Frijoles a la charra
From Lindsey F.
Heat 6 cans of pinto beans with half a can of water over medium high heat, until hot. (It’s ok if it boils.) Add a sprinkle of dried cilantro and a can of tomatoes with green chilies. Stir and serve with tortillas or corn bread.
If I was a bean eater I would try this because it sounds so good and easy. Super inexpensive too. I will definitely give this to my daughter-in-law who loves beans.
-Jill
Photo By: Jason Lam
Delicious Hash Brown Bake
This recipe is a great quick and easy way to use leftovers! You can add fried sausage, crumbled bacon or diced ham to this recipe and use it for breakfast. If you have leftover hamburger, toss it or some veggies in for dinner.
Years ago, one of the mainstays of people’s diets was hash, which is all the leftovers from the previous day thrown together with some finely diced or grated potatoes and fried in a pan. I wonder if that is why they are called “hash” browns because it was what everyone used for hash?
-Jill
2 lbs. frozen hash browns (slightly thawed)
1/2 cup melted butter
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 can cream of chicken or celery soup
8 oz. sour cream
2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese
3/4 cup crushed potato chips
Combine all except 1/2 cup cheese and potato chips. Place in a 9×13 baking dish. Cover with remaining cheese and potato chips. Bake for 1 1/4 hours at 350°.
For more money saving recipes and tips, check out the Dining On A Dime Cookbook.
photo by: lindstorm
Don’t waste that leftover meat! Try making these easy meat sandwiches, which can be a tasty way to use leftover meat or take advantage of sale prices. [Read more…] about Easy Ground Meat Sandwiches
This recipe calls for a box of brown sugar. That is the only way you could get brown sugar years ago so a lot of older recipes are written this way. A box of brown sugar is 1 pound, 16 oz. or 2 1/3 cups.
1 medium cabbage
4 medium onions
3 green peppers
2 red or hot peppers (I used red)
3 Tbsp. salt
1 Tbsp. mustard seed
1 Tbsp. turmeric
5 medium tomatoes (not quite ripe)
2 cups cider vinegar
1 box brown sugar
Wash 9-10 pint jars in hot soapy water. Sterilize jars by boiling in water for 10 minutes. Keep jars hot until ready to fill. Using a food processor, grind all the ingredients except tomatoes, vinegar and brown sugar. Chop tomatoes by hand. Mix all ingredients (except the vinegar and sugar). Let stand for 30 minutes and strain excess water if necessary. In a large pot, add vegetables, 2 cups cider vinegar and 1 box of brown sugar. Cook until mixture boils. Place in jars and process for 30 minutes in a boiling water bath. Note: Makes 9-10 pints, and is absolutely fabulous on hot dogs!!
photo by:spin spin
Apples and Pumpkins make the perfect fall deserts. This Creamy Pumpkin Cupcakes Recipe and Philly Apple Crumble recipe are two easy and delicious options! [Read more…] about Creamy Pumpkin Cupcakes and Philly Apple Crumble
This morning I went to buy eggs. I usually try to get them on sale but couldn’t find any. Since I needed the eggs right then, I had no choice but to pay full price, so I bought a carton of medium eggs.
Sometimes we automatically buy the large eggs (we do that with so many things) thinking that they are the best but for my purpose (baking), the medium eggs worked just fine and they were cheaper.
If you are having trouble with a recipe being extra sticky or not quite right in some other way, you might change your egg size and see if that helps.
Another thing I did this morning was hang my clothes out. After writing an e-book about laundry and how to hang clothes on the line I didn’t think I had missed anything. As I was hanging some T-shirts on the clothesline, I noticed that one of them was sagging in the middle, so I pinned it on the line and I re did it. You need to hang the items taut on the line, not stretched too tight but not sagging. This helps get rid of much of the wrinkling that some of us experience. Sometimes we tend to let our clothes sag in the middle to give us more clothesline space but don’t do this. It’ll only make more work for you.
I hope some of these ideas help make your day go more “smoothly”. : ) Have a super day everyone!
-Jill
Photo By: Brenda Gottsabend
If you don’t have time to make cornbread or are out of crackers when serving soup, serve it with some of your favorite seasoned croutons.
It is so easy to make your own croutons. You can use any old, dried bread you want but tougher breads like French bread work best. This is a good way to use things like leftover hamburger buns, bagels or dinner rolls.
All croutons store well an airtight containers for a couple of weeks.
[Read more…] about Apple Barn Soup Menu – Easy Vegetable Soup Recipe
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
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 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