One Hundred Dollars a Month - Page 1431 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.

No Bake Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies

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By Mavis Butterfield on October 17, 2013 · 9 Comments

You don’t need an oven. You don’t need any baking skills. You don’t need any fancy ingredients. You do need a sweet tooth though. And the ability to stir. Those are pretty much the only requirements for these cookies. Sounds perfect to me!

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup milk
4 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/2 cup peanut butter
3 1/2 cups quick cooking oats
2 teaspoon vanilla

Directions

Mix the first 4 ingredients in a pan on high heat, stirring constantly. Bring to a boil and continue boiling for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in remaining ingredients. Drop spoonfuls of cookie “dough” onto parchment paper {I like to use a 1-tablespoon cookie scoop}. Let cool and enjoy.

Looking for more great cookie recipes? Check out Milk & Cookies.

Looking to get your cookie fix? Check out more Cookie Recipes.

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40lbs of Chicken: Now What? How to Process and Prepare Your Bulk Chicken

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By Mavis Butterfield on October 17, 2013 · 54 Comments

One of the biggest chunks of my food budget, is meat {and unless you are a non-meat eater, I’m sure you’re in the same boat}. While you can shop sales and markdowns, or barter with neighbors, one of the best ways to save on meat is buying in bulk. Zaycon foods is my favorite company to buy bulk meat from. They sell high quality meat at incredible prices. Of course, then you’re left with a HUGE amount of meat to process and prepare at once.

This time I picked up 40lbs of Zaycon chicken. So you know what that means: I’ll be elbow deep in chicken all day. While it might seem like quite the task, I love that I can process the chicken, cook some of it and make a bunch of freezer meals all in one day. It really saves so much time in the long run even though my kitchen is a chickeny disaster at the end of the day!

Here’s what I plan to do with it:

Process it. The first step is to trim the fat off the chicken and cut it if necessary. A bunch of the chicken will be placed in freezer bags in preparation of recipes to come. I put 3 breasts per bag because I know that’s what my family of 4 eats when using chicken as my main protein in a meal. Adjust that according to your family size.

Of course freezing chicken this way means I still have to come up with a recipe, but I’ve already saved so much time by having the chicken processed and bagged up exactly as I need it. So I can pull it out, throw some sauce on it and throw it on the grill. Just eliminating a few steps saves time.

Shred it. I’ll also throw a bunch of chicken in my slow cooker and let it cook while I’m processing the rest. I’ll fill my 2 favorite crock pots with 8 chicken breasts each and add a batch of my DIY Taco Seasoning to one of the crock pots and let them cook on high for about 4 hours. When the chicken is done, I’ll season the other crock pot with salt and pepper and shred it in my stand mixer. Then I’ll bag up the shredded chicken to freeze for soups and all sorts of meals.

Cook it. I might also throw in an easy crock pot meal so my family will actually have something to eat besides raw chicken tonight! I’m thinking either my Mushroom Chicken or my Savory Chicken with Tomatoes Slow Cooker meal because they’re both so simple, yet so good. You can find more of my favorite crock pot recipes HERE.

Freezer meal it. My favorite thing to do when I get bulk meat is to make a ton of freezer meals. I’m already slaving away in the kitchen, so busting out a few meals makes perfect sense. I’m not sure who the inventor of the freezer was, but he single-handedly changed my life {and the life of pretty much every meal preparer I know!}. Freezer meals are the coolest thing since sliced bread {probably even more awesome than that because, really, how hard is it to slice your own bread?! Way easier than cooking a whole meal from scratch!}.

Links to freezer pans I commonly use:

You can find my extensive list of Freezer Meals HERE. But here are a few of our favorites:

Cilantro Lime Chicken
Teriyaki Chicken
Chicken Broccoli Alfredo
Maple Dijon Chicken
Chicken Cacciatore
Pineapple Teriyaki Chicken
Spinach Lasagna Rolls
Chicken Casserole with Mashed Potato Topping

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How to Store Apples for Winter

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By Mavis Butterfield on October 17, 2013 · 2 Comments

I love it when I get questions in my inbox! I recently received an email from reader Erin with a great question: Are apples able to be stored for the winter? I figured since we’re in the height of apple picking season, she’s probably not the only reader with that question. The simple answer is yes, but you’ve got to know how to do it right. Here are some tips to keep those apples fresh for month!

