Deep Freezers are a great assest to any family.  They help you to stock up on  manager sales, buy in bulk, and purchase large amounts of meat from your favorite butcher.  But, if you lose track of what is in them–they could cause you to lose money by having to toss expired foods.  Keeping a detailed Freezer Inventory helps prevent food waste. There’s not telling how much money that saves in the long run!

That’s why I’m offering a FREE Freezer Inventory Printable for you to use!  You can choose from the more compact version {great for those that have a small amount of freezer space} or the more detailed version with more blanks {for those with multiple freezers}.

{TIP}  Laminate your Freezer Inventory Sheet and fill in the blanks using  Dry Erase Marker.  This way you can just wipe off and fill back in!

One Page Freezer Inventory Printable

Two Page Freezer Inventory Printable

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FREE Freezer Inventory Printable is a post from: Getting Freedom From Debt

When you’re trying to cook as many meals as you can at home, you find that you need more and more kitchen gadgets.  Or at least I did.  Being the frugal person that I am, initially I had a very hard time shelling out money for those gadgets, when my goal was to save money, and not spend it. However, I’ve found that sometimes you’ve got to spend money, to make saving money easier.

Case in Point::  Kitchen Gadgets.

One of the top questions I am asked about is my variety of kitchen gadgets, and what I cannot live without in my frugal kitchen.  Over the next few weeks {or however long it takes me to run out of gadgets } I will share with you my favorite kitchen gadgets that help me to maintain a minimal grocery budget.

First up is one of my favorites-and probably the one that has saved me the most money.

My canning supplies.

When I first realized that home canning was something that I was interested in, I bought the water bath canner that is pictured on the right and later invested in the pressure canner {well hubby bought it as a Christmas gift}.  This time of year, many merchants have their canning supplies on sale–and you just might be able to score a deal.

In addition to my canning pots I use a funnel, magnetic wand and a jar lifter.  Neither of these are essential, per se, but they do make the process a bit easier.  Before purchasing them, I relied heavily on my awesome pouring skills {ha! more like my awesome wiping-the-edge-of-the-jar-skills}, my silicone oven mitt, and a pair of tongs.

Cost Breakdown

Oftentimes you can find canning supplies from garage sales, consignment stores, auctions or even on clearance at major retailers. Just keep your eyes open!  I have more canning jars than I will probably ever use at one time {although that would be one fantastic pantry!}, and I’ve probably only paid retail for half of them.  I’ve decided to do a cost breakdown of my out of pocket expenses for my canning supplies, versus what it would cost me for one years worth of buying canned goods.  This is obviously my best guesstimate, so may not be completely accurate, but will atleast give you number people like me something to compare to.

Water Bath Canner:: $8

Pressure Canner:: $90

Miscellaneous Tools:: $14

Jars:: $100 {our current stash is roughly200-250}

Lids for ONE canning season:: $60

Total:: $274

What would it cost to purchase one year worth of canned goods?

Roughly $365, based on 2 canned goods a night at 50¢/can.

More often than not the produce I use to can with comes from my very own garden, or bought on manager mark down at the grocery store for next to nothing.  According to the figures above, I break even in the first year, even if I were to spend $91 on produce.

Sounds like canning is a frugal kitchen must!

Want some canning inspiration? Check out these recipes and this post to help you get started.

This post does contain affiliate links.  Thank you for continuing to support this site!

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To Can or Not to Can? is a post from: Getting Freedom From Debt

Homemade refried beans are on our menu atleast once a week.  If we’re not having them in our quesadillas, we’re having them alongside our tacos, enchiladas or in a taco salad.  They’re frugal and packed with flavor, two musts in our kitchen!

I was delighted when I found out that dried beans could easily be canned at home.  {I  might have even done a happy dance. }  After doing the cost comparison and doing a taste test–home canned refried beans will be a regular around here.  They are incredibly delicious and effortless to make.  Home canned refried beans {using my calculations} cost under 50¢ a quart!  That price is hard to beat in the store–and we’ve not even begun to talk about the flavor!

