cherry tomatoes with one cherry tomato gone moldy. Normally the items are still at near-fresh capacity. Or at least they seem good enough to me. If I can buy a $4 cauliflower for 99 cents by shaving away one pinpoint of brown spot, you better believe I'm going to do it.

I learned about thrifting in the 1990s. I'd bought into the 1980s culture of 'more is better' and 'greed is good' rhetoric. Well maybe not the greed part but the prevailing position of Americans that upward mobility is a given and that accumulating more is always better.

One thing that attitude did for me was instill a hard work ethic and a savings mentality. My husband and I bought a house with 18% down, at age 24. In those days putting 20% down was expected, none of these loans with no percent down. We filled our brand new three-bedroom raised ranch with furniture, stereo equipment, large screen TV, and golf clubs, and two cars in the garage of course, one new and one used, and felt we were living the American Dream. And that was the dream, then.

The husband left a few years later, seeking another, better, American Dream, as Ecclesiastes says we vainly do. I was left paying the mortgage in a beginning teacher's salary.

Uh-oh.

It was a struggle. A life that had seemed shiny and new and appropriate was now a millstone, a burden, and a terror. The first of the month with the mortgage payment was enough to give nightmares. I took on a second job, then a third, then a roommate. A mini-economic downturn happened and the real estate crashed. I was stuck with a house that wouldn't sell, tired of working 7 days a week, and wondering if this was what life was all about.

Eventually I sold the house for what I'd bought for it, barely, and decided to pursue another mind-set. Frugality. I'd tracked on the American Dream of husband, house, career with no thought, because that is what you did, after college. Now I was older and wiser and decided to make more thoughtful decisions about my lifestyle, sans pressure from society.

That's where frugality entered.

From 1990 to 1996 A Maine woman named Amy Dacyczyn (pronounced like decision) wrote and published a little newsletter called The Tightwad Gazette. The sub-hed to the newsletter was: Promoting Thrift as a Viable Alternative Lifestyle.

This was news to me. You mean accumulating stuff was not part of an upwardly mobile lifestyle? Buying - or not buying - into the spendthrift economy was a choice? Living with what you have, and making do was a real thing?

Her newsletter was revolutionary, literally. I was living in Maine and so was she and her family, the proximity made me curious, the useful tips hooked me.

Being thrifty was good. Being frugal left me open to spending what I wanted to spend on, not having to spend on a credit card debt and not paying a mortgage, but travel, books, and this new thing called the internet.

Here is the Amazon link to Amy Dacyczyn's Gazette and she also wrote three other books.

So anyway, what a long introduction to my dish about tomatoes!

I look for marked down produce and the other day I found these pints of tomatoes. Normally $4, $3 if on sale, these were marked down to 50 cents each!

The commitment one makes if buying these items, is to actually use them (thus NOT denying another person their opportunity for a favored fresh vegetable) and to use them right away so they don't go bad. So I halved all of them.

I was going to roast them which would have been great, but I didn't feel like turning on the oven. I use it for storing cookie sheets, muffin tins, griddle, huge saute pan, and three baking dishes, and I just didn't feel like hauling them all out of the oven. I chose to grab a large stock pot and do the cherry tomatoes on top of the stove instead.

Vegetable oil, salt, and pepper and we are good to go. I let them cook, covered, for a while till the tomatoes were soft and there was a lot of juice. I added some mushrooms I had on hand, also a frugal buy.

At the end I threw in some fresh basil, also a frugal buy, and now I have a large stock pot of tomatoes and mushrooms in sauce. If I ate pasta, I'd have boiled some penne and used it for a sauce. Also can toast a baguette hard and put some on top with a bit of cheese. But instead gluten-free me made some quinoa and used the tomatoes as a side dish. Can also add rice, or any other grain you like. Or simply have with a bit of cheese for a side dish sans grain, veggie only.

Were there any bad tomatoes in the 4 pints I bought? Yes. But only 1 or so in each pint. This was the waste:

Not a bad deal at all! I've eaten this dish every day this week. I had it with fish, with shrimp, with cheese, and with quinoa. And all for $1.98. Thanks, Amy Dacyczyn!

