Fun When Temps are High and Cash is Low

 

First, let me start by saying that this summer has really been quite pleasant—especially when compared to the drought of last year and nearly 3 solid weeks of temps over 100.  Yet even last year, in an effort to stretch every dollar to its breaking point, we turned the thermostat up as high as we could stand it to keep the electric bill down.  For us, keeping cool means finding another venue with air conditioning during the day.  And yet we still want to avoid the temptation to spend in other ways,  i.e. we’re not going to browse the mall.  Here are some things we’ve found.

The Movies

The cinema just up the road always offers a series of eight children’s movies on Tuesdays and admission is only $1.00. I know regionally the Wehrenberg Theaters offer 10 weeks of films on both Wednesdays and Thursdays.  So look in your area for independent or theater chains that have a similar program.  The movies aren’t new releases, but generally are less than three years old.  Even if you have seen the picture before you get to sit in a dark and cool theater.  Since we don’t go to the movies often a lot of them are still new to us.  Now this option only remains frugal if you resist the temptation to buy popcorn and drinks.  I make sure my son understands this before we enter the theater.  And if you have a baby or a chatty toddler don’t worry that they will disturb the audience—we’re all in the same position.  Another tip—you may need to arrive early.  Free or nearly free movies can be pretty popular.  I’ve seen whole day camps and day care centers show up at our theater.

Bowling

Bowling Alleys are another air conditioned venue.  This year some one told me about the KidsBowlFree.com  program.  If you visit the site you can see which alleys in your state are participating.  For each account you set up, you can list 6 kids who will get two free games every day from June 1 to Aug 31.  Have more kids? Set up another account.  Want to bowl with them?  For $24 you can add a family pass of up to four adults who will also get to bowl two games per day (they must accompany a kid in the program).  Each facility can set it’s own terms about age limits and shoe rental.  Our nearest bowling alley does not include free shoes, but I found a pair of bowling shoes for myself at a consignment store.  I also determined it was cheaper to buy my son a pair of shoes (new on eBay for $25) rather than pay $2.25 for shoes for the number of times we’d be going (so far more than 18 times).   We’re lucky that this particular town has just passed a ban so the bowling alley is smoke free.  When my son was doing the bowling project for 4-H we went to an alley that allowed smoking, but during the day when there aren’t leagues it really wasn’t bad.

The Library

Every library seems to have a summer program for kids.  They get to hear a story and usually take part in a craft project.  Mom can participate or take some quiet time for herself browsing the shelves.  One year we the Librarian read  The Invention of Hugo Cabret as a serial over the summer but other years there have been shorter selections that only take one day (which helps in case you can’t attend every week).  They’ve brought in balloon artists, magicians, PBS characters, etc.  to the wrap up events.  Our library has toddler time in the morning and time for elementary kids after noon so a family could make a day of it (maybe have a picnic on the library lawn).  And the fun doesn’t have to be limited to the summer.  There are always events at the library to draw in kids.  Our county system sponsors a monthly chess night, monthly Lego building parties, cookie decorating days, and Christmas ornament workshops. 

For more ideas on Beating the Summer Heat Click below

 

Introducing Homeschool Library

Twenty-five dollars won't fill up the gas tank in my car.  It barely gets me a sack of groceries (let's not talk about ground chuck at $3/lb. for Memorial Day).  So this may be one of the best bargains on the planet right now.   The folks at The Old Schoolhouse Magazine have created a virtual Schoolhouse Library with books, videos, and audiobooks and you can have it all for $25.  This is not a subscription--you'll have access to over 175 eProducts forever (plus any new products they add down the road).  Here's a sampling.

• a lapbook from Hands of a Child
• 15 audio books from My Audio School
• a Map Trek sampler for Knowledge Quest
• a Bible Study from Grapevine Studies
• an Amy Puetz unit study
• lots, lots more!

You'll find resources for Bible Study, Economics, Nature Study, Grammar, Spelling, Reading, Geography and more.  So check it out for yourself.

How to take advantage of Walmart's price matching

The local newspaper brought me the bad news---Ameren Missouri's raising the rates on their electricity by 10 percent starting Jan 1st.  And Ol' Man Winter decided to join in the fun too.  We'd had  relatively mild temps thus far but as soon as the price hike came the forecast changed to below normal temps and nights in the single digits.  Since I'm not a member of Congress, I'll actually need to do some jostling in the budget to deal with the higher cost of heat.

I've mentioned before that I don't live in Double Coupon Land.  The one store that does double is 13 miles away and only doubles the first 15 coupons 50 cents and under.  I figure round trip will use up 1 gallon of gas so it would cost me $3.15 to save $7.50.   In fact distance has been the issue in my missing several bargains at the grocery store.  My local paper carries ads for 5 grocery stores in nearby towns ranging from 3 to 14 miles away.  In the past I would combine trips to close stores (Schnucks and Aldi's are near each other) or stop when we had nearby activities (Country Mart is near Schnickelfritz's Royal Ranger's meetings).   But the truth is I don't like to make 3-5 trips to different stores every week just to take advantage of their loss leaders.

Thankfully Walmart (which is actually my closest store) has fully embraced their "We'll match any advertised price" policy.  Now I go through each store's ad and compare their sales to my price book (the subject of a whole other post).  If it's a stock up price, I'll circle it in the ad and write it on my shopping list.   I like to make the list on a spreadsheet so I can sort by grocery aisle (making me more efficient in the store).  Most of the stores in my area are not part of a national or even regional chain.  They all share the same generic brand--Best Choice, and most of their sale items involve this generic.  Walmart will price match generics and in-store labels with their own Great Value brand.  Here's an example from my Thanksgiving dinner shopping trip.

If I've got a lot of price matching to do, I'll try to go during non-peak hours.  In this case I was at the store at 6:30 on a Saturday morning before Thanksgiving.   I take the shopping list and my circled grocery fliers with me to the store. Walmart doesn't require you to bring in the competitor's ads-- they usually have copies, but having the items already circled helps to find them faster and just keeps the check out line moving along.  When I pick something off the shelves I'm very careful where I stick it in the cart.  I try to keep each store's loss leaders together so I can show the cashier all the sales in one flier at the same time.

Apparently I'm not the only one doing this either--someone had already changed Walmart's computers to match Schnuck's turkey sale although it wasn't reflected on the price tag or the freezer case.  The cashier didn't ask to see the Aldi's flier and already knew the sales prices for the potatoes.