Home Canned Refried Beans

Soak Your Beans

I just soaked mine in hot water for about 3 hours before I began. I knew I was wanting to do 7 quarts, so I measured out about 11 cups of beans. Your beans process in the pressure canner long enough that you won’t have to worry about them not getting soft–the soaking here is mostly to remove the gas and any debris.

Gather Your Supplies

Get out all  your jars, rings/lids, and spices that you will need.

To make 7 quarts of refried beans I used::

14 cups water
2 1/3 cup chopped onion; 1/3 cup per quart
7 cloves of garlic, minced; 1 clove per quart
1 ½ Tbsp Chilli Powder
4 tsp salt
6-8 Chipotle Cubes {or, 2-2½ Tbsp chipotle pepper powder}
2 Tbsp Paprika

In a large pot, bring water and spices to a boil. Do not add the garlic or chopped onions to this mixture. 

I followed the basic steps to canning dried beans mentioned in this post, and basically added in my spices.  But to keep things all in one place, I’ll outline the basic steps here also.

In order to can your beans at home, you have to have a pressure canner. Beans can not safely be canned in a water bath canner because a water bath canner cannot reach the temperature needed to kill any bacteria that could be lurking in your beans. This isn’t something to take lightly, so please, do not even attempt it!

Sterilize

Sterilize your lids and jars. You can see a step by step tutorial in this post. While I’ve never done it this way, you can also run your jars through your dishwasher, without soap, on the sterilize setting.

Fill Your Jars

Add your beans to your empty jars; 3/4 cup beans for pints, and 1½ cups for quarts. Once you’ve added in your beans, add in 1/3 cup chopped onion, 1 garlic clove and 2 cups of your seasoned water to each jar.   You will also need to add straight water to your jars, filling to 1 inch headspace. *TIP* This is basically to the bottom of the rings on your canning jar. Wipe off the rim of your jars, and add on the lid and ring.

Process

While you are filling your jars, prepare your pressure canner. Once your jars are ready, carefully add them into the pressure canner. Process pints for 75 minutes, quarts for 90 minutes–both at 10 pounds pressure.

Once your time is up, remove from heat and let your canner cool on it’s own.  After the pressure has returned to zero and the vent lock has went back down, it is now safe to remove the weight.  Let the steam escape, remove the lid {Be very careful, the canner still contains steam.} and then remove your jars using a jar lifter or silicone mitt.  Place your hot jars on a towel to cool down.  Check your seals after 24 hours.

*New to pressure canning?  This post will walk you through the steps, even though it’s for green beans.  

*Note::  To my next batch, I plan to add more beans to the jar.  After I processed them, the beans settled and soaked up a lot of the water–leaving me with more headspace than what I would like {as you can see by the picture}.  While I haven’t tried it yet, my guess is that 1 2/3 cup of beans per quart would be adequate.

*While refried beans may not be the most accurate name for this recipe, I’ve went ahead and named them that because the flavor is that of traditional refried beans.  The beans are still whole when they are finished processing, but are easily smashed to resemble traditional refried beans, or could be “refried” before serving.

What is your favorite way to enjoy refried beans?

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Home Canning Refried Beans is a post from: Getting Freedom From Debt

Preserving and storing food is a favorite of mine.  I truly enjoy looking at my full freezers and pantry shelves and making up more homemade convenience foods to put back in their place.  

When we were still in the planning stages of Project Major Home Addition, one element I was adamant on was a large pantry, even though we were also to have a large kitchen.  My reasoning behind it was that freezer space is highly limited and it is a continued cost {the electricity}.  Not only that, but there are some days when I forget to pull out an ingredient for dinner that is tucked away in my freezer and I end up having to wait longer for it to thaw. 

Many foods can be safely canned at home using a pressure canner or a water bath canner–you just have to follow specific directions.  For my family, learning to how to can just made sense .

Why Can Beans?

