Cheapskater Elizabeth wrote "Keep your home scented and fresh all year round with a beautiful homemade air freshener.
You will need: 6 Drops Eucalyptus Oil 10 Drops Rose Oil 10 Drops Lavender Oil A small dish or bowl, about 1 cup capacity Half fill the dish with boiling water. Add the oils and stir. The heat from the water will warm the oils and your home will smell absolutely wonderful."
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Creative Cheapskater Michelle is on a winner with these unique handmade Christmas gifts.
Approximate $ Savings: $20 per child This Christmas, I plan on creating gingerbread house kits for my primary school age nieces and nephews. Using information from marthastewart.com, I've created a cardboard mock-up of their grandfather's shed. I then used the cardboard pieces to cut gingerbread dough to size. I baked the gingerbread and will now build and decorate the shed. I'll then take a photo of the final product and put that, with the cooked gingerbread slabs, decorating lollies and the ingredients for the icing 'glue' in a box. They can then have full assembling and eating their own gingerbread shed. Choose a simple structure (like a shed), rather than the traditional peaked roof gingerbread house as assembling a gingerbread house takes some skill. I'm even going to put a toy tractor in the box that they can park in the shed. Add 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar to your bottle of body wash. The vinegar will help remove soap residue and make your skin silky soft. After you add the vinegar, give the bottle a good shake to make sure it is completely mixed through.
While you have the vinegar bottle out, add 1/4 cup of vinegar and 2 tablespoons of bicarb soda to 2 cups of hot water and wash your shower puffs and sponges in the solution to clean and freshen them. From Debt Free, Cashed Up and Laughing It's spring. The weather is slowly improving and spring weekends are meant for fun. However, it’s easy to fall into a weekend rut. This is especially the case if you work all week and use the weekends to catch up on household chores and errands. And if your budget is tight then weekend fun may seem impossible. Here are a few tips, ideas, and strategies to have more fun this weekend without having to spend a fortune.
1. Get Outside Getting out into the fresh air almost automatically puts a smile on everyone’s face. And guess what - nature is free. Walk to the park and play a game of Frisbee, football, or cricket. Head to the beach or pool and splash around. Take a nature hike or explore a new outdoor area in your community. Pack a picnic lunch and make a day of it. 2. Make a List Make a list of the things that you want to do and can do on the weekends. This way, when you’re stumped for ideas you can simply turn to your list and make a choice. 3. Put It on the Calendar Many museums, zoos, and other community facilities offer discount days, free days, and special events. Make a list of these and put them on your calendar. Then when you’re trying to decide what to do this weekend you can see all of the possibilities and take advantage of local events. 4. Fairs, Fetes and Festivals Most fairs, fetes and festivals are free to attend and they can be a lot of fun. Add them to your calendar and choose one or two to attend. Set a budget in advance and pack your lunch so you stay on budget. It’s easy to spend a fortune on food and snacks. Find the best of the fairs, fetes and festivals by asking the people you know. They will be able to recommend the best school fete and the best retirement village or church fair and the very best music and historic festivals for you to enjoy. 5. Take Advantage of Short-Term Travel Packages One of the best ways to see the world on a budget is to have an open schedule and open-minded approach to where you go. If you want to get away for a long weekend, visit the discount travel broker websites and review the last-minute packages or tune in to the TV travel shows. You can often save more than 50% on a trip and the spontaneity is fun. You don't even have to leave town. Be a tourist in your own town and see the sights like a visitor, going to the tourist information office and finding out all the free sights and places to visit, then go and enjoy them. 6. Imaginative Projects What do your children love to do? Do they enjoy building things? Do they like putting on shows? Let their imaginations run free and spend a weekend with a creative project. Put on a play in the back yard and film it. Build a playhouse and paint it. If your children love volcanoes then have a science fair. If they love to cook then stage your very own Cupcake Wars in your kitchen. 7. Try Something New Have each family member make a list of something they want to learn or do this summer. Give them a few examples so they don’t write down things like “Go to Paris” or “Ride a camel.” Children can get carried away. Take a look at their list and then create a plan to address one item on each person’s list. You may find that you’re rock climbing one weekend and shopping for vintage clothing the next. Check your local paper. Cheapskater Lee found a "help wanted" ad in her local paper that was fun, educational and helping the local wildlife. She took her partner and children and they put together and painted little houses for an endangered possum native to their area. Then they went to the park and helped put them into the trees. All work and no play makes weekends dull and the work week even harder. Teach your children to take time away from the television and computer, and the shopping centre, to have relax and just have fun. And enjoy your family time together – it’s precious. From Debt Free, Cashed Up and Laughing When you start guerrilla shopping you begin looking for foods that do double or even triple duty, rather than buying something that will serve one purpose. When you start thinking about it, there are lots of things you buy that can fit more than one recipe, saving you time, money and energy.