So how did I do?  You'll note I left a column to write in Walmart's regular price.  It's not necessary, but sometimes it nice to see what you've accomplished. A few things to notice--Walmart's price on green beans was already lower that the competitor's sale price so sometimes you don't want to price match.  Also, Walmart only had two bottles of my husbands flavor of salad dressing.  I didn't actually need to buy three to match the 3 for $5 sale, the cashier figured out the cost per bottle and used that figure for the price.

My 20 minutes of scouring other ads saved me nearly $40!  Amy Dacyczyn of The Tightwad Gazette used to figure the hourly worth of a task to see if the savings was worth the time and effort of doing it.  Price matching, in this case, works out to $120 per hour--I'd say definitely!!!  And there doesn't seem to be a limit.  During Christmas shopping Walmart matched the price of a Cabela's hunting video game that another store had for $35 less.  The cashier had to call a manager over for the price override but no one disputed the sales flyer I'd brought with me.

The Chess Demo Board: a lesson in perseverence

This week we begin a new semester of Co-op classes and since we've already viewed all 10 Disney Imagineering DVDs (and there aren't enough new kids who didn't take the class), I'm moving on to a new subject--beginning chess.  We have the whole series of books and videos from Championship Chess .  You really should visit their website to learn about the benefits chess can bring kids: focusing, weighing options, thinking ahead, etc. Anyway, the one piece I didn't have was a big demonstration chess board to show the kids moves and set up puzzles.  Most of them use pockets into which you place plastic cards with pictures of the pieces. 


First Attempt: Buy One     Talk about your sticker shock--they run from $40-$60.  I even tried eBay.  Since I'm offering this class for free I needed to come up with a more frugal option.

Second Attempt: Use what I have     Years ago while garage-sale-ing, I bought a vinyl, roll-up chess board from a young enthusiast.  I thought perhaps I could hold the board up on my magnetic white board.  I went so far as to make circular chips with symbols of the chess pieces on them and attached magnets to the back.  The problem was the vinyl was too thick for the magnets to adhere.  I could have looked into more powerful magnets, but there again cost became an issue.  Still, I had the pieces.  I was making progress.

Third Attempt: Make my own board     I had printed and made my own pieces after all.  I did find some printable boards online but it involved printing on multiple pages and taping them together and it still wasn't big enough to use in front of a class.  I saved the info for any students who might need to make their own for class.

Fourth Attempt:  Copying what I had   The vinyl board was the right size, just too thick so what if I copied it onto thinner material.  I took my roll-up board to Office Max first but they couldn't handle the size.  They referred me to a local print shop that had a much bigger scanner.  It worked!  With a little coaxing the think vinyl went through their roller/scanner.  Now comes the embarrassing part--I didn't have any cash with me and they wouldn't accept debit or credit cards for such a small order.  God bless those good folks, they let me keep the copy and hoped I'd pay them the next time I came to town.

So I had my  20" square chess board, but I was already a little disappointed in it.  The original board had been green and the scanner had a little trouble picking it up.  Some squares were really faded out.  One the other hand the scanner had no trouble picking up the lines and creases from the vinyl being folded and stored so it looked like chicken scratches all over.

Fifth Attempt:  Improving the Copy    I'm a bit of a crafter and I had rolls of sticky vinyl left over from making cups with all my relatives' names on them from Thanksgiving (I was trying to be slightly more elegant than the standard tape and sharpie marker technique).  So I got out my quilting ruler and fabric cutting wheel (think pizza cutter, only sharper) and cut 32 squares of vinyl to mach my chess board.  They were a cinch to place over the grid on my copy.   I noticed when placing the vinyl, that I could still pull it up and adjust it so I worried how permanent the arrangement would be.  Then it hit me like a bolt of lightening--laminating the board would not only keep the vinyl in place, but we could use dry erase markers to show potential moves, etc. in class!  I went back to the local print shop so I could pay them for the copy and give them the laminating business to boot.

So here's my finished project.  Instead of $40 to $60,  I shelled out $2.50 to the print shop, (the cost of the vinyl may have been another dollar).  There's still some tweaking to do: I found that if the chess board lifts up from the surface of the white board, the magnets fall off so I'm taping the chess board down.  We'll just have to use the refrigerator surface for our All About Spelling lessons this semester.  True, it's not the invention of the light bulb, but it does show what can be accomplished by persevering,  learning from each attempt, and improving upon what you learned.

A math lesson in couponing

First, let me be clear, if you're looking for tips on how you can be the next star of Extreme Couponing you've come to the wrong place.  I'm not organized or committed enough to score 90+ percent savings.  I also don't live in an area that doubles coupons.  There is a Schnucks 12 miles away that will double the first 15 coupons up to .50 which means at most I could save $7.50.  However I do think there are some tips that all of us can learn to use coupons more wisely.

For example, this week the Schnucks flier said they would TRIPLE the first 15 coupons.  They also had a good sale on ham so I decided to make the trip.  I had a few coupon circulars from the last two weeks in my newspaper pile so I began searching for the 50 cent-ers.  They were hard to come by--at least for things I would buy anyway.   I did find two yogurt coupons: one for $.50 off eight and one for $.40 off six.  So 14 yogurts went into the cart and I saved $2.70.  Let's look at the chalk board...

Now on the surface you would think triple coupons was a great thing, right?  I however keep a price book on things I purchase often and know that this same store often puts yogurt on sale 10 for $5.00.  And on any other week I can still have my coupons up to .50 doubled.  So let's look at that scenario on the board...

Wow, now I'm not feeling so thrilled about the Triple coupon deal.  I could have saved almost two dollars more by waiting for the yogurt sale to cycle around again.  The moral of the story is that coupons work best if they're matched up with a sale price.  Even if the store just took the coupons at face value I would have come out better--paying $6.10 instead of $7.10.  

I still bought the yogurt because I needed to spend $25.00 to get the deal on the ham  ($1.77/lb vs $3.98/lb) and the yogurts counted as $9.80 towards that figure (they didn't care whether I paid in cash or coupons).   I also track the price of ham because the Toolman likes it for sandwiches so I knew this was an extremely good deal.  Bottom line for me--coupons are good but a price book is better.

A Frugal Fall Birthday

Well, it finally happened...my Schnickelfritz joined the ranks of us with two digits in our age.  I'm not going to try and figure out where the last decade went so fast.  Instead, I want to share how we celebrated.  I now there have been TV shows where moms outdo one another with the most elaborate and expensive shin-digs they can muster.  We didn't rent a bouncy house, hire a magician, or visit that pizza chain where you spend $50 to buy tokens and "win" a $5 prize.

