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Homemade Essential Oil Air Fresheners

March 17, 2010 by 65 Comments

Have you ever noticed that males of all species have a tendency to (How can I put this delicately?) be malodorous?

I’m talking from a position of knowledge and experience here; I have a husband, five sons, and two male dogs.  We also have chickens and a cat. My boys tromp all over the yard without regard to the location of dog or chicken scat.  I feed my family a great deal of beans. My dogs get gassy when they’re nervous.* There are ample opportunities for ‘the stink’ to arise.

*Boy, do I wish I was joking about that.  Last summer we took the dogs to a family reunion in Southern Michigan.  We got stuck on the Ohio Turnpike in 90°F temperatures.  Our air conditioning broke and only one of the windows in the van worked.  It was the window next to yours-truly’s head.  So all the air exiting the van went right. past. my. face.  Remember that.  It will become very important to my story in mere moments. And the dogs?  Well, let’s just say being stuck in traffic was as hard on their nerves as ours.  Being stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic in sweltering temperatures with a flatulent eighty-five pound hound dog and his equally foul-smelling and obese beagle buddy was -in a word- horrific. You could have calibrated a 30-second hourglass by timing the brief respite between ‘episodes’ from Hambone and Diggedy.  I was traumatized. We all were.

I learned early on in my mother-of-many-boys career that eliminating the causes of ‘the stink’ was nearly impossible; I learned it was all about making a pleasant smelling oasis in each room.  And I spent money on it.  Oooh, baby, did I spend money; scented candles, gel air fresheners, room sprays, linen sprays, plug-in room deodorizers, misters, potpourri (sidebar: My mom fed boiled potpourri on a taco to my German exchange student friend in high school.  But that’s a story for another time. Hi, Mom!)

When I learned that three of my babies had asthma, all that stuff went out the window.  Actually, it went in the trash, but you savvy, right?  All the pretty smelling stuff went buh-bye.  Laundry detergent, fabric softener, cleaners?  All unscented.  Boo hoo.  Poor me.

The allergist told me I could use essential oils in small amounts in little bowls or reed diffusers, but I found that the scent dissipated too quickly.  I had to find something that smelled nice (or an inexpensive carbon filter face mask comfortable enough to wear 24/7) or risk losing what little sanity I had left.  It took five years…

You’ve heard that necessity is the mother of invention?  Well, I’m the mother of five little necessities and I had a perspiration. (My Dad defines ‘Perspiration’ as an inspiration that hurts.)  Homemade all-natural, essential oil powered, gel based air fresheners.  They met all the requirements to keep my poor asthmatic kids from doubling over and wheezing.  They smelled great.  They lasted a good long time.  They were cheap to make.  They had five ingredients you could find at any grocery or department store.  And this mom was happy.

Now a word or two about essential oils: they’re pretty powerfully scented, so go easy on how much you add.  You don’t want to add more than 30 drops per air freshener until you know just how strong your oil is.  The basic air freshener base recipe is listed and my favorite scent combinations are given below it.

For a printer-friendly version of this recipe sans photos and yakety-yakety, click here!

Homemade Essential Oil Air Fresheners

Ingredients:

  • 1 ounce granulated or powdered gelatin
  • 2 cups cold water, divided
  • 20-30 drops of your choice of essential oil
  • 1 Tablespoon salt
  • optional, food coloring to tint the air freshener

Also needed:

  • heat-proof jars to hold the hot gelatin liquid
  • a disposable chopstick or skewer to use as a stir stick

Bring one cup of water to a boil in a small saucepan.  Sprinkle the gelatin over the boiling water and whisk until smooth and all the gelatin is dissolved.  Add the salt and the second cup of cold water and whisk.  Set aside.

Add the desired amount of essential oil and food coloring, if using, to the jar(s).  Quickly pour the hot liquid gelatin over the essential oil and food coloring.  Stir until evenly colored.

Allow to cool, uncovered on a heat-proof surface.  When it reaches room temperature, place wherever you want a lovely scent.

Sweet Basil and Lemon  Air Freshener

  • 20 drops Sweet Basil essential oil
  • 8 drops Lemon essential oil

Rosemary Orange  Air Freshener

  • 25 drops Sweet Orange essential oil
  • 5 drops Rosemary essential oil (The Rosemary essential oil is mighty strong stuff.  Keep a light hand with this!)