Here are five common grocery items you can cross off your list because they are easily replaced by something else you already have or are totally unnecessary in a Real Food diet. 1. Fruit juice. Even 100%, all-natural, organic juice. It’s very high in sugar and is just not essential to your diet. Your whole family will be healthier if you replace the juice with water and encourage them to eat the whole fruit. Have a plate of mixed fruits on the table for each meal and watch it disappear. 2. Sour cream. Plain yogurt can do all the same things sour cream does, so why buy two different products when one will work just as well? MOO your yoghurt for greater savings then use it to replace cream cheese too. 3. Soft drinks. These days we don't even have them for special occasions. Even the drinks with fruit juice added have far too much sugar or worse still, sugar substitutes. You don't need them. 4. Cold cereals. We all know the sugary kids’ cereals are bad for us, and hopefully, if you've been following the Real Food Challenge, you’ve already eliminated those from your diet. But even the healthiest cereals – which are grossly over-priced – are generally full of sugar and over processed ingredients (including HFCS, flavourings, colourings and preservatives). There are lots of other quick breakfast options: granola, rolled oats, fritters, smoothies, toast, hot cereal, boiled or poached eggs, fruit and yoghurt, ground rice porridge, MOO pancakes or muffins. 5. Anything in a cute little individual packet (or a bulk-buy box). You know: chips, biscuits, muesli bars, fruit leathers, crackers, etc. They are very expensive, not very healthy and there are much nicer, healthier alternatives such as pita chips or zucchini chips, or for a sweet treat Sweet Potato Chocolate Cup Cakes, fruit salad, dried fruits, dips and veggie sticks. From Debt Free, Cashed Up and Laughing Sometimes I need to get dinner on the table in a hurry. When that's the case, I make tacos. Ten Minute Tacos to be exact. They are really that quick, use pantry items and the troops can be sitting down to eat in just minutes. Ingredients: 10 taco shells 2 tins baked beans 1 pkt taco seasoning 1/2 lettuce 2 or 3 tomatoes 1 cup grated cheese 200ml tub sour cream or plain yoghurt Method: Put the baked beans into a saucepan and stir through the taco seasoning. Warm the beans through over a low heat. While the beans are heating, warm the taco shells in the microwave according to the directions on the packet. Shred the lettuce and dice the tomatoes. Divide the bean mixture evenly between the taco shells. Top with the shredded lettuce, diced tomatoes and grated cheese. Top each one with a teaspoon of sour cream. Enjoy. Platinum members can login for full access to the Recipe File
Not a Platinum Cheapskates Club Member? Please upgrade to a Platinum Cheapskates Club membership to be able to access our Member's Centre. I was horrified, although I don't know why, I shouldn't have been surprised, earlier this week to see an ad on TV for herbs. McCormicks brand, these herbs are in tiny little packs, just enough for one recipe. And they are supposed to make you an amazing cook.
