Living On A Dime test Site

frugal cooking

Organizing Kids’ Schoolwork

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How To Organize Your Children’s Schoolwork

School has started in many places, which means more mounds of paper clutter to keep under control. Here are some tips to help keep all of that school paperwork from multiplying, reproducing and generally taking over your home and your life.

  • Set a certain time and place to go through your kids’ backpacks and paperwork each day. Use this time to sign all those papers you need to sign, mark upcoming meetings or events on the calendar and sort through everything.

    The best time and place to organize schoolwork will vary for each family. For us, it was best to do it the moment the kids walked through the door while it was fresh on their minds. I would have a snack ready for them, they would explain the papers to me and while I was dealing with them (signing, writing on the calendar or admiring their handiwork), they would tell me about their day.

    Then I would return everything that needed to go back into their backpacks, trash the rest or put it in a special place or folder. This helps prevent things from getting tossed on the counter or table where they are eventually lost or forgotten.

  • Of course you will need a calendar and/or small bulletin board or dry erase board.

    My calendar has very large squares where I simply mark what needs to be done. If there is something very important that I must not forget no matter what, I mark it in red, but I write everything else in pencil in case I need to change it. Then I can just erase it and make the necessary changes.

    There have been times when I used a purple pen if I wanted the kids to remember something. I read about a study which found that people will remember things better when marked in purple.

    Use different colored markers or pens for different things. For example, one child’s events will all be in green, all dentist appointments are in blue or whatever works best for you.

  • If there are special papers that go with an event, I either paper clip them to the calendar page, pin them to a small bulletin board or place them in a folder, making a star on the calendar so I know to look on the bulletin board or in the folder for the paper that goes with the event.

    All my events seem to fit fine on one large square of a calendar. If your events don’t fit, you might need to look at changing a few things in your life and cutting back on some things. This could be a sign you are too busy.

  • There are many many fancy and expensive calendar systems out there. I personally find them to be more confusing and more work than they are worth but if they work for you, use one.

    I know that some of you who work away from home need day planners and other organization systems but that is another whole subject that I deal with in my e book Plan It, Then Do It.

  • Another system some people like is to have a folder for each child with special papers in it. For example, if one child is having a class party, I will mark the class party on the calendar but then place the paper with all the info about it in the folder. Once again, I would place a star by the event to remind me more info is in the folder. Once a week these folders should be sorted through so they don’t get cluttered.

  • Always keep folders of any kind in an upright position in a holder. Most folders or papers that are laid in a horizontal position get forgotten, lost, piled on or not used.

  • KEEP IT SIMPLE. This could be the most important point of all. If it is complicated and too involved  neither you or your family won’t bother to use it. Sometimes it isn’t our families which are the problem but the system we choice to use. Just because it comes highly endorsed  by a famous organizer or some such does not mean it will work for you so don’t fight it and try something different.

Well I will sign off for now. I am looking at the piles of paper on my own desk and think I might need to take a break, practice what I preach and clear my desk. : )

      -Jill

 

Photo By: magma666

Inexpensive Lunch

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Inexpensive Lunch

Hi Tawra,

I just wanted to add a less expensive, and just as delicious option to your Hot Doggie Roll Ups recipe.  Use buttered bread instead of the canned biscuits or crescent rolls. Butter a slice of bread on one side, place a hot dog (I like to precook mine first) diagonally across the UNBUTTERED side, bring the two corners up over the hot dog and secure with a toothpick.  Bake at 375 degrees for 10-15 minutes.  My mother-in-law made these for her children years ago, but she called them “Weiny Winks”!

Thanks for a great newsletter!
Kathy C.

 

 photo by: stevenepolo

Fancy Inexpensive Dinner Breads

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canned regrigerator biscuits in bundt pan

FANCY SCHMANCY dinner breads cheap…

Use a decoratively shaped Bundt pan,

a stick of butter or margarine,

3 cans of biscuits (jumbo or regular) (you could use frozen dinner roll too)

seasonings to suit the meal…for instance, serving Italian?  Use basil and Parmesan cheese

Melt butter or margarine in bottom of Bundt pan evenly. Sprinkle seasonings. Then put biscuits in on end, like stacking dimes, one at a time, to allow seasonings and butter to ooze between each one. Bake as directed on the can. Then simply turn out onto a serving plate, and VOILA! –a beautiful bread ring.  You can use cheddar cheese and jalapeno for Mexican…brown sugar and cinnamon for pull apart cinnabuns…rosemary and olive oil and olives for Italian or Greek… ANY assortment you can think of… dried tomatoes and olive oil… try it!