Tree bones

By Elizabeth Prata

Don't you think that in winter, with the leaves fallen off and exposing the trunk and branches, that the skeleton frame of the tree is beautiful? The leaves and foliage are, too, of course, but it's not often we get a naked glimpse of the infrastructure of the majestic tree. Its bones, so to speak. So pretty! They make a starkly beautiful landscape against the sky. Here are a few from my yard:

Three-Day Weekend

By Elizabeth Prata

How wonderful are the occasional three-day weekends! They come along every few months for the person working and living in a school-year calendar. I love it.

My plans today are to organize my computer folders, work with my photos to make two weeks' worth of Bible pictures and quotes. Tomorrow, to catch up on my systematic theology lessons and Bible reading plan, and Monday, to read some of my other books, (EM Forster's The Machine Stops) and craft. That's the plan, anyway.

Soup this week is going to be split pea with carrots and onions. I will also make some granola, smoothies with pineapple and apple juice, and some kind of casserole - I haven't decided yet. it's still early on this weekend-a-palooza.

The above is a vignette scene from a funky cafe-art gallery-store I took last summer.

Our weather is just as turbulent as it is for the rest of the country. Our version is predicted to be rain-rain-rain. Up to half a foot or more over the next week. It's raining already this morning, lightly. I'm longing for sun but the wet outside means I can stay inside doing crafts, reading, and cooking guilt free.

American Front Porch

Aside from attending church services Sunday, I don't have any plans to go out and do anything. There is plenty to do right here.

Currently my cat Murray is squealing and squeaking, vocalizing in his way. I call him Squeakers sometimes, because his vocalizations are so tiny like a mouse, and cute.

Here ae a few scenes of the wetness outside:

Have a good weekend, everyone!

What happened to Mount Spinach?

By Elizabeth Prata

Saturday! Saturday! I love getting home on Fridays, putting the car in the garage, closing the door, and getting inside the apartment. I change into comfy clothes, make tea, and settle down for 30 hours of alone time. Friday night and Saturday is the time I use to recover, rest, and replenish. I am not open for business.

I had wanted to do some crafting. Today I decided to make 19 corner origami bookmarks for the kids at school, for their Valentine's packet. We still give them a paper bag, they decorate, and then on the day they go around and put a Valentine or a sweet into each bag. They have fun opening the cards, and they really read each card, lol. "Look! It says "Be mine!" they giggle and laugh.

Here are the bookmarks I made. They are of card stock because I know they will take  beating right away, and likely get unfolded immediately too. So I made something a bit hardy to withstand fumbling fingers and passing them around. While I made them I watched Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

Its sad that in all my searching to find a "nice" TV show or movie to watch n an adult level, I could not. I finally went to the kids' section and tuned up the Wimpy Kid. Sometimes you just want an Up or a Princess Bride or a Big or Splash...hey wait a minute, I should look up movies starring Tom Hanks.

I made boy ones for the boys and girl ones for the girls.

Now I'm having some quiche with rice and spinach. I was so happy to buy the huge and I mean YUGE container of spinach because I love spinach and I want a lot of it. I dumped a large pile into the pan and enough to my heart's content, and thought, NOW I'll have a lot of spinach for my side dish!

Wait, wut?

I finished watching Diary of a Wimpy Kid. The movie was well done and seemed true to the book. However, never having read the book, I didn't know that the main character was a jerk. Wimpy is OK. Jerk is not.

I think Harriet the Spy (the book) is a better representation of kid-life.

I am going to cut up a fresh pineapple and have it for a snack, then settle in to finishing my book on Amy Carmichael. Have a good rest of the weekend!

The Special Store yields treasure once again

By Elizabeth Prata

My favorite store is called The Special Store. It's a vintage/antique/estate re-sale store. They acquire lots from estate sales and re-sell them. The prices are incredible, low enough for me on a limited budget to afford to shop there.

Since the inventory rotates, it's always interesting to go there, because you never know what you will find.

I write this way to let you know that no matter your budget, you can feel like a champ and not get left out of shopping. Everyone likes to find a cute little something to buy for themselves once in a while. Even though the bulk of our budget is dedicated to paying bills and charitable endeavors, with a bit of creativity and patience, you can find sweet little things to buy that charm you.