The ad on the website says "Cook like a TV chef with pre-measured pots of herbs and spices." According to the ad, just using the combination of herbs and spices in these packs turns you into a TV chef! Poppycock! It is no wonder home cooking is an almost lost skill. What they do is dumb down intelligent people. They destroy self-confidence and intimate that we are too stupid to be able to successfully follow a recipe and measure the herbs and spices ourselves, resulting in a disastrous meal. These silly little pots do not make you cook like a TV chef! Do not for one minute believe that you need to buy your herbs and spices in tiny little pre-measured pots - you don't. In fact that is the most expensive way to buy them. You don’t even need to buy them in little glass jars; there are cheaper ways to buy your herbs and spices, even in the supermarket. You can buy them from Asian and Indian grocers, greengrocers and wholefood stores. Supermarkets sell a range in cellophane bags, Hoyts brand, that are much better value than those in glass jars. The little pre-measured packs cost $2.48 - a hefty addition to the cost of your recipe - and each pack contains between 7g and 12g of herbs and spices. That's the equivalent of between $20.70 and $35.40 per 100g packet or a hefty $207 and $354 a kilo! Either way you look at it, it's very expensive way to season a recipe. Or give bought herbs the flick completely and grow your own. Herbs are very easy to grow in the garden, in pots, even on a windowsill. Do not for one minute believe that you cannot measure the ingredients for a recipe yourself. You can! All you need is a set of measuring spoons, available at any discount store, homewares store or supermarket for just a couple of dollars, and you can measure the herbs and spices needed for recipes yourself. You don't need to spend an extra $2.48 to season your meals. Don't allow the marketing geniuses to dumb you down. These little packs aren't convenient, they are nothing but expensive, designed to undermine your confidence in your ability to read, shop, measure accurately and follow directions. They cost a small fortune and the packaging just helps to fill your recycle bin. It's not just herbs and spices that have been dumbed-down. What about cake mixes? Packaged salads? Marinated meat? These are all very simple things you can do yourself, that are pushed at us as being more convenient and easier. It is this very dumbing-down of perfectly simple homemaking tasks, under the guise of convenience, that has made modern homemaking so expensive. Please, please, please don't allow them to do it to you. Say no to the expense, say no to the supposed convenience and say no to the dumbing down of Australian homemakers. Pizza is just about everyone's favourite food. It's easy to make (try our Penny Pinching Pan Pizza), tasty and these days it can be healthy too.
When you MOO pizza, using fresh herbs turns what could be a tasty pizza into a gourmet delight. And what better way to have fresh herbs for your pizza than to grow a "pizza garden" by growing some of the herbs that are commonly used on pizza. A typical pizza garden will contain basil and oregano, and perhaps thyme and parsley. You could also grow some of the other things that often go into pizza sauce, like garlic and roma tomatoes. If you want to make the garden larger, you can also add some common pizza toppings like capsicums and onions. A pizza garden is ideal for container gardening and is a wonderful introduction to gardening for children. Since children really love pizza, they should be able to relate to this type of garden very well. They’ll also have fun knowing what goes into one of their favourite foods. March is MOO month. It's the time to take back control of your grocery spending and an opportunity to say good-bye to supermarket reliance.
For a the hefty price (not) of a couple of hours in the kitchen I won't be spending a lot of money at supermarkets this year. When I first consciously decided to live the Cheapskates way (coming up for 17 years now) the first thing I did was look at what I bought that I could make myself to save some money. I discovered that cooking from scratch does save money and that it doesn't take any longer to put a meal on the table if I prepare it myself compared to ordering home delivery, going out for takeaway or even heating a pre-prepared meal. I can get dinner on the table in under 30 minutes and save around $20 a meal. That's a considerable saving each year, over $6,000! I also discovered that homemade not only tastes better and often keeps better but because I control what goes into it, it is better for us as I am able to limit the artificial colours and preservatives I feed my family. A direct result, apart from the dollar savings, is that we are healthier. Our health costs dropped dramatically, especially with the Allan and Hannah, their eczema improved almost overnight and the need for expensive creams, washes and even washing powder disappeared. I started small, baking cakes and biscuits from scratch. As I became more confident I started to expand: bread, breadcrumbs, yoghurt, cream cheese, cottage cheese, pasta, condensed and evaporated milk, salad dressings, mayonnaise, jams, lemon butter, passionfruit butter, peanut butter, pickles, relishes, chutneys, pasta sauces, tomato sauce, bbq