A frugal party takes advantage of and plays up what you already have--in our case: the fall season.  Our assets were a fire pit,  a tractor and wagon, piles and piles of leaves....and a leave blower.

We'll start with the fire pit.  The temps were in the mid fifties but everyone was nice and cozy around the fire.  We had plenty of hot dogs and marshmallows for roasting.  (That saves me from having to prepare a lot of party food--make them do it themselves).  There was apple cider from some of our nearby orchards to drink.

The fall theme has been a standard for this November birthday, but new this year was a hayless hay ride.  The Toolman had bought a wreck of a corn crib style wagon at auction earlier this year.  After removing all the rotted wood he was down to metal frame.  He built a new bed with lumber from his father's saw mill and we replaced the tires with two we'd saved when the pick-up truck needed new ones.  A can of spray paint and we had a really nice looking wagon.  The first thing Fritz said when it was done was "Now we can have rides on my birthday."  It was a big hit,  the kids were bumped and jostled for the off-road portion of the trip and then traveled down the road to visit the horses.  When Toolman needed a break for hot-dog sustenance, the kids all sat quietly in the wagon waiting for the next ride to begin.

But the highlight for the last two year's has been the pile of leaves!  The kids ask when it will start, the parents want to know so they can watch.  There's no shortage of trees on our property and we can make great leaf fortresses.  And then it's a leaf throwing war--all the kids vs the Toolman.....and his leaf blower pack. 

The funniest sight last year was when one boy's baseball cap blew off...every time he reached down to pick it up Toolman was there with a gust of air to blow it out of reach again. 

I used to feel bad that my son couldn't't have a summer birthday--his friend always gets to host a party with a homemade water slide.  But now I wouldn't change a thing about our birthday salute to fall. 

A Little Elbow Grease Pays Off!

As you've probably noticed, we like bargains in this family.  There was the $400 set of dishes I picked up at a garage sale for $5 because one plate was missing (I asked for a replacement for Christmas).  There's our beautiful deck we furnished for absolutely free (okay, we paid for spray paint).  And we refurbished a garden bench for my parents.  We're not afraid of a little work to make used items seem new again.  Recently we found a sofa/love seat combo for free on Craig's List.  Believe it or not, we had to email why we deserved the set and he would pick the winner.  The post did mention that the furniture needed to be cleaned. 

When The Toolman pulled up with borrowed trailer full,  I nearly burst into tears.  The furniture didn't just need to be cleaned--it looked like we should wear a haz-mat suit to approach it.  The stuffing was gone from one arm, the recliner cables were broken and some of the springs were loose.  Where did this guy come off making us "plead" to receive his goods?  I was afraid we'd just saved him the hauling fees to the dump, and now we'd have to pay those too.  Cue the Mission Impossible music....

The stuffing was no problem.  When we flipped the couch over (there was no fabric covering the bottom) we could see the cardboad that had been holding it in place had broken.  Most of the stuffing was still in the side section, but I ran out and bought some more at the fabric store (when it was on sale 50% off of course) to make it extra full.  Once we had it in place we could install a piece of plywood over the opening to prevent reoccurance.

The Toolman figured out how to reattach the springs and secured them with some of those plastic ties.  And we found replacement cables on Amazon.  Of course, all this would be for naught if we couldn't get the fabric clean.  I couldn't imagine how much a professional service would charge--so much for a bargain couch.

Well the sofa was in our basement and we really had nothing to lose so I researched how to clean microfiber on the Internet.  Fortunately, I ran across a blogger who'd already tackled such a problem.  Chris and Robin's Nest gives detailed instruction on using rubbing alcohol to clean their sofa.  I went to Sams Club to buy large quantities of the stuff.  We went a step further and used a Shop-Vac to suck up as much liquid as we could.  Here's the result----

Surely I don't have to label the "Before" and "After" for you. 

Jan 2014 follow up:  After having the couch and love seat for a year, we decided they weren't all that comfortable.  We took it to the consignment store and they sold them for $400!  After taking out their commission, and accounting for the stuffing and rubbing alcohol we still came out waayyy ahead. 

New Life for an Old Bench

I just have to show off what The Toolman did for his Saturday project.  This bench was left behind by the previous owners of my parents home.  They asked if my husband could use his pick-up to haul it off to the dump, but he had other plans.



Before

 Here it is after a day with a wire brush drill bit, a can of spray paint, and some new wood.



After

 True, this was not a freebie (check out Nice, New?...Not Necessarily  for those scores) --we had to buy the wood and bolts.  Still the sense of accomplishment is priceless.

Nice!...New?...Not Necessarily

With the exception of Memorial Day weekend when our typical hot & humid summer weather decided to crash the party, we've been enjoying a really beautiful spring.  Fritz and I wrapped up our school year by taking class outside to our deck.  As I sat under our pergola  in a comfortable, cushioned chair it occurred to me that everything on our deck we got for free.  That's right--even the new gas grill.  Now that's some news to share.  And I might have a few thrifty tips to throw in too.

Let me say that this is the first season our deck has been so bedecked even though we're on our fourth year living in Missouri.  THRIFTY TIP --Patience is a virtue.  Patio furniture is a want, not a need so it comes after normal bills and home maintenance.  We passed up numerous end of season sales because we hadn't saved up for the expense.  A bargain isn't a bargain if you use debt to pay for it.

Shortly after we moved to Missouri our neighbor lost his home in the housing crisis.  We had struck up a relationship during our brief time and when he left he said "Help yourself to whatever's left behind."   On his back deck was a glass top table and a stand-alone porch swing the dog used to sleep on.  THRIFTY TIP--Dirt is temporary.  Both pieces looked terrible but their structure was sound.  A little quality time with a pressure washer did wonders.  We began using the table immediately with a few plastic chairs.  The swing cushions had to be thrown out so it went into our barn until replacements could be had.  (Cushions are a want too).

Step forward to last fall when Schnickelfritz's grandparents finally followed us from Indiana to Missouri.  Their backyard had a small concrete slab to which  the previous owners had added a deck that appeared to be made out of pallets.  It was covered by a pergola that had seen better days.  Some of the overhead bars had trapped water and over the winter they had bowed and buckled.   We found the tarp in the garage but the ties had been torn and the seams were rotting.   We helped my parents remove the wreck and took it to our home (we live outside city limits and have a barn to hold "junk").  The keen-eyed Toolman found a name on one of the vertical post footings.  A little Internet search helped us get the number for customer service.  Now we made clear to the company that we weren't the original purchasers of the pergola and just wanted to know if replacement parts were available.  I guess we weren't the first to bring the trapped water and ripped ties to their attention.  They sent us a new set of overhead poles that now had seep holes in the ends.  The new ties were separate from the tarp and wrapped around the poles that weighted down the ends rather than tug on the fabric.  And they sent everything for free.  THRIFTY TIP--Customer service can be your friend, even if you're not the original owner.