Fresh Pine Scent Air Freshener

  • 25 drops Fir Pine essential oil
  • 3 drops Lemon essential oil
  • 2 drops Sweet Orange essential oil
  • 1 drop Bergamot essential oil

Pure Lavender Air Freshener

  • 30 drops of Lavender essential oil

Essence of Provençe Air Freshener

  • 20 drops Lavender essential oil
  • 5 drops Thyme essential oil
  • 2 drops Lemon essential oil

~~~

This year, if we have to take the dogs on another road trip, I’m prepared; I’ll just cram one of these up each nostril and pray.



Filed Under: Gifts, Household Hints, Instructional, Non-food recipes, Rebecca, Recipes, Stretching your dollars

Homemade Laundry Soap

February 22, 2010 by 41 Comments

Laundry has never been my friend.

I need to make this perfectly clear.  I’ve never liked it; emptying pockets, washing clothes, drying clothes, folding and sorting clothes and putting them away.  Ugh.  I am not naturally inclined toward good housekeeping.  I’d much rather sit down with a cup of tea and a good book or some knitting or quilt blocks.  I might even rather have extensive dental work done rather than tackle a pile of dirty clothes.

Over the years, my ability to ignore laundry has become legendary.  And the problem has grown as my family did. 5 active boys + 1 Evil Genius + 1 clothes horse/baker/homeschooling Mom = 1 big-old-laundry pile.  And thus far, my patient and studied approach of ignoring it long enough for someone to invent self-cleaning/folding/putting away laundry* has gone unrewarded.

*To my husband, The Evil Genius:  Hello, sweetie.  If you read that paragraph above, please know that I am in no way disparaging your progress in inventing self-cleaning laundry.  I understand that it is lower on the priority list than ruling the universe, tesseracting, and DIY space/time continuum rift kits, but if you get a few spare moments…

And I have another good reason to detest laundry.  We have many allergies in our family.  (I’m convinced that I  have an allergy to laundry and they just haven’t discovered the test to prove it.  But that’s not my point; I am referring to my kids’ perfume and dye allergies…) This means that I’ve sprung mad cash on ‘Dye Free/Fragrance Free’ laundry soaps over the years.  Mucho deniro.  Beaucoup d’argent.  Mega bucks.  And I am cheap.  It pained me to spend so much money on an activity that I dislike so very much.

So, when I did began the series in early January on saving money around the kitchen (see Parts I, II, III, and IV ) and I asked for readers’ money saving tips, I was intrigued when I read these two comments:

“Jennifer

I make my own laundry soap. I can make a batch that lasts me the month for approx $1.”

and

“Marcia

I make my own laundry soap, which costs about 1 cent a load. I am going to try the twix bars, they look wonderful!”

Jennifer and Marcia had my interest.  A buck a month?  A penny a load?  Well, geez.  Even I could get excited about THAT little laundry innovation.  I got in touch with Jennifer (because -quite conveniently- she is married to my cousin.  Does that make her my cousin-in-law? ) and she was kind enough to share her recipe for homemade laundry soap.  She also told me that she’s been using this homemade laundry soap for about four months and that she does a great deal of laundry.  (Poor thing.  She has my sympathy.)

Laundry soap for a penny per load was not a difficult experiment to sell to The Evil Genius because his affinity for saving money overrode any skepticism he may have had over the science of the endeavour.  I made a batch.  I tried the soap.  I rejoiced.  Let me tell you, this laundry soap is -in a word- awesome.  My laundry -without using any fabric softeners- came out of the washer and dryer more soft and supple, more vibrant, and better smelling than it has with even the best allergen free laundry soap I’ve ever bought.

No cries of foul allowed; I have a high efficiency washing machine, Jennifer has a 13 year old regular top-loader.  If it worked for both of us, it’ll work for you! I washed an incredibly dirty load that included jeans my son had worn to dirt bomb down our hill and jeans that I had worn for a marathon baking session.  They both came out cleaner than I could have ever imagined.  Go on and look at me.  Am I getting excited about laundry?  I have photographic proof:

Aidan’s jeans after dirt-bombing.  These jeans sat in the hamper for 9 days before being washed.  I had written them off completely.  (I TOLD you I’m bad at laundry.)

Before:

