One Hundred Dollars a Month - Page 1483 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.

Giveaway – THREE Botanical Interests Seed Collections

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By Mavis Butterfield on August 26, 2013 ·

This is Ryan, my online Horticulturist boyfriend, and his new bride, Devra. Me, my online boyfriend & his WIFE all in one pic? Talk about Awkward Family Photo! Actually, the more I look at it the more I think we could be models for the next Old Navy mannequin family. We even have the dog!

But let’s forget about photos for a minute & get down to business. We have some seeds to giveaway. Wahooo!

We stopped by Botanical Interests Seed Company on our Epic Road Trip to St. Jude to pick up some seeds they were kind enough to donate to the hospital. Of course they weren’t going to leave my readers empty handed. They are giving away not one, not two, but THREE Root Renaissance Seed Collections! Check out everything that’s included:

Beet Gourmet Blend Organic (2.5 Grams)
Carrot Carnival Blend Organic (700 Mg)
Carrot Cosmic Purple (800 Mg)
Parsnip All American (1 Gram)
Radish Watermelon Mantanghong (500 Mg)
Rutabaga American Purple Top (2 Grams)
Turnip Purple Top White Globe Organic (4 Grams)

Of course the seed packets themselves are gorgeous, and they package it all in an adorable gift box. Such a perfect giveaway for your fall garden!

All you have to do to enter this giveaway is leave a comment below and let me know what your favorite root vegetable is?

My favorite? Cosmic purple carrots of course!

Just answer that one question and you’re entered to win. Life’s pretty complicated sometimes, so I like to keep things simple around here.

Rules

1 entry per person/ip address. If you cheat, you will totally be disqualified.

This giveaway ends Sunday, September 1st, 2013 @9 pm PST and the winners will be announced in the Tuesday, September 3rd, 2013 edition of Mornings with Mavis. You will be notified via email and have 48 hours to claim your prize. If you do not claim your prize within 48 hours, the prize will be forfeited.

Good Luck! I hope you win!

♥ Mavis

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.

How to Dehydrate Potatoes

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By Mavis Butterfield on August 26, 2013 · 28 Comments

I always seem to blink and my garden has buckets and buckets of potatoes for me to deal with all at once. I’m not complaining because there are ten thousand and one things you can make with them, but this year I decided to try something different: dehydrating them.

The cool thing about dehydrating them is you’ll have them on hand when you’re sitting around craving the most delicious Homemade Scalloped Potatoes, but you’re feeling too lazy to do all that peeling and chopping. This will make your life way easier. You can also throw some in your winter soups.

Start by washing and peeling your potatoes. The number of potatoes you use depends on how many trays you have on your dehydrator. I can fit about 1-2 potatoes per tray depending on how big your trays/potatoes are.

Then I use a mandolin slicer to slice the potatoes about a 1/4 inch thick.

Place the potato slices in an ice water bath and add a little lemon juice or fruit fresh to the water to prevent browning while you bring water to a boil in a large pot {a blanching pot if you have one}. After the water has reached a rolling boil, remove the potatoes from the ice water and place in the boiling water for about 4 minutes {set ice water aside for later}. Remove from boiling water and immediately run cold water over them while draining in a colander to stop the cooking process.

Drain and then carefully place the potato slices on the dehydrator trays or shelves. Set dehydrator to 125 degrees and dry until crisp {I set mine and left it overnight for about 8-10 hours and they were done when we woke up}. Canning jars work great to store them in, but any airtight container would work.

Need a slicer? Amazon has the Progressive International HGT-11 Folding Mandolin Slicer on sale right now.

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.

Mondays with Mavis – How to Feed Your Family for $100 a Month

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By Mavis Butterfield on August 26, 2013 · 6 Comments

Albertsons $41.70

Last week I pretty much lounged around in bed because of my dental surgery. So I decided to send The Girl Who Thinks She’s a Bird to Albertsons {with a small list} and this is what she came back with. Ha! Serves me right for sending a teenager to the grocery store alone.

She thought she scored the deal of the century when she was able to pick up 4 boxes of cereal and 2 gallons of milk for only $8. Although cereal was not on the list, she spotted $1.00/2 coupons on the cereal boxes and went wild.

