Free Sample from Prepare Then Share

Click on the "Get a Free Sample" button at the top right of the Prepare Then Share page at http://www.preparethenshare.com/Home/OurMenu and get a free sample of their freeze-dried food. Many of you have asked me about quick and easy food storage. MREs and freeze dried foods are more expensive, but they do last a long time. Just keep in mind, if you go for freeze-dried foods, you must have enough clean water to rehydrate them! They have a storage life of over 30 years if kept at room temperature (not in a Las Vegas garage!). This company is located in St. George if you're interested in visiting them. Free samples are another great free way to start your 72 hour kit!

Menu Planning!

It's 5 o'clock, do you know what you're having for dinner? Hopefully, you've known for at least a week! Menu planning is a great way to save money and build your 3 month supply. First, make a list of all the meals that your family enjoys eating (sounds like a good FHE activity). Then, make a list of all the ingredients needed for each of those meals. Finally, make a calendar of when you're going to eat those meals. When you're at the store, buy what you need, but when you see a sale or have a coupon (or BOTH!) buy extra of the items you use regularly. By adding to your 3 month supply, when it's time to make dinner, you can just "go shopping" in your pantry.

Here's a sample menu in calendar form:
https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B66nw2sfgICoMDk5NjUwZDQtOGE4ZS00Y2M1LTk2ZWUtNTBjYTgxOWQyNDll&hl=en

Here's a link to Food Storage Made Easy's tools to keep track of what ingredients you have and what you still need.
http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/2009/02/21/3monthfoodsupply/

Budgeting

Sister Phillips did an amazing job at teaching us about budgeting. Here's a link to the budget and the debt-elimination calendar that we went over:

http://providentliving.org/content/display/0,11666,7417-1-4006-1,00.html

On the budget, use your last month's bank statement, credit card statements and your checkbook to determine what your expenditures are. If you are married, make sure that your spouse is able to review and agree on the budget with you. Don't forget to include expenses that may not be monthly like taxes, HOA's, medical expenses, etc.

Sister Phillips told us to be GOOD- it stands for "Get Out Of Debt". The debt elimination calendar at the link above shows the snowball effect of paying off your highest interest rate debt first and then once that's paid off, rolling that payment into the next debt payment. You can see how quickly, when we pay extra on a debt, it can get paid off. There's also a bunch of financial calculators on the provident living website where you can input all of your debts so you can see how soon you can be debt free. Check it out at http://providentliving.org/content/display/0,11666,6657-1-3438-1,00.html

For those of you who want more information on budgeting, check out the church's publication "One for the Money" at http://providentliving.org/pfw/multimedia/files/pfw/pdf/88720_33293_OneForTheMoney_pdf.pdf

Want to do a FHE on finances? Here are a few more resources from the Church:
http://www.providentliving.org/content/display/0,11666,7444-1-4022-1,00.html

Soap & Cleaning Recipes

Here are the handouts for the cleaning recipes (double click on them and they will open, be sure to use your back arrow to come back to this post):

Laundry Soap

Here's the website with the 10 soap recipes.
http://tipnut.com/10-homemade-laundry-soap-detergent-recipes/

Nancy uses Recipe #2:

Hot water
1 cup Washing Soda
1/2 cup Borax
1 Soap bar................ White Castle,Zote,Fels Naphtha,Lirio

Grate the bar soap and add to a large saucepan with (4 cups) hot water. Stir over medium-low heat until soap dissolves and is melted.
Fill a 5 gallon pail half full of hot water (from tap). Add the melted soap, Borax and Washing soda, stir well until all powder is dissolved. Top the pail up with more hot water.
Use 1 cup per load, stirring soap before each use
Home Depot sells their 5 gallon buckets and lids. for around $3-4.00
get a wood paint stick (from Home Depot) the ones for 5 gl buckets,for stirring before each use.

For those of you with questions about using this laundry soap in your HE, here's the website with more info: http://www.stretcher.com/stories/07/07jan01a.cfm

Free tuna!

