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Here is your Daily Dose of Thrifty – a new feature here on The Thrifty Couple. We have tons of these ideas (and want to hear yours yours too!) and thought it would be fun to start sharing some of our tips on thrifty, frugal living.
Today’s Tip: Substitute Rice for half of your ground beef.
How? Well in many recipes, you can replace about 1/2 the ground beef a recipe calls for with rice! It is much cheaper than beef and keep many recipes tasting just as, well… tasty.
Meat can be one of the most expensive portions of your grocery budget, so finding little tricks that can help reduce the cost can have a great impact on your budget.
Our kids are getting bigger – the 6,5,4 and even 1 year old are really gaining some big appetites. So instead of increasing our taco meat or other beef recipes to 1.5-2 lbs. of beef, we just add rice and still use the same amount. Rice is significantly cheaper than ground beef, especially when purchased in bulk.
Here are some examples:
Taco Meat
Meatloaf
Meatballs
Ground Beef Fried Rice
Recipes calling for ground beef
Use around 1/2 cup to 1 cup of rice uncooked in your recipes. This will give you more servings in your typical recipes or you can reduce the ground beef in your recipes. Either way, you can save money and not compromise on taste.
Finally, we all know that our meat portions should be cut down. We all look over our shoulder to make sure our doctor isn’t in the restaurant when eating our half-pound burgers. Not only is this our daily dose of thrifty, but its our small attempt at our daily dose of health (especially when you are using the long-grained, brown rice).
Everyday With Rachael Ray Magazine is FREE for 1-year right now too. Just head over to their site to request your FREE subscription. I personally love Rachael Ray and her magazine. It is a very high quality magazine filled with lots of ideas for cooking (of course), home and more.
Just like the last magazine, each issue is like a Rachael Ray Cookbook.
HURRY! As this one will go just as other Free magazine subscriptions! This could also make for a great gift too.
You will want to take advantage of this offer while you can. Right now you can join Right At Home sponsored by SC Johnson. In the past, we have received great coupons and offers for SC Johnson products. PLUS you will receive tips and recipes.
This is a nice FREEBIE. Right now you can request a Jiffy Mix Cookbook for FREE to help you decide what to make from those very affordable and thrifty boxes of Jiffy mixes. This one even includes recipes using their dessert mixes too. It would be nice to have some Jiffy recipes right at the tip of my fingers.
I remember as a kid, our pantry was full of the pizza crusts and cornbread mixes. It is a nice memory as a kid and makes some yummy comfort foods!
Here is a nice FREEBIE – We love the Pampered Chef cookbooks! Now you can download a Pampered Chef Cookbook for FREE.
It is a “coookbook for a cause” from celebrities and their favorite recipes that they are sharing.
The best part is – that for every download, one meal will be donated to Feeding America. How cool is that – this is the kinda FREEIBES that we loooove!
We are in the Kitchen again together – it is one of our favorite places to be! We love to cook, create and make new things. We are not traditional cooks in that we really just create on our own! Thrifty Al has learned to go with the flow with me and not follow recipes but put in a bit of this and a dash of that and it is sometimes whala and sometimes blah!
This next recipe is one of our breakfast morning or after dinner favorites. It is fresh fruit smoothies with awesome ingredients for a perfect powerhouse of nutrition. It is Super Healthy Power Smoothies.
No two smoothies ever turn out the same and it is one of the simplest recipes you can make – plus the kids loooove it so that is always a bonus!
Here are the tools and ingredients needed for this powerhouse breakfast:
Blender or Magic Bullet – we actually bought a Magic Bullet knock-off with 43 pieces at ShopKo about 18 months ago on clearance for $19.99. It has been a trusty little blender system.
Fresh or frozen fruits – we love the berries, peaches, mangoes and pineapples. It is a great time to “clean out your fridge” in deciding what fruits to use up.
Milk
Yogurt – we love the plain organic or Mountain High yogurts. You can use yogurt with flavor too. We buy our favorite yogurts when they are cheap and stock-up. Whatever we cannot eat fresh, we freeze and then they are perfect for smoothies.
Honey (not pictured – forgot to add it to the picture )
Supplements. This is a perfect recipe to add any vitamins or supplements that you or your spouse or your children need to take that you have a hard time taking. Or if you just simply wanted to add a bit more nutrition. In the ones we made today – we used Flaxseeds and Organic Fiber powder. By putting these in your smoothie – everyone can take them without notice.
Ice
The steps are really quite simple:
Layer the fruits and ice in first – also, this is a fun recipe where everyone can literally customize their own drink with the ingredients they wanted. Our kids wanted “all berries,” Thrifty Al wanted blackberries and strawberries, and I loooove peaches and so it was peach and blackberry for me! You will want to layer up to about 2/3rd’s full. Also, we have heard and read that blending fruit from a fresh or frozen (previously fresh) fruit brings out the nutritional value of the fruit when it is then consumed immediately. Apparently the seeds harbor wonderful amounts of nutrition that only last for several minutes once they have been exposed by breaking open – so this really is the best way to eat them. Anyway – we wanted to add this tidbit and we are going to go with it because it sounds super cool! But we are not making any “official” nutritional claims
Pour in 1 cup of milk so that it can settle in around the fruit and ice.
