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2 Ingredient Pumpkin Muffins

Well, hello again!  I can't even pretend to be surprised anymore that it's been so long. 

This really is a two ingredient pumpkin muffin. Kind of. So I guess not really, but really. Are you confused yet?  

2 Ingredient (Incredibly Easy and not confusing) Pumpkin Muffins:

1 box Spice Cake Mix - regular size (525gr or so)*

1 can (400ml or 15oz or somewhere close to either of those numbers) can of Pumpkin Puree (NOT pumpkin pie filling, just plain pumpkin)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Makes 12 muffins.

Mix these two ingredients together until well blended. Scoop into prepared muffin tins, either greased or lined with papers. The batter is VERY thick, and this will make 12 really full muffins, but don't worry - they won't spill over. If you want prettier muffins than mine, wet the back of a spoon and smooth the tops. Bake for about 25 to 30 minutes. 

That's it! See - it is easy. And it's kind of two ingredients, if you discount the fact that boxed cake mix is a zillion ingredients.

* this little asterisk is there so I can tell you that Betty Crocker has made it's boxed cake mixes smaller. Yes, smaller. It still makes the same amount of cupcakes or cakes, but the volume of mix is less than last year. I know this because I bought some Betty Crocker cake mixes on sale and then found one box buried in the back of my cupboard. The instructions are similar, but the new, smaller boxes call for a little less water, and they suggest filling the muffin tins less. Subtle.  

Gluten Free Brownies

Hello again!

Here's another gluten-free recipe for you. I was at home the other night and had a chocolate craving, and I decided to make brownies. Of course, along with the craving was the thought that I should make something that Mark could eat as well and so began the quest for gluten free brownies!

Since I was baking these at my house, the only gluten-free flour I had on hand was cornstarch. Mark's mom had sent me a great looking recipe for gf brownies, but that recipe required potato starch as the main flour.  So -- off to the local grocery store I went.  The only -- and I *do* mean only -- gluten-free flour they had there was a small packet of Club House Rice flour. I brought it home and decided to see what I could come up with.

A little note about experimenting with gluten-free baking: sometimes it just doesn't turn out. In this case, the brownies turned out AWESOME, but some of my experiments lately haven't been so successful.  Gluten free bread has kicked my you-know-what, but I will keep working on that. In this case, I couldn't find a recipe that had only the ingredients I had on hand. There is no xanthan gum or guar gum here (there is now :) ), just rice flour, cornstarch, and eggs, which is why I had to make things up as I went. I think this would be a good recipe if you are new to GF Baking, simply because the ingredients aren't too 'out there' and should be easy to find. If you are new to gluten free, it's worthwhile to follow a recipe until you're comfortable baking with new flours and ingredients - there are lots and lots of great things to eat on the gfree diet! 

The Chia and/or Flax seed that I've included in the recipe might be unusual for you, and so they are completely optional!  I like adding Chia seed because it acts, I think, as a binder for the ingredients, and it's good for you. Not that I, or anyone, should eat brownies because they are good for you (no thank you, black bean brownies! Give me sugar). However, a little bit of something that might almost be considered healthy makes it easier to justify eating a pan of sugar. You can also substitute out the cornstarch for any other starch, like tapioca or potato starch, if you are sensitive to corn.

Healthy Eating on a Budget: Alternatives to Pizza

This is Part One of Healthy Eating on a Budget and is about healthy, inexpensive alternatives to ordering pizza.

I completely understand the allure of ordering pizza after working all day and getting home late to a hungry family.  For my gang of four it costs about $22 to order pizza and garlic bread. I'd like to think we could get away with no garlic bread but I'd just be lying to myself.  There are the cheap pizzas in the city - Hot and Ready for $8 (mediums, and they advertise $5 but I haven't encountered one of those yet) - and once in a while I get a couple of those as well.  Any way you look at it, it costs me about $20 to get pizza. 

The problem with pizza is that for what you are getting it costs a lot.  Start adding salads and anything remotely healthy and the price goes up.  There are healthier alternatives to ordering pizza, that are almost as quick and easy after working all day.

More real grocery bills

Well, on a good note, I haven't really been to the grocery store since the beginning of the month! That's probably more because of lack of time as opposed to any real will power.  I have three 'bills' today - one is for Easter, which was a very low key affair at our house this year, one is for a last-class party and the munchies for that, and the last one is the real grocery bill. So I guess I have been to the store, but not for grocery shopping - and I LOVE grocery shopping, so this is a good thing! To be honest though, I did go out for lunch twice last week, after months of good behaviour and packing my lunch. One day was soup from the local awesome soup place, called Spoon Lickins, and the other was a slice of deep dish Hawaiian pizza from the local awesome pizza place called Vinnie's. Both cost less than $5.00, but that's about $9.50 added to my food bill this month.

