7 Grain Breakfast in the Crockpot!

I love to do breakfast in the crockpot! It is soooo easy, and I love not having to worry about cooking when we have a busy morning. We like oatmeal, but get tired of it occassionaly. Here's a recipe for what I made this morning. I make this ahead in large batches and store in an empty oatmeal container.

7 Grain Cereal

1 c. brown rice
1 c. barley
1 c. whole oat groats
1 c. kamut
1 c. rye berries
1 c. wheat
1 c. quinoa

To cook: For each serving, add 1/4 cup of grain mixture and 1 cup of water to crockpot. Cook on low overnight for 8-10 hours. Serve with milk or yogurt to make a complete protein.

We also like to add peanut butter, cinnamon, honey, raisins, prunes, or diced apples....not all at the same time. Experiment to see what your family likes. If you add the fruit and cook it with the grain, it gives it a great flavor and naturally sweetens it.

This makes 28 servings at 13.5 cents per serving. Of course, your cost will depend on what you pay for the different grains. I found all of these at our local natural foods store. Some of them were organic, so more expensive.

Some of the grains may sprout overnight. Don't freak out. The first time I did this, I was totally surprised in the morning when there were teeny, tiny little white things in the mixture. I thought at first it was worms. Upon closer inspection, I could see that the grains were starting to sprout. This is actually supposed to be really healthy for you. It's pretty tiny and once you realize what it is, it's not that noticeable.....so not gross to eat.

I have two crockpots. One is the little one for dips and fondues. This would be great if you're making one or two servings. The other one is ginormous.....great for cooking a whole chicken or turkey breast, but not so great for cooking 4-6 servings of hot cereal. Crockpots are most efficient if they are at least 2/3 full. My solution is to use an oven safe glass bowl that fits inside my crockpot. Just put all of the ingredients in there and cook away.

Hope you enjoy this healthy, economical and time-saving alternative to traditional hot breakfast cereals!

Find out when your stores do markdowns

Last week I just happened to do some grocery early Saturday morning on my way home from picking up our co-op produce. In the past, I have tried to avoid the grocery stores on the weekends. They are always so crowded and usually understocked. I was pleasantly surprised to find that no one shops at 7am on a Saturday morning. I also found tons of markdowns on dairy, bakery, and meat items. I stocked up on organic milk for $1 for 1/2 gallon, lunch rolls for $1 doz., and various meat items for well below sale prices. These items were expiring within the next 1 or 2 days and the store cannot sell them after that date. I've found that if you use them up quickly or freeze the items, the expiration dates are fairly arbitrary. This is where our freezer comes in handy. I repacked the meat and bread into freezer bags and appropriate portions for our family and froze most of it, along with most of the milk. Milk freezes great, and thaws pretty quickly in a sink full of cold water.
I went again this Saturday morning, and found some similar deals, just not as much as last week. I will definitely be making a point of doing some early Saturday morning runs to the grocery stores to check the markdowns.
I encourage you to find out when your stores do their markdowns and shop them to get some great deals and stock up your freezer.

Good Luck!

Whole Grain Pumpkin Muffins

I was looking for a healthier muffin recipe and came up with this:

Whole Grain Pumpkin Muffins

3/4 c. milk (I used reconstituted powdered milk)
3/4 c. oat bran
1 egg
1/4 c. canola oil
1/4 c. molasses
1/2 c. pumpkin puree
1/4 c. brown sugar
1 c. rolled oats
2/3 c. flour
1 T. baking powder
1 t. pumpkin pie spice
1/4 t. salt

Combine milk and bran cereal in medium bowl. Add egg, oil, molasses, pumpkin, and brown sugar; mix well. Add remaining ingredients, mixing just until dry ingredients are moistened. Fill 18 medium size muffin cups 2/3 full. Bake in preheated 400 degree oven for 15 minutes.

They turned out great! My one year old ate 3. I think next time I will experiment with adding some wheat germ. This is a great basic recipe and you can substitute whatever you have on hand in place of the pumpkin. I'm thinking maybe diced apples?

Enjoy!

Coupons on Ebay

In searching for online printable coupons, I came across people selling coupons on Ebay. While they technically don't sell the coupons themselves (doing so would be illegal), you are paying for their time and handling.

So, I gave it a try, twice so far.

My experience has been good and the shipping seems to be pretty quick. I have only searched for multiples of specific coupons that I was wanting, but I do see where you can buy a lot of say 100 grocery coupons. I don't think I will go that route, because there are just so many coupons out there. I would rather know exactly what I'm paying for and getting.

For example, I ordered a total of 20 coupons for items that are on sale this week. If you check your ads as soon as they come out and order the coupons right away, you will most likely get them before the sale is over. For the 20 coupons, I paid $2.00. Shipping was free. If I use all of them, which I'm planning to do, I will save $17.50. So my net savings will be $15.50, minus the less than 5 minutes of my time it took me to find and buy them on Ebay.

I know some stores have a limit on how many of one specific coupon they will take, so you might want to check on that before buying a lot of multiples.

Recipe sites

Here's 2 new recipe sites that I came across.

1. This one is awesome for giving recipe ideas for what you have on hand. Great for stretching the grocery budget to next week or next month
http://www.cookingbynumbers.com/search.html

2. I know it's a little early, but this one has tons of Christmas recipes from candy and cookies, to good breakfast and party ideas.
http://www.northpole.com/Kitchen/Cookbook/

Cheap Kid's Clothes

Many stores are having their summer clothes clearance sales and this is the time to stock up for next summer at awesome prices!