-Vicky B.

All I can say is yum! I am going to have to try this one!

Tawra

 

Photo By: C Jill Reed

Saving Cooking Disasters

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Saving Cooking Disasters

I happened to think of a couple of things today that might help you for Thanksgiving and for any of the other holidays, too.

First, if you haven’t already done it, clean out your refrigerator today. You really should clean your refrigerator before you go buy everything for your dinner but if you haven’t done it yet, do it now. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to stuff leftovers into an already full fridge when you have a house full of company over, so clean it now. If you can, leave a certain shelf for the things you are going to store before and after Thanksgiving dinner.

Fixing Cooking Boo Boos:

  • If you didn’t cook your turkey with our recipe, it may come out too dry. Don’t panic. Just slice it, lay it on a platter and pour gravy over it. Then serve.
  • If your stuffing is too dry, once again, add some turkey brot or gravy to it.
  • If a side dish burns and sticks to the bottom of the pot, carefully pour it out of the pot, being sure not to scrape the bottom of the pan or any of the food stuck to it. You can save quite a bit this way.
  • If your dinner rolls burn, carefully slice off the bottoms. If all of the bottoms are gone, people will think that is just the way they are supposed to be.
  • If the crust on your pumpkin pie doesn’t turn out, scrape out the filling and place it in a nice serving dish. Cover it with lots of whipped topping sprinkled with a little cinnamon and call it Pumpkin custard.

Let’s Talk Turkey

I don’t think there is anything more dismal looking then a picked over turkey carcass. Usually, I am so tired from making the meal, being hostess and cleaning up that having to face the turkey carcass can almost put me over the edge. What I finally learned is not to do anything with it on Thanksgiving day. Then, the day after Thanksgiving, we pick at it all day long, making sandwiches and other things. Later I pick off the last of the big chunks.

I usually cook my turkey wrapped in foil or in a disposable pan so, when I’m done, I just wrap the foil around the turkey or gently shape the disposable pan around it. Then I stick it all in a couple of plastic bags, pop it in the freezer and forget it for a couple of weeks. Often I wait until January when I bring out the turkey remains and toss the carcass into a large pot for soup. That’s when it gets it’s final picking over.

If any of you have tips about how to fix Thanksgiving cooking boo boos for our beginning cooks and even some of us old timers, feel free to post. You may be the one to save someone’s Thanksgiving. : )

       -Jill

We just received this today from a reader and thought it was perfect to add here.

From Cindy:

I had just made your pecan pie muffin recipe and popped it into the oven. I checked another recipe site (not as good as yours!) and many commenters said their muffins stuck to the pans and that they had to make it over again with flour, oil, Baker’s Joy or whatever.

I thought “Great! I need these for a bake sale tomorrow. Just my luck– They’ll be stuck in the pan and unusable.” So when I took the pan out of the oven I immediately ran a sharp knife around the sides and popped the muffins out. It worked just fine. I can see, though, that if you left them in the pan to cool they probably would stick. They’re very good. Thanks for the recipe and Happy Thanksgiving!

 

This is a good place to give everyone a heads up that if you bake anything  sticky, sugary or syrupy, you’ll want to get it out of the pan immediately before it cools. I put a sticky topping on my cinnamon rolls so I have another pan ready to “dump” them on to the minute they come out of the oven.

Be careful with things like pecan pies and don’t fill them so full that they spill over the top and onto the edge because you will spend most of the day chiseling and trying to get a piece of pie out of the pan.

Of course, when it comes to pecan pie, I would find a way to get it out of the pan and into my mouth, even going as far as sucking on the pan if I have to. Yum! : ) : )

No matter what you make, a good rule of thumb is that if it is sticky and touches the pan it is like brushing on glue so either grease it very well or get it out of the pan quickly.

      -Jill

 

photos by: toomanythoughts and technodad

Easy And Inexpensive Cake

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Easy And Inexpensive Cake

I just wanted to share a quick and inexpensive tip for making cakes. Buy a box cake mix on sale. If it is a white or yellow cake, add 10 oz. diet sprite, diet 7-up, or the zero calorie sparkling water. Then cook the cake as instructed on the box. You do NOT need to add eggs, butter, oil, water or anything else to the mix, just the soda and the cake mix itself.

