Clean eating the frugal way!

I've jumped on the clean eating bandwagon. That means no processed foods, no refined sugars, heavy on the whole grains, meats, and veggies. And let me tell you, being an "extreme" couponer does not facilitate this way of eating! Yes, I'm constantly writing that coupons are NOT just for the junk food and that's 100% accurate but they're also not for the picky. You can use coupons on things other than food if you're on a really strict diet or have some food intolerances (like my momma, who has Celiac Disease). I seriously haven't paid for toothpaste, toothbrushes, floss, feminine care products, or dryer sheets in years. Also, I've only once or twice paid more than $.50 for shampoo or $1.50 for laundry detergent. But part of my coupon class talks about throwing away the idea of being brand loyal. You just can't be if you're going to save the huge amounts like some couponers do. It's not possible.

                                                                          Clean Eating Shopping List

So how would one be frugal and use coupons while trying to eat healthy and lose weight? Ah, that is the question! Here's a few tips. I've been trying it since coming home from Idaho and while I haven't completely made it fully there yet (as you can see from some of my shopping trip photos on Facebook! But much of that goes to my brother and his roommates, church, and food pantries), my pantry is looking much nicer than it did before the summer!

1) I shop at Sprouts and Whole Foods. They both allow coupons. In fact, both have store coupons on their websites that you can pair with manufacturer coupons to get double savings! Mambosprouts.com has several organic/natural product coupons that pair well with these two stores' coupons. Plus, Sprouts has double Wednesdays. On Wednesdays, the stuff that was on sale last week is still on sale with the coming week's sale prices.
2) I shop at Asian Pacific Market for meat. That's a local Asian grocery that has really good prices on meats and veggies. I don't think they allow coupons but even if they did, they don't have any national brands that I've seen. But boneless, skinless chicken breasts are consistently $1.77/lb there.
3) When you do see good sales on things that are in your eating lifestyle, STOCK UP! Sales are fewer and farther between for these types of products.
4) Join a food co-op. I know there are some out there. Bountiful Baskets is one here in the Springs. We joined Miller Farm's produce co-op one summer and got locally grown, organic produce delivered in huge crates every week all summer and fall long. It was awesome!
5) Be creative with what's on sale! I get coupons for Chex cereal all the time. Most of Chex cereal is gluten free which is what my mom needs. We use corn Chex often for breading on chicken. It stays crunchy when baked! Also, I make my own Chex mix for her because the bagged kind has a bunch of preservatives in it to keep it shelf stable and has wheat in it in the form of their wheat Chex, bagel chips, and pumpernickel chips. I substitute gluten free pretzels and nuts in instead. She loves it!

So, there you go. I hope this helps. Pinterest is my absolute inspiration for meal ideas if you need some! Do you have any tips for eating healthy on a budget?

Back to frugality

(Shore Lodge) 

Let's be honest. Nobody stays frugal ALL the time, right? Or is it just me? But I have excuses! I was going to be so good with money this past summer. Remember my whole budgeting plan? Well, that went totally out the window when I moved to Idaho! But I did get a few things done that were on my list. Like #8: go on a road trip. Definitely did that! 16 hours up and 16 hours back from Idaho! Also numbers 13 and 14: Eat something I've never had before and discover a great, new restaurant. I had never had quail before this summer. I ate it A LOT in McCall. It's on one of the banquet menus. I think I served it 6-8 times in the 11 weeks I was there. Don't like it. It's too gamey for my palette.  Also, I discovered multiple new restaurants while away from home, most notably the two housed within Shore Lodge; Lake Grill and The Narrows. Both wonderful and run by a fantastic executive chef, Steve Toppel. I highly recommend either of them if you ever get a chance to spend time in McCall. So, the summer wasn't a total bust!

 (my backyard) 

But now it's officially Fall. I'm back in Colorado Springs, back in school, back to my routines. My summer is fading from memory fast as the days go by. I've been asked multiple times by my boss, my boss's boss, my boss's boss's boss to return next summer. We'll see. By the end, I was ready to come home. 12-16 hours days on my feet is rough. My feet were very glad to come home! But maybe I'll be ready to go back by next year.

