One Hundred Dollars a Month - Page 1467 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.

Rustic Apple Galette

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By Mavis Butterfield on September 10, 2013 · 3 Comments

I love galettes {or pie frisbees as my kids call them} because they taste just as delicious as a pie, but look so much more fun. I mean who doesn’t want to eat a pie frisbee?

Ingredients

3 Granny Smith apples, cored and cut into 1/4-inch slices {I leave the skins on, but you can peel if preferred}
1/2 cup sugar {plus extra for dusting on crust}
1 tablespoon flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 pie crust {I used My Favorite Pie Crust Recipe}
1 egg

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare pie crust dough or use refrigerated pie crust. Roll out dough on flour dusted parchment paper until about 14 inches wide. Carefully lift parchment paper and transfer the dough to a baking tray (some excess dough might hang off the edge. That’s totally normal}.

In a small mixing bowl, combine sugar, flour and cinnamon. Place apples in a large bowl and cover with the sugar mixture, tossing to coat. Pour coated apples onto middle of rolled out dough on pan. Spread apples out in a circular shape about 10 inches wide. Pull dough up and over apples on all sides, leaving middle exposed.

Mix up an egg wash using the egg and water. Beat until well combined and then brush on top of crust. Dust with sugar.

Bake for about an hour or until golden and bubbly. If you want to prevent a soggy crust, you can first bake at 400 for about 10 minutes on the lowest rack, and then move to the middle rack and reduce heat to 350 for the remainder of the baking time. That will help firm up the bottom of the crust. Serve hot and preferably with ice cream!

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How to Harvest and Store Dry Beans

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By Mavis Butterfield on September 10, 2013 · 19 Comments

This year, I stored a few of my own dry beans, and while harvesting them was not my favorite chore, I love the idea of having them on hand for winter soups.

Beans are an awesome source of vegetable protein, and once you get them out of the pod, they are so super easy to put up. They make for a really cost-effective crop you can enjoy through the winter.

Dry Beans are ready to harvest when the skin is paper thin, and you can shake the pod and hear a rattling sound. You will have to remove the beans from the pod–which you can do by splitting them open and removing them by hand, or you can turn the whole plant upside down in a bucket and bang it against the side, causing the beans to spill out into the bottom of the bucket. {You can throw the skin right back into your compost pile.}

After you get all of the beans out of the pod, the beans need to be cleaned and sorted. If the beans are split open, they need to be weeded out of the “store for winter” pile. To clean them, you can just use a blow dryer and blow off the debris. {If the beans are still soft, spread them on a cookie tray and allow them to dry a little longer.} Before you store them, freeze the beans overnight to kill any tiny bugs that might be still lurking.

To store dried beans, just place them in an airtight container {I think canning jars with a latch lid work awesome} and keep them in a cool, dry place away from sunlight.

Do you store DRY beans for the winter? What do you use them for?

~Mavis

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Mavis Garden Blog – The Latest Harvest

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By Mavis Butterfield on September 10, 2013 · 5 Comments

Yesterday Lucy and I worked in the potato field {yet again} harvesting potatoes. Would you believe we still have two more rows to go? Holy cow man, will it ever end? 😉

I called our local food bank and asked if they’d be interested in some home grown potatoes and they said YES.

Sweet diggety, now I don’t have to spend all winter eating hundreds and hundreds of pounds of potatoes. Don’t get me wrong, we love potatoes, but I’m expecting to harvest around 700- 1,000 spuds and even my Irish husband can’t eat that many.

We have a bunch of green zebra tomatoes too.

And check out these cute peppers. I think soft tacos will be on the menu this week.

I stopped to take a break on the potting bench and Lucy the ~~trouble~~ puggle dog decided to join me.

I’m not sure if all dogs like zucchini, but this one does.

Gardening in September is RAD!

How is YOUR garden doing?

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll be able to continue to pick tomatoes through the beginning of October.

We’ll see.

~Mavis

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Food Waste In America – Chickens Love Produce Scraps

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By Mavis Butterfield on September 10, 2013 · 2 Comments

When we went to pick up our boxes of “chicken scraps” this week there were only 3 boxes. And you know what? It was kind of a relief. After having to process 20 pounds of peppers the other day, we were kind of exhausted. 😉

As usual we gave almost all of the greens to our pet chickens. They LOVE having lettuce and cabbage leaves to snack on. With the exception of citrus, they’ll pretty much eat anything we give them.

Our hens even like mushrooms!

This week were salvaged 3 heads of organic romaine lettuce, 7 apples, 2 carrots, 3 heads of iceberg lettuce and a handful of mushrooms. Not to shabby if you ask me.

Life if good!

Peace Out Girl Scouts, have a great day.

~Mavis

Would you like to see what else we have brought home over the past year?

Head on over HERE to read all the past stories and to see all the pictures.

If you have just stumbled upon this series and are wondering how I got all this food for free, you’ll want to read this story first.

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.