Easy Home Made Nooodles

I am famous for my home made chicken noodle soup.  So was my mom.  Well, we're more famous for our home made noodles that go IN the soup.  And *leans toward you with a motion like she's going to share a secret*...they are so easy to make you'll be amazed and they are cheap to make as well.  Nothing hits the spot when you have a bad cold than a bowl of soup with home made noodles in it.

So, here you go folks.  The easiest home made noodles and they really do give you a "wow" factor to home made chicken noodle soup.  Make these and you'll be happy you did.

Easy Home Made Noodles 

 Ingredients

• 1 Cup AP flour
• 1 Egg
• A pinch of salt
• A little bit of water

Procedure:

Combine the flour, salt and egg in a bowl and using your hands mush it all together.  If the dough is still too dry to stick together, add water until a stiff dough is formed.

Lightly flour your counter top and using a good rolling pin roll the dough very thin (be sure to pick up the dough from time to time to make sure it's not sticking to the counter), using flour as needed to keep things from sticking.  Once you have the dough super thin, take a knife and slice the dough into thin strips (cut long strips in half unless you want REALLY long noodles).

Add the noodles to boiling soup in the last few minutes of cooking a few at a time (if you add them all at once you're going to have a mess.  Add a few and mix the soup and repeat).  Boil the noodles in the soup for a few minutes to cook them all the way through (they will puff up significantly, so don't be alarmed).

Serve and be prepared for people making yummy sounds.

Frugal Friday (Money Saving Weekly Recap): Week ending 2/27/15

Man!  What a week!  It's been super busy around here between taking my kids to school and my son to therapy and doing meetings and dentist appointments and trying to juggle regular stuff as well.

But, I did it!  And I got some other things done that desperately needed TO BE done, even if I had a hard time finding energy to do them all.

1.  I processed a LOT of apples (seen above was part of the work in progress).  Nearly two bushels in fact.  I had planned on keeping the apples I got from our local bulk store super cheap (thanks again for the tip, Megan!) for a while in the pantry in cold storage (my pantry area is unheated), and normally during the winter it does get decently cold in there.  Unfortunately for me, however, we have had a warm spell (not complaining as my heating bill will love it *laugh*) and the area just got too warm to hold the apples from rotting.  When I went and took some out and they were getting wrinkly I knew it was time to process them before they went bad.  I was even able to give some apples to a friend who could use some and I have some left in the fridge for my daughter to eat.

And with what was left over I was still able to make:

Some of my processed apple haul

• 7 quarts of apple pie filling (I just froze everything for the sake of not having to pull out my canner this late in the year)
• 2 Whole and ready to go apple pies (I froze them both to bake later)
  
• 20 pints of applesauce (yes, 20 pints!)
• 2 9x13 baking dishes of Apple Cinnamon Baked Oatmeal (I cut them into squares once I had cooled them, wrapped the pieces in plastic wrap and froze in freezer bags.  Now I have super fast meals at the ready and delicious at that)

2.  My husband and I found that my daughter likes oranges from time to time now, so we've been picking up more oranges than we should really (trying to get my kids to pick up new foods is hard).  We got a great price on a bag of mandarin oranges from Carrs in the middle of getting the daughter to try different types of oranges, too, so yeah...we ended up with a lot of oranges that were going soft.  So, I made orange juice out of them.  It seemed the best way to use them up.  It wasn't hard, but I was ever so grateful I didn't give myself any cuts when processing the apples when I was squeezing the juice out of those things (I have nothing even close to resembling a juicer or citrus juicing thing).  Tastes good if nothing else :).

3.  I made meals at home instead of getting take out, which trust me, when you are processing two bushels of apples?  It's not easy to resist the idea of take out.

4.  I baked a chicken  when I was processing the apples and we not only used it for left overs for sandwiches during the week, but we also made dinner out of it and now I have the carcass sitting in a pot on my stove being made into stock.  Nothing from the chicken went to waste.

5.  We watched things for free on You Tube and other places online instead of buying videos at the used store or buying new movies.

6.  I managed to save a BUNCH of money when it comes to gas and time by calling the local office of the business where we get our speech therapy and asking if they had any openings.  I've been driving my son for a 40 minute commute for speech (one way), which was a trek and took my son away from school about 2/3 of one school day a week, which was not an ideal situation.  I'd been on a waiting list for the local office for nearly 4 years and FINALLY got an opening.  It is wonderful and this was the first week we had speech locally.  So far so good :).

And there you have a few things I did to save money this week.  Hope your money saving endeavors went well this week as well!

Thrifty Thursday (Thrift Store Finds)

The thrift stores have been very good to me lately, which I am thankful for.  This week I scored really big in the future Christmas gift front!

I got a combination of brand new gift sets, a pattern that I can make into shirts for my daughter and some skirts for both my daughter and I (my plans are to get my daughter and I going back to church come summertime).

I would say how much I spent on everything, but since I have family members that go to this page I'll leave it by saying I spent less than 20.00 for everything seen above.  It was a good week :).

Menu Plan Monday: Week of 2/23/15

This week's menu might as well be titled, "For love of hamburger"...cause yeah....we're going to be eating a lot of it (one of the few meats I can get cheap on reduced right now).

Menu Plan for Week 2/23/15

• Monday:  Tacos
• Tuesday:  Chicken and Biscuits (I ended up baking a chicken last night instead of following the original menu plan...I'll explain that later, but anyway, we have leftover chicken in the fridge to use up), green beans
• Wednesday:  Spaghetti and meatballs
• Thursday:  Slow Cooker Mustard Pork Roast, roasted carrots, cauliflower pickles, leftover biscuits
• Friday:  Chili
• Saturday:  Pizza
• Sunday:  Hamburgers and oven fries

Breakfast (out of then norm):  Apple Pie Baked Oatmeal
Desserts (out of the norm):  Birthday cake (which we are currently drowning in.  Long story), Lemon icebox cookies (recipe coming along soon).