Dining on beans is already a frugal choice for dinners.  However, you can stretch your grocery dollars even further by using dried beans.  They are far cheaper than buying already canned beans from the store, and like everything else homemade–you control the ingredients, namely the amount of salt. 

Not only are dried beans easy on your grocery budget, they’re super easy to cook!  The hardest part, for me anyway, is remembering to give them a good long soak the night before.  Before now, I’ve always cooked them for a couple of hours on the stove top, bagged them up in about one pound portions, and popped them in the freezer for use later.  However, I’ve noticed there have been lots of instances {especially lately since my mind is going every which direction, but the way I need it to be!} when I’ve forgotten to pull our our beans for dinner and I’ve had to wait on it to thaw. 

After a few frustrating times, and delayed dinners, a light bulb went off.  Why can’t I just can these?!  So I started to research–and indeed, beans can be canned at home and really, it’s pretty easy!  During the canning process, your beans are cooked to perfection–from start to finish {minus soaking time} you should be done in under 2 hours!

How to Home Can Beans

In order to can your beans at home, you have to have a pressure canner.  Beans can not safely be canned in a water bath canner because a water bath canner cannot reach the temperature needed to kill any bacteria that could be lurking in your beans.  This isn’t something to take lightly, so please, do not even attempt it!

Soak Your Beans

Like I mentioned, I’m pretty scatter brained on this step, so I just soaked mine in hot water for about 3 hours before I began.  I knew I was wanting to do 7 quarts, so I measured out about 11 cups of beans.  Your beans process in the pressure canner long enough that you won’t have to worry about them not getting soft–the soaking here is mostly to remove the gas and any debris.

Sterilize

Sterilize your lids and jars.  You can see a step by step tutorial in this post.  While I’ve never done it this way, you can also run your jars through your dishwasher, without soap, on the sterilize setting.

Fill Your Jars

Add your beans to your empty jars; 3/4 cup beans for pints, and 1½ cups for quarts.  Once you’ve added in your beans, fill with water making sure to leave 1 inch of headspace. *TIP*  This is basically to the bottom of the rings on your canning jar.  Wipe off the rim of your jars, and add on the lid and ring.

Process

While you are filling your jars, prepare your pressure canner.  Once your jars are ready, carefully add them into the pressure canner.  Process pints for 75 minutes, quarts for 90 minutes–both at 10 pounds pressure. 

*New to pressure canning?  This post will walk you through the steps, even though it’s for green beans.  

*You can process pints and quarts together, although it isn’t ideal.  You will need to process them for the longest time, which in this case would be 90 minutes.  This ensures that the quarts are processed correctly, and it’s better to over-process them than to under-process {as there could still be bacteria lurking in there}.

Once your time is up, remove from heat and let your canner cool on it’s own.  After the pressure has returned to zero and the vent lock has went back down, it is now safe to remove the weight.  Let the steam escape, remove the lid {Be very careful, the canner still contains steam.} and then remove your jars using a jar lifter or silicone mitt.  Place your hot jars on a towel to cool down.  Check your seals after 24 hours.

What’s the Cost?

If you’re a number person like I am, and are curious as to roughly how much home canned beans cost–here it is::  While I buy my beans in bulk, I’ve figured up that it cost me roughly 25¢ a cup for dried pinto beans.  With those figures, a quart of home canned pinto beans {about 2 store bought cans of beans} cost right around 38¢.  Now that’s a bargain!

These instructions work for canning most dried beans, such as pinto, black, navy and kidney beans.  As for my canning adventure that I hinted to on facebook and in yesterday’s post??  They were canned beans alright, canned refried beans!  TONS better than my regular ones {although those are fabulous, too!}.  I’ll definiltey share that recipe soon!

This post is part of Frugal Friday.

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How to Can Beans is a post from: Getting Freedom From Debt

Have you ever taken a step back, and thought of your kitchen as a grocery store? A few weeks ago as I was doing my normal grocery shopping, a thought popped in my mind that has really changed the way I view my kitchen.  Not only the contents, but the way it functions–or atleast the way I want it to function.  I want my kitchen to be it’s own little grocery store {well, without the store part!}.  I want those conveniences that the grocery stores offer, without leaving my cushy, comfortable home, because it’s not all that easy with a baby on the loose!

