Use up the batter

Ok this one seems pretty simple, but really, think about it.  How many times do you use all the batter?  If you follow most muffin recipes, you end up with a little extra at the end.  Don't forget that spatula! It can scrap the batter to give you a whole extra muffin or cupcake! Sometimes I've even gotten two extra muffins!  

Too often we throw things out because it doesn't seem like there's much.  But, those small things add up.  Every time I make muffins, if I were to throw out the little bit that I could scrap  to make one more muffin, after 12 times of making muffins or cupcakes, I'd have another whole set of muffins!

Really, I know it doesn't seem like a lot, but those little things add up and thats where you start saving money.  

Enjoy today's little quick tip

Blessings 

 

Travel Snack Prep

 

It's getting close to travel season and with traveling comes trying to keep the kids happy while you or your spouse is driving.  One way to help keep them happy is to keep them fed.  Let's be honest a fed kiddo is a happy kiddo.  

We went on a long trip this summer to see family in Indiana, for the most part my girls travel well, they've just always had to travel so that helps, but this was going to be a long trip.  So I prepared snack bags for the trip to and from (honestly, who wants to pack snack bags leaving your trip).  That was my best decision, it made packing to come home so much easier! So anyways, here is my how-to on prepping snacks for a long trip or any trip for that matter!

1. Make a schedule - 

Below are my schedules for there and home of our trip this summer.  These are the real scratch lists. They don't need to be pretty, just something that you can reference as you go.  Those longer trips can be harder to keep track of what everyone ate when, this really helped me.  Now, honestly did I follow this schedule like it was set in stone, did we not buy Cheetos at the gas station at one point, no.  Things changed, we had lots of rain, the schedule got bumped up a bit here and there, BUT, I was able to have a guideline to follow, I had a roadmap per say to help me. It was nice to have a reference of what we'd had or had available as we went.  

2. Make a list of snack options - 

I wanted to make sure that even though we were traveling, we were able to get some healthy snacks in along with some treats.  While treats are fun and exciting, it's those healthy snacks that keep everyone sane as well.  Snack ideas: cheese sticks, carrots, applesauce pouches, various cracker snacks, fruit strips, fruit snacks and raisins.

Repacking your own snacks is where you can save some money. Cheese sticks, raisins, and any of the cracker snacks are really easy to prepackage yourself instead of paying for them to be prepackaged.  

• Cheese sticks: you can easily buy a large block of cheese and cut your own, throw in a cooler bag and voila your own cheese sticks for cheaper.  Check out my post here: Cheese Sticks for more details. 
• Raisins: Yes it's fun to have your own individual box, but if you buy the large container you can pour your own individual baggies full.  You can also mix in some peanuts or cashews too if you are able. 
• Cracker snacks: So first of all our youngest is gluten free, so she needs her own individual cracker snacks.  Also, if your house is anything like mine, no one likes the same snacks, so I just grab a few larger containers of the snacks we usually eat and divide up smaller baggies of them for each kiddo.  It beats spending more for the prepackaged + spending even more, because we all want different prepackaged snack bags. 

3. Purchase the items needed 

Now that you know what all you want, it's easier to buy your snacks. It's really easy to go shopping and then get a bunch of items because you didn't plan ahead and end up with more than you need or items you weren't planning on.  Also, now that you know what snacks you are planning on saving with making your own, you can pick a few fun items too.  For example, yes it would be cheaper to buy applesauce and use my reusable pouches; however for the 12 hour drive it was not feasible to try and do, and honestly I didn't want to balance that.  So for this trip I saved on the cracker snacks and bought applesauce pouches.  We also bought fruit snacks and fruit strips as a fun treat. Things we don't have often, so it makes it fun.  You'll also note I had cereal listed as the first snack.  For this particular trip we took off early, so I let my girls pick ONE special box of cereal to share.  I then poured it into baggies for them.  Again a special treat, but we limited that one to one option and they only got the one bag full.  

4. Gather all your supplies, label and start packing 

Now, with all these different snacks I'm collecting, I do use our reusable baggies as much as possible.  I don't have any fancy ones we got ours from Walmart.  They work well, except the zipper sticks after I use them in the freezer, so if you are in the market for them make sure they are freezer safe.

Anyways, back to gathering your supplies.  I did use regular ziplock bags to hold all the snacks, because I wanted to write on them with Sharpie each kiddos name and either "THERE" or "HOME",  so I knew what bags were for when.  