Today I found lots of cool things and didn't spend more than $5.50

I'm excited about the Bird Identification book! The Guy De Maupassant is in French. The pages within will be used for crafting. The Scott book is a compilation of his poems, and has a no publication date marked inside, but it's old. The spine is blue with gold gilt wreaths.

The Household Words was a fun find. It's the compilation of the weekly journal 'conducted by' Charles Dickens. It was published in 1857 and the front features red leather three-quarter binding with marbling. The spine is raised with bands. So cool, said this ole bookbinder. I bet the stories inside are good too!

Note paper! All of it for $1. I will use half the large ream of white paper at home for printing and the other half I'll take to school for the kids to draw on. The others are just handy to have around I really bought the pile for the doodle faces pad. I'll bring that to school also, for the kids.

The teapot is Noritake china, pattern Chatham, produced between 1954-1964, so it is mid-century. I found the teacup today among others, but no saucers. I got the cup for fifty cents. I have a saucer with the iconic silver line around the rim just as the Chatham has so I'll use that saucer when I use this cup.

A friend and co-worker gave me some tea from Forte, very fancy! It is black currant tea, and I brewed some to sip while I dug into the research on the books.

The ride to this store from school isn't long, about 7-8 minutes, and I pass pastures and hills and cows. The sun was shining brightly and despite the frigid temps earlier this week, today was 62 degrees. It is a very nice way to end the day.

Hope you all have a nice weekend. :)

Errands on a day off

By Elizabeth Prata


My day off began with piercing cold and a drive to the tire store early this morning. Yesterday I'd stopped in to the tire store to add air to my constantly deflating tire. The tire guy saw a nail in it. Ohhhh, that's why I always had to put air in it.

That's a praise to my Lord's providential care. I am really a numb nuts when it comes to practical living. He kept me safe until I finally sorted it out. They had one in my size in stock but no time to install it, so I said I'd be back in the morning.

Though it was cold, it wasn't frigid. One thing I like about Georgia, even in January, is that as I passed cows grazing, they were grazing on green grass. There were birds flitting in the trees. I spotted two of those little neon blue birds I like so much. The sun is strong, and it warms the air quickly, so you know the whole day isn't going to be a hunker down kind of day.

I got my tire in under an hour and swung by Kroger for a few items. No one was there, something I enjoyed When I normally go, on Sundays after church, it's crowded. Sunday, the clerks tell me, is one of their busiest days. I don't know why. I'd have thought Friday night or Saturday afternoon would be busier. Then I decided to get the splashed mud off my car. A fast driving 18-wheeler passed me on one of the rainy days in a muddy spot on the road and my car got covered. No one was at the car wash either, strangely enough. I'm just kidding, It was still below freezing and I felt a little bad for the boys who mop the car with soap as you enter the auto wash, but oh well.

I had spent numerous days in Maine during the really freezing winter washing the endless salt off my car. I remember one time a guy got stuck in the car wash (it was personal wash, not automatic) as the garage door you close stuck to the ground because the car wash water freezes quickly. Usually if you just bang the door a bunch it comes unstuck, but not that day. The guy yelled and the guy waiting behind him helped him get out lol. Life in Maine.

Anyway, I plan to cook up the things I bought at Kroger, (tomato soup, black bean patties, roasted green peppers, crabcakes) finish my book, and then head out again to a friend's house for dinner. Italian soup, I hear, is on the menu.

Waiting for my new tire to be put on

Birds in my backyard

By Elizabeth Prata

I'm blessed with a lot of foliage in and around the yard, and as a result, I'm blessed with lots of birds that visit. The other day I was writing with the window open and I heard so many calls. I began to list in my mind the birds I have come to learn by sight, and the list was pretty long (for me, not to a real birder!). I am trying to learn them by call, too.


I thought this video was perfect. The videographer records backyard common bird calls, shows them live in a tree or at his feeder, then posts a photo with label and lingers on it for a few seconds so you can really see the details. It goes at just the right pace.