Think of it this way:: Your kitchen cupboards are full of nothing more than what the grocery store sets forth to provide{talking in terms of mostly convenience food here}.  Food.  Quick and Easy Food. If the grocery store sells it, you can grow it, farm it, or make it {generally}. Just exactly how much you do is up to you.

{I know, I know..My mind is a bit crazy at times! }

Easy Homemade Convenience Foods

Frozen Meatballs

Pizza Pockets/Taco Pockets

Pudding Cups/Dry Pudding Mixes

Remember my grandmother’s cookbook? It is chock full of homemade puddings of all sorts of flavors. From scratch, not the box, using on hand ingredients. When I found them, I was eager to try them–but moreso now that Lynn makes it look easy!

Homemade Hummus

Family Sized Meals/TV Dinners

Freezing cooking is all the rage around blog land.  Many of your favorite meals are freezer friendly.  If you need ideas–take a walk down the frozen section of your grocery store! After all that’s what you’re going for.  You can package them in single serving portions with various side dishes to achieve the modern day convenience of TV Dinners, or as one big Family Sized Entree.

Biscuit/Baking Mix

Frozen Biscuits/Bread Dough

While Pillsbury tries hard, nothing can compare to homemade biscuits, rolls, or bread.  Don’t sacrifice flavor, just for convenience, when you can create convenience without sacrificing! The next time you find some extra time, or you are already making {insert bread product} for dinner–make up some for the freezer.  Most recipes can either be frozen as a finished product, or after the first rise {After shaping, pop in the freezer on a cookie sheet.  Once frozen, toss in a freezer bag.  Thaw completely, let rise, bake as normal.}.

Oatmeal Packets

I buy my oats in 50 pound bags mostly because we go through it like water.  While I don’t make them up quite often enough, oatmeal packets are handy! I take sandwich bags and add about ¼-½ cup of oats, 2-3 teaspoons brown sugar, a handful of dried fruit {our favorite is cranberries} and another handful of walnuts {I don’t always add in the nuts}.  When needed, just add some hot boiling water and let sit until it’s absorbed.

Homemade Poptarts

Frozen Waffles/Pancakes

So easy!  Mix up your favorite recipe.  Let cool.  Throw on a cookie sheet, pop in the freezer and flash freeze.  Once frozen–toss ‘em in a freezer bag and remove all the air.  Put them back in the freezer, and you are good to go! Don’t forget your homemade syrup, too.

Cake/Brownie Mixes

All you’re buying is a box with pre-measured dry ingredients at an inflated price.  Use your own recipes and make them at home! Mix up the dry ingredients, store in ziploc bags and attach a list of the wet ingredients and the instructions.

Hashbrowns/French Fries

When I find a steal of a deal on potatoes, I like to stock up {as with everything else}.  We really don’t eat a lot of potatoes, so before they go bad I like to make and freeze up some hash browns and french fries.

Frozen Smoothie Cubes

We eat a lot of smoothies, especially during the summer months.  We’ve never followed an actual recipe, but instead just thrown some of this fruit, some of that fruit, some yogurt and some milk and blended away.  This method, while easy and wonderful, can create a lot of smoothie!  Instead of throwing it away, we started freezing it in ice cube trays for a quick snack bite, or in single-serve sized containers.

Refrigerated/Frozen Cookie Dough

I’ve been guilty myself of purchasing ready made cookie dough before. But truly?  Nothing compares to homemade!  If you’re looking for convenience, the next time you make cookies, make a double or triple batch and freeze the cookie dough.  I’ve frozen in it one big ball, or as already measured out cookies.  Either way is fine.  Makes a great snack, too!

Spice Mixes

Grocery stores have many different spice blends available for purchase.  Really, they are nothing more than various spices mixed together with a new name slapped on the front.  Cut your costs, and make up your own!  One of the easiest and most popular spice blends to make is Taco Seasoning or even Fajita Seasoning.  This sane concept rings true for meat and vegetable marinades, too.  They can easily be mixed up and stored in the refrigerator in a glass jar for a couple days.

