Stringing Jalapenos for Drying

I love adding colors to my kitchen and home through natural means! There is almost nothing prettier than bunches of herbs and flowers and strings of peppers hanging from the ceiling.

Stringing jalapenos isn’t exactly like stringing popcorn for a Christmas tree.

You need a needle and a heavier thread (I used upholstery thread). I had about 15 peppers so I used about 3 feet of thread.

Tie a thick knot on the end of your thread and shove the needle through the thickest part of the stem.

Wrap the thread around the stem once or twice and stick the needle back through the hole. That will hold the pepper in place and keep the following peppers from crowding.

Thread the rest of the peppers the same way, keeping each one an inch or two above the previous one.

Yay! So festive!  🙂

~ Amy

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Balsamic Sweet Potato Chicken Casserole

I. Am. So. Excited.

It’s noon.

And dinner is done.

And I washed the pots and pans.

And I invented an awesome recipe.

It’s a good day, and yes, I’m sharing.

~Balsamic Sweet Potato Chicken Casserole~

1 large chicken breast, cubed
5 small sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 large onion, chopped
2 Tbs. olive oil
2 Tbs. thyme
2 cloves crushed garlic (or 2 Tbs. garlic powder)
4-5 Tbs. balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste
3 cups cooked rice

In 2 separate pans heat 1 Tbs. olive oil each. Add chicken to one, veggies to the other. To the veggies add 1 tablespoon thyme, 1 clove crushed garlic, and 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar. To the chicken add 1 tablespoon thyme, 1 tablespoon crushed garlic, and 3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar. Saute veggies and chicken till done. Add a pinch of thyme and 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar to the rice, spread into the bottom of a baking dish. Combine veggies and chicken, spoon over the rice. If you want you can sprinkle some cheese over the top, bake it at 350° till the cheese is melted.

I ate some of it for lunch, it was amazing. It didn’t take very long to make, about 20-30 mins.

I’m really excited to see what hubby thinks!  🙂

~ Amy

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Rich Budgeted Living- tips

Growing up, my mom was always very frugal. She was a stay at home mom working with one salary and was a whiz at taking a little and making it go a long way! Once I was old enough she taught me everything she knew about bargain shopping and stretching food to make it last. It takes a lot of creativity and planning and a little extra effort, but the end result feels really good!

Several things that have helped me keep within our budget and still eat healthy are buying in bulk (Sams Club), buying less to no “convenience” food (granola bars, frozen dinners, frozen garlic bread, things like that), and buying dried beans and grains, all the way down to the coffee (beware, once you start grinding your own coffee you won’t go back to pre-ground! It’s so much fresher!)  🙂

I really like buying meat in bulk, after a shopping trip I usually throw it all in the freezer till I need it, then pull it out, thaw it, cook all of it at once and freeze what I don’t use in ziplock bags to just pull out next time I need it. It saves me some time and effort the next time I really don’t feel like making a huge production out of cooking dinner!

For chicken I usually don’t cook a whole pack at once, after I thaw it and take what I need for that night I put each piece (I usually get breast meat) into a ziplock bag and freeze them like that. The individual breasts usually thaw quickly when you pull them out of the freezer and put the bag into a bowl of hot water.

You can do the same thing with beans! I like keeping beans on hand to throw in soup and rice dishes, they add bulk and protein and kids usually love them! Just soak a bag of beans in water overnight, in the morning dump them into a colander, rinse, and pick out any crummy looking ones. Boil them covered either in water or chicken broth for 45 minutes to an hour till they get tender. After they cool put them into ziplock bags and freeze!

A couple of cheap, super easy meals I make with pre-cooked ground beef or ground turkey are:

Spaghetti with meat sauce

Taco salad (mix meat with some taco powder, serve with corn chips, salad greens, tomatoes, salsa, cheese, sour cream, hot sauce)

Mexican bean and rice bowls (toss meat with hot cooked brown rice, add corn and beans, cilantro, garlic, lemon juice, some taco powder if you want. My hubby likes to eat his with chips, salsa, and hot sauce)

Chili

Here are a few easy chicken dishes I make:

Chicken noodle soup (put one or two frozen chicken breast pieces into a pot of water, cover and boil till their done, take them out and chop them up, put them back into the pot of water, add chopped onion, celery, carrots, salt, pepper and whatever other spices you want, simmer until the veggies are done and add any kind of dried pasta, cook till the pasta is done and enjoy!)

