Simple Homemade Pasta Sauce

So today I want to show you how to make the EASIEST homemade pasta sauce-hands down! It is so simple & so yummy!! Plus it is cheap to make....sounds too good to be true huh?

Well it's not. Here we go:

You need:

A blender or immersion blender
A stock pot with lid
4-6 (28oz.) Cans of whole tomatoes (or the equivalent in fresh from your garden/farm stand)
6-10 cloves of garlic
Olive oil

That's it.





Promise.

To make:

Open all your tomato cans and either use the immersion blender or put them in the blender and purée.

Pssst. There are those pesky DIY Painted countertops again!


Finely chop garlic. In stock pot heat about a 1/4-1/2 cup of olive oil over medium heat. After about a minute or so you will want to add your garlic. Stir and don't burn the garlic!! Only a minute at the most!

Then add just a 1/2 cup or so of your tomato purée. Stir it around for a couple minutes.

Next you'll just dump all your purée in the stock pot (as much as will fit- mine holds 5 cans) and simmer on medium-low or low heat for at least 4 hours. Stir it whenever you think of it.

Then we get to the part I love the best: take a big thick slice of homemade bread (if I'm really on my game I make them the same day so I have fresh-from-the-oven-homemade-bread)and dunk it in the sauce without anyone seeing.

Place it on a plate and smother in warm homemade-y goodness. Devour before your family catches you.

You're welcome for that secret.

Now back to the recipe. Take the pot off the burner after 4-6 hours of simmering (and who knows how many dunks of bread) and let cool completely. I usually make this starting at noon and remove it from the burner around 5pm let it stand on the stove until after supper then I place it in the fridge- pot & all- overnight. In the morning (or when it's completely cool) divide it up into large freezer ziploc bags and lay flat until frozen. Then you can stand them up like little files in your freezer. Cute, eh? If ziplocs filled with sauce were cute I mean. But anyway if you do it like that you will fit more in less space and they will thaw faster than if you put them in containers.

What I do is divide them into the exact quantities my recipes call for. So if I do my menu plan every two weeks and there are 4 dinners that need sauce- I make it, divide into those amounts, label it the recipe name & freeze. It's SO easy for Military Man to pull the one he needs and there is no measuring or leftover sauce that needs to be used up.

Yum yum yum!!
Also feel free to add your spices or a bay leaf or what have you. I don't only because we add those to the dish we are making with the sauce and we also use this as a pizza sauce for our homemade pizza night!

Thank you so much for stopping by, please leave me a comment so I know you were here! I comment back, I swear!!

Have A Happy Day,



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How to Make Hummus

Ok we’re going to completely gloss over the fact that I didn’t do a WIDTW (What I Did This Weekend) post yet again this week. Why? Because I really didn’t do much that I can blog about (since I don’t share pics of the kiddos on here and all that jazz).
Ok moving on. Today I have a photo tutorial for how to make your own homemade hummus!
Making Hummus is actually very easy & I do it about once every two weeks! It saves a lot of money because the size container I fill cost me at least $4 in the store!

Ready to make your own homemade hummus?(Psst: you will also find close ups of my painted countertops in these pictures! Just in case you wanted to see more detail!)

Here is the picture tutorial:
You will need:
1 can of Chick Peas
Lemon Juice
Olive Oil
3-5 cloves of garlic (or some garlic powder if you want)
Red Pepper Flakes (or whatever ingredient you need to make the flavor of your choice.
Food processor or blender or good old fashioned muscle/potato masher (notice I am using the worlds tiniest food processor-its for making baby food actually)
Note: If you have tahini on hand put some in too but if you don’t no big deal! You can also substitute sesame oil for the olive oil if you want.

Ok lets get started:
1. Open, drain & rinse your chick peas. Place in your food processor.

2. Add a little bit of lemon juice. I always eyeball this but its like 1/8 of a cup.

3. Add your cloves of garlic...more if you want a stronger garlic flavor- less if you want less. If you are using garlic powder I don't know the conversions so you'll have to either go for it & see how much you like or Google the conversions lol

4. Run your food processor a little to mix it all and start creaming the chick peas. Add your flavoring.

5. Run your food processor & stream in your olive oil until you get the texture/creaminess you want. I can't stream in while my food processor is running so I add a little, process, add a little, process etc. until I get there. You may have to stop a few times and scrape the sides of the food processor bowl to make sure it’s all getting mixed/creamed evenly.

