I’ve got a lot of unfinished projects I’m hoping to finish up this week, so I’m looking for an easy way out in the kitchen. I know my limits!

Tried-and-true, quick meals that everyone likes. And did I mention, easy clean up?

Monday: Pumpkin pancakes, our breakfast-for-dinner selection of the week.  My freezer is packed with pumpkin puree that I froze last fall so I’m going to make a double batch of these pancakes in an attempt to cook from my stash. We’ll have one batch for supper and the leftovers will be great for quick breakfasts heated up in the microwave the rest of the week.

Tuesday: Chili with homemade bread, if it’s a good day, or crackers, if the day unravels. Theoretically, I should have time to bake bread since all I need to do is take the chili out of my freezer. I made it a couple of weeks ago during a flurry of double-batch cooking. I just LOVE it when my dinner is already made for me. It’s almost as good as someone cooking for me. With warmer weather, this may be the last time we’ll be eating chili until fall.

Wednesday: Lazy Girl’s barbecue chicken in the crock pot. (I just made that name up. Lazy girl, that’s me!) You can’t get any easier than this recipe: put chicken breasts in your crock pot, dump bottle of your favorite flavor of barbecue sauce on top and walk away. Return several hours later, shred chicken with fork and serve on your favorite type of rolls. I’ll be making some of my home-baked french fries as a side dish.

Thursday: Grilled cheese, fruit salad, baked potato chips.

Friday: The DH and I will have a date night, location to be determined, but it will undoubtedly involve coupons or a gift card or both.

Saturday: Home-made pizza and salad.

Sunday:  Spaghetti, garlic bread, salad.

Need more ideas? Check out orgjunkie.com.

Are you kidding me?

In anticipation of my gift card arriving, I did a little bit of grocery reconnaissance on the deals at Kroger this week. Through Sunday, Kroger is running a “cart buster” sale. Some of the brands included in the sale are: Honey Nut Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Pillsbury, Betty Crocker, Yoplait, Progresso, Cascadian Farm, Tide, Bounty, Pampers and Pantene.

Luckily, I had already clipped my coupons this week. I also made sure to load my shortcuts e-coupons to my Kroger card to save even more. Hey, every little bit helps. After that, I spent a little bit of time matching my coupons with the sales. Gotta have a game plan.

Here’s what I ended up with:

Before sales and coupons, my total was $53.94.

After sales, coupons and e-coupons, I paid $17.14.

I saved 68 percent.

As you can see, I zeroed in on the snack foods, which were the best deals, in my opinion. And since we had wiped out virtually every fun food in the house during February, this worked out great for me.

I also took the opportunity to buy a few items for sweet Caroline’s upcoming chocolate-themed birthday party.

That’s where the brownie mixes and chocolate Chex Mix came into play. And the mini Warm Delights I’ve designated for the boys’ college care packages for finals week in May. Yes, I’m way too cheap (and too smart) to buy the survival kits sold by the universities.

My only shopping mistake — and it was a big one — was bringing sweet Caroline with me! Her many “suggestions” would have had me leaving the store with twice as many bags of groceries. I finally bought her silence with a bag of bold and spicy Chex Mix.

OK, now for the details on how you can win yourself a $25 gift card to Kroger or an affiliate store.

You’ve got two ways to win.

1. Leave me a comment (be sure to leave your name and email address) telling me what you would buy with a $25 Kroger gift card.

2. For a second entry, tweet this about the giveaway:  “Win a $25 gift card to Kroger from @freetobefrugal. bit.ly/cLIw8a” Be sure to leave me a second comment letting me know you tweeted.

Contest deadline is midnight Saturday, March 13. The winner will be selected at random and notified by email. Winner must respond within 24 hours.

Disclosure: The gift card, information, and giveaway were all provided by the Kroger Family of Stores and General Mills through MyBlogSpark. I received no other compensation for this post. The opinions are my own.

The little roll-top with matching swivel chair was just fine and dandy when she was five. Its cute little cubbie holes were a fun place to display her “snow globies” and the small work surface was just perfect for doing a little coloring.

Beyond the undeniable cuteness factor, the desk had become a family tradition.

As a tiny girl, I had colored and played school at that very desk, purchased second-hand for $5 by my folks, who taught me a thing or two about being frugal.

My oldest boy, now 22 and about to graduate college, played office at that desk. My younger son, now 19 and a sophomore in college, took his turn at the desk as well.