I was also SO ready to come back to my coupons! Being in a tiny town, 2 hours from any chain store, was hard on my shopping skills :) Although, working in events, there is always an abundance of leftovers that helps keep from breaking the bank in food costs! But I like to cook and so still wanted to keep a full frig. And I had a very cute, young, Chinese roommate who did not cook at all. So I HAD to keep her from starving too. Because all she ever made was ramen noodle soup and microwavable bacon. I still shudder at her eating habits! But I'm back now, to civilization, surrounding by my coupons! Let the frugalness commence!

Life in McCall

Wow, it's been a whirlwind 3 weeks! I think most of you know that I moved to Idaho last month to oversee a hotel's events department in McCall. It's a beautiful hotel amidst a stunning setting. I've really enjoyed these past few weeks, doing a job that I love. Even through the 12 hour days! It's been interesting though, working in a secular setting. I worked for 2 years at Focus on the Family as an event coordinator, which is a highly conservative, Christian nonprofit. I've also done numerous weddings for friends and acquaintances but all within a Christian setting. Honestly, the wastefulness of events has always gotten to me. When you throw $1000 worth of prime rib in the garbage, it's tough! (Though my roommates at the time would probably say the endless supply of leftovers was a treat!) Or you pour $6800 worth of champagne in under 20 minutes (I did that last night!), its sometimes hard to let go of what that money could do. But I just have to remember, it's not my job to judge. It's my job to be wise with the money God has given to me and use THAT for His glory, right? That's one of the main reasons I took this job! It was quite a bit of money in a short amount of time and I wanted to be more financially stable and be able to buy a car in cash, without a car payment, next year.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love hospitality and events. It's wonderful to get to see a bride on her wedding day looking radiant and know you had a part in making her dreams come true. I've always been service oriented. It's my primary love language. I've always struggled with the story of Martha and Mary because I know I'm just like Martha, going a mile a minute, serving others but not remembering to stop and just be in the presence of The Lord. And... Oh man, I got off on a tangent! :) I was supposed to be updating you on life in McCall!

If you've never been to Idaho, you're missing out! I really thought it would look a lot like Colorado, but I was wrong! The mountains aren't as tall (McCall is only at elevation 5,000ft) and they're more rounded and hill-like. The skies are just as blue and wide open but they seem closer. I don't know how to explain it. It's like you can reach out and touch it. The landscape is more diverse. In the two hour drive from Boise to McCall (I've done this drive 4 times already!), you pass from mountain pass to flat farmland to wide-open lakefronts. It's truly amazing!

The hotel is beautiful too! It's changed hands a couple of times in the last 10 years but seems to be steadying now. They're doing a complete renovation of the rooms come fall in hopes of going from a 4-star (that they just earned last year) to a 5-star hotel. I don't like the renovation ideas but whatever :) The hotel sits on the banks of the Payette Lake, which has just bursted into life in the last week. Kayaks, canoes, pontoon boats, jet skis, all commingle on this 25 acre lake. The town is a resort town. In the winter, only about 1800 people call McCall home. In the summer, it explodes to 10,000. Most of the houses are summer houses, people who vacation but don't reside here. Lots of families and older folks. It's not really a party town, like say, the Hamptons. Only one bar stays open till past 10pm :)

Well, I think that's good for now. Next time, maybe I'll share about my apartment (that's been an adventure in and of itself!). Hope your summers have been as adventuresome as mine!

 

A New Look

I'm revamping the format of my blog. Do you like it? It's not done yet so don't get too attached! I have a few things I'd like to see added but haven't quite figured out how to add them to the template. Like buttons. Anybody know how to add a button that links to another page of the blog from the home screen? I don't know if it's even possible for Blogger. Eventually I might need to switch to another web page designer.

#9 on my summer bucket list is to read a classic. I looked up the World Library's list of top 100 classics of all time and picked Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. Looking at the list, I realized I am an idiot. I think I've read maybe 12-15 of the books on this list! And most of them, I had to read for school. Maybe 2 or 3 of them I've actually read for pleasure. How depressing. Though, the authors who picked this list might be a bit crazy. Pippi Longstocking? Really?