Starkist Tuna Pouches are $1 at WalMart. You can get a coupon for $1 off of 1 pouch here:

http://bricks.coupons.com/Start.asp?tqnm=zauifus13435129&bt=wg&o=61118&c=SK&p=ew1Gv4I5

Using the coupon, you can start your 72 hour kit for free! The pouches don't expire for 2 years! Thanks, Christine!

Fudgy Oat Bars

My daughter had these at school last week and raved about them. Thank you to Crystal for the recipe:

Fudgey Oat Bars

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

1 cup butter (room temperature)
2 cups packed brown sugar

Cream these together. In the meantime, mix together your dry ingredients in a separate bowl…

2 ½ cups flour
½ tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
3 cups regular oats

Now add the following to your butter/sugar mixture…

2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla

Cream these together. , then add slowly add your dry ingredients.

Press half of the dough in the bottom of an un-greased 9x13 pan and bake for 5 minutes or so. You want the top to look more on the dry side, so that later it won’t be too doughy.

While the dough bakes, combine the following ingredients in a microwave-safe bowl.

12 oz. semisweet chocolate chips (approximately 1 ½ cups)
1 can sweetened condensed milk
2 tsp. vanilla
2 Tbsp. butter

Microwave these ingredients for between 3 - 5 minutes until melted and fudgey (but not overcooked!), stirring together often. I mix together every thirty seconds or so. You want it to become smooth and creamy chocolate, the ingredients totally combined together. Take the pan out of the oven, and spread the chocolate mixture in a layer on the baked oats. Crumble the rest of the dough over the top of the fudgey oats and bake until golden. (I just watch it – maybe 10 minutes or so – not too golden, but don’t want it to be too doughy either.) Cool the pan and cover with foil when not devouring!

Cannery prices are increasing!

Just to give you a heads up, the cannery is going to be raising prices. Milk is seeing the biggest increase. So if you need milk, buy it before the January 16th increase. Our ward's next canning date will be in February so you won't have to store that big bag for long.

Here's a list of the new prices:
Black Beans was 16.35 will be 14.50
Pinto Beans was 14.45 will be 16.30
White Beans was 15.75 will be 14.10
Dry NF Milk was 24.80 will be 35.40
White Rice was 10.35 will be 8.45
Sugar was 13.20 will be 14.00
Red Wheat was 5.90 will be 6.35
White Wheat was 5.90 will be 5.80
Apple Slices was 54.75 will be 54.75
Carrots was 52.25 will be 52.25
Macaroni was 13.45 will be 12.10
Quick Oats was 7.50 will be 8.15
Regular Oats was 7.50 will be 7.60
Dry Onions was 69.15 will be 69.15
Potato Flakes was 30.20 will be 22.20
Spaghetti was 16.25 will be 14.56
Refried Beans was 25.95 will be 25.96
Hot Cocoa Mix was 20.75 will be 23.10
White Flour was 10.00 will be 9.35
Fruit Drink Mix was 21.95 will be 23.10
Pancake Mix (box of 16 lbs) was 9.80 will be 11.15
Potato Pearls (box of 21 lbs) was 43.10 will be 43.10

Get a jump start on your food storage!

This week 1/6-1/12 is the Smith's case lot sale. They usually have a small one now and then one before each general conference (approx. Mar & Sept). If you're running low on can goods or peanut butter, you may want to stop in and grab a few things to restock. They are usually in the front of the store. Don't be afraid to ask about an item that you want. It may be hiding and they will help you find it. You can usually mix and match the cake mixes if you don't want an entire box of chocolate cake mix.

Free travel size first aid kit

Don't throw out the Red Plum coupons that you got in the mail! The 1/3 Red Plum has a coupon for $1 off of a Johnson & Johnson's First Aid Product. You could buy a J&J First Aid To Go kit at Target for a dollar so with this coupon, it should be free! What a great way to start off a 72 hour kit.

