Friday, October 14, 2005

Cleaning Up

Last night I finally gave Ruthie's corn muffin recipe (see comments 10/9/2005) a try and got two thumbs up from everyone in the house. Thanks Ruthie! Ruthie hit upon what I've always suspected, you don't need the salt in corn bread/muffin recipes. In fact, it tastes better without it. My kids decided to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the muffins for lunch today. That's the best sign of approval this mom can get.

My kids were all off yesterday so we were able to accomplish a lot. With the help of my oldest daughter, we got the greens rinsed, chopped, steamed and frozen. My younger daughter helped me start to reorganize the basement. I didn't realize how cluttered it was until I tried searching for a bat in it the other night. Aside from vacuuming, her main contribution was to transfer all the scrapbooking stuff off the table and into a storage cabinet that was sitting around empty. We even got some laundry done. They were both huge helps!

Getting organized is such an important part of being frugal. Think about how much money I'd be wasting if I hadn't gotten those greens into the freezer and they'd gone bad. It would be like going to the store buying your veggies and then chucking them into the garbage on the way out. You spent the money but have nothing to show for it. Everytime food goes funky in your fridge, you've wasted a bit of money.

If you're wondering how getting the scrapbooking supplies under control saves money, here's how. First there's the obvious, do I have a particular thing I need for scrapbooking, like glue sticks or am I out? Knowing when you're out of something let's you plan for buying it when the price is right. Honestly, I'm not a big scrapbooker, for me the bigger savings is that my craft table is clear. This makes it easier for me to work on other craft projects (think birthday or holiday presents or even curtains.) Many of the crafts that I do are in some way money saving. If I have to hunt for space to work on them, I'm less likely to do them and in turn less likely to save money upon their completion.

There will be no creative cooking tonight, we're heading to a wedding and my parents are watching the kids. They're planning to bring a veggie treat for dinner, nuggets or soy pizza or something similar.

3 comments:

Sunflower said...

Katie--

One day I made blueberry cornbread and added too much salt. It was one of the few things I've made that is completely unedible. After that experience I deemed cornbread as "harder than it looks" but since recently I made it and absolutely forgot the baking powder and ended up with solidified corn batter and it actually TASTED GOOD, I've re-deemed cornbread as "easy to get too salty" :)

We tried your Chickpeas and Greens soup, except I accidentally added way too much nutritional yeast. It was SOOO good!!! I've added it to my "favorite chickpea recipes" category. :)

I'm making pumpkin pancakes for breakfast. I used to get them at IHOP when I was a.) living on my parents mula and b.) not vegan. My homemade version is totally as good. :-D

Have a good day! Batfree I hope. :)

Ruthie

Katie said...

I'm glad you liked the soup, I was just so happy to find a way to get everyone to eat greens without complaining.

I love pumpkin pancakes. I use a recipe from Vegetarian Times that's probably from 1996 or so, before they forgot they were a veggie mag.

I'm hoping for day three, bat free! Have a great weekend.

Sunflower said...

LOL I forgot about Veggie Times. I used to get it in high school and quick subscribing when I found a recipe that included FISH! When I called to cancel my subscription they asked why and I said I didn't find the information pertinent to my lifestyle, i.e. I'm never bringing fish sauce into my house hold. I was incredibly angry.

You know, I'm thrilled more people are excluding beef and pork from their diets, but I just wish they wouldn't call themselves vegetarian if they eat fish or chicken on a regular basis.