One Hundred Dollars a Month - Page 1972 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.

Turning Trash into Treasure: Reclaimed Food and What To Do With It

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By Mavis Butterfield on April 30, 2012 · 24 Comments

If you were wondering how much food I was able to salvage from the “chicken scraps” the other day… Here you go. Not only does Monkey Boy and The Girl Who Thinks She’s a Bird have enough veggies for their lunches this week, there’s enough for a stir fry dinner as well.

I have 3 words for you: Reclaimed. Food. Rocks.

Here is what I was able to salvage from 4 boxes of scraps:

5 gallons strawberries {now frozen, will use for smoothies}
11 snack size bags baby carrots {lunch snacks}
10 snack size bags mixed sweet peppers {lunch snacks}
1 quart size bag mixed peppers {stir fry night}
3 snack size bags grapes {lunch snacks}
3 snack size bags cucumbers {lunch snacks}
3 snack size bags sugar snap peas {lunch snacks}
9 heads romaine lettuce {I think I’ll make a Cesar salad for dinner tomorrow}

I was able to prepare:

2 {10 oz} glasses fresh grapefruit juice
2 1/2 quarts homemade apple sauce
2 pints fresh salsa
3 quarts vegetable stock

Call me crazy, but I think my refrigerator looks pretty normal. The only difference between my refrigerator and my neighbors? I probably paid less than $5 for its contents.

Go forth and be frugal,

♥ Mavis

Looking for a some new smoothie recipes? Check out 500 Smoothies & Juices: The Only Smoothie & Juice Compendium You’ll Ever Need By Christime Watson. Amazon currently has it on sale for $11.80.

Looking for a juicer? Well, you probably don’t want the one I own. This review by fellow Amazon shopper Kara pretty much sums up how I feel about it;

“I hate it, it hates me. Even when rolling the oranges and lemons, making them as soft as can be, it is impossible to use. Good luck squishing it all the way down. I’m not weak, and it was bad on my shoulder and hand. You have to balance the bottom, while swinging the top. Then when you want to take out the fruit, you have to finagle it up and it’s a mess. It always gets stuck. Small suction cups are worthless. It came with flattening tool. WHY. I tried to squish strawberries and raspberries. What a joke.” Kara

I’d buy this one instead. The Breville Compact Juice Fountainis the highest rated juicer on Amazon and ships for free.

*Amazon prices are subject to change at anytime.

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 April 30, 2012 · 18 Comments

Even though I spent a lot of time playing in the dirt this week, I still managed to squeeze in a few quick shopping trips. My favorite “shopping” trip last week wasn’t really shopping at all. I mean really, what normal person would consider picking up “chicken scraps shopping? I think it would be more like scavenging wouldn’t you?

I still find the whole topic of food waste amazing, and in my next post I’ll show you what I was able to reclaim from the boxes and what I did with all of it.

But first, here’s what else made its way into our kitchen this week:

Vitacost $3.31

If you have not signed up for Vitacost yet you should. Not only do they have great prices on dry goods and specialty foods, but when you sign up Vitacost will email you a code for $10 off your first order. Pretty sweet if you ask me!

Costco $7.49

I need to figure out a way to stock up on flour and sugar before canning season begins. Once the zucchinis start rolling in I’ll probably go through at least a 25 pound bag of flour for zucchini bread alone.

Track Meet $1.00

Fred Meyer $7.48

Milk was $2.49 a gallon, and the English muffins and sack of bagels were both marked down to $1.25 each.

Albertsons $4.58

Whoop there it is!

Total Spent This Week $23.86
Total Spent This Year $454.96
Total Spent This Year on Garden Seeds/Supplies $383.40

How did you do this week? Buy anything good? Was there any scavenging going on in your neck of the woods?

If you are interesting in reading more about food waste around the world, be sure and check out Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal By Tristram Staurt. Amazon currently has it on sale for $11.18.

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 Get Free Food Week #2

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By Mavis Butterfield on April 29, 2012 · 9 Comments

Yesterday, I collected another load of “chicken scraps.” This time there were 4 boxes. I almost fainted. The first thing that came to mind was, what’s wrong with the watermelon? What’s wrong with the carrots? And then it hit me. There was nothing wrong with them.

It would just be to time consuming to pick out the bad stuff, re-package it, and sell the rest.

Instead of taking the time to open a plastic container of strawberries, yank out the 3 bad ones, close it back up and put the container back on the shelf, it’s much easier to dump all the berries in a compost box and be done with it. After all, there are more berries to sell in the back. Right?

One bad apple spoils the bunch… Right?

The Girl Who Thinks She’s a Bird and I disagree.

Raw Food By Erica Palmcrantz-Aziz Amazon $11.32

How to Grow Your Own Food: Garden Plot Pictures

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By Mavis Butterfield on April 29, 2012 · 21 Comments

Here we are, the end of April and the backyard garden plot is finally starting to take shape. Just a few more weeks to go until I can plant my tomato starts and really start to see some progress from above.

The recent cold weather has done wonders for the peas, broccoli and cabbage plants. The herb garden is coming alive too.

Yesterday, I transplanted my tomato seedlings to larger pots and lined the greenhouse walls with them. Hopefully by the time they are ready to be transplanted they will have established a nice root ball and will be easy to remove from the free pots I scored last week.

Not much is going on at the future heirloom pumpkin patch. It’s too chilly to plant pumpkins so for now it sits empty.

The raspberry canes are starting to leaf out. It looks like I still have quite a bit of dead raspberry canes to prune, but sometimes it’s hard to tell if a cane is dead or not so I think I’ll wait just a little longer to see if there is any new growth.

The potato towers I built are looking great, and so are the new rhubarb plants.

And lets not forget about the flowers. The hillside of periwinkle is in full bloom and looks divine.

What about your garden?

Have you started planting yet?

Want to start a garden but on a smaller scale? Check out Starter Vegetable Gardens: 24 No-Fail Plans for Small Organic Gardens By Barbara Pleasant. Amazon.com currently has it on sale for $13.57.

*Amazon Prices are subject to change at anytime.

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.