Okay, it didn’t get the stain out.  But the light stain?  That was nine-days-in-the-hamper-my-fault.  It ended up much, much better than I expected and the resulting jeans are perfectly acceptable for everything from visiting with friends to spending the day in town.  That is an improvement over the ‘only-good-for-further-dirt-bombinb’ appearance I expected.

After:

Now, for my jeans.  Check out the fact that the entire leg is dusted with flour while there are many little areas of ground in, caked on bread dough.  If they were human I’d tell you to look at their pallid color; all dingy and faded.  So sad.  I feared for my jeans.

Before:

Wowza!  Look how clean they got.  There’s no foolery here.  These are the same jeans! Not a trace of the full-leg coating of flour OR of the little mini-loaves of bread that were ground into the fabric.  Total, 100% win on these!

After:

Look at the advantages:

  1. It is really, really inexpensive.
  2. It is environmentally and septic-system friendly.  No worries about phosphates or other nasties.
  3. You can customize the scent of your laundry.  Want lavender, lemon, orange, fir pine, or coffee scented clothes?  No prob.  Just grab the appropriate essential oil.  Want to repel mosquitos with your clothes?  Add citronella essential oil.  Want no scent at all?  Don’t add oil!  Piece of cake!
  4. It’s really cheap.
  5. It is allergy-sufferer friendly.  You can use the mildest bar soap on the market (Dr. Bronner’s Mild All-In-One for Babies gets my vote.)
  6. There are no dyes in it to irritate sensitive skin.
  7. Did I mention it saves you a ton of money?

Let me break down the cost for you:

The amounts needed end up costing this:

  • Washing soda: $0.35 for one batch (10 batches worth in the box.)
  • Borax:  $0.17 for one batch (24 batches worth in the box.)
  • Soap: $0.50 for one batch (3 batches worth in the three-pack.)
  • Essential Oil: $0.10 (this is an estimate based on pure guess work.  It’s a big bottle of oil and I used very little.)

Total cost for the batch: $1.12.  If I left out the essential oil, the batch would have cost $1.02.  Let me repeat: $1.12 for nearly five gallons of allergy-sufferer friendly, superior laundry detergent.  Beat that.

For a photo-free, printer-friendly version of this ‘recipe’, click here!

Homemade Laundry Soap

Ingredients:

  • One five gallon plastic bucket with a tight fitting lid.  (Can be found at Walmart or Home Depot near the paint sections.)
  • One bar of gentle soap  (You can use Ivory, Dr. Bronner’s or any other non-beauty bar.  In other words, no lotion in the soap!  My Amish friends told me they use 1/3 of a bar of Fels-Naptha for their homemade soap.  That’s a little harsher than I want to use on my allergy-prone babies, but there’s no doubt that’ll get dirt out of anything…)
  • 1 cup Washing Soda (This is available in the laundry aisle at Walmart and my tiny small-town grocery store.  I’m sure you can find it.  If you don’t have luck, Amazon.com carries it.)
  • 1/2 cup Borax (This is also available in laundry aisles and Amazon.com.)
  • 4 cups warm water plus 4 gallons warm water, separated.
  • Optional, 10-40 drops of essential oil of your choice (Strictly optional, folks.  But shhhh… I used 35 drops of lavender essential oil.  Don’t tell the menfolk.  They don’t care for smellin’ purty.)

Grate the bar of soap on a metal cheese grater.

There is a large part of me that is so conditioned to what you normally do with cheese graters that I had to restrain myself from eating the soap.  Doesn’t it look like a beautiful pile of mozzarella?  It looked so good that I was tempted to cuss just so I could try washing my mouth out with it.  But I didn’t…

Do not use a plastic cheese grater as plastic is more likely to absorb odors from the soap. Put into a stainless steel or glass saucepan on the stove with 4 cups of warm water.  The same warning applies here as to the cheese grater. Don’t use a pan that will absorb odors.  Non-stick surfaces are more likely to soak up that soapy scent and flavor.

Heat while stirring until the soap is all dissolved.  Set aside.

Put 4 gallons of warm water into the large bucket and thoroughly stir in the Borax and Washing Soda. When those are dissolved into the water, stir in the melted soap. After pouring the melted soap into the bucket, plunge the pan up and down in the water a few times to stir the contents.

Look at that squeaky clean pan.  Stir and clean at the same time?  I’m all about efficiency!  But don’t forget to rinse it thoroughly before drying.  Nothing like soapy soup to bring you down.

