Corned Beef and St Patrick’s Day

Corned beef seems to be the ubiquitous main dish for St. Patrick’s Day.  But what’s to say that you can’t have corned beef after March 17th?  If you wait until March 18th you’ll probably be able to snag some deals on this mid-March meat.  Check out some info from a John, a butcher for 30 years on what to buy and how to cook it.

I was alerted to this info from my friend Jennifer.  The Dollar Stretcher is a great resource with lots and lots of ideas for stretching your money.  Check out the website or subscribe to updates via e-mail or RSS.

Happy Savings!

During weeks like this I like to use my crockpot and smell dinner cooking all afternoon.  This week I tried out a new recipe from Kara’s Kitchen Creations.   It’s her Crockpot Lemon Garlic Chicken.  The recipe is simple and smells GREAT as it’s cooking.  It tasted just fine, but it wasn’t very lemon-y or garlic-y.  Next time I’m going to double the amount of lemon juice and garlic.  Do you have a favorite crockpot meal to share?

Q: How do you know if there’s a coupon for an item?
A: I remember a lot of coupons that come in the newspaper, but I also use technology when my memory fails.  One place I go is http://www.coupontom.com/.  Just start typing a product name and it’ll come up with coupons that match.  Not all coupons are in this database and sometimes the Sunday coupons don’t seem to be in there right away.  But this is a great source for a quick “is there a coupon I can use” question.

No one likes to remember the “fun” we had when Hurricane Ike surprised the nation and brought strong wind and rain to the nation’s midsection.  We were lucky and were only out of power for a few days and all of our food was fine.  Why?  Because we followed this tip:

To keep food in your freezer cold during extended outages, keep your freezer full.  If you don’t have enough food in it, fill with juice jugs full of water.  Fill jug to with-in 2 inches of the top.  Don’t fill it all the way up because when water freezes it expands.  Place in freezer.  Once frozen, put cap on.  This will help your freezer run more efficiently and keep things cold when power goes out. It’s also handy to have ice on hand for keeping stuff cold in coolers.

If you’re not sure how long the power will be out, wrap your freezer in insulating blankets (aka comforters).  This will also help keep your frozen foods frozen.

Freezing Beef can Save you Dough

Every few months I’ll see a great deal on meat and I stock up.  Last summer a friend negotiated a great deal with our local Sam’s Club.  She was able to get 90% lean ground beef for $1.72/#!  The catch?  I had to buy in 10# rolls.  I bought 6 rolls or 60# of beef.  You may think I’m crazy,  but I had a plan for all that ground beef.  I started processing right away.  Some of it I browned for easy meals like tacos, taco soup, spaghetti, and cheeseburger pie.  I packaged some as is for who knows what.  I also made lots and lots of meatballs as well as some Alton Brown meatloaf/ravioli mix.  The key to dealing with this much beef is to have a plan.

1. Know what your family likes.  I don’t can ground beef because we don’t like the texture of it.  I used well loved recipes.  I don’t prepare in bulk if I don’t know if we’ll like it.
2. Fridge cleaned out.  This is vital. We only have 1 regular sized fridge. I needed space in the fridge to store the 60 pounds of beef while I was working on it.
3. Kitchen Counters and dishes clean. If there’s no place to work, or clean dishes to use, you’ll end up taking more time and chances are you won’t be happy about it either.
4. Extra Ingredients on hand – if you’re making recipes instead of just freezing beef, make sure you have all the other ingredients.  Making meatballs without eggs or breadcrumbs wouldn’t make very good meatballs.  And it’s no fun to have to make a grocery run in the middle of a big cooking session.

Watch for ideas for packing up all that beef.

This post has been shared on Kitchen Tip Tuesday at Tammy’s Recipes

I just love the smell of baked goods flowing out of my oven.   One of our family’s favorites is a simple Lemon Poppyseed Muffin.  This recipe originally came from here back in 2004.  My smudged printout plays testament to the many times we’ve enjoyed these muffins.  Here’s my modified recipe.

Lemon Poppyseed Muffins

Combine dry ingredients in large bowl or mixer:

3 cups flour
2 1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 Tablespoon poppyseeds
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Mix well.
Add all wet ingredients

3 eggs
1 1/2 cups milk
1 cup canola oil
2 Tablespoons lemon juice

Mix only until all ingredients are combined.  Over mixing can result in chewy muffins.

Preheat oven to 400F.  Spray muffin tins with Pam.  Fill muffin tins approximately 3/4 full. Sprinkle a little sugar on top of each muffin. You’ll use about a teaspoon of sugar for 12 muffins. Bake for about 20 minutes or until tops are golden brown and/or toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Let cool in pans for about 5 minutes. Remove from pans and cool completely on wire racks. If muffins don’t come out of pans easily, run a blunt butter knife around muffin to loosen it. Enjoy.

Makes 24 muffins

Need a big bag of something?  Call your local GFS and see if it’s something they stock.  They have thousands of food items in their warehouse that they can often have shipped to the store within 2 days.  GFS supplies local restaurants and schools.  Their Marketplace stores offer large size packaging to the general public.   There is no membership or card needed to take advantage of their items.   Check out a full list of products at www.gfs.com. Last year’s catalog is available online as a PDF.  It’s 136 pages of products.  Use Adobe Reader’s ‘Find’ to locate an item.

GFS is a great store….but some prices are more expensive than your local grocery store.  Know your regular store’s prices and shop to compare.  Approximately monthly GFS will have a $5 off $50 coupon in their ad.  These coupons aren’t available at the store.

Items I buy at GFS:

• SAF yeast 1# about $3.29
• large containers of spices (great for making your own mixes)
• raisins
• single serve bags of chips (box of 36-50)
• big bag of potato chips, pretzels and tortilla chips
• cashews
• Cheddar cheese, block and shredded (price changes throughout the year)
• Parmesan cheese
• 5# bag of shredded lettuce
• frozen cheesecake
• frozen berries
• and more….

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