But this past weekend, when I glanced in sweet Caroline’s room, the desk struck me as being ridiculously out of place. Piled high with the trappings of a middle school girl, it had not been used for work or play in months, if not years. It had become a keeper of clutter.

My sweet little girl isn’t so little anymore. That was the first thought that hit me, followed by:  She NEEDS a new desk.

Time to go shopping.

But did I really want to spend several hundred dollars on a desk right now?

And as our nest starts to empty and our thoughts have already started to turn to down-sizing, do I really want to bring another incredibly large piece of furniture into the house?

And would she use it?

No. 1 son, once he outgrew the roll-top, sat at his grown-up desk every single day of his life — and still uses it now when he stops in from school. No. 2 son, however, preferred to sprawl across his bed to do homework. His grown-up desk sat in his room loaded with STUFF and, more often than not, covered in dust.

Which brother would she be most likely to follow? Did I want to take that chance right now with a major purchase. We could certainly afford to buy her a new desk, but was it a wise purchase at this point in time.

That’s when the idea hit me.

Yep. With the permission of No. 2 son, we moved that lonely desk of his down the hall, out of his room and into hers.

It may only be a temporary fix because, after all, my son may want/need to take the desk with him when he finishes college in two years. But for now, at least, we’ve shopped from the house, making a not-so-little girl happy.

My wallet’s happy, too. Gives a whole new meaning to “shopping from home.”

Sweet Caroline at her tiny roll-top, looking like a giant!

Sweet Caroline at her “new” desk looking like the middle schooler she is.

What items in your house have you repurposed? What have you “made do” with instead of rushing out to buy new? Leave your  “shop at home” stories in the Comment section.

Recently, Jaime asked:

What are your favorite stockpile items…items you always have in your pantry for stretching a month of groceries?

Great question, Jaime.

I use two methods to go about stocking my pantry.

The first involves keeping a stash of low-cost ingredients that I can use in a variety of ways to make a lot of the meals that typically appear on my menu plan. I will buy these items with a coupon, if possible, but if not, I try to seek out the lowest price available. That’s where my obsession with Aldi’s comes in.

Here are a few of my pantry basics:

Flour — I like to keep a substantial stash of flour on hand to make my own bread, pizza crust and baked goods. (Right now, there’s a 75-cent coupon out for Gold Medal flour so I’ll be on the lookout for the best deal to stock up on unbleached and whole wheat varieties.)

Yeast — This is an item I’ve added recently as I’ve started to make our own bread.

Oranges and apples — I typically buy a big bag of each of these at Aldi’s. They are inexpensive and last considerably longer than other fruits. (More bang for my produce buck.)

Potatoes — I always like to have a bag of potatoes in the pantry. The DH will bake five at a time, wrap them individually and take one in his lunch each day of the work week. I also use them to make a healthier baked version of french fries as a side dish with our meals.

In the canned goods department, I like to keep a stash of canned corn, tomatoes, black beans and kidney beans, evaporated milk and chicken broth. All of these are key ingredients in meals we often eat.

A few other items I try to always have on hand: tortillas, pasta, peanut butter, pancake syrup, Cheerios, old-fashioned oats, applesauce, chocolate chips, pretzels, dry milk, pasta sauce and raisins.

My second pantry stocking method involves couponing. Basically, if I can get it free or for just a few pennies, I’ll buy as many as possible — within reason, of course.

I’ll use mustard as an example. Come grilling season, mustard coupons will start appearing regularly in the newspaper coupon inserts. And mustard will be on sale in every grocery store. My family ADORES mustard and since we don’t use mayo at all, we go through a lot of mustard. So, I’ll combine those mustard coupons and sales to “buy” a year’s worth of mustard for free. That way, come late winter and early spring, I don’t find myself mustard-less. I’m happy to report, I currently have three bottles on the shelf. (Last year, I miscalculated and had to pay FULL PRICE! It nearly killed me.)

Super Double and triple-coupon promotions, which are offered on a fairly regular basis here in central North Carolina, are a HUGE help in stocking the pantry, along with CVS and its Extra Care Bucks program.

Besides mustard, here’s a random list of some of my most frequent stockpile freebies:  ketchup, salad dressing, barbecue sauce, baking powder, vanilla extract, hot sauce, rice, cake mixes, pancake mixes, toothbrushes, toothpaste, floss, shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, soap, shaving cream and pain reliever.