Stir in the essential oil at this point if you are using it.

Allow the soap to sit, tightly covered, overnight.

The next morning you will find the soap to have a thick, gelatinous appearance.  Use a long spoon to break it up and stir it.  And don’t forget- use a spoon that won’t soak up the scent or soap flavor.

Hey look- this soap looks like brains.  The kids have been sick and I’ve had very little sleep. You could probably transplant this into my cranium with no appreciable difference in performance.

You will probably not be able to completely break up the lumps, but this is not a problem.

Congratulations: You have now joined the Tightwad Fraternity.  But you don’t have to tell anyone.  Just reap the compliments when people remark that your clothes look so nice and so clean and smell so fresh.

This is now usable!  Store tightly lidded for up to two months.*

*If you cannot use this quantity of laundry soap within two months, you can definitely reduce it.  To make a much smaller batch: use 1/4 of a bar of soap, grated into 1 cup of warm water; 1/4 cup of washing soda, 1/8 cup of Borax, and 1 gallon of warm water.  If you opt to use the essential oil, you would use between 3 and 10 drops in the micro-batch.

To use:

Use one cup (8 liquid ounces) of the laundry soap per load of laundry.  As this soap does not create suds, it is acceptable for use in high-efficiency machines as well as being good for the standard top-loading machines.


Filed Under: Household Hints, Instructional, Kitchen Techniques and Hints, Non-food recipes, Rebecca, Recipes, Stretching your dollars Tagged With: , ,

5-Minute Homemade Creamy Tomato Soup

January 19, 2010 by 7 Comments

Today’s post is Part IV of the “Saving Money in the Kitchen” series that began Tuesday.  You can read Part I here ,  Part II here and Part III here.

Wowza!  Who knew the response to being frugal would be so excellent?  I’m thrilled that so many of you are excited about stretching your food dollars to the max.  I feel like we’re all part of a super secret savings club.  I am fully aware how dorky that makes me sound, but really.  I love knowing I’m not the only one who gets a little shiver of joy when I save a few bucks.

I promised this post yesterday and I’m oh so sorry I didn’t get the chance, but I hope you find it was worth the wait.  To make it up to you I’ll share my recipe for my 5-Minute Homemade Creamy Tomato Soup.  No, it is not ketchup soup. *  Yes, it is done in about 5 mintutes.  It is so much better -and better for you- than any of that stuff that comes in the red, white and gold cans or their imitators.  And guess what.  It’s less expensive than that aforementioned national brand is when it’s on sale!  I kid you not.  Homemade, from-scratch soup that tastes superior to, is better for you than and is cheaper than the stuff in the store.

creamytomatosoup2

But first we talk savings…

*Ketchup soup is the enfant terrible of the frugal foods movement.  Let’s be real.  It tastes like what it is; watered down ketchup.  And honestly?  Unless you’re stealing the ketchup packets from a fast food restaurant (What are you doing in there anyway?  Those places aren’t really all that cheap!) it’s not going to end up being any cheaper than generic label or my homemade tomato soup.  And it’s wrong to steal.  So there.

Remember the list we’ve been talking about? The list I like to call “The Better Living List”?  I call it this mainly because I haven’t come up with a wittier name just yet.  I’m open for suggestions. To jog your memory, here’s the list again.

  1. Know your preferences.
  2. Keep staples on hand.
  3. Know what you have on hand.
  4. Plan your potential meals and make the most of what you already have available before you shop.
  5. Know what you need beyond what you have to make those meals.
  6. Build flexibility into your plan.
  7. Build change into your plan.
  8. Have a back-up plan.
  9. Relax, dangit!  It’s food!

We talked about points one through five previously (You can read Part I here ,  Part II here and Part III here.) Today I’m devoting to points six through nine (and soup, but that comes later.)

Build flexibility into your plan.