Chicken stir fry (cut a chicken breast into strips, saute in butter or olive oil, add a package of frozen mixed veggies, garlic, powdered ginger, soy sauce. Serve over rice)

Chicken salad (saute sliced chicken breast in butter with onions and green peppers, serve on a bed of salad greens with cheese, dressing, and a side of pasta)

A lot of different kinds of vegetables are freezer friendly as well, green peppers are my favorite! I wash, seed, and chop them, spread them out in a single layer on a baking sheet and freeze them, then store them in ziplock bags. My hubby likes to throw them in his omelets, I like to throw them into spaghetti sauce and saute them with onions and butter and chicken to put on top of my salads. You can freeze them chopped or sliced, I usually freeze some both ways for different things.

The money that I save by buying less conventional foods usually goes towards fresh produce and healthier snack stuff. I always have salad greens in my fridge, along with yogurt, berries, apples, bananas, oranges, carrots, and whatever other fruit may be on sale that week. I’ve found that if the only things I have to offer my daughter are healthy then the less picky she is generally. If it isn’t in the house then it isn’t an option, and it works out for the whole family!

Let me know if you have questions or would like me to post about a certain topic concerning this!  🙂

~amy

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After a *brief* hiatus…

Wow that gap between posts was way longer than I expected! This summer was, in a word, NUTS. But life is back to normal (define normal) now, and blog access had been made easier thanks to Android, so I’m hoping to be more dedicated (as a blogger, I’m already a housewife…)…

Recent picture…

Yep, Liz wasn’t lying! Baby boy due Christmas Eve! We’re very excited, and it’s been so much fun getting fat with Liz (so far)!

Recent picture of R..

Those are pumpkin pancakes she is very effectively mixing with her fingers. She loves helping me in the kitchen, I let her get messy as often as I can. She loved these pancakes, I froze what we didn’t eat and she has been eating them for breakfast for a couple days. This is where I got the recipe-
pumpkin pancakes
The only change I made was I substituted a cup of whole wheat flour for a cup of the white flour. They were amazing! 🙂
Stay tuned for more amazingness!
-Amy

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Pumpkin Bread

INTERNET IS BACK!!!

I kid you not, I was in the middle of typing up this post AN HOUR before the scheduled blog launch and my internet stopped working. Today is the first day that I’ve had it since. SO SORRY!

I use almost double the amount of pumpkin.  It makes it so moist!

Pumpkin Bread

3 cups of sugar

1 cup cooking oil

4 eggs

3 1/3 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon nutmeg

2/3 cup water

1 15 oz can of pumpkin ( I use a 29 oz can!)

Grease 2 loaf pans and a muffin pan.  In a very large mixing bowl beat sugar and oil on medium speed. Add eggs and beat well.

In a large bowl combine flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Alternately add flour mixture and water to sugar mixture, beating on low-speed after each addition. Stir in the pumpkin. Bake the muffins first for about 15-20 minutes, then cool them on a wire cooling rack while the loaves are baking for about an hour.

I will usually pop one or both of the loaves in the freezer to pull out the night before a fellowship meal or random get together.

 

~amy

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A most excellent, easy, versatile chicken dish!

People ask me all the time for recipes for things and when they do I usually groan, the reason being this; about 70% of the time I don’t use a recipe. Most of my “recipes” are filed away neatly in my brain, to be tweaked and bended and stretched without the actual measurements glaring at me from a hundred year old, failproof cookbook. However, when someone asks me for one that is not written down I write out my most reliable version for them and for myself, to preserve it for posterity. It’s been good for me. This blog is another way for me to get them out of my head and into the world so that my family and friends are not the only ones enjoying them.

At a girlfriends house one evening she made chicken for dinner, and I was amazed by it. It was simply breaded and baked. The end. Her secret…. she used mayonnaise instead of eggs or milk to make the breadcrumbs stick.  It broke my brain a little bit, how could something so good be so simple? But it was, and I’ve never used eggs or milk again.

So, here it is.

Baked Chicken

Chicken breasts

Low-fat mayonnaise

Italian style breadcrumbs

Roll the chicken in the mayo, then the breadcrumbs, place on a greased cookie sheet (I wrap my cookie sheet in foil first, then you won’t have to wash it later!) Bake at 350° for 25-30 minutes (depending on thickness of chicken)

The reason I use low-fat mayo is because the regular results in the chicken sitting in a puddle of grease after it bakes, blech. But it you like grease, go for it.

SO EASY RIGHT??? You could cut your chicken into strips or nuggets before breading for convenient ketchup dipping for the kids.

Yum.

~amy

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