In Prescott Valley:

Kohls has infant and toddler clothes up to 90% off. There's many items right now for $1-$2 and they're good brands.

K-Mart has their clearance racks for infants and toddlers and everything is marked $2.99. There's lots of 2 piece sets, so this is a good deal.

I'm sure there are similar deals at other stores, but these are the two that I've seen this week.

Universal Casserole Recipe

This universal casserole recipe is great for mixing and matching whichever ingredients are on sale each week. The creative possibilities are endless!

1 cup main ingredient
1 cup second ingredient
1-2 cups starchy ingredient
1 1/2 cup binder
1/4 cup "goodie"
Seasoning
Topping


Main ingredient suggestions : tuna, cubed chicken, turkey, ham, seafood
Second ingredient suggestions : thinly sliced celery, mushrooms, peas, chopped hard-cooked eggs
Starchy ingredient suggestions : thinly sliced potatoes, cooked noodles, cooked rice
Binder suggestions : cream sauce, sour cream, can of soup
"Goodie" suggestions : pimiento, olives, almonds, water chestnuts
Topping suggestions : potato chips, cheese, bread crumbs


Thoroughly mix your combination of the above ingredients. If it seems dry, add 1/2 cup milk or stock. Place in buttered casserole dish and bake at 350 degrees for 30-45 minutes.

Check your electric rates

I know that many people don't even know that there are
different rate plans for residential electricity. Our
house is electric only and our bill always spikes when
the weather turns colder. On the APS website
(www.aps.com)you can now get a rate comparison for
your account to make sure that you're on the best plan
for your specific usage. When you request the rate
comparison it analyzes your actual usage over the past
12 months, and forecasts which plan would be the most
cost effective for you in the future. There are
several different rate plans available, based on the
time of day that you use the most electricity. It
only takes a few seconds and it could end up saving a
lot of money.

Review your health insurance plan

e just reviewed our health insurance plan and decided on a different plan that would not only serve our needs better, but also save us over $30/month.

A lot of companies do their open enrollment around this time of year, when you are allowed to switch insurance plans.

It really is worth the time of going through your past bills and trying to estimate your health insurance costs for next year, in order to choose the best plan for your family.

Check your receipts!

fter checking out yesterday at the grocery store, I found an error on my receipt. When I took it to the customer service desk, the manager told me that it is the store's policy to refund the entire price of the item (which they do not advertise). I had bought two and used a coupon. The manager was not interested in dealing with the return of the coupon, so just gave me the full price refund. After it was all finished, the store actually ended up paying me to buy these items. Take a few seconds to review your receipt BEFORE you leave the store and it could save you some money.

Pre-paid Cell Phones

I just wanted to share with you a way that we've recently managed to save another $40-$50 per month. Maybe this will help someone else save a little too.

Our contract was up for our cell phones and after investigating all of our options, we found that it would be significantly cheaper for us to go with prepaid cell phones. We could eliminate them entirely, but don't feel comfortable doing that for convenience, health and travel reasons.

If you're not familiar with prepaid cell phones, here's a brief explaination of how they work. You buy the cell phone and a phone card. You call an 800-number with all of the information about the phone and the phone card and the minutes from the phone card are loaded onto your phone. Most major retailers carry both the phones and cards in stock. We got ours from Wal-Mart. The phones are usually pretty inexpensive. You can buy the phone cards in different denominations, and for most companies, the cost per minute decreases with the more minutes that you purchase at one time. (One thing to note is that the phone cards also have an expiration date. For example, the card may be for 300 minutes, but it expires in 60 days.) Before it expires, you have to buy another card and recharge the phone with additional minutes. Some companies roll-over your unused minutes and adds to the recharged minutes, but with other companies you just loose them.

The lowest monthly plan that most traditional cell companies offer in our area starts around $40, or an emergency plan for $15 that gives you about 25 min/ month. With the prepaid company that we chose, the minimum is $12.50-$15.00/month with 125-150 minutes - depending on the quantity of minutes purchased at one time.

I was suprised to find that there are so many different companies that offer prepaid cell phone plans now. I think Wal-Mart has at least 6 different ones to choose from.

We ended up going with NET10. We liked the NET10 option, because there are no monthly/daily fees, all calls (including long distance and roaming) are 10 cents/min, and all unused minutes rollover when you re-charge and add more minutes. The phone was $40 and came with $30 worth of minutes. The prepaid phones work off of the same networks as traditional cell phones and we haven't had any problems with reception. In fact, this phone actually picks up in a few more places than the old one.

Another great thing about the prepaid phone is that it always displays how many minutes you have left. I think of it as budgeting our minutes. This really makes you think twice about using your phone when you're only two minutes from home or when the call can just wait until later. I love the fact that I always know exactly how much I'm spending on the cell phone each month, without waiting for the bill and realizing there were overages or other fees. (This might also be a good idea for teens.)

We were using our free night and weekend minutes on our old cell phones for our long distance, and now are using cheap phone cards (about 3 cents/min.) or PhoneHog (FREE - see their website) on our land line. With all of these changes, our net savings per month has been between $40 and $50, depending on our usage.

Of course the savings would be different for everyone and this probably would not be cost effective if you use your cell phone a lot, but it's just another idea to help cut a little more out of the monthly budget without sacrificing a lot.