I spent $44 on Easter candy for my three kids and I. No toys, no bikes, no new wardrobes -- Mr. Bunny is trying to support sustainable holidays and support the very poor people in the world. At least that's what he told me, and I told my kids. I had $50 budgeted for Easter, and I stuck to it. 

My after class party was $14 worth of goodies, and that was too much, really. I just wanted to make sure I got at least one tart of each kind, so I had to buy two packages. My prof's husband made us a chocolate cheesecake though, so the tarts weren't actually needed. I've frozen them and I'll pull them out next time I need some sort of treat somewhere. 

The grocery bill came to $52, and there was some stocking up in there as well. I'll have to figure out what exactly I've come into this challenge with - I've said it before, but I have a very well stocked pantry and freezer. When I separated from my husband I had this media-induced fear of going hungry and I think I've pretty well succeeded in making sure that won't happen!! But I'll save that for another post. $52 for groceries is the important point to remember.

2 more real grocery bills

Okay - two more grocery bills. One was a March 31 last minute run to the grocery store before class. Remember the first rule of grocery shopping on a budget - DON'T SHOP WHEN YOU'RE HUNGRY. Ugh. More on that in a bit. I spent $46.67 at the store, but $17.87 was paper products and household products, which means I spent $28.80 on food. I also had $2.58 in gas receipt coupons, so that brought the total down to $26.22.  Now, the problem with shopping hungry is that I spent $2.33 on cut up vegetables with dip. So essentially I spent $2.33 on what amounts to one carrot and one stalk of celery. I could buy pounds of either carrots or celery with that much money!! But I was soo hungry, and they looked so ... green. And orange. Stupid.

The second rule of shopping is to leave the kids at home, or school, or something! I swear I spend twice as much when they are shopping with me. Today we took a trip to the Farmer's Market in Sarnia, Ontario, and we had a really great time! It helped a lot that the first person in the door gave the kids a sample of cinnamon honey - they thought that was pretty cool. We spent $14.50 at the market, and that was actually a good part of the trip. The kids went crazy for the giant Golden Delicious apples we bought, we at all the cheese curds in the parking lot, and the little beignets ... oh my, the beignets. The troubles came up when we got to the grocery store. I was a bit tougher today, and didn't give in to too many demands, but at least half the bill was junk food they picked out. I spent $19.80 at the store today, and had no coupons to reduce the cost.

More real grocery bills

Apparently I have a hard time resisting the grocery store! Here's 2 more of my grocery bills, although both are somewhat of a stock up trip. Chicken breasts were on sale for $2.99lb (skinless, boneless), and 3lbs of Parkay Margarine were on sale for $2.99. I know, I know, you don't have to tell me that skin on, bone in chicken breasts are cheaper, and if I debone and skin them, I can make soup. I've done that. Now I'm lazy. And in this case, these chicken breasts were the same price as the skin on bone in kind. 

The margarine was a good buy, because I usually pay $1.27lb for No Name cooking margarine. This works out to $1lb AND it comes over-packaged in little 1/2 cup squares. Wonderful stuff.

My sister took a trip to the U.S. today to go shopping, and I couldn't believe the prices over there!! $1.49lb for butter! A gallon of milk for less than $2.00! I can't wait to go check it out on Sunday - I'm hoping to find some good deals on powdered milk.

All right, enough procrastinating - on to my grocery bills. This keeps me honest, and aware of what I spend, that's for sure.

My real grocery bill

Okay, so I like to brag about spending next to nothing on groceries, but I thought I should actually keep track of what I *really* spend. I am on a budget - I think we all are - so let's compare bills. My advance budget for groceries is set at $225 for the month, to feed myself and three kids. My ex-husband and I share custody of the kids, so they are not here every single day but I do still have to feed them.

I should point out that I do not buy meat at the grocery store. In January I bought a half of a cow and have it in my freezer, and last summer I bought a half of a pig and there's still a little bit of pork left too. Chicken is one thing I still have to buy, since I haven't found a source of inexpensive market farm chicken yet.  But I will! And then I'll stock my freezer full of that too. The total cost for the half cow averaged out at $1.95 per pound (one quarter from one supplier at $2.30lb and 1/4 from another at $1.60lb). The pork was about $2 lb. There is about $450 worth of meat in my freezer, so that will have to be worked into the monthly bill over the year.

