Making Popcorn at Home

My family eats a TON of popcorn.  It is one of our favorite snacks and a must-have on movie nights.

I tried switching my family over to air popped popcorn for awhile.  For one, it is much healthier than the stuff we were getting.  I wasn't exactly sure what they were putting into those bags that makes all that bright orange yumminess my kids and husband love.  My family was not impressed with air popped and they went back to buying the microwave bags.  Sigh...

Then one day I went to my dads for a potluck.  My step sister had brought popcorn.  Huh-I thought, what a good snack to share.  Little did I know that day would change the way I bought and made popcorn forever!

We sampled her popcorn and man-o-man it was the best popcorn I had ever had!  I had to know how she made it.  After getting all the details from her a few days later I tried it myself.  Not only was it easy and super delicious but ALL of my family absolutely loves it!  And the best part?  It is WAY cheaper than buying microwave popcorn!

Here is how we do it.

Take a pot, my step sister uses a large skillet, I use a large stockpot.  Whatever you choose just make sure it has a proper lid.  Cover the bottom of the pan in oil, if I had to guess I would say about 1/4 cup.  I use just plain ol' canola.  I am assuming you could use whatever oil you prefer.

Sprinkle the bottom of the pan with popcorn seeds.  I cover the entire bottom with just a single layer of seeds.  Set the burner on medium high.  You can use whatever popcorn seed you prefer.  I like buying my seed from a local producer and I also prefer white over yellow.










Place your lid on top and wait for that pop, pop, pop.  Once the corn starts popping I give the pan a little shake shake about halfway through and again at the end to make sure all the seeds get a chance to pop.  Once the popping slows down, remove from burner.  Once the popping is over slowly remove lid but BE CAREFUL the steam from the popcorn is very hot and will burn you if your not careful.

I like to add a little popcorn salt to ours before serving.

Have you ever made popcorn on the stove?  You should try it.  Trust me, you'll never go back to microwave again!

Teach Them While They are Young

My little momma isn't quite 2 yet but she loves being in the kitchen.  It use to be that when I would bake she would be content looking at books or playing in a tub of beans.  Not anymore.  Now she wants to be right up there with me, getting her hands on whatever I am working on. 

This is her helping me make bread. 

Summer Harvest

The other night our dinner consisted of stuffed peppers, peaches, pears and corn.

The peppers came from our own garden, as did the tomatoes that were used in the recipe. The ground beef that filled them was grown locally. At the end of the summer I had a huge supply of peppers so I made up a big batch of stuffed peppers. They are super easy to make, freeze and then just pull out when you want an easy meal.

The corn was also grown locally and was canned this past summer with my family. The peaches and pears, though not from my own trees, were grown organically. I bought them when they were in season at a good price and canned them this past fall.

I feel good knowing that I am supplying my family with healthy, locally grown food. I love being able to enjoy summers harvest during the long cold winter months. It makes all the work worth it.

Linked to Simple Lives Thursday at A Little Bit of Spain in Iowa.

Homemade Bread and a Giveaway

Welcome to my post for the Des Moines Area Frugal Blog Tour! Thank you Julia for hosting such a great tour. Be sure to check out all the bloggers involved, you are sure to come away with some great frugal ideas. I am fairly new to baking my own bread. I would make a loaf here and there, but never really thought about substituting my store bought bread with fresh homemade bread. It seemed a little intimidating. Then I discovered that baking bread was really not that hard, nor was it as time consuming as I once thought (thanks to some great bread machine recipes!) Now I would say that I make roughly 80% of the bread consumed by my family. I also make all my own biscuits, pizza crust, cinnamon rolls and dinner rolls.

Knowing all the ingredients and being able to control how my bread is made really appealed to me and is what got me started. Homemade bread is obviously fresher and much healthier than most store bought breads. When I looked at the ingredients list on the store bought bread that we used to buy, I was shocked to see the how many different ones were listed. Some of them I couldn't even pronounce. My homemade bread recipe calls for 6 ingredients, one of which is water.