Cream Soups/Gravy Mixes

Chicken Broth

The next time you cook up a chicken, reserve the bones for homemade chicken broth. Added Tip:: When you’re chopping up vegetables–save your celery and carrot pieces {and whatever else you think of}.  You can store these in the fridge, or even the freezer until the next time you make broth.

Granola

We eat a ton of granola!  Whether it be on top of some fruit and yogurt, by itself, or as a cereal.  However, store bought granola is out-right pricey!  Not only is homemade granola easy on the budget, it’s also fun to play around with the ingredients.  You can even make granola bars for a portable treat.

Croutons/SeasonedBread Crumbs

Various Side Dishes

Grocery store shelves are lined with all sorts of side dishes in cans, boxes and even in pouch.  Don’t fall for their inflated price…make them at home.  I rarely purchase canned beans anymore for this very reason!

This is only a sample of what you can make at home. Your possibilities are endless {as you can tell by the ever changing grocery store shelves}.

While making your own convience foods may seem like a lot of effort, in the end you benefit greatly.  Not only does it decrease what you rely on the grocery store for {in turn reducing your grocery expenses!}, but it also gives you more control over what your family is putting in their mouth.  I spend less time preparing my grocery list, grocery shopping, and putting away groceries. To me, it’s worth it!

What are your favorite convenience foods? How about your favorite homemade convenience items?

This post is part of Frugal Friday.

Have you purchased your copy of the Home Management Binder yet? It's not too late!

Thank you for supporting our February Sponsors!

Don't Feel Guilty About Dessert! Eat a Smart Sweet! Check out the 80+page Ebook from Kitchen Stewardship.

{Mountain Rose Herbs}--Organic Spices, Herbs, Teas and Essential Oils {Plus MORE!!}

Visit the Clever Housewife for Saving and Stretching a Buck.
Do It Yourself Convenience Foods is a post from: Getting Freedom From Debt

A few weeks ago I finally came to the conclusion that my freezers had gotten the best of me.  There was no telling what was in them, and my “freezer memory” was becoming rather unreliable.  Once upon a time I had a freezer inventory of sorts, which worked but, I didn’t stick with it.  I knew I needed to change it up.

We are blessed to have ample amount of freezer space.  This has really proven priceless when it comes to storing our harvests, as well as being able to take full advantage of meat sales, and extra bursts of productivity during baking days and Once and Month Cooking Days.  Currently we have the freezer with our refrigerator, a chest deep freezer, and an upright deep freeze that we just purchased in December.  I wanted to keep the things we used the most in the refrigerator freezer, and consolidate the 2 deep freezers, if possible, for our upcoming beef purchase.

To start, I emptied everything out of our upright freezer, which is our biggest.  Since it was a recent purchase, it really wasn’t in that bad of shape, I just needed to know what was in it.  As I put things back into the freezer, I wrote them down on a sheet of notebook paper.  Then I moved on to the chest freezer, which is located outside in our make-shift pantry.  I carried everything inside, and tallied it up on notebook paper as I placed it in the upright freezer.   I put off my refrigerator freezer, because I knew there was a lot of cleaning that needed to be done!  So glad to finally have accomplished it, though!  I did the same process for it, as I did the others.  Except, I left basically only breakfast and lunch items in it, as well as our ice packs.  Everything else went into our upright freezer.

Once I was done emptying out and reorganizing all of our freezers, I decided to make an Excel Spreadsheet of the contents.  I broke the items up into main categories which included:

• Vegetables
• Fruits
• Baked Goods
• Pork
• Beef/Venison
• Poultry
• Fish/Seafood
• Meals
• Potato Products
• Miscellaneous

Under the main categories, I listed specific products such as diced green peppers, roasted green peppers, hamburger, hamburger patties.  I got as specific as I could so that I knew at a glance exactly what I had, instead of having to open up my freezer and figure it out.  Next to the specific item I wrote how many of it there was.  I thought I was done at this point, but I decided to go back and include the location in which said item was located. For the upright freezer, I mentioned the shelf it was on, the drawer, or the door.  For the other 2 freezers, I just put Kitchen or Outside, I figured that was specific enough.