Then add a few scoops of yogurt, a scoop of flaxseed/supplements that you wanted to add.
Finally, add the sweetener of honey (about 1-2 tablespoons depending on liking) or natural sweeteners such as Stevia to taste. Please be aware that if you are using flavored yogurts – you may not need to add any additional sweetener.
Stick the lid on top and place it on your Magic Bullet (or knock-off) and start blending! The blending time will vary depending on how chunky or smooth you want your drink. We typically blend about 30 – 90 seconds. Our kids like their really smooth so they can easily sip through a regular straw. We like it a little thicker so we can eat the chunky fruit.
Pour into a glass and serve! Our kids love it when we had the special little things like a fruit garnish! It is a perfect drink for parties for summer too as your guests can customize their drink and add a fruit garnish and little umbrella.
Be prepared for everyone to go “Oliver Twist” on you! Our kids do nearly every time. And we don’t mind a bit
A few tips:
Rinse the blender/blending cups and tools immediately. It only takes a couple of seconds, but if you don’t it will be a dozy to scrub the caked on seeds and fruit from the cups and blender later! Trust us…. we have done it a few times and finally learned that taking a couple of seconds now saves minutes, minutes and minutes later!
Buy your fresh fruit and berries when they are super cheap, stock-up and then freeze them so that you have them through out the year at the “in-season” price.
We recently did this! About a month ago – one of our local markets was selling pints of blackberries and blueberries for only $1.00!! We were so excited that we stock-up and bought 2 cases of each for a 24 pints of each berry. We then left them in the plastic containers and whatever we did not eat fresh – we froze in the containers. By doing this – they freeze separately. We then pulled the containers out and dumped the berries into gallon size bags. We filled up 4 gallon bags of each berry! We typically use about 1 bag every 5-6 weeks between this recipe, desserts and ice cream sundaes. So this will last us quite a while. Also, at Target recently, they had bags of organic raspberries, blueberries and blackberries for $1.58 a 12 oz. bag. We only stocked up on Raspberries as we already had the others. But keep your eyes peeled now for the berry deals!
The Thrifty Couple is in the kitchen again. This time it is a Thrifty Couple recipe invention (although this is something we made up – we are sure it is not a unique idea ).
This recipe is for Beef and Potato Enchilada Casserole – it is easy, fun and yummy and very thrifty!
The ingredients needed for this fun family favorite is:
1 lb. Hamburger (you can also use shredded beef, chicken or pork)
1 family size can of Enchilada sauce
1/2 med onion (diced)
1 small can of Green Chilies (diced)
2 lbs. shredded cheese
1 package of Simply Potatoes any variety (for this one – we used the diced potatoes and onions)
12 – 18 Corn tortillas
Sour Cream
Here are the easy steps to get this dish on the table fast:
Brown the hamburger, drain and rinse and put back in the pan
Then sautee’ the onions and the simply potatoes with the ground hamburger until the potatoes are slightly under al dente’
Spray a 9×13 pan with non-stick cooking spray
Layer the pan with 4-6 corn tortillas as the first layer
Then add a layer of the hamburger, onion and potatoes
Pour half of the can of enchilada sauce over the meat mixture
Add half of the diced chilies and then a layer of cheese
Repeat the layering from the corn tortillas to the cheese again
For the final layer, add corn tortillas, then the remaining cheeese
Top the casserole with the diced green onions
Bake in the oven at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes
We like to serve this dish topped with sour cream. We also like to serve with a side of veggies (like corn with diced sweet bell peppers), fruit and a green salad. Yummy, Yummy, Yummy!
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Here’s how the deal works, head over to Every Day with Rachael Ray (10 total issues) and add it to your cart. It will show up at $4.39 in price. But we are going to maximize by adding a coupon code for an additional 15% off! When you check out, usePXCJ74 for an additional 15% off which gives a final price of:
Please note that you will enter the code on the last page of checkout!
Compare to the retail of $39.90 and Amazon.com’s current discount price of $24.00! I’d say this is an awesome deal! That’s an amazing savings of over 90% off!!!
UPDATE: The FREE coupons are now gone – but you can now get a BOGO FREE coupon!
Here is a HOT FREEBIE! Especially if you are like us and will be firing up your grill this weekend for a holiday BBQ!
You can request a FREE FlameDisk for your grill – this is apparently an alternative to charcoal. to get your FREE Flame Disk – just fill-out this form and they will send you an email with the coupon. You can then take this coupon to Home Depot or Target and get your FREE one!
Not only is this our daily dose of thrifty, but its our small attempt at our daily dose of health (especially when you are using the long-grained, brown rice).
