One Hundred Dollars a Month - Page 1212 of 2143 - I am your typical housewife living in high maintenance suburbia. I have a handsome husband, 2 kids and a flock of pet chickens. I try and feed my family with $100 a month. With the help of coupons, gardening and bartering I am able to squeeze the most out of our grocery budget and still manage to have a little fun along the way.

Old Fashioned Rhubarb Custard Pie

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By Mavis Butterfield on May 15, 2014 · 3 Comments

This recipe for old-fashioned rhubarb custard pie comes from my neighbor Hulda. I can’t remember if this is a family recipe or one from her church’s cookbook, I’ll have to ask.

Hulda made this old-fashioned rhubarb custard pie and everyone loved it. Even the HH. 🙂

Rhubarb is awesome!! And crazy delicious in a custard pie. Perfect for potlucks or Sunday dinners. I highly recommend this recipe.

~Mavis

Old Fashioned Rhubarb Custard Pie

Author Mavis Butterfield

Ingredients

3 cups rhubarb , chopped
1 cup milk
4 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon flour
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
single pie crust

Instructions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Place chopped rhubarb in a bowl and pour hot water over it and let it sit for 5 minutes. Drain. Pour rhubarb in the pie crust, sprinkle flour over the top and set aside. In a large bowl mix together the milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla and salt. Pour mixture over rhubarb and bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes. Reduce temperature to 350 degrees and bake for an additional 30 to 45 minutes or until the custard is firm.

Recipe Notes

Cool before serving.

Find More Rhubarb Recipes HERE

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How to Clean a BBQ Grill

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By Mavis Butterfield on May 15, 2014 · 1 Comment

I love BBQ season. The grill is like my summer crock pot. I love it. It doesn’t heat up the house, and it’s super simple to throw some marinated chicken and veggies onto the grill and have a meal in under 30 minutes.

I don’t know about you, but after a winter of sitting idle, my grill always needs a little cleaning. If you have never really cleaned your grill before, here’s a couple of super simple steps to clean and maintain it and make sure your food doesn’t stick when you barbecue.

You’ll need:

Cooking Oil
A Small Bowl
Paper Towels {only 1 or 2}
Grill Brush
Long Tongs

First, heat the grill. It’s way easier to clean this way, because it loosens all of those stuck on particles. I usually let it warm up for 10-15 minutes before I start.

Once your grill is nice and hot, grab your grill brush and start scraping the burnt food from the grill. {You can use wadded up aluminum foil if you don’t have a grill brush–but it doesn’t work quite as well.} It’s best to scrape your grill each time you use it to avoid having to really put some elbow grease into it.

Now, put your cooking oil in your small bowl. Dip a folded up paper towel into the bowl, using your tongs. Allow the paper towel to become completely saturated with the oil. Then, {still using the tongs} rub the oiled paper towel all over the grate, giving it a really nice shine and nonstick coating. Finally, allow the oil to sit under the heat for another 10 minutes or so before you add any food to the grill.

That’s it. Easy, right?

Happy Barbecue Season,

Mavis

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Maybe You Should Just Whip the Frosting Instead…

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By Mavis Butterfield on May 15, 2014 · 12 Comments

Yesterday was nuts. In fact, the next 24 hours are going to be nuts and there is nothing I can do about it. And that’s okay, because HOLY CANNOLI’S PEOPLE, we are heading down the homestretch. Only 20 more days to go until graduation, and it’s going to be an exhausting sprint to the finish line.

This is my friend Jennifer. {wink* wink} I’ve known her ever since our kids were in junior high and a few weeks ago during one of our volunteering sessions the conversation of cupcakes came up and she basically offered to help me bake and frost 600 cupcakes for a school function.

Obviously I said YES!!!

But after a few cupcakes it was decided that perhaps Jennifer’s true calling was whipping frosting. 😉 Not that I do have OCD or anything, but some of us are just better and different things. Right?

Ahh Jennifer, if you are reading this I LOVE YOU. I think you are amazing person and I’m going to miss you next year when our kids graduate and I won’t get to hang out with you anymore. It’s been so much fun volunteering at the school these past few years with you. You are one fun lady.

Maybe we can take a cake decorating class together next fall or something. 😉

It’s sad isn’t it.

When our kids move on, so do we, and all those long hours spent helping out at our kids school and hanging out with other moms just sorta fades away.

Snif, Snif.

This whole moving on stuff is going to be harder than I thought.