Here is my list of Birds I have seen in my yard


Crows
Turkey vultures
Blue jay
Cardinal
Mockingbird
Carolina Wren
Cedar Waxwing
Hen
Rooster
Robin
Killdeer
Geese
Hawk
Eurasian dove
Chickadee
Pileated Woodpecker
Red Winged Blackbird
Goldfinch
Hummingbird

Blue heron (at my other apartment)
Emu (in the county)

Elsewhere in the US

Anhinga
Road runner
Pelican
Roseate spoonbill
Puffin
Mandarin duck
Eagle
Cormorant
Loon
Seagull
Sandpiper
Osprey

There's frugal that saves money and there's frugal that costs money

By Elizabeth Prata

I'm in the middle of the time between paychecks. It takes skill, self-control, commitment to one's budget, duct tape and dental floss to hang it all together and make it through! LOL. I'm used to it by now and I plan for it. I'm in a lot of company, living paycheck to paycheck. :)

So this week for food-made-ahead, I've got:

Crabcake
Crabcake
Crabcake
Tilapia filet
Chicken chili
Green salads
Green beans
Granola
Fruit
Yogurt

The fish dishes and green beans are dinners, and the chili and salads are lunches, and the fruit & yogurt are desserts/snacks.

I found something called Siggi's, an Icelandic recipe for Skyr.

Skyr is an Icelandic dairy product, and it’s been a provision of Icelanders for nearly 1,000 years. Icelandic Provisions was developed in partnership with Iceland’s oldest farmer-owned dairy. It’s the only Skyr made in the US using the original Icelandic recipe with heirloom Icelandic Skyr cultures. That’s what makes it thick, creamy and delicious.

Yogurt and Skyr are both cultured dairy products, but the cultures that make them are different. The original cultures we use to make our Skyr impart a rich, creamy flavor, whereas yogurt cultures may provide a sour, tart taste. source

Siggi's yogurt is skyr. Siggi is an Icelandic man transplanted to upstate NY, and he makes the yogurt skyr style. It's thick and creamy, possesses mad amounts of protein, and lots less sugar. There are no artificial ingredients. My flavor (plain) has two ingredients at all, grass-fed milk and yogurt cultures. It has 25 grams of protein. It is more expensive, but since it is SO thick, you eat less per serving, so it evens out.

Coming out of the oven is burned granola. Sigh. Granola is hard to make in that it turns on a dime and burns quickly. It also browns as it cools, so you have to take it out of the oven before it is the golden color you want, trusting that as it cools, you've timed it to cook to the crispiness you desire before it stops cooling. I usually do OK with my granola, if I use my standard recipe.

This time, I changed recipes. Bad move.

The main binding agent in the recipe I usually use is honey. The recipe calls for 1/2 a cup. It costs $5.50 for a small jar that isn't even 8 ounces, but 7.5 (we notice you've dialed back on the quantity, honey people! We notice!!) In an attempt to save $$, I searched for and found a recipe that uses brown sugar.

I don't bake much, if at all, so I am not used to the different properties of baking ingredients. Apparently, brown sugar burns EASILY. Given the delicacy of the granola to begin with, I wasn't paying strict attention to that split second when it turns from undone to crispy black, and I burned it. I am still going to eat it. Only the parts that had open spaces on the pan burned. I collected the rest, pretty dark as it was, and decided that the extra cost for honey is worth it to produce a large batch of granola that doubles as cereal or straight snacks all week.  It's also very sweet, and I don't like sweet.

The Icelandic yogurt is $5.50 for 24 ounces instead of the usual Kroger brand I get, $1.99 for 32 ounces.

But frugality isn't just about saving a dollar. It's shepherding the money you have to obtain the most bang for the buck. The most bang could be more protein (the yogurt) a better tasting dish, a recipe that's easier to cook (less time in the kitchen) less waste (batch of granola). Just because something is less expensive in the short-term doesn't always mean it's less expensive in thelong-term. Or better for you or less time consuming or easier to clean up or...whatever valance between time/money/ease of use you're trying to achieve.

I'm looking forward to this week. I enjoy the kids,, I enjoy my home time, and the upcoming weekend is a three-day weekend. (Martin Luther King day is Monday.) It's all good I'll start a new book as I progress on my Tim Challies challenge of reading throughout the year, Book about music or Musician: Nobody Knows: The Forgotten Story of One of the Most Influential Figures in American Music, by Craig von Buseck

Have a good week everyone!

Cold outside, hard ground, chilly rain

Warm & comfy inside!