sauce, worcestershire sauce, cordials, ginger beer, lemonade, pizza, pizza sauce, shake'n'bake, and more. These days I buy very little packaged or processed foods and just about everything we eat is cooked from scratch. And believe me when I say I am not a fantastic cook! It really is easy. Take this week for example. We have had an abundance of zucchini in the garden. We had them steamed, stuffed, baked, raw and grated in pasta sauce. I've added them to meatloaf and rissoles. The kids have been munching on them as is or eating zucchini straws with dip and still they kept growing. Yesterday I made a batch of zucchini pickle. Nothing new in that, I make at least two batches each summer. It took less than an hour and there are now 12 jars of yummy pickle in the pantry, enough for sandwiches and rolls or to add to cottage cheese for dip until next summer. With what has already been made this summer I won't need to buy pickles for at least twelve months saving around $47 at the supermarket because I won't be buying pickles. While I was in the kitchen anyway I thought I may as well cook up the tomatoes and capsicums and bottle some pasta sauce too. Again it is really easy - I simply put the ingredients into the crockpot and let it cook on low for 8 hours, until it was thick and aromatic. Prep time was around 20 minutes. When it was done I poured it into sterilised jars, and used the microwave method to seal it. I'm not standing at the stove or the sink all the time. I can go away and do other things. Making pickles and pasta sauce doesn't take hours and hours of hard work but the benefits are huge. I didn't have to buy the zucchini, capsicums or tomatoes. Vinegar, sugar and spices aren't expensive ingredients. I did buy the onions in a 10kg bag from the orchard down the road for 30 cents a kilo a few weeks ago and used 1.5kg in the pasta sauce at a cost of 45 cents. Yesterday's effort produced 30 jars of pasta sauce. I won't be spending around $100 on pasta sauce at the supermarket this year. I was talking to my sister-in-law early last year and what she said stunned me. She has never, ever roasted a chicken. Not once in all her married life (and that's a long, long time). When she's made a meal using a roast chicken, she's bought one from the supermarket. Now it can't get any easier than roasting a chicken so why would you pay twice the price to buy one? Especially when it's been sitting for hours. Eww. If you have never roasted a chicken, or would like to know how to roast the perfect chicken, here's the steps: 1.Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. 2.Make sure your chicken is completely thawed if it's been frozen.Wash inside and out thoroughly and dry. 3.Take 3 cloves garlic and a lemon and place them in the cavity. 4.Put the chicken into a roasting dish. 5.Pour over olive oil, rubbing it into the skin. Be generous, a little extra oil in the bottom of the dish is OK but you don't want your chicken swimming in it. 6.Sprinkle liberally with salt, rubbing it into the skin. 7.Put it in the oven and cook for 2 hours, or a little longer, depending on the size of the chicken. A No. 20 is done in this time. Use a meat thermometer to determine doneness or pierce the breast and if the juices are clear the chicken is done. Don't be tempted to skimp on the salt. It not only adds flavour but makes the skin delightfully crisp and golden. There is no need to turn or baste the chicken. Just put it in the oven and let it cook. Roast your own chickens and not spend around $7 each at the supermarket. For a long time I've been saying that the supermarkets are not our friends. That's the fiction they like to present, and they do it well. They don't make our lives easier or save us money or time or energy. Since the 1960s supermarkets have taken choices away from homemakers and destroyed basic homemaking skills, all under the guise of making the Australian homemaker's life easier. Phooey! What they've done is made the population reliant on them as the main source of food, toiletries, and cleaning products and they are making an attempt to become a one-stop shop with the addition of clothes and homewares. It is getting harder and harder to find basic ingredients in both Coles and Woolworths. There are plenty of mixes and packaged products, pre-prepared biscuits and cakes, even complete meals. But try to find something as basic as flour or sugar or yeast or gravy powder and you'll be looking, no searching, high and low to find them. You will find them, but a very small, limited range, hidden away from the mixes and packets. You have three choices: 1.You can give in and live your life according to the supermarkets plan 2.You can ask, and ask, and keep on asking, supermarkets to stock the items you need. 3.You can shop elsewhere. Number three is my first choice. I want to be able to buy the raw ingredients I need to prepare the healthy, tasty and economical meals I want to serve my family. What's your choice? I've really noticed the end of summer this week. The days are getting shorter, or rather the sun is setting earlier and it is dark much later in the mornings. Before too long winter will be here and with it a whole lot of extra expenses: heating, warm clothing, more fuel for the car (less walking in winter weather) and more indoor pursuits which invariably seem to cost something.
