I discovered this website called Hillbilly Housewife.
You may think it’s a little radical and it is. But sometimes when you’re strapped and you want to get out of a debt situation, drastic measures are in order.
This is a great menu plan and worth modifying for shopping lists and getting some control of your weekly spending. It’s also vegetarian but she offers a menu including meat for a little more per week.
I remember taking stale bread and letting the slices dry and making breadcrumbs. I whirred them up in a Cuisinart food processor gotten for $5 at a yard sale. I used them to coat chicken legs bought on sale. The ultimate in recycling.
I once asked a friend of mine how he fed his family of six. He told me that he shopped at one of those deep discount, no-frills type grocery stores. Each week, when they had a loss leader of say, canned tomatoes or hamburger, he’d buy as much as he was allowed. He worked the menus around the food he got.
When I was 10, I was invited to a birthday party of one of the girls at my swimming club. It was a slumber party. Her family had six children so the parents were pros at having birthday parties. We had a scavenger hunt. Her parents sent us in teams all over the neighborhood asking the neighbors for wire coat hangers with paper still on them, seeds from trees, a 1962 penny, objects starting with the letter K and other odd things. I figure the neighbors had been part of these shenanigans before so they were quite helpful.
That night after settling down on the floor in the family room in our sleeping bags, I thought that was it for the night. Her parents had other ideas. “Get up!” they exclaimed at midnight. We were shepherded into the giant dining room where her parents acted as short order cooks, asking us what we wanted for breakfast. Yes, breakfast. At midnight. French toast, pancakes, whatever our heart desired.
I had a lot of fun at that birthday party. My friend was not the first child of that family, nor the second or third. She was the sixth. And her parents treated each of those kids as special.
Nothing cost a lot. We were treated like gold.
Every Thanksgiving and Christmas, I make Monkey Bread for the gang. The buttery pieces can be pulled apart for dinner rolls. This is an inexpensive but impressive contribution to any dinner.
1 tsp sugar
1/2 cup lukewarm water (not too hot, you’ll kill the yeast)
1 package dry active yeast or 1 tbsp. - get it from the bulk place, it’s cheaper
[You want the regular stuff, not the Rapid Rise variety]
1 cup milk
2/3 cup unsalted butter
1/4 cup sugar
1-1/2 tsp salt
3 eggs, beaten
5-1/2 cups (approx.) all-purpose flour
In a large bowl, dissolve 1 tsp sugar in the lukewarm water. Sprinkle yeast over and let stand for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, heat the milk with 1/3 cup of the butter, stirring until melted. Cool to lukewarm.
To dissolved yeast, add 1/4 sugar, salt, beaten eggs and the lukewarm milk/butter mixture. Stir in 3 cups of flour and mix well. Gradually add enough remaining flour to make a soft dough. Knead on floured surface until smooth and elastic – about 10 minutes. Great Youtube video here on how to knead dough.
Place in a large greased bowl, turn dough over to grease all over. Cover and let rise in warm place until doubles, 1 to 1-1/2 hours.
Punch down dough and roll out to about an inch thick. Cut in two-inch squares. Melt remaining 1/3 cup butter and cool to lukewarm. Dip squares of dough in butter and let excess drip off. Arrange in layers in a tube pan (use one with non-removable bottom so butter doesn’t leak out). Pan will be about half full. Cover and let rise until doubled – about an hour.
Bake in a 375°F oven for 40-45 minutes or until bread sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom. If it starts to brown too much, cover loosely with foil. Turn out onto rack and let cool at least 20 minutes before serving. Depending on how big you made the pieces, makes about 25 rolls.
It’s nice to be frugal and environmental friendly at the same time. If you are looking to make your own body cleaning products this is the site for you. Laundry soap, shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste and more.
This is a good chart from the Earth to Body folks that outlines what is in what products and the harmful effects.
It is worth buying the Earth to Body’s products as I know their shampoo bar lasts forever (or seems to).
My husband is a big fan of Hulda Clark’s book. He treated our geriatric kitty successfully with Clark’s parasite cleansing methods and the feline lived to be over 23 years old.
When I was a kid, my friend Carol and I would often treat-or-treat together. We always made our costumes.
One year, I wore my mother’s nurse’s outfit with the traditional nursing hat. My mother wanted to fix Carol up as a doctor. We had a stethoscope and a reflex hammer at home. The crowning glory was when my mother snatched a gown out of the operating room bin complete with blood on the front. We were set. Upon knocking at doors, we were greeted with comments like, “My, how real that blood looks!” If only they knew. Hey, it was the sixties.
We made other costumes like a horse’s head out of bristol board. That was a big hit.