6. Place your hummus in a container and refrigerate. I washed out an old hummus container and my homemade fits perfectly in it!


That's it for homemade hummus!
Other Flavorings you can add are:

• Roasted Red Peppers
• Feta Cheese
• Jalapeños
• Sun-dried tomatoes
• Parsley
• Ground Cumin
• Plain black pepper

Have fun with it and enjoy!
Have a Happy Day,

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None of the brands featured in this post have paid me or provided me with product to review. All opinions are my own and I bought all the ingredients/supplies myself.

I’m Guest Posting over at Top Notch Eats!

Hi all! Today I am guest posting over at Top Notch Eats!
Kaleena is a college friend of mine and boy if I knew the girl could cook when we were in college I would’ve hit her up for her leftovers at lunch! ;)

Please go read the post and check out the yummy recipes she posts!! :)
Have a happy day!

Guest Post: A Few Short Cuts- a tutorial!

This is a guest post by Amanda Carlisle from A Few Short Cuts. She shows you how to save time and money in the kitchen and at the store with her recipes, coupons and more. She is a stay at home mom of 3, and loves to craft!




Back to School is just around the corner and I wanted to share this craft project with you guys. If you have a sewing machine and can sew a straight line, you can totally make this. I do not pretend to be a seamstress, or know how to sew anything but a straight line. Straight lines can get you pretty far in the world of sewing if you ask me, or my family. So far straight lines have gotten us pillows, curtain panels, and several crafts in between.

This time my straight lines made a grocery bag. Not just an ordinary grocery bag. A grocery bag made out of Capri Sun Pouches; empty of course! Did you know that you can not recycle a juice pouch? They just go sit in a landfill somewhere. Since I am trying to teach my crew not to be wasteful, we are re-purposing those pouches into a nifty grocery bag. Now, not only did we save pouches from a landfill, but we won’t need to use the bags from the store! Did I mention that it is super cute too?

What you will need

• 42 Empty Juice Pouches (easier to do than you would think)
• Sewing machine
• Thread (of course)
• 1” - 2" wide ribbon for handles

You are going to want to make sure the pouches have been washed thoroughly. The best way is to make a slit it the bottom and wash with dish soap! Then, Start by sewing 2 pouches together. Overlap them just slightly and do a zig zag stitch the whole way down.

This is how you will sew all of the pouches together. It is super simple. I used this as a lesson to teach my daughter how to use the sewing machine.

 

This is what the seam will look like

Now, to put the bag together you will need to assemble the different pieces. You will need the following...

• A Front 4 Pouches wide by 3 Pouches Tall (12 total)
• A back 4 Pouches wide by 3 Pouches Tall (12 total)
• 2 Sides 2 Pouches wide by 3 Pouches Tall (6 for each) (12 total)
• A Bottom 2 Pouches by 3 Pouches (6 total)

You can see all of the pieces above!

Now, for assembly.



Begin sewing each side to the bottom. Once they are all attached it will look like this.



Now this is the point where I goofed! I will tell you plain as day! I goofed! I should have sewn the handles on now, but did I?? NOPE! I waited until the bag was all finished, and it was a pain in the butt! Don't be like me! Sew your handles on now....You will thank me for my mistake later! :)

All you have to do is pin the 1"-2" wide ribbon to the inside of the front and back panels. Stitch in a square pattern to hold in place securely.

Back to what I did!

After the handles are attached, Sew the sides together! This is really simple.

That is it you should now have a finished grocery bag!

So far I have heard the following perks to making my own bag!

• It looks really cute!
• It smells really good (fruit punch I am guessing)
• It insulates well (added bonus)
• It is really sturdy!

So, start saving those pouches from the lunch boxes and make your own grocery bag!

Isn't that just the cutest idea? I wonder if it has 'insulating' properties (i.e. could be used as your 'meats' or 'frozen' items bag?) 
Thanks so much  Amanda for the awesome tutorial!

Have a happy day,

Feeding my family on $140- Part 2

Ok so now you know my menu plan for the next few weeks & I just wanted to put in a couple notes.
1. I switch around meals to suit our needs that day (for example Hubs will be working late one night this week & since he is the 'cook' I will probably move Saturday's pasta night to that night to save me some time). I write out the menu plan so I know what I need to buy at the grocery store to have everything I need for all those meals- it doesn't mean we ONLY eat that on the scheduled day.
2. Lunch is usually grilled cheese but you won't ever find bread on my grocery list. I make my own. Flour & yeast are so much more inexpensive then a loaf of bread. I do not have a breadmaker but I do have a stand mixer to help me out. That said- a stand mixer is not an 'essential' part of a kitchen, people have been making bread for many more years then there has been electricity.