This is a look at my complete inventory.

And this one is just a closer look.

Once my list was completely finished, I printed it off and placed in on the front of my upright freezer.  There is space after the last column to mark when something is taken out of the freezer.  There is also room at the bottom of my inventory list for when I add something in.  When the list gets too busy with tallies and marks, it’s time to print out a revised, more current version.

I cannot even believe how much food I had stashed away in my freezers!  Seeing it first hand, written out in front of me has been a real eye opener for me and my husband. I’m continually amazed at how blessed we really are!  It is also amazing to realize that other than our big beef purchase, which obviously broke the grocery budget for the time being, everything else was purchased out of our regular monthly grocery budget of $300!

This freezer inventory is really working for me!

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Freezer Inventory is a post from: Getting Freedom From Debt

**Updated to add in pricing**

The day is done and so am I!  I was able to complete most of my Once a Month Cooking List, which honestly, is far more than I thought I would get done.  Originally I had planned on doing the Lazy Granola after dinner this evening, but I really have no desire to even mess with it now.  My new plan is to tackle it tomorrow, along with some Whole Wheat Honey Pumpkin Muffins that I will later take to a church dinner.

I started the day at about 7:30 or 8.  I began by dicing up the bacon and getting it cooking, as well as cooking the hamburger meat.  Normally smells do not bother me, but I could hardly handle smelling the hamburger cook for that long.  Yuck!

While the meats were cooking, I started making up the breakfast items (the Bacon Egg and Cheese Biscuit Cups and th Blueberry Muffins).

It was very hard for me to stay out of the both of the muffins.  They were both so very good! I made up the double batch of Sloppy Joe’s and then it was time for me to clean up the kitchen a bit before I ran my youngest to school. When I returned I had a hard time getting started again, but I knew I needed to and I that I would be so happy when I was able to sit back and be done with it all.

When I started again, I tackled the Taco Bake, Lumpia, and Curried Chicken, and the Chicken Ranch Pizza (I added in diced bacon), and Pizza Crust.  To my surprise, I flew right threw these dishes and I was gaining ground fast.  Then I realized just how messy my kitchen was! EEEkkk!  I was able to get the kitchen pretty well cleaned up, and everything in the freezer by about 7pm (that is also with dinner prep and clean up).  With all my breaks, I would guess my actual cooking time at about 7 hours.

While the picture doesn’t look like much here is what I ended up with:

• 2 meals Sloppy Joe’s
• 2 meals Curried Chicken
• 2 meals Taco Bake
• 2-4 meals of Lumpia (I couldn’t find the wrappers Sherry recommended, and I ended up running out of the ones I found.  I put the extra filling in a freezer bag to use later on.)
• 2 pizzas with crust
• 2 breakfasts of Blueberry Muffins
• 2 breakfasts of Bacon Egg and Cheese Biscuit Cups

It’s nice to know that I have meals waiting for me in the freezer when we have busy days, or when I’m just not feeling up to cooking, even if it did leave me exhausted today.

**Update: I was curious as to how much this big day cost me, but it’s hard for me to figure.  I had a super full freezer, and a lot of the other ingredients for these meal already on hand.  My out of pocket expenses for this day came in right around the $30 mark, the rest of my grocery expenses last week were for my regular groceries.

**For links to the recipes I used, go here.**

This post is linked to:

• Once a Month Mom’s Cook Off
• Works For Me Wednesday.

Have you purchased your copy of the Home Management Binder yet? It's not too late!

Thank you for supporting our February Sponsors!

Don't Feel Guilty About Dessert! Eat a Smart Sweet! Check out the 80+page Ebook from Kitchen Stewardship.