Has anyone read this book? What did you think? I'm surprised that none of the Bronte sisters' books were required reading in school. But then again, I was an International Baccalaureate student in high school and we had to read some strange stuff. No Charles Dickens or William Faulkner. Instead, we were subjected to Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale. Both weirdly disturbing books, at least in my 16 year old self's eyes.

I made another new recipe yesterday and my work loved them! Cookies from a cake mix, who would have thunk it? I guess everybody, because there are hundreds of recipes for them. They called this recipe Ooey Gooey Butter Cookies but I don't agree with the title :) They were light and fluffy, not gooey. We really liked them and maybe next time, I'll make this chocolate version instead!

A hectic week

Wow, did these past two weeks speed by! My dad unexpectedly graduated from college last weekend. He wasn't planning on finishing till Christmas but the college worked his schedule around a bit so that he could walk with his fellow classmates and then finish up two more classes during the summer. So... he graduated and then we went on a quick vacation to Taos for a few days. It was beautiful!

I made THREE new recipes today. I was quite ambitious :) And exhausted by the end of it. They all came out great though! Thank you, Pinterest!

Magic Cookie Bars

Vegetable Pancakes with Sour Cream

And Salisbury Steak 

It was a delicious meal!

Not much else happened this week. The summer might be changing for me drastically as I have a job opportunity in Idaho for 10 weeks. I'm not sure it will actually pan out but if it does, I might have to revise my whole summer thought process! I'll keep ya'll updated!

Scrumptious Living

One of my summer bucket list items is to make a new recipe every week. I'll probably do more than that over the course of the summer, but the goal is at least one. This week, I made Hawaiian Chicken Kabobs. The recipe link is HERE and my modified recipe (because I AM my mother's daughter and can't follow a recipe for the life of me!) is below. The marinade/sauce was wonderful. My chicken was a bit dry because 1) I didn't marinate the chicken overnight and 2) I defrosted it in the microwave. I just didn't think about dinner until a couple hours before! Oh well. I used fresh spices instead of ground because I actually didn't have dried in the house! Whoa... what a concept :) I also added crushed pinapple and it's juice to the marinade instead of skewering pinepple chunks to the kabobs. And lastly, I added vegetables to the skewers (zucchini, bell pepper, and onion) to give it a more healthy flair. Add whatever you'd like to the skewers, it doesn't matter. Just make sure everything is about the same size so they cook at the same time!

Hawaiian Chicken Kabobs

Ingredients

3 T soy sauce
3 T  brown sugar
2 T sherry
1 T sesame oil
1/4 t ground ginger (I used fresh)
1/4 t garlic powder (again, I used fresh)
1/4 c crushed pineapple with it's juice
3 Large boneless chicken breasts
Vegetables (I used zucchini, bell peppers, and onion)
Wooden Skewers

Directions

1. In a bowl, mix soy sauce, sugar, sherry, sesame oil, ginger, pineapple and garlic. Cut chicken breasts into bite-sized pieces and add to marinade. Mix until coated and cover with plastic wrap. Marinate in frig for at least 2 hours.

2. Preheat grill to medium heat and oil to prevent sticking.

3. Thread chicken and vegetables onto skewers. Grill for 15-20 minutes or until chicken is thoroughly cooked.

P.S. I made an extra batch of sauce and cooked it on the stove for a few minutes to blend the flavors and melt the sugar. If you do that, you'll have sauce to baste with while it's cooking and more to dip in!

My first week

Well, the first week of my summer is coming to a close. Boy, did it go by fast! I didn't do a ton of my bucket list but that's ok. Don't need to get it all done the first week! That would be no fun at all! But here's a few things I did accomplish!

1. I got all my plants in the ground, except for the eggplant. Not sure where I'm going to put that yet! But it's looking so nice! I hope I don't lose too much of it. Sometimes hail wipes out my whole garden or they have been known to go into shock or something and die :) Peppers are on the left and I think parsley is on the right?