This is, believe it or not, one of the most important things you can do to save money.  And it is a darned good reason to have that list of food likes and dislikes for your family. (Remember our list from Part II?) Here’s a scenario that has happened to me that shows why flexibility is important: I knew what was in my refrigerator and pantry and I had  planned my meals.  Most of my dinners meals for that week were fashioned around making a huge batch of taco meat at the beginning of the week; Tacos, taco soup, cheeseburger pizza, ground beef quesadillas with leftover soup, and spaghetti,  as well as a fish meal and a roast chicken for Sunday.  I arrived at the store armed with my menu plan and grocery list.  At the meat counter, I saw the ground beef was $2.99 per pound.  According to my plan and list I was going to purchase eight pounds.  Eight pounds at $2.99 per pound was $24.00.  Right next to the ground beef was a manager’s special of pork shoulder for $0.69 per pound.  Because I was flexible, I bought an eight pound porkshoulder roast for $5.52 and got the equivalent number of meals (shredded pork tacos, pork tortilla soup, barbecue pork pizza, pulled pork quesadillas and pulled pork nachos)  at a savings of $18.48.  That was almost $20 off the grocery bill right there.

So how do you build flexibility into your plan?  I tell you it’s all in the list.  The list of likes and dislikes and potential meals, that is.  When you run across those killer sales you can take a quick glance at your list to tell you whether it’s worth bringing home.  ‘Cause let me tell you something, no matter HOW cheap monkey brains were offered at my local store it wouldn’t do me a lick of good to bring them home since I would refuse to cook them let alone eat them.  (Okay, monkey brains?  Not so big a market for them here in Amish country, but you get my point.)  And my example above was a pretty straightforward one.  You can substitute slow-cooker braised shredded pork pretty easily for ground beef in most cases.  The trick is in teaching yourself to recognize substitutions when they’re on sale.  But  you should be ready to overhaul your menu plan in a more drastic way if you see something that you all like that is on mega-sale.  Having your list of potential meals handy helps you to see what you could replace on your meal plan to take advantage of sale items.  Be sure to write it down if you do change meals.  I have been known to forget the meals I dreamed up in the grocery store between the checkout and my car.  I know.  It’s sad.  Maybe I should eat more fish.

Build change into your plan

Make sure you add new meals occasionally.  Nothing will put me off a plan faster than getting bored.  If I’ve mentioned my fickleness once I’ve mentioned it a thousand times.  I need to have new, exciting foods semi-regularly.  Even if it’s just Beef Sukiyaki instead of Beef Stew one week it helps keep your love of food fresh.  When I was a kid, my mom had different ethnic foods for different nights of the week; Italian foods on Mondays, Filipino foods on Wednesdays, Mexican foods on Fridays, etc…  I love this memory.

Have a back-up plan

I’m not much of a ‘convenience food’ gal.  Truth be known, I don’t find convenience foods all that convenient.  I prefer the taste and nutritional value of simple home-crafted, home-cooked food.  But I’d be lying to myself and you if I didn’t say that you need to have something around to feed you all on those nights.  You know just as well as I do which nights those are.  They’re the nights that cap off the days where your alarm clock didn’t sound, you got the kids to school an hour late without a note, got a traffic ticket you couldn’t afford on the way to the office which also made you an hour and a half late.  Then you got home to find out the dog had gotten sick on your wool sweater that was unaccountably in the middle of the floor , your kids were ‘starving’ and you had forgotten to take the ground beef out of the freezer to make dinner.  Those nights you need sanity more than you need food snobbery or a guilt complex.  For those occasions you need a jar or two of prepared pasta sauce, some dried pasta or frozen ravioli and a frozen loaf of garlic bread.  Just do yourself a favor and have them on hand.  Trust me.  It would be nice to live in a land where fairy godmothers dropped off locally-grown, grass-fed meat and organic vegetable laden care-packages on nights where you could barely drag yourself to bed, but we don’t.  And unless Alice Waters is your godmother, neither do you. So keep it real and make sure you have a back-up plan.

The back-up plan is the safety net that keeps you from chucking the overall plan altogether on those horrid nights.  Which brings us, finally, to…

Relax dangit!  It’s food!