That about sums it up. I hope I answered your question, Jamie.

I’d love to hear from all of you on this topic. How  do you stock your pantries? What your favorite pantry staples?

And keep those questions coming!

This is only my second week back in the grocery store following a month-long moratorium on spending so this week’s menu is still made up largely of items remaining in our much-depleted stockpile. Luckily, I happened upon a terrific sale on turkey breasts last week for just 77 cents per pound. Using just one of those turkey breasts this week, I’ll be able to make three of this week’s seven dinners plus at least two lunch time sandwiches — all for under $5! If you’ve been wavering on the value of menu planning, I’m hoping I’ve won you over. Think about it. I paid less for one turkey breast than I would have paid for just one “value” meal at most fast-food joints.

Monday: Ziti in the crock pot. This was the meal I planned for last Friday but it never got made. (When schedules unexpectedly changed, the DH and I were able to keep our regular Friday night date with a coupon.)

Tuesday: Pancakes, applesauce.

Wednesday: Southwest roll-ups, salad. I have a stash of these family favorites in the freezer so I won’t have to work very hard to get supper on the table! That’s always a good feeling.

Thursday: Turkey, dressing, veggies, rolls. Part 1 of my triple-play turkey meal deal.

Friday: Open-faced turkey sandwiches, veggies, applesauce. Using leftover turkey, I’ll make these on homemade wheat bread with gravy.

Saturday: Dinner out.

Sunday: Turkey corn soup and crackers. After Thursday evening’s turkey dinner, I’ll pick the carcass clean and simmer it in water for a few hours to make a broth for today’s turkey corn soup. After pouring the broth into the crock pot, I’ll add two cups of turkey, a can of corn and a couple of carrots for an easy and cheap meal. It also happens to be one of our family’s favorites.

Check out other great menu plans at I’m an Organizing Junkie.

For 28 days, we lived in retail rebellion. No money exchanged hands. No credit or debit cards were swiped for discretionary spending of any type. We survived unscathed to tell about it.

Why, exactly, did we choose to do a No-Spend Challenge?

There are many reasons, really, the least of which was saving money.

That might surprise you because we did, of course, save money. (That kind of happens when you don’t go to the grocery except for a couple of gallons of milk and a handful of produce for four weeks straight.) And I will get to all those nitty gritty details later on in this post.

But more than the money, our Month of No Spending was No. 1, a challenge, and No. 2, a reminder.

*a challenge to see how little we could get by on if  we had to…..in other words, if our worst-case scenario occurred and my DH lost his job.

*a reminder of how fortunate we are, both on a personal level and as a country. Nothing like the Great Recession and a couple of earthquakes to bring this point into sharp focus.

Without getting too preachy and/or philosophical, I’ll attempt to explain.

First, the challenge. Could we cut our discretionary spending to zero? How would it make us feel? Would thoughts of deprivation set in, much like an overly strict diet?

Surprisingly, it wasn’t all that difficult. That being said, I realize it probably didn’t seem all that difficult because it was all voluntary. The DH, thankfully, was going off to work each day and his salary was still being automatically deposited into our account. All the bills were being paid. In other words, we were not living with the fear that many in our country are right now because of lost jobs, underwater mortgages, lost health care benefits and no hope in sight that their circumstances will change any time soon.

So from my comfort zone in suburbia, I conducted my little social experiment in “getting by” knowing that Feb. 28 would eventually arrive and we would go back to normal.

OK, so, we began on Feb. 1 with a stocked pantry and freezer, as you can see from the photos I posted here. And no, I did not go out Jan. 31 and run amok through the grocery aisles buying anything and everything I thought we would need in preparation.

In fact, I spent my usual $50 per week for the entire month of January so what you see in the pantry and freezer was pretty representative of how we operate on a typical basis. (It shows the true power of the frugal trifecta:  couponing, shopping sales and meal planning!)

If you’ve been following along, you know we ate fairly well in February. Click here, here, here and here to see our menus.  Improvising was key.

We had an abundance of chicken, thanks to a great sale in December, but not much ground beef. A couple of times I substituted chicken for ground beef — healthier anyway. And twice, I used half as much ground beef as the recipe called for and added black beans. Also healthier.

As I blogged about here, on the ups and downs of no spending, we stretched our milk by freezing some — with mixed results. We also used dry milk in my husband’s coffee and in recipes. It was easy, cheaper and we could not detect any difference in taste.

