Category: Frugal Food

Delicious foods and frugal recipes from some of our favorites!

December 31, 2014

How We Fed Our Family for $200 This Month

Well, almost $200. $215.48 to be exact. But that was only because of the anarchy that ensued after we ran out of milk and fresh fruit about half way through the month. 🙂

You might remember that we made a goal for this month of spending only $200 for groceries in the month of December for our family of six as we worked to stay within our yearly budgeted goal for groceries. We wanted to challenge ourselves and prove to ourselves that we really could save money on food expenses. Well, we came pretty darn close, coming in at $215.48.

The government-collected numbers as of January 2017 shows that in order to feed a family of four (with two kids aged between 6 and 11) it is costing between $636.70 and $1268.70 per month for groceries

Our family of six has had approximately ZERO grocery months over $600 in the last five years. Yep, our monthly grocery bill has never reached even $600 in a given month.

Read on to find out how we feed our family for less than the lowest grocery costs for a family of four, and we eat healthy in the process. Read more

December 10, 2014

The Perfect Spritz Cookie Recipe

Hey, friends! As I mentioned the other day in my post on how to make fudge the super easy way, I’ll be sharing a few different cookie recipes during the month of December. Today I’ll share our Spritz Cookie recipe. Spritz cookies use a cookie press, but often times the way the spritz cookie recipe is composed makes the cookie dough stick onto the press, not coming off easily onto the cookie sheet. This can make spritz cookies frustrating to make. My dear old friend Val, however, shared with me years ago THE perfect spritz cookie recipe. Read more

December 4, 2014

Super Easy Fudge Recipe

Greetings, Frugal Farmer friends!! SO, since Christmas is right around the corner, I thought I’d take a few posts this month and share some of the Christmas baking recipes we use in our house, starting with this super easy fudge recipe. By making delicious fudge and candies at home, you can save big bucks off of expensive store prices, and avoid preservatives and other chemicals as well. Read more

November 30, 2014

Review: GMO OMG

In our never-ending quest for continuing education in The Frugal Farmer family, we sat down yesterday to watch GMO OMG
, the documentary that follows a father of three on a journey to find out the truth about GMOs. Read more

November 24, 2014

30 of My Best Cooking Tips

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved to cook, so today I thought I’d share some of my best cooking tips. Making and serving great food is an awesome way to usher in great times with family and friends. There is something about sharing a meal that bonds people, and there is something about serving a meal to others that makes them feel loved. This is why it’s so vitally important that, when making a meal, one puts in his/her best efforts. Read more

October 16, 2014

Garden Carrots 101

One of the things we’re starting to feel like we’re really getting the hang of as far as gardening goes is garden carrots. Carrots are super easy to grow and maintain, and as such, we’ve always gotten a pretty good yield from our garden carrots. We do eat them fresh, but mostly we peel, blanch and freeze them in a variety of sizes for later use. Here are some of the things you might want to know about growing garden carrots and how to preserve them for later use. Read more

October 1, 2014

Smoky Chipotle Salsa

Hey, friends! As we wade through what’s left of the produce to can and freeze, I thought I’d take a minute out and share with you the new Smoky Chipotle Salsa recipe we tried this year that has gotten rave reviews so far. Last year when we did our first salsa canning, we used our Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving’s recipe for their Simple House Salsa. We stayed on track with the recipe, except for that we added some jalpenos and habaneros, but we still found the salsa a bit mild for our tastes. This year we decided to do a little modification and see if we couldn’t spice it up a bit, and it worked! Here’s the recipe: Read more

September 2, 2014

Why It’s Vital to Learn to Grow and Preserve Your Own Food

When we share, either on the blog or in person, why we believe it’s so important to grow and preserve your own food, we get a mixed bag of reactions. Some react with awe and wonder, quizzing us on what it’s like and what’s involved. Others think it’s cool but not important. And still others think we’re crazy. While that may well be the case 🙂 , I’m here to share why we think it’s so very important to learn how to grow and preserve your own food. Read more

August 29, 2014

How to Make and Can Spaghetti Sauce

The more I learn about canning and preserving, the more I realize I know very little about canning, preserving and cooking in general. I’ve always considered myself a pro in the kitchen. I love to cook, and, at the risk of sounding arrogant, 🙂 I’m AWESOME at comfort food meals like Thanksgiving dinners and meat and potatoes stuff.

The other day, however, Read more

August 20, 2014

Garden 2014 Update and Other Stuff: Taters!!!

We did it!!! We planted potatoes this year for the first time, and actually got a small harvest!!! Now, it wasn’t the harvest I was hoping for, but aren’t they beautiful? Growing potatoes was odd. Read more