I am totally serious.  I love good food.  I love it enough to spend a good deal of time thinking, talking and writing about it, cooking it, teaching people to cook it, and eating it but I don’t love it enough to make it a god.  What I mean by that is that my main goal is simply to keep my family well-nourished.  The ideal is locally and organically grown produce and grains, ethically raised poultry, seafood and grass-fed beef.  Reality for us often falls well short of that and I will not sacrifice my family’s mental or fiscal well-being to attain that ideal.  When allocating my food money, I choose the hills I’m going to die on (organic carrots, high fructose corn syrup, lettuce and celery) and the hills where I’ll execute a strategic withdrawal (potatoes, tomatoes, onions, and corn.) This is what works for us with the amount of money we have to spend.  You may have more or less than we do, so do what works best within the resources you have available and don’t feel guilty about it;  I’ve found my happy medium and I encourage you all to do the same.  Once you have decided on your priorities, just relax and enjoy the food.  Unless we’re talking about real food allergies or major health problems I really think we all need to take a deep breath and chill.  In other words, no ritual suicides if you fail to attain locavore* sainthood.

*Sidebar: This has been a growing topic of discussion lately.  There have been politicians, celebrity chefs and food bloggers all weighing in the subject and I’m really interested in getting your thoughts. Does ‘eating local’ matter to you?  I’d love to know why it does or doesn’t.

Tomorrow, I’ll cover the “No-no List” from Part II in greater detail.  (And I’ll name the winner of the Korintje Cinnamon giveaway!) But for now?  Let’s talk about soup!

This isn’t just any old soup.  This is magical soup recipe;  It takes five minutes, costs $1.50, and yields eight cups of creamy, silky, delicious, intensely tomatoey soup.  (Are you ready for my broken record routine?) There are no funky preservatives or additives and you can control the sodium without paying premium prices for low-sodium soup. That’s something I never understood.  How do you charge me more when you leave things out?  Hmmm…

Here’s the price breakdown (Just so’s  you know I’m not funning you.)

  • $0.59 for a 48 ounce can of tomato puree
  • $0.00 for 3-3/4 cups tap water (provided your tap water is potable!)
  • $0.04 for 2 Tablespoons of cornstarch from a 1 pound box that cost $1.00
  • $0.75 for 1 cup of Half and Half from a pint carton that cost $1.50
  • $0.01 for 1 teaspoon of Kosher salt from a 1 pound box that cost $2.99
  • $0.11 for 1/2 teaspoon of celery salt and a pinch of Italian seasonings from larger bulk containers.  (I love you, but I’m not determining how many 1/2 teaspoon servings of celery salt came in that 2 pound bag I got from the Amish bulk foods place. I’m making an educated estimation here.)
  • That brings our grand total to $1.50 for the whole batch of soup.

To recap: eight cups of amazing tomato bisque made from scratch in five minutes for a buck-fifty.  Try it on for size tonight.  It’s cold out there, honey!

For a photo-free, I-go-on-and-on-free, printer-friendly version of this recipe, click here!

5-Minute Homemade Creamy Tomato Soup

Ingredients:

  • 1 (48 ounce) can Tomato Puree (You can substitute crushed tomatoes if you prefer more robust texture in your soup.)
  • 3-3/4 cups plus 1/4 cup fresh water, divided
  • 2 Tablespoons Cornstarch
  • 1 teaspoon Kosher Salt
  • 3/4 teaspoon Granulated Garlic
  • 1/2 teaspoon Celery Salt
  • a pinch of Italian Seasonings
  • 1 cup Half and Half

Stir together the tomato puree, 3-3/4 cups water, Kosher salt, granulated garlic, celery salt and Italian seasonings in a heavy bottomed pan over medium heat.  Bring to a simmer, stirring frequently to prevent scorching.  When the soup is simmering, use a fork to combine the cornstarch and remaining 1/4 cup of water in a small bowl or cup.  Stir the cornstarch until no lumps remain.  While stirring the soup vigorously, pour the cornstarch and water mixture into the pan.  Return to a simmer and continue cooking until thickened, about 1 to 2 minutes.  When thickened, remove from the heat and stir in Half and Half.  Serve immediately or refrigerate, tightly covered, for up to a week.

We like ours with grilled cheese sandwiches made on homemade rye bread, but it’s equally good with a handful of oyster crackers or as a meal starter.  Every now and then, when I’ve been extra good, I swirl a little heavy cream into my soup when I serve it.  Okay.  I really do it most of the time.  And I’m not necessarily really good when I do it.  But it’s cream!  Do I really need a reason?

