I have been trying to be more frugal with our food lately.  My grocery spending has gotten way out of hand. 

 Today we had eggs, fried potatoes and homemade applesauce and biscuits for dinner.  The potatoes were from grandma's garden, so they were free.  I fried them up in a little margerine and added onions, salt and pepper.  For the eggs, I had some raw spinach that was wilting, so I added some and some chopped onion.  I also chopped up 4 mushrooms and added salt and pepper.  Grandma gave me some ham slices left over from my uncles birthday dinner sunday, so I chopped some up and added it to the mix (I froze the rest of the ham slices to add to beans in the crockpot later this week).  I used 12 eggs, from my own hens, and added a splash of milk and some salt and pepper.  I melted some cheese in it before serving it.

I purchased refrigerator biscuits for 33 cents a roll last week, so I baked some of them.

I also peeled 6 yellow apples (on sale at the farm market) and boiled them till soft, then mashed them with a potatoe masher and added cinamon and brown sugar.

Tomorrow I will serve homemade chicken and noodle soup.  I bought a rotiseree chicken last saturday, so I will pull off the leftover meat for the soup.  I have a can of chicken stock in the pantry so I will use it, and toss in a few herbs out of the garden.  I will put carrots, celery and onion in the soup as well. 

I will also make sauteed squash and zuccini, from my garden.  For desert we will have bread pudding, made in the crock pot.  We don't like rasins, so I will adapt the recipe and add some apples and nutmeg.

In addition to being frugal with my recipes, There are some other things I am trying to do to save some money. 

I feed all vegetable and fruit peelings and scraps to the chickens.  I also am crushing the egg shells and feeding them to the chickens for extra calcium.  I am mixing the chickens feed half and half with cracked corn from my dads corn crib.  It is full of cob, so after they eat and leave the cob, I will use it as bedding.  I will also use as bedding the old bayles of straw in the barn that are otherwise useless because the strings broke.  I will compost my old chicken bedding when I scoop out the coop, instead of throwing it out.  Next spring, that will go on the garden.  I feed any bad or bug eaten veggies out of the garden to the chickens as well. 

Any other food scraps will go to the cats and dogs.

I plan on sewing and baking nearly all of our christmas gifts this year.  I am also sewing some curtains for the house and clothes for the children this winter.

These ideas should help save some money and make it a little easier to live on one income.

joyfull homemaker