A big change came to the deck when we were offered first dibs on a set of chairs and end tables before they ended up on the curb for pickers.  They were replacing their patio furniture after 25 years or so based on its dusty rose paint.  We found some evidence of retained water freezing and distorting the tubes again and once again the mold had a date with the pressure washer but most of the cushions were in good shape this time.

The Toolman banged out the tubing into its original shape and drilled his own seep holes to prevent a recurrence.  Then he picked out a lovely can of Hammered Gold paint.  Look at the results. THRIFTY TIP--You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear, but furniture can always be restored, recovered and repainted.

Our final piece arrived on the eve of our neighborhood garage sale.  While helping a single lady down the road bring up some furniture from the basement,  my husband The Toolman spotted the 6 burner, stainless steel monster with the sale tag on it.  She had won it in a raffle at work.  He wanted it badly to replace the ancient grill we'd been using (I won it in a contest when I was 11 years old, believe it or not).  Of course we had already agreed that our profits from the sale were going to repaint the house so he sent me down to negotiate.  Now what did we have that Miss Brenda wanted?  Turns out she was in the market for lawn furniture herself.  Now I wasn't going to give her any of our new (at least new to us) pieces, but do you remember the swing we had stored in the barn?  I'd purchased outdoor fabric (on clearance + a 50% off coupon) but had never found a bargain for weather-resistant cushion material so it still sat out there collecting cobwebs.   Both of us we satisfied trading our free items that we didn't need for free items that we wanted.  THRIFTY TIP--Bartering is a lost art, it's time to find it again.

So is our deck perfect now?  Well, I'm not crazy about the white plastic table with everything else looking so posh but I can live with it.  It's becoming a game now to see how its replacement will arrive and in the meantime, we're trying to figure out if we can spray paint it without taking out the glass. 

Now before I close, I want to be clear that we aren't  nice to people just so they'll give us things.  We practice kindness and courtesy because our Savior taught us the second greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself.  The final THRIFTY TIP--Sometimes you can find yourself being blessed when your bless others.

Eureka! I've found free science resources.

I don't think anyone loves a bargain more than a homeschooler.   We tend to have bigger families and most of us are not working or working fewer hours so we can be home with our kids.  Last month the Missouri History museum offered free admission to their Mastodon exhibit and over 800 homeschool kids showed up!  I'll be making a list of other cruiser's resources but I wanted to mention of few of my own.

We've been using Apologia's Young Explorer series for science all along.  I know most of us are eager to dive into the lessons with their eye-catching illustrations and conversation-style text, but have you ever gone back to read the introduction?  Each book  has the website and password to access additional files and information specifically for that text.   This is where I got the idea for our paperclip model of the solar system.  In order to visualize the distance between the sun and planets we had to count out paper clips and line them up down the hall.

From the wall we have Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars-- a total of 15 paperclip distance.

Then we started counting hundreds and hundreds of paperclips.  We used the 1 inch clips and we still ran out of room in our hallway--we had to turn a corner and keep going for Pluto (which is still a planet in my book).

But be sure to check out Apologia's site.  They have corrections for the various text editions, blank notebooking pages (much less sophisticated than their Notebooking Journal, but free), and plenty of links for photos, videos, more in depth articles, etc.



Fault Line



Speaking of notebooking, my second resource website will provide you with all the free clip art you could need to illustrate notebooks and lapbooks.   ClipArt ETC is an online service from Florida with free clip art for students and educators.  Since this post is about science I'll mention those categories first (the number of illustrations is in parentheses) :  Astronomy (143), Biology (3759), Chemistry (478),  Earth Science (755), Physics (1557), Animals (over 9800), Plants (5340).  Of course, there's much more than science here.  Other categories include American History, Art, Architecture, Flags and emblems, Music, and Sports & Recreation.  The illustrations are all black and white drawings. The famous people category reminds me a lot of the timeline figures from Homeschool in the Woods.

And finally I stumbled on this website when I Googled "free science resources."  The Science Inquirer has done all the work for you--their Free Stuff for Science Teachers page has links to hundreds of websites.  I don't know how often the site is updated--I did find a few dead links.  The categories are: Science Podcasts, Posters, email servers, Foldables, Bookmarks & Coloring books, Kits, Videos,  Lessons Labs & Demos,  Books & Newsletters, and Computer Stuff.  A quick perusal and I noted I want to go back and visit the Space & Astronomy-related games, the Virtual Biology labs, and the Crime Scene Investigator online game.   And that's just the Free Stuff page.  On other pages they've also got some great slow motion videos that capture a balloon popping  and a slinky being dropped.   and don't leave without looking and the digital microscope pictures like the one below.

Does anyone else feel like Cookie Monster is staring at them?  It's really a red-faced jumping spider.

Of course you'll want to check out everyone else's resources by clicking here.  I'm hoping to save several new favorites on my Internet browser.

B is for Butter making

Here we are in week 2 of Ben & Me's ABC challenge.  The hardest thing about the letter B is choosing from all the possible topics--biology, botany, the Bible, baking bread (that should earn bonus points for using B twice).  I ended up choosing to share how I make butter because I've got a lot of cream on my hands and that's what I need to do today anyway.

This is not about a hands-on experiment to show kids how butter is formed.  For that I'd just shake the cream in a jar (good energy dissipation  exercise for the kids if you know what I mean).  We get three gallons of raw milk fresh from a nearby dairy once a week--that means a lot of cream.  By putting our milk in wide-mouth gallon jars, we're able to see and skim off the cream as it rises to the top.  We happened to have a friend give us these  1-gallon jars but we've also found gallon jars by buying pickles at Sam's Club--you'll just need to clean them thoroughly.   I just use a soup ladle to scoop off the cream and pour it in a quart sized mason jar.  You'll know when you've hit the milk layer because it appears darker than the cream.  I collect the cream from each gallon as we need to drink the milk, each time adding to the quart jar I keep in the fridge.  If you've got plenty of butter on hand, it's also possible to freeze the cream.  I've had no problem using it for butter or ice cream later.