2. I made a new recipe. I made this recipe for Vanilla Pound Cake from Martha Stewart. It was ok. My mom ended up bringing it to work with strawberries and whipped cream. I thought it was too dense. I probably won't make it again.

3. I read two new books. Might have to revise my book count for the summer. I'm flying through! I read Catching Fire and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, which are part of the Hunger Games Trilogy. They're teen fiction, which is why I flew threw those books. Read them in just a couple of days. I liked Catching Fire but I got bored about 1/4 of the way through Mockingjay. But the movie is coming out this fall and I wanted to read them before seeing it. I think that's a good thing to do!

That's about it. How was your week of summer? If you're in school, are you out yet?

An Official Start!

First off, Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there! We had a great day here. My great aunt and uncle came over for lunch and I made a yummy lunch including my homemade bread that I'm starting to become famous for! Then I proceeded to totally lose at dominoes. I was winning till the last 15 minutes!

My summer officially starts tomorrow. Technically, I've been done with school for a week but I wanted to ease into my summer slowly :) I'm adding a couple more things to our bucket list checklist that people have mentioned and I like.

1. Go to a drive-in movie. I don't think there is one close by but I'll try to get there!
2. Read 13 new books (that's one a week. Shouldn't be too hard. I read two this past week! Though they weren't new. I'd read them before)
3. Attend a baseball game. Sky Sox or Rockies will do.
4. Wade in a creek.
5. Go to a community pool. And take my cousins with me!
6. Go water tubing.

I've also planned out a couple of things that are already on my list. We're going camping for Father's Day and our road trip will be to Wyoming for Cheyenne's Frontier Days in July. Yay!

How's YOUR summer bucket list coming? Anything new and cool that you're planning on doing this summer?

A Budgeting Challenge: A Summer to Remember

                                       


It's been a LONG time since I've blogged but I'm going to start back up. Hope you're as excited about that as I am!

I've decided this is going to be a summer to remember. This is the first summer while in college that I won't be taking summer classes. I'm done with all my prereq's and clinicals (which is all I have left to do) don't go through the summer. So I've got a lot more free time this summer and I'm so excited about that!. I'm going to do a BUNCH of stuff I've never done before and I'm going to share it all here! So here's what I'm thinking so far. I invite your suggestions and comments; bring them on!

I'm going to label my summer as May 13-August 13. So everything I want to get done this summer needs to happen in that timespan. I've got $900 in "extra" spending money. That needs to last through the end of the summer and that total doesn't include bills. I've already paid, in advance, all major bills. And I do have a job, so that money will be used to pay for mundane things like gas and groceries :) But anything extra and fun that I want to do this summer needs to come out of that $900. That's an average of $300 a month. Here's my summer bucket list so far...

#1 Grow a great garden (It's already in the works and looking wonderful!)
#2 Go camping (I haven't done this since high school! Sad, I know!)
#3 Go to the zoo
#4 Climb a mountain
#5 Lose weight
#6 Go to Las Vegas
#7 Enter something in the county and state fair (I'm thinking a photograph or some kind of baked good)
#8 Go on a road trip
#9 Read a classic
#10 Watch an outdoor movie under the stars
#11 Pack a picnic with the family
#12 Taking a gun safety class (I think everyone should at least know the basics!)
#13 Eat something I've never had before
#14 Discover a great, new restaurant
#15 Try a new recipe, every week!
#16 Spend an entire day, in my pajamas, watching movies I've never seen
#17 Go fishing (I've never done this!)
#18 Make homemade ice cream
#19 Visit every farmers market in town
#20 Spend a day being a tourist in my own town (Staycation, anybody?)

Can you think of something else that should be on my summer bucket list?

And here's how I'm going to be oh so very frugal about it because, this is a blog about being frugal!

#1 I will buy NO new clothing. I don't care if I have a 90% off coupon. But thrift stores don't count.
#2 I will eat way less fast food. This is hard for me. But my schedule is way lighter so that should help.
#3 I will drink NO soda. That's right... none! Sweet tea and lemonade don't count :)
#4 I will not eat out without a coupon. This should help with the fast food addiction!

That's all I can think of right now. Any suggestions?