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Visit the Clever Housewife for Saving and Stretching a Buck.
March OAMC Update is a post from: Getting Freedom From Debt

For many months now I’ve wanted to try my hand at a full on Once a Month Cooking Day (OAMC).  I really like the convenience of having ready made meals in the freezer for busy nights, mornings or even lunches. Trisha, over at Once a Month Mom, is celebrating her one year blogiversary and to celebrate she put forth a Once a Month Cookoff complete with great prizes!  I knew it was my time to jump in.

Some of the meals I’m making will be for those busy days, while others I hope to use later on in my pregnancy when the “gusto” is just not there anymore.  If everything goes smoothly, I hope to tackle a few more of these Once a Month cooking Days between now and July so my freezer will be stocked post baby.

This is what I am making tomorrow (Tuesday):

Breakfast:

• Lazy Granola (double batch)
• Blueberry Muffins (triple batch) Done!
• Bacon and Egg Biscuit Cups Done!

Dinners:

• Sloppy Joe’s (double batch) Done!
• Beef Empanada’s/Pockets (using homemade pie crust) Decided against this, because I had no desire to roll/cut out pockets!
• Lumpia {so excited for these!} Cooling the mixture so I can wrap them. Done!
• Taco Bake Done!
• Quick Pizza Crust and Chicken Ranch Pizza (double batch) Done!
• Curried Chicken Tidbits (double batch) Done!
• Black Bean Salsa Chicken AGH!  Forgot to pull my cooked black beans out of the freezer! No go on this one.

Now, here’s hoping I can make it through this list without first collapsing.

What are your favorite OAMC recipes and tips/tricks?

This post is linked to:

• Money Saving Mom’s OAMC Roundup
• Tasty Tuesday
• .

Have you purchased your copy of the Home Management Binder yet? It's not too late!

Thank you for supporting our February Sponsors!

Don't Feel Guilty About Dessert! Eat a Smart Sweet! Check out the 80+page Ebook from Kitchen Stewardship.

{Mountain Rose Herbs}--Organic Spices, Herbs, Teas and Essential Oils {Plus MORE!!}

Visit the Clever Housewife for Saving and Stretching a Buck.
Stocking the Freezer with OAMC is a post from: Getting Freedom From Debt

My family loves meatballs, however I forget about how easy and versatile they are. As part of our New Year’s Eve snacks, I made meatballs with a homemade barbeque-like sauce. We devoured them! Not only do we like them by themselves, but we also like to serve them on french bread baguettes, as a pizza topping, or in our spaghetti.

You can buy frozen, bagged meatballs or you can easily make your own and freeze them for later use. Having homemade frozen meatballs, exactly how we like them is what we prefer. Not only does the homemade meatballs taste better, but it comes out a lot cheaper in the long run. Especially if you use venison and pulverized homemade croutons in place of the bread crumbs.

This post is linked to:

• Recipe Swap
• Tasty Tuesday
• Tempt my Tummy Tuesday

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Don't Feel Guilty About Dessert! Eat a Smart Sweet! Check out the 80+page Ebook from Kitchen Stewardship.

{Mountain Rose Herbs}--Organic Spices, Herbs, Teas and Essential Oils {Plus MORE!!}

Visit the Clever Housewife for Saving and Stretching a Buck.
Easy Meatball Recipe is a post from: Getting Freedom From Debt

I really enjoy looking back over my posts to see which ones ended up being the top posts. Oftentimes, I am surprised by the results.

3. Managing Your Expenses was another post I really enjoyed writing–I could talk finances all day long.

Have you purchased your copy of the Home Management Binder yet? It's not too late!

Thank you for supporting our February Sponsors!

Don't Feel Guilty About Dessert! Eat a Smart Sweet! Check out the 80+page Ebook from Kitchen Stewardship.

{Mountain Rose Herbs}--Organic Spices, Herbs, Teas and Essential Oils {Plus MORE!!}

Visit the Clever Housewife for Saving and Stretching a Buck.
Top Ten Posts of 2009 is a post from: Getting Freedom From Debt