I used to try using my Bosch mixer with the whipping blades to make butter (someone else online has the instructions) but I only had one success and many failures.  Since I've switched to making butter in the food processor I've had a 100 percent success rate.  The day I'm going to make butter I set the quart jars on the counter to bring them to room temperature.  This step isn't absolutely necessary, I've actually made butter while there were still ice crystals in the cream.  It does speed up the process if the cream is not so cold.  I made butter in 2 min. 26 sec. with room temp cream.  Cream out of the fridge can take 5+ minutes.

Here's the start of our process--a mere two cups of cream in the Cuisinart.  Why so little?  Well look at the next picture.....



I've actually made whipped cream at this point and its more than doubled the volume I'd say.   We've got to keep going.

Near the beginning of the process.



The cream edges away from the center

 As the butter forms you'll notice changes in both the sound and look of the cream--the pitch gets higher and you can hear the splats on the sides of the bowl.  Looking at the side of the bowl you'll start to notice swirls of darkness spinning around which I assume is shadows from the butter clumps.  If you look through the feeder hole you can see the cream moves further away from the center post.  I've hear it's possible to over churn the butter and return it to a liquid so you probably don't want to stray too far away from the kitchen, but I've never actually had that problem.

   Here's what we end up with, but it's not butter yet.

  Here I'm straining off the liquid.  DON"T THROW IT OUT!!!  What you've got is REAL buttermilk.  It's thinner than the cultured stuff you can buy at the store so it may take a while to get used to drinking it.  I use mine as the liquid for pancake batter, biscuits, and muffins.  (A great resource is Sue Gregg's books on the blender batter method of baking.  She uses buttermilk to soak whole grains).

Now comes the one part I dislike about making butter, and frankly it takes the longest.  You have to wash  the butter to remove all the excess liquid.  Don't be tempted to skip this step.  Leaving the buttermilk in the butter may cause it to go rancid quickly.  I dump my butter in a large bowl and begin pressing  it against the sides.  You'll see droplet of liquid escaping from the butter solids.  I spray the whole batch with COLD water from the sinks sprayer (can you guess why you don't want to use hot water?)  Then it's rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.

    When you start the liquid will be opaque like the buttermilk, but don't bother saving this--it's been diluted.

Here I'm almost done.  This liquid is actually rinse water more than squeezed out buttermilk.  See how much clearer it becomes?  Now you have unsalted butter.  While it's still so soft and creamy you can add flavorings--salt, cinnamon and honey, chives, etc.  For this batch I used about 1/2 t. of salt.  I started the day with just shy of three quarts of cream.  Now I have about 6-7 cups of buttermilk and 3 cups of butter.

Check out my latest find on eBay. This mold makes four standard-sized sticks of butter and even has ridges to imprint lines for 2 tablespoon portions.  The jury is still out on this gadget though--I'm having to learn how to remove air pockets in the butter so the measurements are accurate.  I'm also having a dickens of a time removing the butter after it solidifies.

The end results are sure worth it.  I served home-made butter at my family's Thanksgiving and my aunt just raved about how it tasted like what she remembered growing up on the farm.

Now don't forget to check out what the other bloggers have chosen for their "B" week at the Ben & Me blog.  I'll be busy trying to choose my "C" for next week.  Hmmmm,  chess, chemistry, coin collecting....

Money Monday: The Sodastream

For those of you who don't know me personally, I've always had a passion for educating people about money.  My degree and business experience is in accounting.  When I would see all the errors on troop leader's deposit slips or spend twenty minutes on the phone explaining to a camp counelor why her paycheck didn't match the salary in her hire letter (taxes coming out), I always felt like our schools were really dropping the ball when it came to personal finance.  So I'm going to try and start a new series covering various money topics from earning to saving to keeping track of it all.

Today's idea came from a very real conversation I had with the Toolman last week.  Our weekly paper had a $10 rebate  for the Sodastream, a device that allows you to make carbonated beverages in your own home.   The Toolman is a devout cola drinker and I am a kitchen gadget junkie so this seemed like a good fit.  We are however,  both recent graduates of Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University so we needed to look at this from a financial side.  

Kohl's has the Sodastream on sale for $89.99 and as luck would have it, they had just sent us a 30% off coupon.  Combined with the rebate the price of the Sodastream was down to  $52.99 (I'm not considering sales tax in any of my equations to keep things simpler).  The kit includes the machine, one carbonation canister, and one plastic liter bottle to hold to finished product.   The flavor syrups are on sale for $4.99, if I use my same 30 % coupon the cost comes down to $3.49.  Each bottle claims to make fifty 8 oz servings.  Now lets get to some math.  For any parents teaching math to their kids, this example with help them see the importance of including the units in their math equations: $/oz, oz/liter, etc.

50 X 8 oz =  400 oz

$3.49 / 400 oz =  $0.00873/oz

 That's not the end of the cost for Sodastream soda though--the carbonation canister is a consumable product.  Kohl's doesn't sell the canisters separately so I needed to do some online research.  According to Sodastream.com, the canister to fit the Kohl's model holds enough gas for 60 liters ( 1 liter = 33.814 ounces).   There are no retailers in my area participating in the canister exchange program so I would need to get my canisters directly from the company.   Just to get the price of the gas, I'm not going to worry about shipping costs right now.  Two exchanged canisters cost $29.99 (of course I only have one to exchange from the starter kit)  $29.99 .   120 liters X  33.814 ounces/liter = 4057.68 oz.

$29.99/4057.68 oz =  $.00739/oz

$.00739/oz + $0.00873/oz = $.01612/oz

A can of soda is 12 oz so the equivalent amount of Sodastream soda is 12 oz X $0.01612/oz = $.19339 or 19.4 cents per can

For comparison, we can buy a 24 case of Coca Cola for $6.98 or  (6.98/24=) 29.08 cents per can.  Yes,  the Sodastream is cheaper but you would need to drink 544 cans before you broke even after purchasing the machine in the first place.  If I weren't able to get the syrup on sale that would raise the cost of a can's worth of soda to 26.8 cents--practically the same as the can of Coke.

Bottom line for us, there are a lot easier ways to save money so the Sodastream won't be under our Christmas tree this year.