I’ve always wanted to do this one: Put on a western shirt and cowboy boots. Get two large pieces of one-inch thick foam and cut both in the shape of a slice of bread. Brush some brown paint on one side so that it looks like toast. Attach them sandwich-style to your front and back. The costume? A toasted western.
I’ve also heard about attaching balloons to shoulders and then putting a shirt over so that the top of your head is at the neck hole. Make some slits to see out the front of the shirt and then carry a Styrofoam head with a wig on it because you’ve been beheaded.
Here are some more good ones. There are even books on how to make costumes using duct tape.
Happy trick or treating!
It used to be when I was young that it was a stigma to live at home, say, beyond 25. “What? You’re living at home? Ewww.” I watched a comedian a couple of years ago talk about how to get your grown children to move out. His solution – he and his wife walked around naked and made lewd comments to each other. Kids were out pronto.
Seems we have a nation of mooching, entitled children. I see some of these parents not wanting their children to suffer as they did. They’re also afraid to let their children have a few tumbles and get up.
Both my parents left the North American continent by the time I was 19. I rather liked the challenge. I could eat Cheerios for dinner and no one would tell me that was a bad dinner choice. I discovered that objects put down in my living room, they would stay there until I moved them. I didn’t have some quiet house elf putting away my things.
I raised one son as a single parent. I didn’t have a lot of money to spoil him and in a weird way, I’m glad I didn’t have the money to indulge him. He still traveled to Europe, Canada, much of the US and he had a great childhood.
Ask yourself the question:
Is what I’m doing increasing their self-sufficiency or making them more self-sufficient?
Reader Email: Can you travel and not have to pay an arm and a leg?
I’ll start with accommodations.
When I worked for a marketing company, we would have to book hotels for our employees who were attending trade shows. I discovered Priceline.com.
You bid on a room in a zone in a city. Let’s say it’s Dayton, Ohio. You pick the area of the city, the number of stars for the hotel and bid a price. Go low. You will probably be rejected but you creep up with your price and there will be some point where the price will be accepted and you’ll get a room. The name of the hotel and the location will be revealed to you at the end. You do have to submit a credit card before this point and you are committed to following through.
By bidding on Priceline, I’ve gotten rooms for $79/night at 4-star hotels. But when you called the hotel directly, they quoted a price of $189/night. Savings were always significant.
As long as you’re not too particular about where you stay in that part of the city, you can score some good deals. I have called the hotel after booking and made further requests for small fridges, cots and whatnot. Depends on the hotel as to whether you get it. Most of the time, they allowed the request.
Another great site is ratestogo.com
I did a search for hotels here in the Niagara Falls area and you can get rooms at the Great Wolf lodge for less than half of their going rate. The advantage of Rates to Go is that you know the hotel you’ll be staying at before you pay.
I have a friend who drives the worst car he can find. He figures as long as it’s not spewing smoke and it stops with the brake pedal engaged, the car is fine. His point to me was that if people didn’t like him because of his car, they weren’t the kind of people he wanted to have as friends. He also referred to it as reverse snobbism. Lately though, I’ve noticed his car has improved a notch.
I think this is a little extreme but it makes a point. Should your stuff define you? Are you really an Audi A8 or more of a Porsche Boxster? Sometimes your banker doesn’t always think so either.
I call it having to have in order to be.
It’s also referred to as conspicuous consumption.
Today, I drive an four-year-old, generic hatchback with good gas mileage.
Smoking isn’t frugal. I’m sure you already know this. I have never been a smoker. When I was 12 years old, I met an old woman. She said to me as her cigarette smoke wafted up through the room, “I’m going to give you some advice – don’t ever smoke.” I figured she was about 85 and, as this was the only piece of information she felt important to impart to me, I took her seriously. I never smoked.
If you are in the US, a pack a day habit at $5/pack would cost you $1825 for the year.
Good cost calculator here.
But if you are a smoker, how to quit? In talking to smokers over the years, I have heard from many people having success after reading Allen Carr’s book, “The Easy Way to Stop Smoking”. There are hundreds of positive reviews of the book on Amazon.
Now, as a non-smoker, I just know how much this habit would cost if I had it. I am a weak person and I haven’t got any willpower. I think the old lady knew that.
Good luck to you.
My brother is a big fan of the Earthbox. This is a great system for growing vegetables in a small space.
This year, I grew tomatoes this year the conventional fashion and it is a lot of work. I chose heritage tomato seeds and started them inside in March. Some grew and some didn’t. There is a lot of weeding and watering to do once they are outside. We had a lot of rain and many of the tomatoes split.
The Earthbox is a no-weeding, foolproof watering system. You can even garden on a balcony with the Earthbox. It doesn’t matter what kind of soil conditions you have in your area. The yield for tomatoes is double. All of your questions are answered here.
This would make a great Christmas present for your gardener friend and also the friend whose green thumb is more like a plantar’s wart.
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