creamytomatosoup1

Filed Under: Appetizers & Snacks, Happy Healthy and Wise, Healthy Foods, Household Hints, Instructional, Kitchen Techniques and Hints, Rebecca, Recipes, Soups & Stews, Stretching your dollars, Vegetarian Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Savoury Rice and Egg Pancakes

January 12, 2010 by 14 Comments

savouryriceandeggpancakes 11

Looks tasty, doesn’t it?  It’s crisp around the edges with the perfect balance of saltiness and creaminess in the center.  It’s nourishing.  It’s delicious.  It fills you up.  It only takes five minutes to make from start to finish. But you know what else dings my chimes about this dish? It costs $3.42 for four large servings.  And yes, that includes garnish.

And no, I’m not joking.

I sat down today prepared to write a little ‘how-to’ on saving money in the kitchen with a family favorite recipe thrown in to boot.  The keyword here was ‘little’.  An hour into writing, I realized there was no way to condense what is a way of life into one itty-bitty post with a recipe.  I have enough material to fill four posts and I will get to every bit of it.  I want you to come back for all of this.  Here’s the deal.  I know saving money in the kitchen isn’t exactly the sexiest topic.  I get it.  So I have a little incentive to offer.  But first, a question.

How much do you spend on food each month?  And how many people are you feeding?  You don’t have to tell me unless you feel so inclined, but just consider it for a moment.  According to the USDA’s Cost of Food reports (published monthly), my family of seven should be spending $804.40* per month on our food.

*This is calculated according to the ‘Thrifty’ food plan numbers given on the chart.  If I were to use the ‘Low’ food plan we would be expected to spend in excess of $1,067.  This trend continues on up through the ‘Moderate’ and ‘Liberal’ plans.

Here is my incentive.  I’m going to tell you what I spend every month on groceries.  I’m also going to tell you what another blogger buddy of mine, my dear friend Krysta a.k.a. Evil Chef Mom,  pays monthly to feed her family of six. Just one other question, though, before divulging our food budgets.  Would you agree, from all appearances here at Foodie With Family and over at Evil Chef Mom that our families eat pretty well?  You might even say a wee bit on the fancy-pants side occasionally?  I think that’s fairly safe to say, right?

I spend $500 a month.  I feed seven people and whatever friends or family happen to be hanging around at meal time out of that.

Krysta spends between $650 and $700 a month.  She’s feeding three, count ‘em, THREE teenagers, a pre-teen, a host of kids’ friends (also teenagers), and any family or friends who might be present at meal time.

We both make food good enough to share.

That puts me in at more than $300 under what the government believes is the least amount of money a family my size would reasonably spend per month in food.

Lest you should get the wrong idea let me tell you something important.  Neither of us coupon shops.  Neither of us obsessively watches sales.   None of us -ourselves, our kids or our husbands- feel deprived of the food we want or crave.  We are food lovers.

It’s really simple.  Really.  I wouldn’t lie to you!

Starting tomorrow we’ll go through a series of posts chock full of tips, tricks, and methods that can potentially help you save beaucoup bucks in the kitchen without sacrificing flavor or slaving away in the kitchen.  Unless, of course, you like slaving away in the kitchen.  The point is that it’s your choice.

Let me break down the food cost from today’s recipe:

  • 2 cups of uncooked rice from a 25 pound bag.  The bag was $16.  There were 62.5 cups of rice in the bag. That translates to $0.51 for this recipe.
  • 6 eggs from a dozen at a cost of $1.50 per dozen (from our own chickens).  The cost for the eggs was $0.75.
  • 1 cup of shredded cheese from a 3 cup bag that cost $2.79.  The cost of the cheese for this recipe was $0.93.
  • 1 Tablespoon of hot sauce from a bottle containing twenty tablespoons.   The bottle cost $2.99.  The hot sauce used in this recipe cost $0.15.
  • 1 teaspoon of salt from a one pound box that cost $2.99.  The one pound box contained 283 teaspoons.  That puts the cost of the salt in this recipe at a fraction of a cent over $0.01.
  • 2 Tablespoons of canola oil from a $1.00 jar that contained sixty tablespoons.  The cost of the oil is $0.03.