Menu Planning!

It's a new year and we all want to stay within our budget. One great way to stay within your budget is to plan your meals. By knowing what you're going to be making, you'll know what foods to store in your 3 month food supply and you'll make less trips to the store which means less impulse buying! So, here's a great post from Food Storage Made Easy with some great tools to plan your meals and keep a 3 month inventory: http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/2009/02/21/3monthfoodsupply/

Apples

If you ordered the 40 lb box of apples from the cannery, you may be wondering what to do with them. They are so good. We're eating them sliced mostly. Utah Deal Diva did a post on what to do with all your apples. It looks so yummy! http://www.utahdealdiva.com/2009/10/ideas-on-using-preserving-apples.html Enjoy!

Got Pumpkin?

I meant to post this after Halloween, but forgot. So if I post it now, I'll have it for this year. Here's a link to the Utah Deal Diva http://www.utahdealdiva.com/2009/11/cooking-with-pumpkin.html . She goes in depth on how to cook your Halloween Jack o Lantern (scoop out the yuck, cut up the pumpkin and put it into a dish with 1 inch water, cover with foil, and bake for 1.5 hours at 350 degrees). Once it's cooked and pureed it's only .18/cup. Here are the recipes from her post (check out her post for the yummy pics):

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
Has nothing to do with pumpkin puree! They're so good, you have to try them!
Melt 1-2 TBSP of butter and mix into about 2 cups of well cleaned pumpkin seeds. Spread on a baking sheet and sprinkle with kosher salt. Bake at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes. Apple

Pumpkin Muffins
I saw this recipe and knew I had to try it, being as I have quite a bit of diced apples in my freezer. My family loved these so much, I've made this recipe twice in 3 days! The original recipe is here, however, I changed so much of it, it's almost unrecognizable. Here's my version:
1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup pumpkin puree
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 cup milk
1 cup diced apples, softened in microwave {2 minutes worked for me}
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray muffin tin with oil. Mix ingredients and spoon into muffin cups, filling them about 3/4 full. I like to make mini muffins because they bake in less time and they're fun for my kids to eat. Mini muffins take about 13 minutes to cook. Regular sized muffins take about 18-20 minutes to cook.
Cool and enjoy!

Soft Ginger-Pumpkin Cookies with Browned Butter Frosting
This recipe came from the newest Pillsbury recipe booklet, available in stores. I received it for free from MyBlogSpark for providing input for the cover photo. I made some changes to this one as well, just because it called for items I don't normally have on hand, like crystallized ginger. It still turned out incredible though, so be sure to try it!!
1 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup butter (I used butter flavored Crisco!}
3/4 cup pumpkin puree
1 egg
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground ginger {I used 1/2 tsp fresh grated ginger I had left over from another recipe and the other half ground ginger.}
1/4 cup chopped crystallized ginger {I omitted this and my cookies still had plenty of ginger flavor!}
1 tsp cinnamon {my addition}
1/2 tsp vanilla {my addition}
Frosting
1/3 cup butter {do not use margarine!}
2 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2-4 TBSP milk
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a large bowl combine brown sugar, ginger, the 3/4 cup butter, pumpkin and egg. Beat with a mixer until well blended. Add remaining ingredients to form soft dough. Refrigerate for about 20 minutes so that your cookies will have more shape. Roll into 1-inch balls and flatten slightly on tray. Bake 7-10 minutes or until lightly golden brown. {The cookies don't spread much at all, so I ended up baking about 20 on a tray!} Remove from tray immediately and place on cooling rack.
In a small saucepan, heat the 1/3 cup butter over medium heat, stirring constantly. Cook until butter turns a nice golden brown. It took mine about 5 minutes and when it turned, it turned very suddenly. Remove from heat. Add in remaining ingredients, stirring until frosting is smooth and spreadable. Let cookies cool for about 20 minutes before frosting. Enjoy!