Pumpkin Pancakes

http://www.momadvice.com/blog/2009/10/fluffy-light-pumpkin-pancakes.html

I made these for breakfast this morning. I tripled the batch, thinking I would freeze leftovers, but I don’t know if there will be any left to freeze. They were very good!!

I made mine with regular pumpkin. I cooked up a big one yesterday and froze most of the puree, but I left out one package to try this recipe.

I used sour milk instead of fresh (because I had it!) and I eliminated the salt because it already had so much sodium from the baking powder. I used white sugar and 1/2 WW flour and 1/2 white flour.

One thing – they are pretty sweet, so if you like to put syrup on your pancakes, you might want to eliminate the sugar from the batter. I had one pancake without syrup and it was perfect.

I was afraid that they wouldn’t be fluffy, but they were! They tasted a little like pumpkin pie, of course, with all that spice in them.  YUMMY!

Mail Call

I’ve been a slacker lately and not been shopping much. If I stay on top of things and shop at least once a week, I do better, but I am lazy and like to stay at home.

In the mail today: A full-size can of Progresso High Fiber Chicken Tuscany soup and ten coupons for $1.10 off a single can at the store!

Also in today’s mail, a full-size bottle of L’Oreal Revitalift Deep-Set Wrinkle Repair and four addition smaller samples with coupons. That will go really well with yesterday’s mail: Olay’s new ProX Wrinkle Smoothing Cream. That also came with coupons.

I’m seeing a theme here.

College Con’t

Guys do not wear bathrobes. I checked with some male college students. They wear gym shorts and a tshirt. Or towels.

We are starting to set aside some of the toiletries. We have so many bottles of free shampoo, bars of soap, tubes of toothpaste and toothbrushes, deodorant… so it’s mostly clothing and household items he will need.

School supplies! As homeschoolers, we just didn’t do a lot of  “school supplies” shopping. And, of course, we don’t really know what he will need.  Notebooks and pens to start with, I suppose. I’d better track down those experienced college students again and ask more questions.

College Bound

For a taxpayer-funded institution, the state university is sure expensive! I know private colleges are higher, but DH’s private college has many scholarships and discounts, so his education is actually cheaper than it will be for DS#3 to attend the public school.

Every time we turn around, there is another letter or email wanting us to mail them $100 by yesterday.  We found some lists of what Matthew will need for dorm life. One list is four pages long!  He won’t need all of the items, of course, and we have some of it here at home.  Something we hadn’t considered is a cell phone. There is cable television in every room, but there are no landline telephones!  We’ve never used cell phones, and we are not going to take on an unnecessary monthly bill, so we bought a prepaid tracfone. We got a very good deal on it! Matthew will have to buy his own refill minutes, but he has a phone to start with.

I have been worried about sheets. Dorm beds are XL twins, which are hard to find except in the back-to-school sales. They go on sale at Kmart tomorrow! In addition, I have been offered a brand new set by a friend who couldn’t use hers. Towels. A Bathrobe. My son has never worn a bathrobe in his life. Do guys really wear bathrobes in the dorms? Oh, and there are beds, but they really want you to rent loft kits so you can put a desk in your room.  Loft kits – $80

The list goes on and on. We should have had all of this taken care of months ago, but we didn’t. It’s amazing how many little and big expenses there are!

Feeding People

On the Living Like Noone Else forum, a woman posted that her teenage son was eating so much that she didn’t know how she could afford to feed her family. She gave the example that he had just eaten an entire bag of Aldi Chex Mix and was still hungry. I thought my response to her might be helpful to others and am posting it here.

 

DH and I raised three sons to adulthood and also had an 18 yo girl living with us for a year. It is expensive, especially if you feed them junk food that contributes nothing but empty calories to their growth.

Protein is going to be much more filling. Make sure everything that goes into their mouth has real food value. Carbs with fiber (fruit, starchy vegetables, 100% whole wheat bread or brown rice) will keep them filled up longer, too, and be less detrimental to their health.

I shop at Aldi, too, so I know that for the price of a bag of Aldi Chex Mix, you can buy an 8 oz package of cheese. Or some produce. Or natural peanut butter. Or even a chicken breast or two. Depending on where you live, maybe even a gallon of milk or a carton of cottage cheese. 2 dozen eggs! Two pounds of carrots. Three pounds of bananas. A stalk of celery. A loaf of 100% whole wheat bread (at least at Aldi or Walmart)

If you are okay with snacking, make good snacks available. Boil up some eggs. Devilled eggs are cheap to make (just add a small amount of mayo and mustard). Cut up celery and fill it with peanut butter. Have the carrots cut up so they can snack quickly. As someone else mentioned, teach them to spread apples with peanut butter. If they are little, slice up the cheese for them. Let them make peanut butter sandwiches.

I love to feed the boys’ guests. A crowdful of noisy young adult males is so fun. But that is when I break out the carbs – homemade cookies, popcorn, muffins, brownies, gingerbread… and even cheap pizzas. The other night, we fed 4 of them with 4 frozen pizzas. They are nice guys and usually have a few bucks they can contribute, but this time we paid for it – Red Baron pizzas were 3/$10, so we paid $13.50. They drank about $1 worth of milk and also water. I felt like that was pretty reasonable for a “party”.

