Free Food and Veggies from the Garden

FREE FOOD

Well, yesterday we went to an informal wedding reception and was sent home with a bunch of food. I don't ever pass up free food! LOL. Especially right now, with neither of us working, every little bit helps. So here is what we were given:

So, as you can see from the above pictures, we got a plate full of deli meats, some bottles of beer for hubby, 8 cans of soda (which we usually do not drink but eventually they will get drank), 15 large rolls and half a watermelon. YUMMY! Oh, we were also given 5 cupcakes, but one was gone before we got home (thanks to hubby) and the rest were eaten when we got home - one per person.


OUR GARDEN

We also were quite surprised at how well our first garden is doing. Everything is just getting larger. We were able to pick a green pepper, some pea pods, and spinach yesterday. The lettuce also needs to be thinned out, so we will take quite a bit of that and make salads with it. The beans will also be ready soon.

As you can see in the picture above, we picked a green pepper, spinach, and we also picked some peas that were eaten raw. We don't have many pea plants because most of the seeds did not grow. We also picked wild blackberries. YUMMY!

Quick Wegmans Stop

So, I have a few things I need to add to my food total for the month. My husband stopped at Wegmans last night and got milk and some fruit, plus our prepaid card for our phones (these are in another part of our budget - we buy them every other month at $30 each).

• gallon of whole milk for the little guy $1.99
• gallon of skim milk for the rest of us $1.99
• pound of strawberries $1.50 (I doubt these will be as good as the local ones we had last week, but we will see)
• pint of blueberries $1.50

So, he spent $6.98 which I now need to add to our total amount spent on our food for this month.

Frugal Meal Friday 7/3

Every Friday I will be sharing with you a frugal recipe. These meals will average $5 or less for a family of four, and many will give you lots of leftovers for lunches. If you have any recipes you would like to share with others, please feel free to email it to me at: couponqueenofcorning @ hotmail.com and I will include it in my Friday's posts.

Homemade pizza is on the menu for today. It tastes soooo good and is very frugal since you can add whatever toppings you would like. It is definitely cheaper than buying a sheet pizza for $20. You can use whatever pizza dough you would like. I use one from my Betty Crocker cookbook and it comes out great every time. Here are a few recipes I found online that you can use: pizza crust 1, Chicago deep dish pizza crust, and thin crust.

Now, we like our pizza crust thick, so I usually let it rise once, put it in the pan and let it rise again. This makes a really nice thicker crust. If you like your crust thinner, just don't let it rise for the second time.You will then want to bake the crust for 15-20 minutes at 375 until crust is just starting to get golden.

Now the fun part: adding the toppings. Add tomato sauce, pizza sauce or spaghetti sauce to the top of your pizza. I usually use about 1/4 of a jar of sauce and then I will use the rest within the next few days for chicken Parmesan, a spaghetti side, etc. Add mozzarella cheese or you could use any cheese you have in your fridge. Now just pick your toppings. I usually put chopped onions and peppers (I chop these up and freeze them for easy meal prep), pepperoni, and hot sausage (I usually use 2 patties from Aldi's) on ours.

After you have all your ingredients on your pizza, put it back in the oven and bake until cheese is fully melted. And enjoy. Add a salad or a veggie to round out the meal a little more.

The price will depend on what toppings you add to the pizza. Here is the breakdown of cost the way I make mine:

• Pizza dough - homemade costs me about $.30
• cheese - I buy on sale (keeps for several months) usually at $2 or less for 8 oz
• 2 sausage patties - I buy a package of them for around $3.50 at Aldi's and I think there are about 18 patties so about $.40 if I use 2.
• pepperoni - I buy the packs when they are $2 or less. I would say it costs less than $.50 for the pepperoni I use.
  
• 1 onion - I can usually get several pounds for a little over $1. So, I would say this was about $.25
• 1/2 -1 pepper depending on size - I buy these 3/$1.75 at Aldi's so even if I use a whole pepper it is still less than $.60.

So, for about $4.00 I can make a really tasty pizza. Adding a vegetable still keeps me under the $5 mark.

I made this last week and it was yummy! I also made strawberry banana muffins for dessert. These turned out yummy and I had the opportunity to use up a bunch of those free strawberries I had gotten. Here is the link to the recipe I used if you would like to make it: Strawnana Muffins.