I've also noticed it because I've spent the last two glorious days in the veggie garden planting our winter veggies. They should have been in a couple of weeks ago but time was away. It was a major garden renovation, so I had to wait until there was almost nothing left. We have moved four of our big veggie boxes so they are in line with the rest of the garden. This came about because we need a new side fence (what a palaver and all over a fence). To get the new fence the old creepers had to come down (yay!). This freed up a whole lot of space - about 54 square feet - in the back garden. It also meant I could move the veggie boxes so they now get sun all day long, instead of just 7 hours. Unfortunately to move the boxes we had to empty them. That meant digging out the soil, shifting the boxes into their new positions, replacing the soil and re-planting. The boxes were moved one at a time, as Wayne was on call and we never knew just when the phone would ring and he'd have to go to work. It was a huge job and took most of the day, but I can't stop grinning, everything looks so lovely and tidy now. Mind you I'm paying for it today; my arms and shoulders are a little stiff and achy, obviously not used to all the pushing and lifting of the shovel. Once the boxes were in place I was itching to get planting. The weatherman says that this is the last of the nice warm days for the year and that a very cold change is on its way for later in the week so I had to get moving. Wayne turned over the compost for me and we dug in lots and lots of lovely, crumbly compost and watered it down, ready for the seedlings. Then he started a new lot of compost with the lawn clippings and the contents of the bokashi bucket and some fern clippings he mulched up. He'll be able to add apple leaves soon; I noticed this morning they are starting to turn yellow on the tree. I've planted mini cauliflowers and cabbages. I love these little vegetables, one is just the right size for a meal for my family so there is no waste and they don't get to go black in the fridge. I pick them as I want them so they are really fresh too. I've also put in some more potatoes (Desiree this time) and re-planted the strawberries into a bigger bed for the winter. Hannah tells me that our homegrown, organic potatoes are the best tasting ever. That’s high praise from my girl who doesn’t really like spuds all that much. I sowed another dozen beetroot too. Have you tried roasted beetroot? Beetroot is a summer salad staple for many Australians but it's even better as a winter veggie roasted in a drizzle of olive oil. Or in a soup or dip. And of course I've sown some more lettuce and broccoli. We'll also enjoy Rainbow Silverbeet, garlic chives, peas, Chinese cabbage, turnips and parsnips (I love baked parsnip), celery and spring onions. I'm tempted to try a couple of tomato plants and keep them in the greenhouse but I fear Melbourne winters just don't get enough hot sun. This afternoon I sowed more silverbeet, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, and lettuce and celery seeds. By the time these are ready to go into the garden I should be picking their older mates. That's the plan anyway. Succession planting will ensure we have a steady supply of fresh veggies all winter, and save a small fortune too. For root vegetables, such as beetroot and parsnip, I plant direct. You can buy seedlings of these veggies, but they really do better if they are sown direct and grown from seed. Try beetroot or radishes for salads, turnips and parsnips for soups and casseroles and carrots grown straight from seed and you'll be amazed at how much better they grow for you. There is still one empty veggie bed. This is for onions. It will rest for the next three months, ready for planting in July. The onions did really well this year so I hope I can replicate the results. The soil has been turned over and had lots and lots of manure dug into it. My Grandfather grew the best onions ever, and he grew them in a mix of 3:1 manure to soil - not what the books suggest at all. His onions were always golden and big and very tasty. My plan is to give Grandad's method a try and hope I have his green thumb, at least when it comes to onions anyway. When people ask me how I keep the food bill down the first thing I mention is the veggie garden. The few minutes it takes each day to water, pull the odd weed, re-sow seed and pick gorgeous fresh vegetables is fantastic value for effort. Our fruit and veg bill is so low, around $10 a fortnight, that I once had a journalist accuse me of not feeding my family properly. The look on her face when I invited her out the back to see our garden, and then the smile when she left with a big bag of fresh veggies was priceless. And I think she understood - you don't need to rely on the supermarkets for your food - you can grow it yourself, in your own backyard, and tell the supermarket fruit and veg department goodbye. From Debt Free, Cashed Up and Laughing |
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