The yogurt, cottage cheese, juice, soup {not chili} and Haggen Daz was for me and my soft foods diet. The canned chili was a surprise for her brother. Apparently she found a deal on breakfast sausages too because it looks like manager markdown stickers/coupons were removed from the packages.

For the most part, I think she did pretty good.

Garden Stand $3.00

The Girl and I were driving home and noticed someone had a sign for fresh corn at the end of their driveway. $0.50 an ear. I wasn’t able to have any but the HH said it was the best corn he had ever tasted. And I’m sure it was. Nothing beats fresh picked corn.

I did a bunch of bartering last week with friends and neighbors. You can see how all the deals played out HERE.

Fresh from the Garden

Let’s just say we are swimming in potatoes right now. 😉

Fresh from the Garden

And tomatoes too. Wait until you see what I made with these beauties.

Fresh from the Garden

Another thing we harvested a boatload of last week was beets. The are still chillin’ in the refrigerator and I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them yet. But once I figure it out, I’ll let you know.

Mr. Produce Guy – FREE

And last but not least, this is what we salvaged from our free produce boxes from Mr. Produce Guy last week. I don’t know about you, but I love free food. 🙂

How did you do with your grocery budget this week? Did you stock up on anything exciting?

~Mavis

Total Spent This Week $44.70

Total Spent This Year $1,496.01 – It’s official, I’m over for the year!

Total Spent This Year on Garden Seeds/Supplies $919.96{I bought a Meyer Lemon Tree, Rhubarb crowns, 6 Fruit Trees , 16 yards of soil}, Walla Walla Onions and 90 pounds of seed potatoes. Plus, supplies to make my own potting soil. I also picked up a boatload of heirloom tomato plants at the Seattle Tilth sale.

Read more Shopping Trip Stories.

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.

Mavis Butterfield | Backyard Garden Plot Pictures – Week 34 of 52

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By Mavis Butterfield on August 25, 2013 · 12 Comments

Backyard Garden Plot Pictures – Week 34 of 52

Well I finally figured out what kind of squash plant is growing in the half oak barrel next to the fence, Delicata Honeyboat. Have you ever tried it before? So far I have 3 squash growing and let me tell you Bob, I am keeping my fingers crossed.

If you squint real hard you’ll be able to spot lettuce growing in the pallet gardens to the right. My guess is that by the end of September it should be ready to harvest.

The ornamental strawberry corn is a little over 2 feet tall now. I spotted a few little ears of baby corn growing so I’m pretty excited. I know I won’t get a bumper crop or anything but if I can get enough to use for Thanksgiving decorations I’ll be happy.

The biggest challenge right now with the bean tepees, is watering them. The squash vines are taking over and it’s getting hard to find a place to stand and water them. YES, I know I need to jimmy some sort of sprinkler system up there, but right now it’s a bit out of the question.

You know, honey do lists, back to school, cooking cleaning, walking the dog. Someday I’ll find the time.

It’s magical isn’t it? I am seriously loving my greenhouse right now.

Take a look at the HUGE Chinese cabbage there on the right. Wowie zowie if the slugs don’t get it, it will be the largest one I’ve ever grown.

Boo… I still need to weed those potato towers. 🙁 On the plus side, they’re still alive. 😉

A view from the back deck.

It’s looking like a sea of green down at the pumpkin patch but I’m not sure how many we’ll get this year {last year it seemed like there were more} but I’ll be happy with pretty much anything I can get.

And in case you are wondering, the HH did not mow over any pumpkins this week. 😉

Just so you know, I’m waiting for someone to call the garden police on me. I know the raspberry canes are dying, but man does the pathway look like crap or what? I seriously need to make a checklist and get some garden chores done. Pronto.

Luckily the rhubarb is still alive. Yep, I think it might be time for a strawberry rhubarb pie here pretty soon.

Who wants to make one for me?

Pretty please?

~Mavis

This years garden is being sponsored by the awesome folks at Botanical Interests Seed Company. You can check out their website HERE, order their new 2013 Garden Seed Catalog HERE, or visit my online boyfriend Ryan’s blog HERE.

Up for a tour? Read about our behind the scenes tour of Botanical Interests Seed Company.

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.