Category: Frugality

Contest winners are identified below along with over 30 excellent comments from moms like you!

Here is my top frugal post from contest winner Jill Ferris:

Dear Marilyn,

Many years ago when I was worrying about how to eat healthily on a very very limited budget I met ayoung mother who was raised in a poor family (12 children) who told me what they ate growing up.

Basically, they ate cooked dried beans, cornbread and some sort of cooked greens (like turnip greens) for at least two meals a day all year long. She said they got ice cream once a year for Christmas or Fourth of July. That was it.

When she married and moved across the country she went to a doctor and dentist for the first time in her life and was told that she was the healthiest person they had ever seen. The dentist had never seen teeth as strong as hers!!

I thought about her parents and wondered if they worried all those years about not really “providing” for their family and wondered if they realized what wonderful health their children had because of growing up without refined foods!

Meeting her was reassuring to me. I realized that good nutrition can be very simple and very plain. It can be very very inexpensive. It, of course, must be balanced (the beans and the corn bread compliment each other and the greens are a wonderful food if not overcooked).

I realized that we could get very, very poor and still afford GOOD nutritious food!

So that’s my money saving tip! Relax, trust in God to provide what you need, ask Him to teach you simple ways to make nutritious foods (sprouting seeds is one of those ways; they are very cheap but highly nutritious!) and have the confidence to know that you are providing the BEST for your family!

I wrote a few weeks ago:
Let’s all share our tips and wisdom with each other so we can learn together to be better wives, mothers, and homemaker’s! This contest will end March 18, 2008.

Here are a few tips to get your started!

You can save a lot of money buy making your own easy to make cream soups with four ingredients instead of many unpronounceable ingredients.

Cream Soup Alternatives

For one can of cream of “whatever soup” use the following simple, four ingredient recipe:

Basic Cream Soup
3 T Butter
3 T Flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup chicken stock, water or milk

Instructions:

Melt butter in heavy saucepan. Blend flour and salt into saucepan while cooking and stirring until bubbly. using a wire whisk to prevent lumps, stir in liquid ingredient choice slowly. Medium thick sauce is comparable to undiluted condensed soups and makes approximately the same amount as a 10 oz can.

Variations:
Cheese Sauce: Add ½ C grated sharp cheese and ¼ tsp mustard

Tomato Sauce: Use tomato juice as liquid and add a dash each of garlic powder or garlic salt, onion powder or onion salt, basil and oregano.

Mushroom Sauce: Saute ¼ C finely chopped mushrooms and 1 Tbsp finely chopped onion in the butter before adding the flour.

Celery Sauce: Saute ½ Cup finely chopped celery and 1 Tbsp finely chopped onion in butter before adding flour

Chicken Sauce: Use chicken broth or bouillon as half the liquid. Add ¼ tsp poultry seasoning or sage, and diced cooked chicken if available.

CONTEST WINNERS

ED NOTE: What a challenge to pick five contest winners from all these great posts! Please read all the comments, but my prize winners of the two ebooks are:

Jody Courtney, Sharon Clark, Christine Jones, Jill Farris, Carly from AL

They are each winners of Fast and Healthy Menus for Busy Moms along with my ebook A Beginner’s Guide to Baking Bread. This is a $19.93 retail value! Congratulations to the winners. Your ideas have blessed me immensely.