One Hundred Dollars a Month - Page 1482 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.

Cleaning Out The Freezer to Make Room for Fall Crops

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By Mavis Butterfield on August 27, 2013 · 34 Comments

If you have a large garden and you freeze a lot of your homegrown fruits and vegetables so you can enjoy them during the winter months, your freezer is probably bursting at the seams right now just like mine is. Or was.

Not only did we clean out our two chest freezers to make room for our fall crops, but I also needed to see how much bread we had in there before I did my back to school grocery shopping this weekend.

To say I was shocked to find over a dozen bags of bread/bagels still in there would be an understatement.

And the fruit! Holy smokes, I think we’ll have enough to get us through until next summer for sure.

Meat? Not so much. It appears I’m going to need to do a little more bartering with Chino the Handyman and the Hunter pretty soon. But I’m not worried, We already have tomatoes and potatoes coming out of our ears, and as long as we don’t get an early frost, we should have plenty of pumpkins to trade as well.

After re-organizing the freezers, I now have about a half of a freezer left for our fall crops.

Mission Accomplished!

Are you ready for fall? When was the last time YOU cleaned out your freezer?

~Mavis

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Should You Wash Your Chicken Before Cooking?

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By Mavis Butterfield on August 27, 2013 · 39 Comments

So you know how you’re supposed to rinse your chicken and pat it dry before cooking it? Yeah, well, at least, I THOUGHT you were supposed to, but it turns out, you’re not. I stumbled onto an NPR article the other day that explained that the science behind rinsing chicken is faulty. The article claimed that rinsing the chicken actually causes more harm than good, because it spreads bacteria around the kitchen because of splashing, etc. {It even provided a handy little germ-o-vision splash video to drive the point home}.

So if you’re not rinsing your bird, how do you make sure you aren’t feeding your family a not so healthy dose of Salmonella? The article stated that cooking the bird to an internal temperature of 165 will kill far more food born pathogens than rinsing.

Here’s the thing, I HATE rinsing chicken anyway. It’s gross. So, this is some of the best news I’ve heard in awhile. Still, I’m curious, will YOU still be rinsing your chicken before you cook it? Or will you happily stop?

~Mavis

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Food Waste In America – Those are Some Nice Melons

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By Mavis Butterfield on August 27, 2013 · 2 Comments

This week when we picked up the “chicken scrap” boxes from Mr. Produce Guy, there were quite a few watermelons. And The Girl and I were VERY excited. We LOVE watermelon. And so do our pet chickens.

Back in April of 2012 when I asked our local produce guy if we could collect extra scraps for our chickens, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But now I do. Although the food is different every week, it’s still pretty exciting to see what we can salvage from the boxes of discarded produce.

If I had to guess, most people don’t want to bother with sorting through damaged fruits and vegetables to find a few gems. But we don’t mind.

After all, free food is free food, and not knowing what we are going to get each week, is just part of the adventure.

Life is good! 🙂

~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.

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Freezer Meals – Ground Beef Pot Pie

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By Mavis Butterfield on August 26, 2013 · 21 Comments

If Monkey Boy and The Girl Who Thinks She’s a Bird had it their way, we’d be eating homemade pot pie every night for dinner. Chicken? Turkey? Beef? They’d choose that over just about anything I make. Making homemade pot pie might seem like a tough task, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll see it’s super easy and you’ll be able to whip them out in no time at all. Good thing too because the ones you find in the freezer section at the grocery store taste like cardboard compared to these!

Ingredients

5 pounds ground beef, browned and drained {I used Zaycon 97% lean ground beef}
5 pounds frozen vegetables
5 pounds, potatoes, cubed and cooked
5 jars Heinz Homestyle Gravy {or homemade}
1 tablespoon dried thyme
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon dried oregano
5 double pie crusts {store bought or homemade}

Directions

In a extra large bowl, combine all ingredients up to the pie crusts. Scoop mixture evenly into 5 unbaked pie crusts. Cover with top pie crust and brush an egg wash over the top. Wrap in plastic wrap and then foil. Label and freeze.

To cook after frozen, bake at 350 until gravy bubbles and pie crust tops are a nice golden brown {about 45 minutes -1 hour}. Cool slightly, serve and remember why comfort food rules.

** I place the pie dish on a cookie sheet and then turn on the oven. That way the pan has time to warm slowly and does not crack.

Looking for more freezer meals? Check out the book Fix, Freeze, Feast: The Delicious, Money-Saving Way to Feed Your Family. I think it’s pretty awesome!

Here are a few more of my Freezer Meal Recipes:

Roadside Sliders Recipe
Easy Freezer Meal Meatballs
Peach Crisp Recipe
Cilantro Lime Chicken
Chicken Cacciatore
Chicken Casserole with Mashed Potato Topping

Links to freezer pans I commonly use:

Find More of My Freezer Meal Recipes

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.