Review: e-Mealz

Benjamin Franklin gave us the quote "The only things certain in life are death and taxes."  I think if Mr. Franklin had consulted Mrs.Franklin she might have added one more--at sometime during the day someone will utter the phrase "What's for dinner?"   In an ideal world, it would be asked by my husband and he tries to identify that delicious aroma wafting towards him at the front door.  It's often my son who asks when his tummy starts rumbling around 4:30.  Worst case scenario:  I'm asking myself this question as I peer into cabinets or the freezer wondering what ingredients I can throw together to make the semblance of a meal.  When the Homeschool Crew got the chance to review e-Mealz , a tool to help organize dinner menus and grocery shopping, I was thrilled.

A three-month subscription to e-Mealz costs $15 and entitles you to download a meal plan and grocery list each week.  Plans are available for national and regional chains like Aldi, Walmart, Kroger and Publix.  You may choose a 2-3 person plan or a 4-6 person plan.  There are also options available for dietary restrictions like gluten free or portion control.  I selected the Aldi plan as I shop there anyway.  My three concerns were: Does the food taste good,  am I more organized,  and am I saving money?

Delicious or no?

If my family isn't willing to eat what I prepare, it's no bargain no matter how little it costs.  I might as well just throw cash in the trash.   I can report that my family enjoyed every meal I tried from Shepherd's Pie and Low Country Stew  to Swiss Chicken and Taco Salad.   Some of these recipes will definitely make it into my rotating line-up of family dinners.    There were also some dishes that I purposefully did not prepare--fish is not a favorite in our house and one week had two fish recipes.  It's easy enough to cross off ingredients you won't need from the grocery list as everything includes its meal number.  If I'm not making Tuna Muffins, I just don't buy anything with meal #7 beside it.  You can of course prepare the meals in any order.  When we started e-Mealz we had temps in the hundreds and I didn't want the heavy stew that was scheduled.  We swapped it out for a chicken quesadilla.  Three days later when the temperature dropped 50 degrees the stew seemed more appropriate.

Am I more organized?

I have to say that few things are more satisfying at four in the afternoon than the knowledge that dinner's already taken care of.  Even if I still have to prepare the meal, I don't find that nearly as draining and the frantic dash around the kitchen to see what I've got on hand and what I can make with it.  I even went the step beyond and kept each meal's ingredients grouped together in the fridge and the pantry.  And shopping was easier as well.  I think most Aldi stores have the same floor plan and the grocery list was organized by produce, dairy, canned goods, etc.  A word of warning though--always be sure to check the list of staple items at the bottom of the shopping list.  One night I didn't have pecans on hand because they were listed down in the staples section and I don't consider that as a staple in my house.  There was also one occasion when an ingredient wasn't available at Aldi--the shopping list noted this with an "n/a" in the price column.  The ingredient was a package of seasoning for white chicken chili.  I ended up referring to a cookbook for a similar recipe and copied the spices.

Am I Saving Money?

Shortly after beginning my review period for e-Mealz I was a caller on the Dave Ramsey show.  I was amazed at how frequently I heard a commercial for e-Mealz--usually with Dave himself touting how e-Mealz allowed a family to eat much more than rice & beans off a rice & beans budget.  I'll agree with him to a point.  If you don't have any plan and you're constantly falling back  on a trip to the golden arches for dinner, you will blow the family budget.   By the same token, if you are making multiple trips to the store to pick up missing ingredients you increase you risk of leaving the store with more than the one or two items you went in for--another budget buster.   When I first started e-Mealz, I was surprised that the average weekly shopping trip would cost $65-85 dollars at Aldi's and that's not even covering lunches and breakfasts.  I'm already spending much less than that for all my meals.   It didn't take me long perusing the shopping lists to see why the sticker shock.     Some of the "side dishes" include: potato, tortilla, and corn chips,  frozen Texas toast, and canned buttermilk biscuits.   I don't consider chips a suitable side dish for dinner.  They're snacks, and expensive ones at that.  I was also paying for the convenience of pre-cooked meatballs rather than buying ground beef and making my own.   Dave Ramsey may be impressed but I think it's possible to do better.

Bottom Line:

I don't believe we will continue a subscription to e-Mealz.   I have my own collection of family favorite recipes and I save money by stocking up on loss-leaders at the stores and shopping from my own pantry to make dinner.  I just need to be more organized about planning meals beforehand so maybe a menu calendar is in order.  I would recommend e-Mealz as a starting point for someone who has does not have their own recipe collection, never planned menus, or shopped from a grocery list before.  It would also helpful if your family is adventuresome about what they eat--not from the standpoint that you'll be eating exotic foods but it does take some openness to eat a different meal every night with no repetition for months.  You can find one or two day sample menu plans on their website to see which one might be right for your family.

You can read how others on the Homeschool Crew felt about their e-Mealz experience by clicking here.

Disclaimer: I received a free 3-month subscription to e-Mealz for the purpose of completing this review.  I received no other compensation.

School Budgets: What would Dave Say?

If confession is good for the soul then I'll feel better after I admit that for years I did not budget money for our homeschooling.   "What's the big deal?" some of you are thinking, "neither do I."  Well, I was an accountant by trade so I knew better.  When we were a two income family, I would purchase books and supplies years in advance so we'd have them when I stopped working to homeschool our son.  Schnickelfritz is in third grade now and we've pretty much gone through most of those materials now.   In the past I always assumed that we would have had costs associated with public school (we lived in Indiana and families have to pay hundreds of dollars to rent school books each year) and as long as I was doing it for less then we were ahead.  Then we moved to Missouri, I stopped working outside of the home, and our family income was cut by more than a third.  When I'd go to the homeschool fair I may have drooled over a lot of great products but I was VERY stingy about what I'd buy.  In the back of my mind I'd be thinking about how high the credit card balance already was and I didn't want to take it above what we could afford to pay in full each month. (Dave Ramsey, if you're reading this blog, this was before FPU.  I know how you feel about credit cards, even if they're paid off every month).

This fall my husband and I started Financial Peace University at our church.  Can I first say that FPU is not just for people in serious financial situations?  We actually had no consumer debt when we started the course.  While paying off debt is the topic of some of the classes, we also are learning how men and women view money differently and how to talk about money instead of squabble (or avoiding the talk all together).  Some nights we learn how to get the best bargain possible on purchases, what types of insurance are available and which we need, and we're looking forward to learning about sound investing.  I honestly don't think there is anyone who wouldn't benefit from FPU.  Wives, if you're worried your husband won't like being lectured to,  every man in our class that has found Dave Ramsey's humorous teaching style entertaining as well as informative.  On the Dave Ramsey's website you can type in your zip code and find classes in your area.