BTW – I was at Walmart last night and got a box of their generic Triscuits. They were about $1.50, and they contain 100% whole wheat (not just the flour), oil, and salt. So it cost about the same as a bag of Chex Mix, but it’s much more wholesome and can be a base for the peanut butter, cheese, or other good toppings and they don’t eat the whole box at once.

In the mail

While I was on vacation -

A roll of toilet paper and sample of flushable “personal wipes”

Six samples of instant coffee

Sample of sunscreen

Shampoo samples

Coupon for a free candy bar!

Fun mail to come home to!

Oh Yeah. I Rock.

 

Kmart Double Coupons Trip!

Olay Ribbons body wash – big bottle – $6.49

2 bottles Visine – $7.89

Dove Ultimate AntiP/Deod – $3.99

Dove Ultimate – $3.99

Tylenol Arthritis Pain – $4.79

60 Ct. BandAids – $2.50

First Aid Tape – $2.79

First Aid Gauze pads – $2.29

Pert for Men -  $3.49

Snaps Licorice – $1.79

 

Merchandise – $40.01   (pretax)

 

But after coupons….

 

TOTAL EXPENDITURE  – 99 cents

(and that includes sales tax!)

Did I mention that I used my Paypal debit card, where I get cash back? So technically I only spent 97.5 cents. 

And some of that can be reimbursed by my FSA. I know that is really our own money, but it’s pre-tax and taken out of DH’s paychecks before we ever see it, so it feels like double-dipping.

Brand Loyalty

After writing that last post, I started thinking about “brand loyalty.” I refuse to have brand loyalty to something just because I started with that item – it has to prove itself to be really superior to other products, worthy of exclusive purchase. We don’t have many of those.

Brown sugar – C&H pure cane sugar. From Hawaii. Growing in the sun…  Virtually all other readily available brands of brown sugar are just white beet sugar with some molasses added for flavor and color. Ick.

QTips – my husband feels very strongly about this one. We have tried generic versions and the J&J nicer ones, but he wants QTips.

Kraft Miracle Whip – just one of those things. We have not liked any of the others nearly as well.

Sometimes, we avoid certain brands of things. Our newest tube of toothpaste is a definite loser. We won’t buy that one again. But it was free, so we will finish up the tube and move on to something else.

Otherwise, we are flexible.  With careful couponing, we get very nice things for less money than the generics (or even free!) Cereal is a good coupon item. If the only options are Fruity Pebbles and Golden Grahams, I usually skip it, but there are often good deals on more wholesome cereals.

We choose some items for reasons other than cost. I avoid high fructose corn syrup, so I buy Arnold’s  brand of 100% whole wheat bread at Walmart – $1.88 for the large loaf. I can get a similar sized loaf at Walmart or Aldi for less, but they both have HFCS, so I spend about 40 cents more for the better bread. I buy fruit canned in juice (instead of syrup) for my youngest son. I buy non-aluminum baking powder when I can find it. It costs a little more than the regular baking powder. We eat a mostly “whole foods” diet, so the majority of my coupon savings comes in household and personal items. Don’t be afraid to try new brands! If you hate it, you can console yourself with the knowledge that it was really cheap or free.

Being Diligent

It’s very easy for me to not shop.  I am a homebody, and I often go from one Sunday to the next without leaving home. I like it. I have a husband who is glad to have me at home, so I don’t have to work outside of my home.  But by putting in an hour or two each week, clipping and organizing coupons and doing some online research, I can “make money” by reducing our grocery and household expenses.

No, I don’t buy things we don’t use, except when they are free or nearly free and I pick them up for the food bank or shelter. We are flexible in our tastes, however, and don’t have “brand loyalty” to more than one or two items. We will eat any cereal except for the sugary childrens varieties, and we don’t care about the brand of our soap, toothbrushes or toothpaste, shampoo, deodorant, pain relievers, cough syrup, dish soap, shavers, cleaners, etc.    If they are free, I will even give cat treats to my dog.  He doesn’t seem to mind.

But I have to do it, and I have to leave the house and GO TO THE STORE.

I did that today – after coupons at KMart, I spent $5 at the register. I bought:

Secret Deodorant

Kotex Liners

Dental Floss Picks

Tylenol

Bandaids

Starbucks Espresso drink

2 packages of Playtex rubber gloves

Dawn Dishsoap

Pert Plus for Men

Everything was full size – no trial sizes. As soon as I got home, I filled out the mail-in rebate for the Pert Plus ($3.49). I also got two coupons from Kmart – one was for $5 off my next $25 purchase (total before coupons, and I will probably use that tonight or tomorrow) and the other was $5 off my next $50 purchase. I probably won’t use that one — I don’t buy that much!

So after the rebate and the $5 coupon, I came out about $3 ahead. And I will be going back soon.

I did very well at the grocery store, too. I had a number of coupons for free items, and I cherry-picked their sale items.

The coupons for free coupons are usually found on the company’s websites (Kraft often has some), and some come in the weekly paper. My favorite website for finding these is Money Saving Mom and if you are a forum junkie like me, you will also enjoy Coupon Mom Forums.

Free Lipton Tea

I just made the phone call to sign up for a coupon for a free box of Lipton’s Tea! It was an automated system – very easy to do.

1-888-435-3639