When our fresh milk and produce ran out, I did replenish them, thanks to a $20 Target gift card I had received at Christmas. (I still have a couple of dollars left on the card so you know I didn’t buy much.)

There was never a single time in the entire month when we felt deprived of food.

In other areas of life, it was also relatively painless to survive a month without spending. That might be because we’re homebodies who are pretty easily amused.  But still.

We used a couple of Redbox codes for free movie rentals. We also borrowed a couple of DVDs from friends and neighbors. Why rent or buy when so many folks have their own mini DVD libraries? Borrowing is one of my favorite frugal recommendations, but be sure to willingly reciprocate.

We took a family walk on the one warm weekend in February, we read books, we went to sweet Caroline’s rec basketball games, and we watched the Super Bowl and a couple of other sporting events on TV together. On the last weekend in February, I actually invited friends over to scrapbook. I made one meal, a friend made another meal and a third brought home-baked goods for dessert. Voila! Free entertainment.

Dining out with cash or credit was also a no-no during the month. Sadly, this meant we couldn’t take advantage of Denny’s free breakfast promo early in the month because I would NEVER stiff a waitress. This also meant we couldn’t use gift cards we had for a couple of other sit-down places. With no money for a tip, we just did without.

We did, however, use our coupons and gift card to Chick-fil-A, which helped ease any fast-food yearnings we had. Luckily, I have a huge stash of coupons for free food at Chick-fil-A.

But our No. 1 secret weapon for surviving the challenge? Our family and friends. My mom treated us to a dinner out one evening and a friend took me out to lunch. Another friend played fruit fairy, leaving a couple of bananas, pears and tangerines on my doorstep. While we were especially thankful for the timing of these love offerings, these folks frequently shower us with random acts of kindness. And, of course, we try to do the same.

What did we miss during the month?

I missed my occasional diet soda indulgence when I found myself out and about and thirsty. I also missed treating my carpool kids to McDonald’s ice cream cones. The DH missed out on a special lunch with his coworkers. I had actually encouraged him to go, but in the end he opted out.

What did we do without?

Probably the hardest thing for me was color ink. We tried to replace our color ink cartridge in late January but our cartridge replacement shop was out of our particular cartridge and wouldn’t be getting it in until February! Drat. I certainly wasn’t going to pay full price at an office supply store so we did without. We did just fine, of course, with black ink only.

We also made do without one of our lights in the kitchen. Of course, it burned out in early February and happened to be the one directly over the kitchen sink area. If I had been a little smarter, I would have switched out the light for one in a less strategic place, but I didn’t. We just made do.

Sweet Caroline went without graph paper for a few days until I discovered an entire pad hiding on the bookshelves in one of her big brother’s rooms. Whoohoo. A win-win. While clearing out clutter, I discovered something we actually needed.

These could hardly be described as deprivation. More like minor annoyances.

Which brings me to how our No-Spend Challenge served as a wonderful reminder of how fortunate, how blessed, we are as a family.

Every evening as I watched the latest news on the Great Recession, I was reminded that real people are living No-Spend Challenges all day, every day and not by choice. They aren’t adding beans to a ground beef recipe; they’re only eating beans.

They aren’t using a gift card to eat fast-food once a week or buy fruits and veggies. If they had any gift cards to start with, they ran out long ago.

And I can only imagine how thrilled they would be if the worst of their troubles was an empty printer cartridge or a burned out light bulb.

On more than one occasion during the month, DH and I found our conversation turned to the subject of gratitude. We shared with each other how thankful we are for each other, his job and all it provides us, our health, our friends and family.

Our Month of No Spending also reminded us about THE STUFF. That  STUFF doesn’t matter. That you can often do without it. That if you do without it for awhile, you often lose your desire for it.

Funny thing about human nature. The less you have, the more you appreciate. Of course, we all know this. We just don’t always remember it.

Oops. I said I wasn’t going to preach or philosophize so I’ll leave it at that.

On to the numbers….

How much did we save?

~Groceries. Since I keep to a pretty strict budget of $50 a week for groceries, I can safely say we saved $200 by not shopping for food and personal care items this month.

~Entertainment. Hard to say how much we saved, given our boring homebody nature. Let’s say $20.

~Dining out. Again, hard to say since we usually don’t indulge much more than our once-a-week fast food treat. I’ll estimate $25. 