Choose your apples wisely: Not all apples are created equal. Late-ripening varieties {harvested in October} like Red Delicious, Rome, Fuji or Crispin usually keep well. Other apple varieties will survive for awhile, but will probably not make it through winter. Do not mix varieties as different varieties ripen at different rate.

Your apples must be ripe, not over and not under. Ripe apples keep the longest. Store apples as soon after picking as possible. Also, make sure to inspect all apples for bruises, cuts and soft spots. Unless the apple is perfect, it won’t last and will actually ruin your perfectly good fruit. There is truth to that “One bad apple” saying! Check the apples frequently to make sure one apple has not begun to rot. Remove imperfect apples immediately from storage.

Finally, when choosing apples to store, smallest is best. Large apples don’t store as well, so if you sort the apples by size, you can keep the larger apples out so they get eaten first or are used in recipes.

Storage conditions are key: Apples ripen quickly if storage temperatures rise above 40 degrees F and will freeze and become inedible if temperatures drop below 30 degrees F. Find a place to store them with a temperature between 30-35 degrees F. A root cellar is preferable, but a cool basement, garage, fruit cellar or refrigerator will work just fine.

Apples also store best around 90% humidity, so finding a dry place isn’t necessary. In fact, although I’ve never tried this, some even recommend placing a damp paper towel over the apples to help keep the air moist.

Store apples in perforated plastic bags or in boxes lined with perforated plastic. I’ve also heard of people who individually wrap the apples in paper towels or black and white newspaper to keep the apples from potentially touching and bruising each other.

Do not store apples near potatoes or onions. They absorb flavors easily, so unless you want oniony apples, I’d avoid that. Potatoes cause apples to ripen faster, so keep your apples away from your potatoes if you are storing them in the same location.

Apple recipes: If you’re overrun with apples or if you have some bruised apples in the bunch that you need to get rid of, here are my favorite apple recipes:

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Mavis Garden Blog – Gardening in October

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By Mavis Butterfield on October 17, 2013 · 8 Comments

I was walking around the garden yesterday and spotted a few Tri-Star strawberries and decided to snap some pictures to show you what’s growing in our backyard garden right now.

We live in Western Washington and usually don’t get freezing temps until around the beginning to mid November, so even though it doesn’t look like there is much growing when I post photos of our garden as a whole, we still have lot’s of edibles.

The Fava Beans we planted last month are now about 4 inches tall. If you have never planted fava beans before they LOVE the cool temps and are a great cover crop if you are looking in enrich your soil.

We have oodles of Detroit Dark Red Beets growing right now and will have plenty for a Thanksgiving harvest.

Rainbow Swiss Chard. Yep, we’ve got plenty of that too. 😉

One of the more surprising vegetables we having growing right now is Artichokes. I started these from seed this January and am still amazed at how well they are growing this late in the season.

One of my goals this year is to try and over winter some Danvers Carrots. I’ve heard plenty of people say that growing carrots in the winter is super easy as long as they are protected a little bit. Once the temperatures dip I’m going to cover them with straw and hope for the best. I think as long as we don’t get a super hard freeze, we should be okay.

Mama Mia, check out the Purple Cauliflower. Isn’t it cool? I bet parents could get their kids to eat more cauliflower if they served them purple cauliflower at the dinner table.

All the other vegetables are nice, but this head of Broccoli Romanesco is my favorite. It just has a certain cool factor to it. It’s like what hipsters who play bongos and backpack around Europe would eat.

It’s like totally out there man. 😉

Ha!

So how is YOUR garden doing these days? Are you still pulling up vegetables?

Mavis wants to know.

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.