3. If you don't stay at home like I do you CAN still do this. It takes a little thing called pre-planning & discipline to figure it out. If you are living paycheck to paycheck and there is always more month then $$ just promise me you'll give menu planning & a grocery budget a try? It's so reassuring to know that your family will be fed no matter what. I'm not saying you have to make your own bread or hamburger rolls- that's just how I save us that much more.
4. Beans & rice are staples in our diet. Why? they are filling, nutritious, and cheap. Yes they take a little pre-planning & 'extra' work but you are saving $ by doing the 'extra' work yourself and not paying someone to do it for you. That is the core of saving money- remove some of the convenience and you get a cheaper product.
5. There ARE menu planning resources on the internet and I did try a few (usually $5 a month subscription or something similar) but I found our grocery budget skyrocketing because they didn't focus on cheaper foods, just yummy tasting ones. But if they work for you- by all means go that route and save yourself some time!
6. I buy whole chickens and cook them up in my crockpot and end up with enough meat for at least 2 meals plus *free* chicken stock for other meals. For about $4 a chicken (whole, free range, 'organic' chicken) I get much more then those $7 (& up!) packages of boneless, skinless chicken breasts. If I don't get a whole chicken I at least get the bone in, skin on package of chicken. It takes 2 seconds to take of the skin and cut the meat away from the bone. If you are squeamish about it just have Hubs do it- like I do ;)

Ok moving on. I know these posts without many pictures are long but hopefully we are all learning something and saving some $$ for ourselves right?? I promise tomorrow I will get back to posts with pictures & more crafty ideas!
Here is my grocery list & receipt total- keep in mind even if it doesn't list 'organic' next to it- it still probably was. I am just pointing out organic items that I buy that you might not think of as having an 'organic' option.

My grocery list for this paycheck was this: (tried to separate it out a bit for you- easier reading)
1 gal. Milk, juice, bananas, apples, grapes,
D's cereal bars (organic), raisins, dried cranberries, butter- hope to buy in bulk soon,
half & half, coffee-organic/fair trade, celery, cream cheese, 4 cans tuna fish packed in water,
Vegetable oil (almost out so had to replace), Sugar (again- replacing), Worcestershire sauce (replacing),
15 oz. chopped tomatoes, 26 oz. chicken stock (needed some more before I remembered I had a chicken to cook in the crockpot- oops!), 15 oz. can kidney beans (normally buy dried to save money but didn't this week...weird.),
6 pack Yo-kids yogurt for Little Man & the large organic vanilla yogurt for Hubs & me, sour cream,
all-natural peanut butter, strawberry jelly, 1 lb. bag northern beans, Jiffy mix- cornbread,
Stove Top stuffing mix (I never have any leftover bread to make my own stuffing or bread crumbs), taco shells, 2 or 3 tomatoes, lettuce (we buy the pre-shredded bag but the lettuce head would be cheaper),
pinto beans (hubs bought the canned kind but I prefer the bag of dried), dozen eggs,
2 cans black beans, rice (we were running low on both white & brown), mexican shredded cheese mix (hope to buy bulk blocks of cheese and shred just what we need soon to save $$),
shredded cheddar cheese, 1 lb. ground turkey,
jar of yeast, bottle of honey (anyone know where I can get bulk honey??). That's it!

Here is a photo (blurry- iPhone again...stupid computer won't read my camera card reader!) of the total for all the items listed above:

In case you can't read that it says: $125.98 (woohoo! LESS then my $140 budget!)
Also here is a photo of the $$ off per gallon I saved too since my grocery store teams up with a gas chain to offer the discount:

It says I will save $0.20/gallon if I use it within the next 2 weeks...which we always do! :)

So there you have it! A little thought, planning & time is all it takes to save money on the grocery bill! Coupons & stockpiling not required! (Although would help out a lot!)

I hope you learned something and if not- at least got some great links to new sites to check out recipes from! :) Please let me know what you think & if you have any great resources for me!!