Diet Dr. Pepper or Diet Coke are fine for chocolate cakes, but if added to the yellow cake mix, it makes it a yucky gray color. NO added calories, no eggs, no milk, no water, no oil…. Voila! A VERY MOIST cake for .99 + soda (you can get the whole 2 liter for .99 cents and you only need to use 10 oz.)

 

Ok, I admit, this does sound strange but I just might have to give a try. I have heard of doing this with pancake mix before so maybe it would work with cakes too.

      -Tawra

For more money saving recipes and tips check out Dining On A Dime Cookbook.

 

photo by: kimberlykv

Menu – Yankee Noodles, Bottled (Canned) Fruit Cake

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Tips:

Sometimes we tend to make our meals so much more complicated than they need to be. I was blessed to be able to watch many women prepare their meals who learned to cook during the 30’s and 40’s. Some were busy stay at home moms. Others were moms who worked away from home and some were moms who helped their husbands on the farm.

These women used some tricks to prepare their meals that made meal preparation easier and faster. Here are a few of them:

    • They didn’t worry if they had homemade biscuits or muffins for every meal. Often for a daily meal they would just place a plate of bread (not always homemade bread, either) on the table to eat with butter and jam or honey. In some homes, this was a staple at every meal.

 

    • They would keep things cleaned and ready to use for a relish dish like carrot sticks, celery sticks, olives, pickles, sliced cucumbers, tomatoes or fresh cauliflower.

 

    • Hard boiled eggs or pickled beets were kept on hand to place in a bowl at the last minute.

 

    • They didn’t hesitate to open some canned fruit to pour into a bowl and set on the table to eat by itself without whipped cream or any added extras.

 

  • Canned vegetables were a life saver for many of them. Then they could just warm some canned peas to set on the table.

 

They served some combination of all of these at most meals. Then they would add a potato dish, rice or noodles and a meat and they would have dinner.

Sometimes we read cooking magazines and see very elaborate meals on TV and think if this isn’t the kind of food we make we must have failed as good cooks. Each dish doesn’t need five or more ingredients in it to make it good. That is probably one of the places where our diets started going down the tubes. We forgot to keep things simple.

You also save money when you keep it simple because you’re not using as many ingredients or extras like whipped cream or special spices.

Just like in the old days, your family will probably enjoy an icy cold canned peach just as much as a fresh organically grown peach you had to study to determine how ripe it was before you took it home to try to peel and slice it. It’s you, mom and dad, who make the meal special just by being together with the family, not the pedigree of your fruits and vegetables.

 

Menu:

Yankee Noodles*
Relish Dish
Bread and Jam
Bottled (canned) Fruit Cake*

Yankee Noodles

From: Alice B. (I learned this recipe in junior high. It’s tasty, quick to cook, inexpensive, and dirties only one pan!)

1 lb. lean ground beef
8 oz. uncooked noodles
1/2 large onion, chopped
1 large can tomatoes
Salt and pepper (to taste)

Brown meat and onion. Drain off excess grease. Add noodles and canned tomatoes. Chop tomatoes a little bit while in the pan. Bring to a boil. Reduce temperature and simmer covered for 7 minutes. Stir. Cover and simmer 8 more minutes. That’s it!

You can add other ingredients you may have on hand like chopped green peppers, black olives, mushrooms, fresh herbs, etc. You may want to top with grated cheese. (Never cook the noodles first. They must cook with the rest of ingredients to absorb their flavors.)

I love, love, love recipes that take only one pan and this one really does! Often, people will call something a one dish meal but they end up using 3 pans, 2 mixing bowls and 1 casserole dish. (That’s the one dish, I guess.) Now you can see why I really appreciated your recipe. : )

      -Jill

 

Bottled Fruit Cake

From: Ruth P.

CAKE USING BOTTLED FRUIT – (Sometimes we have an excess of home bottled fruit and need to use it up before it gets old. This is a great way to use it!)

1 quart of fruit with liquid
4 cups flour
4 tsp. soda
2 cups sugar
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. cloves
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1 cup oil
4 eggs
Raisins and nuts if desired

Blend all of the above ingredients at the same time. Bake at 350° for 35 to 45 minutes. This makes one sheet cake or two cakes in 9×13 inch pans. This is a nice change from just using the fruit for a crisp, cobbler. or pie. You don’t need to put frosting on this, which can save time, too.

 

Photo by: Yoames