Now the point of this blog was homeschool budgets.  According to Dave, we need to have every dollar spent on paper before it every gets deposited in our bank account and we need to be in agreement on where it's spent.  When our FPU homework assignment was to create a family budget we purposefully included a line item for home school ($25 per month).  It's not a large amount, but when we have to pay an entrance fee to a museum or I need to pick up supplies for a science experiment I can pull cash out of the homeschool envelope and take care of it.  Of course, I don't spend all of the money.  Most of it will stay in the envelope until homeschool fair time.  Then I can purchase my ticket and peruse the curriculum hall without the nagging fear that I'm spreading our finances to thin.   Prior to the event, we may discuss adding more to the homeschooling envelope at our monthly cash flow meeting (budgets are meant to be flexible not written in stone) but it won't have to be as big a chunk since we've been saving for it year long.

Be sure to click on the Blog Cruise button to see what others have to say about budgeting for books and supplies.

Disney on the Cheap

Even as I wrote that title it seemed like an oxymoron.   A one-day ticket with the park hopper option costs more than a barrel of oil (and you know everyone thinks that's too high).  We've saved up, made reservations, and booked our flights and now I'm going to share some of the little ways we've saved.

First--get a Disney Visa and start accumulating points.  We've had ours for five years now and use it for all our purchases and reoccurring bills (phones, insurance, cable, etc) .   They are all things we'd have to buy anyway.  Now we just write one monthly check to Chase Visa instead of multiple checks to all the utilities.  Because we  pay off the credit card balance every month we accumulate points for FREE.  If you're not in a situation to pay your bill in full each month or you aren't in control of your credit card use this is probably not the option for you.  You'll be paying for these points through the interest you're charged (and if you don't pay the minimum balance due you can't accumulate points at all).   Bottom Line: we're getting our 6 night stay at Port Orleans FREE and there's still plenty of points left to cover our food and souvenirs in the parks.   (There are a few other perks to the Disney Visa like a special character greet and access to resort discounts before the general public).

Second--You know how they say the value of an automobile drops the second you drive it off the lot?  Well that's doubly true for park souvenirs.  I've been hitting the garage sales and thrift stores for items we may have purchased in the parks.  Like the Duggars say "Buy used and save the difference."  

The scrapbook was $5 at a consignment store.  The stickers that should have been included were gone, but I can buy a LOT of stickers with the $30+ I saved by not buying it at the resort gift shop.    I think Schnickelfritz has outgrown the Mouse Ears we bought him on the last trip (maturity-wise, not size wise).  Will pack them just in case I'm wrong.  In the meantime I found him this nice denim ball cap for 50 cent at a garage sale.  I had to doctor Mickey's eyes with a Sharpie marker. 

I've also been able to get a lot of Disney themed shirts--Cars are the easiest to find right now but I didn't manage to snag a Phineas and Ferb.  Again, why pay full price at the park when you can get them for less than a dollar at a garage sale.  I would much rather get cheap souvinirs and save our money for memorable experiences like a back stage tour of the Magic Kingdom's Train shed.

Here's an item from our last trip to Disney World.  The toy store in Downtown Disney has a themed Mr. Potatohead.  For a set price you can fill a box with Mouse ears, Goofy hats, and other items for a Potatohead doll.  Now most people will buy to potato body and try to fill it with parts to get more in the box.  I found a body (and generic arms, eyes, and feet) at a garage sale so I could fill my box with exclusive Disney items.



One of the big things to do at the park is Pin Trading.  Each pin cost $5 or more at the park.  I'm looking into buying a lot of pins on ebay.  It won't matter what they are because we can trade them for pins we like with cast members at the parks.  BUYER BEWARE:  I have read that a lot of sellers on ebay are in fact selling knock-offs that you may not be able to trade so do some homework.

Coming Next: Cheap Dining

A Tribute to the Tightwad Gazette

Years ago (dare I say decades? I know it was before the internet) my mother had a subscription to a monthly newsletter called The Tightwad Gazette. The articles were filled with tips for frugal living. Later these newsletters were compiled and published in book format --and you would do well to see if your local library carries them. I still have my three volumes and every time gas nudges upward I'm motivated to peruse the pages in search of another money-saving tip. Some of the ideas are now quaint reminders of the way things used to be--gone is the need to set a timer for long distance calls. Others have stood the test of time. Just a few weeks ago I was helping a homeschooling friend set up a grocery price book to track sales and bargains. My favorite articles were the ones involving math calculations to show how much could be saved by making items from scratch (that was the future accountant in me I suppose). There have been a lot of comercials on TV lately touting the "bargains" by various pizza chains. Dominoes has been selling 1-topping medium pizzas for $5.99. The latest Papa Johns' commercials tout the pizzas they sell are "worth twice" theie sale price of $11. Now pizza is a weekly staple in our family but how do these "bargains" stack up to homemade. Well here are my tightwad calulations.  Normally I try to add some freshly ground wheat into my dough but for ease of math I'm using the recipe as it comes from my bread machine manual.

• 3/4 Cup Water
  
• 1 Tbl oil
  
• 1 Tbl  sugar
  
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
  
• 2 1/4 Cups bread flour
  
• 1 tsp active dry yeast

For toppings we add (approx):

• 2/3 cup pizza sauce
  
• 3/4 cup mozzarella cheese
  
• 38 slices pepperoni (yes I counted them)

I recently stocked up on pizza making ingredients from Sam's Club so I'm using current prices                         

 

Ingredient	Price	Size	Calculations	Cost	Per Unit	Recipe Uses	Final Cost
Bread Flour	$7.86	25 lbs	3.57 C per lb	$0.09	C	2 1/4 C	$0.20
Sugar	$6.43	10 lbs	37 T per lb	$0.02	T	1 T	$0.02
Yeast	$4.68	32 oz	2.25 t= 1/4 oz	$0.04	t	1 t	$0.04
Salt	$1.38	26 oz	5.1 t per oz	$0.01	t	1 1/2 t	$0.02
Pizza Sauce	$3.88	12 C		$0.32	C	2/3 C	$0.17
Mozzarella	$10.98	5 lbs	4 C = 1 lb	$0.55	C	3/4 C	$0.41
Pepperoni	$8.38	816 slices		$0.01	slice	38 slices	$0.38
Water	$0.00		free from well		C	3/4 C	$0.00
Oil	$2.26	96 T		$0.02	T	1 T	$0.02
							$1.27

 

 

 

I found all the ratios for volume per weight on various baking sites on the internet.  The number of pepperoni slices was taken by multiplying the number of slices per serving by the number of servings listed on the  packaging.  I will say that when it comes to toppings I've never been one to cover every square inch of surface.  A taste a pepperoni every bite or two is sufficient.  My pizza already looks like a bargain at $1.27 compared to $5.99 or $11, but let's keep digging.

