How-to Mondays: One bird, three meals

Welcome back to How-to Monday!
I thought I would devote today's blog to one of my favorite things to do... save time and money! This is a little explanation of how I take a whole chicken and turn it into three separate meals and then some!

First I defrost a whole chicken which you can get from the store for about .99 a pound on average... unless you get it on sale like this week I got two at .58 a pound woohoo! I fill one of my large pots 1/2 to 3/4 full of water. Add some salt, pepper, parsley and any other seasonings that you like and put the bird in to soak in the hot tub a few hours. While the bird is cooking I will cut up several celery sticks and pick off all the leaves to go in because they have soooo much flavor. Don't throw those puppies away! Add in some Chopped carrots and a whole onion. Let all this come together for a few hours.

Once the chicken is cooked thoroughly, I take it out and put it in a seperate bowl. I let the broth cool and skim the top of the fat. Then I dip out two quart bags full of chicken broth and throw them in the freezer to use with other recipes. I usually add some extra water back into the pot because the broth is so concentrated. Then I skim off the dark meat to put back in the soup. I put each chicken breast in freezer bags and freeze. I usually take one out a few days later and use it for chicken pot pie along with some of the frozen chicken broth. The other breast you can use for chicken burritos, chicken salad etc. Now that my soup has the meat added back in, I put three handfuls of egg noodles in and let cook for another ten to fifteen minutes. Then your homemade chicken noodle soup is ready. I usually take half of it and freeze it because it makes sooooo much! So in reality you can probably get a weeks worth of meals out of this. Pretty amazing and great on the pocketbook.

That concludes how-to Monday!

How-to Mondays: Organize Your Internet Notes

Welcome to another How-to Monday!


A good friend of mine sent me a link to this new internet based program called Evernote. I am totally head-over-heals in love! Have you ever surfed the web for ideas and had to paste all the links to an email and email it to yourself, just to have a reference of where the ideas came from and a way to get back to them? Evernote lets you take screenshots of the website, Copy pictures, make audio notes, take a snapshot of a handwritten note (I can't tell you how many times I have written notes on a little sticky note and then lost it). Then you can organize them into "notebooks" I have my general notebook which I use for graphic design inspiration. I also have a notebook for craft ideas, recipe ideas, sewing tutorials, etc. It has been a life saver since I offered to help organize a friends baby shower. Every little piece of inspiration is organized into the "baby shower ideas" notebook. It's so easy! Oh and the best part.... It's free! At least for now, it's the beta version so I'm sure eventually they will charge people for it... so check it out now! You won't regret it!

That's it for How-to Mondays! Short and oh so sweet!

How-to Mondays: Beans & Rice BABY!

Welcome back for How-to Mondays! I thought I would make a humble attempt to share some info on how I feed my family while keeping the costs down. If you have been through the Dave
Ramsey course then you will totally get the title :)

First you will need a plan! How do you come up with this plan? There are several great websites out there with free meal planning info etc. If you are really on a tiny budget www.hillbillyhousewife.com has two full week menus for a family of four; one is a $70 menu and the other is a $45 menu for those times when you are really in a pinch. So that is a great place to start. She also has lots of budget friendly recipes.

I also created my own "grocery notebook" with the scriptures: Isaiah 58:11 and Phillipians 4:19 on the front. I'm not going to write them out for you! Go look them up for yourself. Great security from the word of God. I printed out these menu pages to go in my notebook. I found them while searching around thehomeschoolmom.com take a look around, there is some great stuff and lots of freebies. I'm not homeschooling yet but if you are I'm sure it would be great inspiration. So back to the menu pages. These help me to organize my meals by day and on the side is a grocery list section so I can write in what I need in order to make those meals. It's such a great help and it cuts down on the "oh I don't know what I should fix... we don't have anything... lets just grab a hamburger or pizza or whatever." When you have a plan there is no excuse!

When on a budget don't forget about those great fillers that you can put into any meal like rice, beans, pasta etc. Instead of making tacos with a whole pound of hamburger meat... use 1/2 pound or less and stir in some black beans. I did this a few weeks ago and my husband loved them and didn't notice there was less meat. I'm sure its healthier too! Also don't be afraid to make some of your own seasonings. Find recipes for taco mix, chili mix etc. It's amazing how easy it is to put together in an old spice jar and it doesn't have the extra stuff like MSG that the stores like to include in the "mixes."

Also don't forget about snacks! It's so easy to pick up the "pre-packaged" junk in the stores - chips, cookies, gummies, cereal bars, pop tarts etc" now does any of that sound healthy or easy on your pocket? Buy big jars of applesauce which doubles great as babies first food (that is litte C's favorite food right now), graham crackers, bananas (portable and healthy), yogurt, raisins, prunes, nuts etc. If you plan these out ahead of time you won't get sucked in to buying that tasty looking bag of iced cookies when it is staring you in the face at the grocery store... then again maybe you will give in... we all need a little splurge now and then, right?

Well I didn't think I had this much info in my brain wow! So I think I should just stop now... this concludes our how-to Monday.

Do you have any meal planning tips??