Bread made from scratch is fresher, it certainly tastes better, and I know the recipe I use is healthier than most store bought breads. But is it really considered "frugal"? Is it cheaper to make your own bread? I decided to do the math and see.

Here is the break down of the ingredients used for my sandwich bread.

1 cup water
3 tbs sugar (I use raw sugar which I buy in bulk) = $.09
1 packet yeast (I buy this in bulk) $.05
2 cups bread flour (usually buy flour for around $.99 lb) = $.20
1 cup whole wheat flour = (this can vary depending on where I buy my flour) = $.32
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil ( I buy this in bulk from Sam's Club) = $.34
1 1/2 tsp salt $.01

Cost of the ingredients for my homemade bread recipe is roughly $1.01. There are ways to make it cheaper. Using all white flour or using regular oil instead of EVOO for example. But this is how I like my bread and feel it is healthiest for my family.

I can usually find store brand generic white bread on sale for around $1.00. If you are looking for whole wheat bread the price will go up. Artisan breads can sell for $2-$4 at the store. You can make your own by reading here. The bread I typically buy for my family is normally $1.99 per loaf, $1.59 when it is on sale. So, by making my own bread I am saving a minimum of $.59 each loaf.

Only you can decide if it is worth the time and effort to bake your own bread. I would consider making your own bread a frugal alternative to buying store bought bread. Plus nothing beats the smell of fresh bread baking in the oven.

Now how about a give-a-way? I am giving away one copy of my new ebook "Learning the Frugal Life Grocery Rules". This ebook covers some of my most useful posts as well as additional information that isn't on the blog. The ebook will give you great advice for getting started with coupons, where to find coupons, how to organize and use them effectively, learning to meal plan as well as many other helpful tips all at your fingertips.

There are 4 ways to enter. You can do one or all of the following.
1. Just leave me a comment on this post telling me how you save money on groceries.
2. Become a follower of Learning the Frugal Life
3. Subscribe by email. You can do so at the top of my site. Then leave a comment letting me know.
4. You can "like" Learning the Frugal Life on Facebook. Leave an additional comment letting me know.

One winner will be chosen December 3rd at 8 pm. Make sure you check back to see if that's you. Also the Frugal Blog Tour continues until December 15 so be sure to check out the rest of the stops for some great frugal tips and advice.

Baking Day

I think I am going to have a baking day here in the near future. I want to try a few new things. I have made homemade granola bars before but I am wanting to try a different recipe. I also want to try and make some homemade English muffins. I have 2 recipes I found and printed off. I love English muffins!

I need to make a couple loaves of banana bread and some more white bread as my supply is running low. My family devours this bread. I wish I could find a wheat bread that is sandwich quality. My oldest son likes wheat bread but the other kids are not big fans. The last few recipes I have made left the bread very dry and crumbly. I am still searching for that right recipe.

How about you? Baked anything good recently?

Preserving Blueberries

I came across a sweet deal. Well actually my sister-in-law did and called me to share. Our local Fareway had blueberries for $1.00 pint last week. Now I know that blueberries are rated 5th on the top 12 dirtiest foods but since blueberries are rated a "super food" I am going to try to ignore the fact that what I bought was not organic.

A dollar a pint is an unbelievably good deal for blueberries. So I bought 15 pints. Yes, maybe overkill but my family loves blueberries. We ate a couple pints and I have frozen the rest to use later. These will be great in the winter months too!

Here is how I freeze blueberries. First wash and gently dry off the berries.

Instead of just tossing them into a bag I lay them all flat on cookie sheets. This prevents them from sticking together. I did this with my strawberries a few months back. Then you can pull out whatever desired amount you want without having to thaw then entire bag. You can lay them directly on the cookie sheet or you can place them on a towel. This will help prevent sticking to the pan. Freeze for a couple hours. Place desired amount of blueberries into a ziplock bag, label and place in the freezer. I choose to place 2 cups of berries in each bag.