  • 8 Tablespoons of salsa from a jar containing twenty two tablespoons.  This is the big splurge in our recipe.  Since the jar cost $2.79, the total cost of the salsa for the dish was a whopping $1.04.
  • That makes the grand total for the whole recipe a bank-book friendly $3.42.  If you skipped the salsa you’d clock in at $2.38 for the whole entree.

This is great-tasting food, too.  You can make a whole batch of them, store them in an airtight container in the refrigerator, and take a couple a day to work or school for lunch.  They reheat beautifully.  If you  need a little something extra, throw a handful of salad alongside.  Bang.  A complete meal.

There are more options.  You can mix in some leftover cooked meat or vegetables.  Wrapped in a piece of foil or a paper towel it’s a meal you can take on the road with you. No matter how you slice it, it’s going to be cheaper and more filling for the money than even the dollar menu.

Frugal does not have to look or taste like sacrifice.

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Hang on.  There’s more to it.  It’s good for you.  It’s great for you.  The egg provides lean protein.  The rice provides a healthy carbohydrate.  The canola oil is non-hydrogenated. The salt is negligible.  On it’s own, it’s healthy.  If, however,  you compare it to fast-food or pre-packaged, processed food you’re going to come out leaps and bounds and miles ahead nutritionally.

How about it?  Are you interested?  Try the Savoury Rice and Egg Pancakes and then come back tomorrow.  This is going to be fun! I promise!

For a photo-free, printer-friendly version of this recipe, click here!

Savoury Rice and Egg Pancakes

Ingredients:

  • 4 cups chilled leftover cooked rice
  • 6 large eggs
  • 1 cup shredded cheese, whatever type you have on hand
  • 1 Tablespoon hot sauce
  • 1 teaspoon Kosher salt
  • 2 Tablespoons Canola oil (or non-stick cooking spray)
  • 8 Tablespoons salsa
  • optional: thinly sliced green onion tops

Break up the cold rice in a mixing bowl (or in a resealable plastic bag) with your hands so that no chunks remain.

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Crack eggs into the rice, add shredded cheese, hot sauce and Kosher salt.  Mix thoroughly.

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If your mixture is too thick or dry, you can crack another egg into it.  Eggs vary in size, so this may happen occasionally.  So, gee whiz, add another $0.10 to the total if you need to do it.

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Add just enough oil to a non-stick skillet to lightly coat the pan.  Place pan over medium high heat.  When the pan is hot scoop a scant quarter cup into the pan.  Use the bottom of the scoop to gently pat the rice mixture out to a thinner patty shape.  The mixture will not spread on its own.

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Don’t crowd the pan.  This 12″ nonstick pan can comfortably fit four pancakes at a time.

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Cook for about two minutes per side, or until deep golden brown on each side.

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Transfer to a waiting plate and repeat with the remaining rice and oil until it is gone. Serve with salsa.  You can plate it up all perty-like if you want.  And I want.

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Filed Under: Appetizers & Snacks, Breakfast Foods, Eggs, Getting Creative With Leftovers, Happy Healthy and Wise, Healthy Foods, Household Hints, Instructional, Kitchen Techniques and Hints, Main Dish, Rebecca, Recipes, Side Dishes, Snacks, Stretching your dollars, Vegetarian Tagged With: , , , , ,

Quick Mason Jar Iced Coffee

June 3, 2008 by 4 Comments

Frothy, creamy, icey good!I love iced coffee.  My iced coffee proclivity is an anomaly because I’m not a daily coffee drinker.  When the mercury climbs, though, there’s something about a frothy, sweet, chocolaty , icy coffee that really rings my chimes.  I started making my own because the ones sold by most restaurants were too sweet for my tastes, but I continued on the quest for the perfect homemade iced coffee because I’m obsessive. 

 

As with most things I do, I started out much too complicated and ended up simplifying drastically. 

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Filed Under: Beverages, Desserts, Household Hints, Rebecca, Recipes, Stretching your dollars Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,