Feeding my family for $140 or less

So..... I posted on my facebook a few weeks ago about how my hubs was heading off to do our bi-weekly grocery shopping & that I had instructed him to keep it under $140. I got a lot of responses that basically boiled down to "You're crazy! You can't feed 3 people for TWO weeks on $140" so I promptly did what every person would do in that situation...I tweeted about it. I asked if I really WAS crazy and way under pricing my grocery budget. By the responses I received- I'm guessing so.
But here's the funny thing: Hubs & I have had a grocery budget of $140 for every paycheck (he gets bi-weekly paychecks) for almost 2 years now (ever since we starting following Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover). At first it was really hard keeping it under $140 and we'd end up eating out or running back to the store with our money that was saved for debt repayment.
In the past 3 months or so we've gotten strict about it. After that $140 is spent that's it. We eat what we have and no more runs to the grocery store.
Right about now you're all going "Ok I get that you have a budget but you need to tell me what you are buying that you can have 3 meals a day for 3 people and stay under $140 every two weeks"
So here we go- below you'll find my menu plan below (with links to all the recipes I get from the internet) then tomorrow I'll post my grocery list (what we didn't already have) and the total on my receipt for the grocery trip Hubs took on Saturday. Plus other little tips I have for saving money. I had to break this up into 2 posts because it is getting pretty long already!

I am only listing dinner as breakfast and lunch don't change much. It's either oatmeal, yogurt & granola, or a cereal bar for breakfast. Lunch is usually grilled cheese or chicken nuggets, yogurt and crackers (Hubs takes leftovers usually).

Menu Plan:
Week One:
Monday March 1- Northern Beans & corn bread
Tuesday March 2- Aloha Chicken & a veggie (From Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food)
Wednesday March 3- Baked Potato, a veggie & Stove Top stuffing
Thursday March 4- Taco Night with homemade refried beans & homemade taco seasoning
Friday March 5- Homemade pizza (dough recipe from Betty Crocker Cookbook: Everything You Need to Know to Cook Today, 10th Edition)
Saturday March 6- Pasta noodles with from the jar sauce and a veggie
Sunday March 7- Breakfast for dinner (whole wheat pancakes from Betty Crocker cookbook, turkey bacon & scrambled eggs plus fruit) You can also find whole wheat pancakes at The Happy Housewife too.
Week Two:
Monday March 8- Mexican Chiken Skillet  (this is one of my favorites!!)
Tuesday March 9- Southwest Brown Rice/Black bean burgers with homemade hamburger buns (this is a new recipe for us to try)
Wednesday March 10- Cream Of potato Soup (again a new recipe to try)
Thursday March 11- Homemade Mac & Cheese (from Deceptively Delicious cookbook)
Friday March 12- Tuna salad sandwiches (from Deceptively Delicious cookbook)
Saturday March 13- Sloppy Joes made with ground turkey (from Deceptively Delicious cookbook)
Sunday March 14- Moroccan Spiced Chicken (can not find the link online- I'll post the recipe below it's really simple)
Week Three: (oh yes we are entering week 3 on the same $140 budget)
Monday March 15- Turkey Chili (from Deceptively Delicious) This one is a favorite among Hub's Army co-workers when we make way to much and he has to bring the extra to work.

Ok so there you have it 15 days of our menu plan. I usually just rotate this in for the next two weeks too and as the seasons change we change our meals to be less 'hot' and more 'summer-y'. I always have 2 weeks planned out on a calendar on the fridge & sometimes I get crazy and plan the whole month haha. I am not a crazy 'coupon' lady- meaning I very very rarely use them. I shop at Shaw's supermarket using my Shaw's rewards card (to get the gas savings) & I buy approx. 90-97% organic. You'll also notice we have quite a few 'meatless' meals since that saves money- and trust me on this ladies: my meat & potato Irish heritage Hubs doesn't mind ONE bit. All the food is yummy & filling!

Here is the Moroccan Spiced Chicken recipe (don't forget to come back tomorrow to see the grocery list & how much I spent on this menu plan at the grocery store this week)

Moroccan Spiced Chicken:
1 Tbl paprika
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 to 1 & 1/2 lb. boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 Tbl vegetable or olive oil

Mix together spices in a small bowl. Rub on both sides of each piece of chicken. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add chicken and cook 15-20 minutes, turning once, until fully cooked. Enjoy with rice if you'd like!





P.S. I'd LOVE to know your menu plan (or if you don't have one), what is your favorite recipe & what do you do to save money on groceries? Also I think it would be fun if you all left a comment with how many people you feed and how much your grocery bill is (whether it be weekly shopping, bi-weekly or monthly)! I would love to see where my $140 falls in the mix!

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