This post is linked to Simple Lives Thursday at Little bit of Spain in Iowa.

Dehydrating Herbs

This is the first year we have had an herb garden. I haven't used much of the fresh herbs but I have been busy dehydrating! I had no idea that they would grow so fast. Here is a picture of the garden.Drying herbs is very easy. Here are a few tips when harvesting. Pick your herbs in the morning. Let the dew dry and pick them before the heat of the day. This is when they have the best flavor. Also, harvest herbs prior to flowering.

You can dry your herbs simply by washing them, patting them dry and laying them on a cookie sheet of some other flat surface and allow them to air dry.

You can tie 5-8 stems together and place them in a paper bag with holes punched in it. Hang up-side-down in a cool dark area for 2 weeks.

You can place them in the oven on a baking pan at 180 degrees for 2-3 hours.

You can also use a food dehydrator. This is what I did. Wash herbs under cool water.Place on trays so that they are not touching. Place setting on low and periodically check to see if they are dry.Store your herbs in an air tight container. I use small mason jars. I have read they can be kept anywhere from 1-3 years. Anyone know how long they are good? I don't think they really go bad, I think they just lose their flavor.

Herbs aren't generally all that expensive at the store. But, it is awesome to have fresh herbs right at your finger tips while cooking. I also love the idea of using dried spices that came right out of my own garden.

Linked to Frugal Friday at Life as Mom.

Farmer's Markets

Farmer's Markets are in full swing around here. My family has been visiting lots of local area markets. So far we have visited Polk City, Ankeny, Johnston and Des Moines. By far Des Moines is the largest and also the busiest. It is nice to attend the smaller town markets too. It's fun to visit with the vendors and admire all the crafts, produce and baked items.

I grow most of my own produce but I still like to go to the markets to get those certain things that either aren't ready for picking yet in my own garden or things I just didn't plant. For instance last night I got some sugar snap peas and cucumbers. My peas have all died off and my cucumbers are about 2 inches long!

I feel good about purchasing from the market. I love supporting our local farmers and I would love someday to be one of those vendors out there selling my own produce. Maybe next year...

Do any of you shop at Farmer's Markets?

To find a list of local farmer's markets for Iowa head over here. I couldn't access the PDF files in Firefox, it just froze my computer. Internet Explorer had no problems. For anyone not in the state of Iowa you can head over to Localharvest.org. This is a great resource to find local foods.

Making Homemade Butter

I made my first batch of homemade butter the other day. Actually I have to give credit to my hubby. He did all the shaking. I bought 12oz of cream from a local creamery and was excited to give it a shot. Who knew it was so easy!

First let the cream come to room temperature.Put the cream in a sealed container and shake vigorously. I put our cream into a glass jar. First the cream will turn into whipping cream. Eventually it will separate from the liquid and form a ball. This is your butter.It took about 20 minutes to complete. The liquid that seperated is buttermilk so you can keep that and use that in your baking. I am going to make buttermilk waffles with ours! You can see from the photo below that the jar that was almost full yielded about 1/3 cup of buttermilk.

Dirty Dozen - Can You Name the 12 Dirtiest Foods?

I couldn't. I had no idea and was quite shocked at the list. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) just released the top 12 dirtiest foods for 2010. What does this mean? It means that these 12 items contain high amounts of pesticide contamination even after washing or peeling.

Here is the top 12 dirtiest foods in order from the most contaminated.

Celery
Peaches
Strawberries
Apples
Blueberries
Nectarines
Bell Peppers
Spinach
Kale
Cherries
Potatoes
Grapes (Imported)

By avoiding this list of foods, you can reduce your pesticide exposure by as much as 80%. Other options are to grow them yourself chemical free or buying them organic.

Here are the cleanest foods in order of least contaminated.