My pizza measures 12" X 17" (I use the same silpat mat every time) or 204 square inches

Dominoes medium pizzas are 12" in diameter or 113.04 square inches

Papa Johns large pizzas are 16 " in diameter of 200.96 square inches

The volume of the Papa John's pizza is about the same as mine but at 8.6 times the price.  I'd have to buy two Dominoes mediums to get the same volume and it would cost 9.6 times as much.   Since we eat pizza every week, I'm saving over $500 per year by making mine from scratch.  That more than pays for the bread machine I use to make my dough.

(This post is part of The Christian Home blog magazine Issue 24)

A bargain may be yours for the asking

My Schnickelfritz and the Toolman were both running the soundboards for both church services yesterday--at Children's Promiseland and the main sanctuary respectively.  This left me free to stop at a local estate auction.  The yard had been filled with years of collected books, tools, furniture, etc.  I was sticking around in hopes of picking up an atlas and a copy of Ken Burns' Civil War for our school when I heard the mention of camping gear over the loud speaker.  Schnickelfritz will be able to go camping with Royal Rangers next year and I've been thinking about overnight trips to other parts of our state as we cover Missouri history.  I hadn't inspected it, but I spotted a gray, nylon tent that looked promising.  Rainclouds were looming overhead and things were being sold in large lots to try and move quickly before everything got soaked.  The tent got lumped in with another and a musty sleeping bag but it still looked like I was going to get a bargain at $3.  Then another bidder asked if the neighboring hammock was part of this lot.  The auctioneer said "Sure, why not."  Suddenly a bidding war erupted as everyone wanted the Mexican blanket hammock.  Auction fever carried the price much higher than I was willing or able to pay with the cash in my purse. 

 The bidding crowd lumbered away to a collection of frog lawn ornaments and the winner bidder picked up her prize hammock, rolled it carefully and put it in the back of her truck.  I was quick to notice that she left everything else out in the drizzle and mud.   I caught up to her as she returned to the crowd.  "So you were mostly interested in the hammock?" I asked.  I got a nod.  "Would you be willing to part with that gray tent?"  The lady look at me and then back to the pile of camping gear.  I was preparing to offer to ofset some of her cost.

"Sure, go ahead and take it," she said.    Not only did I save the cost of the tent I'd bid on, but now I didn't have to deal with disposing of the junk that would have come with it.    When we set it up at home it turned out to be a 3-room, 8 X 12 tent that doesn't even look used!  Fritz wants to sleep in it tonight but I think I'll postpone buying the necessary tent stakes until the overnight temps go back up to the sixties.  The moral of the story is Don't Be Afraid To Ask.

Spice Rack Makeover

I can't tell you how long I've owned these spices jars but they were certainly showing their age.  For cooking convenience I store them right next to the stove and years of grease splatters and other food spills have not only discolored the labels but some lost their adhesive and just slipped off.  I could have gone the easy route and just purchased a new spice rack but the frugal German in me  decided to scrounge around the house and see what I could come up with.  In the end this worked out better because I could customize the labels and fill them with the spices I use, not necessarily the ones that come in the set (as I worked on the jars I discovered some were still sealed and never been used in at least a decade--a waste of valuable counter space).

 My first thought was the Graphics Toolbox program we reviewed for the Homeschool Crew last year.  I still use it all the time for editing pictures, making lapbook components, etc.   I checked the clip art files on my computer and found a vibrant picture of some chili pepper; cute but a little too vibrant, especially when you want to add the name of the spice over the top.  GT lets you copy an image while adjusting its transparancy so I was able to make a more muted background.   I played around with text color as well--trying all of the colors from the original clip art.  In the end I decided to go with basic black since it just popped out so nicely.  I made hollow circles in the proper size to fit the lids and put them around each picture.  I printed everything on a sheet of photo paper but before cutting out each label I ran the sheet through my Scotch Laminator (to hopefully protect the new labels from grease splatter).  I chose hot lamination over my Xyron because I've learned the hardway that cold lamination doesn't hold adhesive well at all.  

 After cutting out the labels, I ran the circles through my xyron with the permanant adhesive cartridge.  And below you can see my finished results.

Where are you when we need you Amy Dacyczyn?

Gas prices have gone up 50 cents per gallon in a month, Walmart has raised the price on apple juice by the same amount, and last week I saw a head of lettuce the size of a softball selling for $2 at my local grocery.  I knew it was time to whip out my copies of the Tightwad Gazette.  It's funny to see how many articles are obsolete these days--no one worries about writing a letter vs making a long distance call anymore.  Now we have email or free long distance calling plans on cell phones.  I am putting more effort into creating a price book, that is keeping track of sales prices and frequencies of items I tend to purchase.  I'm using an excel spreadsheet I found free online.  I can type in items straight from the register tape or the sales flyer and then sort by item and price to see who has the best deal on juice for example.  Since meat is probably the most expensive category, I'm focusing on that now, but adding pantry staples as I have the chance to browse aisles.  No one has ever stopped me to ask what I'm doing with pen and paper in hand, I guess they assume I'm crossing off a grocery list.  I'll be adding prices from the farmer's markets as they start up this spring.

A second area I chose to focus on from The Tightwad Gazette was learning new money-saving skills.  Last Sunday my husband, The Toolman, had a hankerin' for some KFC.  Since we had been running errands in the town where that was located, we stopped through the drive-thru for an 8 piece meal deal.  Up till now, I've always considerred this a reasonable deal because our family of three can make it last for at least two meals.  This time as I looked at the $21 receipt, I thought about what made up the price.  Looking in my price book I know I could buy:

2 Cans of green beans --- $1.18

10 pounds Potatoes ---  $2.99  (the 2 or 3 potatoes to equal what I received were probably worth 40 cents)

1 Roasting Chicken ---$7.99 

That's $9.57 for an equivelnt amount of food.   That means I'm paying someone else  over 10 dollars for their knowledge of how to fry chicken.  And I keep repaying them every time we stop there.  True,  they use a pressure fryer which I don't have but I think I can make up for that by not having my food sit under a heat lamp until it's sold.  So my first goal is to learn how to make a good fried chicken.  Anyone with a good recipe?  Please leave a comment.