Then I loaded each bag up.  I started with my schedule and figured out how many fruit strips I'd need for there, then put them in each kiddo's larger bag, then I did the same for the fruit snacks, applesauce pouches and raisins.  Then I took the cracker snacks and decided how many times we'd need a cracker snack and made up their individual bags of their cracker snacks choices and put those in their larger bag.  Then I repeated the process for the the trip home.  Again, seriously, this was my best decision, BECAUSE, I was having too much fun hanging out to want to pack like this while there the night before we came home.  And that worked out great, because it was already done.  

The cooler items, like the carrots, cheese sticks or other veggies I packed the morning of. I got them ready, carrots in one bag, cheese sticks in another, etc.  But, then packed them in the cooler in the morning.  

When I loaded our larger snack bag, I made sure the "HOME" bags were on the bottom and the "THERE" bags were on top. Then I didn't have to dig so much.  

5. Tips & Tricks I learned after 14 hours on the road: 

1. Pack few extra snacks - you never know what might happen, pouring rain FOREVER or just extra hungry i.e. bored kiddos. I had a bag at the bottom that was leftover items we got; applesauce pouches, fruit snacks, fruit strips and we used a few of them. 
2. Snack/hour - really even if you don't end up having a snack that often, if you are going for a longer trip plan snack/hour. 
3. Have those fun snacks intermixed. Whatever is a fun snack for your household, us it's the fruit snacks and fruit strips.  I made sure to have those a few times for our long trip.

So if you are traveling for 5 hours or 20, I hope you find something here that you can use to help make that trip a little less costly, but still being able to have some good snacks along the way.   

Blessings on your upcoming travels 

Weekly schedule after grocery shopping

So, I've shared a lot of things I do to save on groceries.  A lot are things that take some prep work when you get home and that can be a little daunting to get started. So I wanted to share my tips and tricks for how I go about it. 

There are 3-4 big things that I need to get done for prep when I get back from the grocery store.  If you've been following my blog these last few months you'll notice a few I've talked about.  They are as follows: 

1. Fruits & veggies following Amy Cross from A Cross legacy 

2. Dividing up the eggs 

3.  Making the cheese sticks

4. Dividing up the meat

When we are talking 2 weeks of fruits and veggies + 5-10 lbs of hamburger meat + 7-8 chicken breasts + 60 eggs + making your own cheese sticks, that can add up fast.  Let's be honest after a long shopping trip the last thing I want is extra work to put it all away.  So, I've started dividing up the chores.  

On the day I get home from the store: 

First, I divide up the eggs.  I have 4-5 18 egg cartons that I divide up the 60 eggs into.  That doesn't take that long and it's done. 

Second, I wash and prepare all my fruits and veggies.  You can check out Amy Cross' blog for her how-tos for the different fruits and veggies.  But, I usually can work on that as I unload a few groceries here and there.  

Then, I get the meat and cheese in the fridge as I bought it.  I don't worry about dividing it up right at that moment.  

Later that week: 

In the next few days, I take time to cut up the cheese into cheese sticks.  This isn't something that takes a lot of time, but to have to plan on cutting it up right after I get home can seem overwhelming, I mean I'm ready to sit for a bit, so I wait and do that within a day or two of the shopping trip.  Any more time and then I won't get it done either.  Make it a "chore" on your to-do list if you need to.  

Finally, I divide up the meat as I use it that week.  Usually, the hamburger meat and chicken are good in their packages for a few days.  The first night we have something with chicken, I divide the rest of it up as I'm cooking.  Same goes for the hamburger meat.  This also saves me from freezing it all and having to thaw something right after I bought it.  

And that's it! Rather than get everything done as I get home, it's nice to divide and conquer.  I hope it helps you if you are beginning to buy more in bulk or make your own items.  

What are some things you do that help you unload groceries? 

Breadcrumbs Re-visited

Way back I wrote about how I use breadcrumbs.  If you didn't see it you can check out that post here: Bread Crumbs. A pretty simple concept, but a process that can save you money over time.  If you've already started saving those bread crumbs from your toaster drawer, then this won't be a huge change as well. 

If you're like our house your kiddos don't eat their crust very often.  Most days, I will eat their crust, but there are days I just don't want to.  I started adding the crust pieces to my bread crumb jar.  I keep my bread crumb jar in the freezer so after a few days the crust pieces are easy to break down and crumble.  

This is just one more way you can get bread crumbs.  This has been really helpful with our family's recent shift in being more gluten free.  We don't all need to be gluten free, but my youngest has done better when she's not eating gluten.  With that, she also doesn't like the crust.  We now have a bread crumb jar and a GF bread crumb jar in our freezer.  Instead of having to buy GF bread crumbs, we were able to make our own without spending any extra money.  That is huge when GF food is just so much more pricey. 

Hope this helps you save a little 

Blessings,