Onions
Avocado
Sweet Corn
Pineapple
Mangos
Sweet Peas
Asparagus
Kiwi
Cabbage
Eggplant
Cantaloupe
Watermelon
Grapefruit
Sweet Potato
Honeydew
Melon

"EWG analysts have developed the Guide based on data from nearly
96,000 tests for pesticide residues in produce conducted between
2000 and 2008 and collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture
and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration."

You can print off this nice little card to carry around with you to remind you of what is and isn't considered "clean".

To learn more head over to http://www.foodnews.org/

Eat Local ~Farmer's Markets

As a personal goal, I am trying to feed my family more locally grown food. This past weekend we headed out to our local downtown Farmer's Market. Here is what we came home with.Locally grown asparagus, onions, spinach, and lettuce. We also purchased some steel cut oats and 7-Grain cereal from the Paul family of Paul's Grains. My favorite of the day is locally produced cheeses from Milton Creamery. My husband is a huge sourdough bread fan so we had to buy a loaf of bread for him and we couldn't leave out the kettle popcorn for me!

I love supporting our local farms. Also knowing where our food is coming from and knowing that it is chemical free makes me feel really good about feeding it to my family.

One of the most important things is to know your farmer. Buy what you know is in season. Obviously melons and sweet corn being sold at the market this time of year is not locally grown. Talk to the vendor and ask questions. I usually ask if they have grown the product themselves, if it is chemical free and where they are located. Most vendors will be eager to talk to you and answer your questions.

Frugal Graduation Cake

Graduation time is upon us. I was asked to make this cake for my husbands cousins graduation party last year. I have always made my kids birthday cakes but have never made a cake for a large party before. I was very honored and a little nervous to say the least. Here is how they turned out.I made 6 cakes total. 3 white and 3 chocolate. The cake mixes were roughly $.88 each. The frosting was a bit more expensive because I bought it already made. I think the total cake costs around $15 to make. I know now for future large cake orders I will find my own butter cream recipe to make (which I did finally, I posted the recipe here). That would cut the cost even more. Anyone have any great icing recipes they want to share?

Eggs

In my quest to eat more locally grown, real food I was excited to finally find a connection for some free range eggs. Well, they may not be free ranging all that much right now since we still have 14" of snow on the ground! At any rate I am so excited to have them. Aren't they pretty? I bought 4 dozen eggs for a grand total of $8!The kids and I had fun inspecting all the eggs. There was many different shapes, some were really big and some were small, some had speckles some didn't. It was a great learning experience.I am planning on purchasing eggs from this contact until my own hens mature and produce eggs. This probably won't be until some time in late September.

And I bet you can't guess what we had for breakfast this morning? You betcha, scrambled eggs!

Making the Switch to Whole Grains

Why whole grains? Research shows that whole grains can help reduce the risk of heart disease, some types of cancers and type 2 Diabetes. This hits close to home for me because most of the deaths in my family have been related to cancer. Diabetes also runs strong in both mine and my husbands families. Whole grains are rich in fiber, vitamins and minerals. They can even help with weight loss.

I have been slowly adding more and more whole grains to our diet. When I think about it, everything I bake has been with white flour. After reading this very informative article, I realized that there really is no nutritional value in white flour. I had no idea that when white flour is processed most of the nutrients; the bran and germ are stripped away leaving only the endosperm which is high in protein and carbohydrates and lacks most of the vitamins and minerals.

The Food Pyramid provided by the USDA recommends 6-11 servings of bread/grain per day. I know my family was no where near this but I am changing that by simply changing the way I bake. I have stared incorporating a lot more whole grains into our diet.