~Mavis

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Beautiful Raised Garden Bed Pictures from Austin, Texas

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By Mavis Butterfield on May 15, 2014 · 17 Comments

A big THANK YOU to everyone who has sent in their photographs and stories. I hope by sharing other peoples pictures and stories here on One Hundred Dollars a Month we can all have a rock star garden this summer. Keep them coming!

Check out this story and pictures Jana from Austin, Texas sent in for a little garden inspiration:

Hi Mavis!

When I was first inspired by your gardening adventures, we lived in Hillsboro, OR. A year ago we moved to Austin, TX and one of my goals was to have a raised bed garden in the tiny backyard of our new house. My husband built this whole 20′ x 30′ “urban farm” in early March. I had started some plants from seed, some were bedding plants, some seeds were sown directly and we planted it all before St. Paddy’s Day. We have 21 tomatoes, cabbage, onions, carrots, broccoli raab, snow peas, lettuce, corn, jalapeno peppers, bell peppers, brussel sprouts, Blue Lake green beans, cilantro, basil and chives.

The growing season here is very different from the Pacific Northwest, some plants can be in the ground in January and the whole party is over by late June (too hot for most things by then). It is possible to squeeze in a second growing season starting in early fall, if you play your cards right.

Here is an overview of the six 4′ x 8′ beds and one 4′ x 4′ bed, all made from 2″x 6″ cedar with heavy duty landscape cloth on the bottom and a mixture of garden soil, compost, sand and riverbed soil. We are in a new neighborhood, so we recycled old survey stakes and built supports which can be used again next year for the tomatoes. I tied bamboo poles together to make teepees for the Oregon snow peas.

These are Campari tomatoes, lettuce, bell peppers and protective marigolds (I swear they and the ladybugs repelled a multitude of bugs). One day in March, on a whim, I took an egg carton, planted a tomato seed in potting soil in each cup (taken from my Costco Campari lunch tomato) just to see if they would grow. Lo and behold, they not only grew, they thrived and now we have 8 Campari’s with little tomatoes!

We have 27 white corn stalks. Today I saw the first corn silk on several plants, so we should have corn soon. The toughest thing about growing corn in a Texas spring was all the WIND. Several of the little corns were blown completely out of the ground and we’ve had to prop up some of the bigger plants after being blown over.

Jalapenos do very well in this hot, dry climate. This bed also has brussel sprouts (which I planted too late and will probably not get sprouts), Blue Lake green beans, which have tons of little beans on them and spinach, which has done well.

This bed has cabbage, onions and carrots. You can see the 4″ x 4″ cedar posts my husband used in the corners of each raised bed for stability. He also screwed them together versus nailing as he wants them to last a long time!

These are the heirloom tomato plants. We have Ox Heart and Cherokee Purple. Also, there are 4 Italian Roma tomato plants, 1 Sun Gold and 1 Supersweet 100 cherry tomato, 4 New Girls, 2 Celebrity tomatoes and the 8 Campari’s. All of them are covered in flowers and there are mature tomatoes on each just turning red.

Here is my garden craft project. I made this planter from the last bit of cement in the wheelbarrow when hubby was building something else. I used a shoebox, lining it with wet cement which I hollowed out, let cure and popped out of the cardboard after it had dried. Makes a nice, although rather shallow planter for English Daisies on the patio table.

Hope you find my garden interesting enough to use in your blog. Come visit Austin sometime. It is a blast and a world traveler like you would love it!

~ Jana

If you would like to have your garden, chicken coop or something you’ve made featured on One Hundred Dollars a Month, here’s what I’m looking for:

Your Garden Pictures and Tips – I’d especially like to see your garden set ups, growing areas, and know if you are starting seeds indoors this year. If so, show me some picture of how you are going about it.
Your Chicken and Chicken Related Stories – Coops, Chicks, Hen’s, Roosters, Eggs, you name it. If it clucks, send us some pictures to share with the world.
Cool Arts & Crafts – Made from your very own hands with detailed {and well photographed} pictures and instructions.
Your pictures and stories about your pets. The more pictures and details the better.
Garage Sale, Thrift Store and Dumpster Diving pictures and the stories behind the treasures you found including how much you paid for them.

If I feature your pictures and the stories behind them on One Hundred Dollars a Month, I will send you a $20.00 gift card to the greatest store in the world: Amazon.com.

Go HERE for the official rules.

This post may contain affiliate links. These affiliate links help support this site. For more information, please see my disclosure policy. Thank you for supporting One Hundred Dollars a Month.