~Gasoline. About $75 saved. Since I wasn’t shopping, I didn’t burn up near as much gasoline. I started with a full tank in my Honda minivan and ended the month with about one-third of a tank. In between, I spent right at $75 on gas. In a regular month, I spend almost twice that. Not bad considering I had weekly carpool to sweet Caroline’s  school. And our plans to walk to piano and to deliver Girl Scout cookies were foiled by some of the coldest temperatures we’ve had in February.

~Household purchases. I’m going to say zero, simply because our purchases in this category were merely delayed. We will be replacing that light bulb and printer cartridge.

Estimated grand total of savings for the No-Spend Challenge: $320.

But remember, it wasn’t really about the money.

Pantry BEFORE

And Pantry AFTER

Freezer BEFORE

And freezer AFTER

As you can see, we ate our way through the pantry and freezer, leaving the cupboard pretty much bare. Though I do believe we could have gone a bit longer. Now that really would have been interesting!

I’ll be back later today or tomorrow with a wrap-up post on our Month of No Spending, what we learned, how much we saved and interesting things that happened along the way.

***My apologies for my pantry photos. I didn’t realize until it was too late that I failed to show the top shelf on my AFTER pantry shot. This was an oops on my part, not an attempt to hide a secret stash of Doritos or other illicit purchases!  I could have removed everything I’ve purchased in the last three days to redo the shot, but, truthfully, I’m much too lazy for that. So I hope you understand. Suffice it to say, that top shelf was similarly bare, with just three boxes of Cheerios, two boxes of pancake mix, two boxes of rice and one box of instant mashed potatoes left. Oh yeah, and a couple of bottles of mustard.

It’s March! Which means our No-Spend Challenge is over. Which means I’ll be headed to the grocery to do a full-fledged shopping trip. I’ll be spending my usual $50 per week budget, scouting for extra-good deals to restock my seriously depleted pantry, freezer and fridge.

But, you may be surprised to hear, I won’t be headed to the supermarket until at least Tuesday! I’ve got a lot going on Monday, plus I really want to strategically plan my retail return. So, I’ll be making a shopping list and checking it twice, perusing the sales circulars and heading to at least two stores to maximize my savings.

I’ve also got the extra pressure and excitement of buying groceries for the DH’s birthday dinner and the arrival of two extra mouths to feed when the boys come home from college for their spring breaks.

All of this means that Monday and Tuesday’s meals are based on food I still have on hand after 28 days of shunning the stores and cooking from the pantry. (Luckily, I have plenty of pancake mix, chicken and barbecue sauce!)

The rest of the week, I’ll be cooking with the help of newly purchased groceries.

Monday: Blueberry pancakes, our breakfast-for-dinner selection.

Tuesday: Barbecue chicken sandwiches, veggies, baked french fries.

Wednesday: Grilled cheese, applesauce, pretzels.

Thursday: Cranberry-apple baked oatmeal, a second breakfast-for-dinner selection to help stretch our budget as I try to recoup from our month of no spending.

Friday: Ziti in the crock pot, salad, rolls.

Saturday: The DH’s birthday dinner. He’s ordered up Chicken Tacos, a new recipe I’ll be trying out of Stephanie O’Dea’s Make It Fast, Cook It Slow crock pot cookbook, which, by the way, has become one of my favorite cookbooks ever. Some folks don’t like experimenting with a new recipe for a special occasion, but Mark is an adventurous sort and more than willing to try something new. Besides, I have yet to make a bad meal from this cookbook. (See recipe below.) For his birthday dessert, he’s selected a dark chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.

Sunday: Homemade pizza, salad.

*********************************************************************************************************

Chicken Tacos

(Recipe from Make It Fast, Cook It Slow)

4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves

1 (15-ounce) can of tomatoes with chiles

1 cup frozen corn

1/3 cup water

1 (15-ounce) can black beans, drained and rinsed

corn taco shells

your favorite toppings, such as shredded cheese, sour cream, lettuce, tomatoes, black olives

Put chicken into a 4-quart crock pot and top with tomatoes, corn, water and beans. Cover and cook on low for 7 to 8 hours or on high for 4 to 5 hours.  Shred chicken with two large forks. Fill taco shells and add your favorite toppings.

For more great ideas on menu planning, check out this week’s edition of Menu Planning Monday over at orgjunkie.com.

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