For starters the other day for breakfast instead of making pancakes with white flour, I used 1 cup of white and 1 cup of wheat flour for the batter. I decided to ease into it that day. Next time I will make them with all wheat. Then I made waffles another morning using my new 7 grain flour that I just bought from a local farmer. While you could definitly tell there was a grainy texture to these waffles, I really liked it and the kids didn't complain.I also bought some steel cut oats from the store and made that for my own breakfast a few mornings. I am not a fan of regular oatmeal, but the steel cut oats have a different texture and I like it better. Another way to add whole grains? I just made my first batch of granola last week. My husband has been taking this to work every day and eating it for breakfast. I will post the recipe for that later.I just made a batch of white sandwich bread, but I am hoping to get a batch of whole wheat bread made this weekend. Once I do I will let you know how that turns out. I also want to try the Artisan 5 Minute a Day Whole Wheat recipe. Had anyone tried that?

A Little Bit of Summer...

in the dead of Winter. This past week we have enjoyed lots of Summer produce. For instance,the other night for dinner we had fresh canned peaches with our meal. For lunch yesterday we had applesauce that I preserved back in September. When I made chili the other night I used green and red peppers that were grown in our garden and then diced up and frozen. We have also been enjoying our homemade salsa that I thought we made so much of. Little did I know how much of that my husband could eat!

There is nothing better than having a little taste of your garden in February, it definitely works for me!

My Failed Attempt at Pita Bread

I had this great tutorial all planned out. I took pictures of all the steps I did making my homemade pita bread the other day. The only problem? They turned out like this.Doh! I don't think I will give you advise on making your own pita bread. They turned out more like a tortilla or flat bread than pitas. They didn't puff.

They tasted ok. We used them anyway. I just switched up the dinner idea a bit. My oldest middle child and I ate the bread on it's own. Hubby made his into a quesidilla and my oldest and youngest used them for chicken tacos. It worked.

But why didn't they turn out? I had great help. I followed all the directions. Could it be the yeast? I just bought a new bottle. Could it be the flour? I am using Pillsbury which my sister said she has had terrible luck making bread with this flour. She has abandoned it for all bread making. I have noticed that my artisan bread is really flat too making me think that it is something wrong with the flour since there is no yeast in that.

I hate failed attempts. What do you think?

Baby Carrots...Who Knew!

So I have been reading alot lately about real food. While I was doing some research I came across this article about carrots and thought it was worth sharing. Who knew there was so much information on baby carrots!

If your looking for some reading this weekend, or happen to be completely bored, you might want to check it out.

My Inner Dilema

On one hand the deal finder in me really wanted to go to Fareway this week and stock up on salad dressing. You can get Ken's Dressing for $.88 this week. That's a great deal, and so convenient to have in the pantry.

On the other hand I am a bit obsessed with getting my family on a healthier, real food diet. I found this great blog a while back and while reading discovered how to make my own salad dressing. I really like this idea and I think I could probably make it for under $.88 a bottle.

So, I think I am forgoing the deal at Fareway this week and going to use up what I have in the fridge. Once that is gone, I am going to be trying some of these homemade recipes.

Have any of you made homemade dressing before?

Eating Healthy

I am wanting to change my family over to a better diet. While I think we have made great strides at this in the last year, I think there is also lots of room for improvement. We NEED to do this. We have to stop eating so much unhealthy food. Last night we went out to dinner and Will and I were both sick afterwards from the grease. Yes, we could have ordered healthier meals but we didn't.

I am vowing here that we are hopping on the healthy, real food bandwagon. I am going to s-l-o-w-l-y make the transition to get as much processed, artificial, fake foods out of our diet as possible. While this is going to be a huge challenge for me, I feel like we need to do this.

I have started reading labels recently and am shocked at what is on the things that we are eating. I would love to switch strictly to an organic way of eating but realistically I know we probably can't afford to do this entirely. I can however, grow more of my own food and try and make more of my own meals at home. This will help me be more aware of what I am putting into my families body.

I don't think we can completely cut out chips, granola bars and ice cream forever but I do think we can certainly limit these things and be on the look out for a more healthier alternative.