What I'll do is list my grocery bill and then see how it compares to my grocery budget for the month. I don't quite fit with the $35 per week grocery challenge, but I'm sure this will show me some areas I could cut back. 

Of course, today was a terrible day as far as stupid spending!! This bill is loaded with things we really didn't need. On a good note, even though we Canadians don't get to 'coupon' like our neighbours to the south, I still managed to cash in my PC points for $20 off my bill, and to use one of my gas coupons for another $1.11 off the bill. It's not a huge amount as far as coupons go, but it still helped out a bit.

Artisan bread English Muffins

I really am on the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day kick right now.  I can't stress enough how easy the bread is to make, and how great it turns out! I typically use the Light Whole Wheat recipe from the book, and I cheat and bake it in a loaf pan (I don't have a pizza stone, which is the suggested thing to cook the bread on). It has turned out great, it's incredibly cheap to make, and I can make so many different things with the dough that is always ready and waiting in my fridge.

There is an english muffin recipe on the Artisan Bread site, but I wanted something easier, and I wanted to cook my english muffins on a griddle. The official website recipe calls for English muffin forms, and letting the dough rise, baking in the oven, and then the muffins turn out  rounded on one side. That actually *does* offend my sensibilities, so I did things a little differently.  

This is why I love this bread dough - I pulled my dough out of the fridge, freezing cold, and sort of patted it out/rolled it out on a counter sprinkled with cornmeal until it was about 1/4 inch thick (maybe slightly thicker). I made sure that both sides were well coated with cornmeal (yum! A favourite of mine), and with no rest, no rise, no warming up, I cut the muffins out with a clean empty tuna can. Then I put 7 of them on my electric griddle at medium heat. The time to do all this was at most 5 minutes, and it took about 10 minutes of unsupervised cooking to have the muffins finished.  Easy. Cheap. Did I mention easy, and cheap? The English muffins were fantastic to boot! The only thing I may do differently is to let the muffins rise slightly before cooking, more to allow the dough to warm up first - it was hard to get the muffins to cook through to the centre when the dough was so cold.

Budget cooking 1

No picture yet, but I might take a picture of the salad tomorrow when the lighting is better. I thought I'd post what we (the kids and I) had for supper tonight, with a cost break down included. It's become a cliche, but times really are getting tough, and food is an easy way to cut back on expenses. It can't be said enough, but shop local if you can, buy from local producers where possible, and think about the cost of driving a distance to get a bargain. I'm all for shopping loss leader sales - that's usually the stuff listed on the front and/or back page of the flyer - but sometimes it doesn't all add up to a great deal. It IS possible to eat frugal, cheap even, and not give up on quality or resort to Mr. Noodles and Spaghetti O's (I don't think we can get those in Canada, but I know what they are).

We had lasagna for supper tonight, with a salad and garlic toast on the side. The noodles were purchased at the local grocery store. The beef, though, came from a local beef farm, and the flour for the cheese sauce and the bread came from the Arva Flour Mill, a mill within 60km of my house which mills locally grown grains. The lettuce came from the grocery store - that's something to work on, I guess!  I made the bread for the garlic toast, using the Light Whole Wheat recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. It's incredibly easy, and it really does only take five minutes per day. 

The cost breakdown is on the next page ....

Meat Pie

This recipe started out as the best of intentions to make a tourtiere for the site. However, after I started cooking the meat and onions I realized I didn't have any of the spices needed to make a tourtiere. So this is simple a meat pie, or meat tart, really, since I cheated and used some frozen pre-made tarts I found while digging in my freezer.  The meat pies turned out really well - a total winner with the kids!  They all loved them, so these are definite keepers. There are some ... well, herbs and herb blends that I couldn't identify and that I used on the meat, so it's not a cut and dried recipe, but a bit of a creative instruction.  This meat pie or meat tart also fits in with the $35 per week challenge, which is always on my mind if not on my blog.

A special note about the tortiere this was supposed to be: my mom's original recipe does not use beef. She would be appalled to see I used it at all, but I have 100 pounds of ground beef in my freezer, so I'm going to use it any chance I get!! And the spices I've used have nothing at all to do with a real tourtiere, so don't let them be any sort of guide at all.