Frugal Friday (Money Saving Weekly Recap): Week Ending 2/21/15

Since Blogger is FINALLY working for more than two minutes at a time today, I figured I'd share this week's frugal accomplishments.

Here's some ways I saved money this week...

1.  My daughter wanted me to buy a store bought cake to bring to school for her birthday, but instead I made cookies for all of her classmates (and bonus she could carry them with her so I didn't have to disrupt class to bring in a treat).  Recipe for those coming soon.

2.  I finished work on another pot holder to replace my silicone lined one that started melting silicone onto my baking dishes (not too sure, but I'm relatively certain that is not a good thing).  I've decided to start replacing store bought with home made whenever possible and I have to say that these work great and don't burn my hands (instructions for those coming soon as well).  I started making these over the holidays for my daughter's teachers and kinda fell in love with them, so I've been making my own with the yarn I have left from projects over the years.

3.  My husband ran out of the foot cream I'd bought for him at Fred Meyer, which was not cheap (I know it was about 9.00), so instead of buying him more I took some herb infused oils I had around the house and made him a big vat of foot cream.  That should last him a while. I took my recipe from my old blog here and added a bit of shea butter.  It did not work as well with cheap coconut oil, so I had to add a bunch of extra beeswax to make it solid enough to work, but overall it works okay (and yes, I do have all of that stuff around, oddly enough *laugh*).

4.  I made all of our meals at home, with the exception of a birthday dinner for my daughter and for that we used gift cards given to us by a friend as a thank you to my husband for doing some work on his house.  We still have some money left on the gift cards and my daughter had a great birthday, so it worked out.

And there you have it folks.  Some of my frugal accomplishments this week.  How did you do?

Chicken Fried "Steak" (Made With Hamburger)

Here's a recipe that came out of, literally, a want to have beef for dinner, but knowing that steak would cost the same price as a small car (I feel like the main character from "Trancers" these days, "Beef?!?  From a cow?!?").  I thought and thought of something other than tacos or hamburgers or the usual "stuff" to do with hamburger and I came up with this.

I really liked it, my husband thought I should have just made hamburgers I think (he's a big burger fan).  But, it was a different dinner anyway, and economical.  So, I thought I'd share.

If you are gluten free, by the way, just use your favorite gluten free AP flour for this or even brown rice flour (gives you a more light breading, but I've done it a lot myself).

Chicken Fried "Steak" (Made With Hamburger)

• 1 Cup AP Flour
• 2 tablespoons kosher salt (if using regular table salt, reduce to 1 TBS)
• 2 1/2 tablespoons paprika 
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 4 Hamburger patties, pressed very thin if you can (I mix about 1 tsp salt and pepper into my hamburger meat before I form the patties too, so the seasoning goes throughout the meat).  For 4 hamburger patties I think I used about 1/4 pound of meat.

Procedure:

Mix flour (I honestly eyeball the amount, but I'd say 1 cup is pretty close) and seasonings in a container and then dump into a pie tin.  Dredge (carefully of course) both sides of the hamburger patties in the flour mixture.

Meanwhile heat about 1/4 inch of oil in a deep skillet (I use my 12 inch cast iron skillet for this) to about 375 degrees F (I just wait until I'm pretty sure it's nice and hot, honestly).

Place hamburgers carefully in the oil and cook until golden brown on both sides (the hamburgers are going to look dark, just as a warning, as the paprika browns dark) and hamburgers are done in the middle.  If you get your patties thin enough a couple of minutes per side will be enough, but if thicker it will take longer (obviously).  Either way, cook to an internal temperature of 160 degrees F.

Serve with your favorite sawmill gravy recipe, or a brown gravy will work in a pinch as well (what I served here).

I like to serve my chicken fried "steak" with mashed potatoes and a salad (in this case it was fruit salad).

Rebuilding a Pantry on 25.00 a Week (Week 7)

This week's 25.00 pantry rebuild was a bunch of awesome scores that I got at Carrs on clearance and on in-store sale.

• 2 boxes of corn taco shells 50% off: .98
• 1 box instant dry milk on clearance 50% off:  2.24
• 1 Jar Classico Pasta Sauce on clearance 50% off:  .15 (I'll get into that in a minute)
• 1 Can olives on clearance 50% off:  .49
•  2 Jugs Welch's Grape Juice:  2.50 a piece on sale (in store sale on those)

The best score this time around was definitely the pasta sauce.  It was 50% off and the original price was 3.00 and something.  But, I was surprised to find the jar cost me .15 when I looked at my receipt, because I'd had a Just 4 U price of 1.00 and some change on the pasta sauce and I had a manufacturer coupon loaded on my card on top of it.  Once the discounts and coupons stacked I walked out with a .15 thing of pasta sauce.  Those are the types of things that make your day just that much brighter.

I had a personalized price on the olives for .99 (although I'm pretty sure the can said .99 on it anyway, so maybe it was on sale?) and so once the 50% off came into play it was .49.

And the taco shells were just an awesome find.  I got the only two boxes that they had on reduced for 50% off.  I had a personalized price loaded on my card for .99 a box for the corn shells, so once the 50% off was taken into account I got them for .49 a box!  The original price on them was only like 1.19 a box anyway, so it wasn't THAT big of a price difference for my Just 4 U price, but I was still over the moon about it.

So, all total for the pantry this week:  8.86

So, all totaled I had 16.14 left out of my 25.00 for the week.  

None too shabby I'd say!  I would have bought more to make up some of the difference, but honestly I've been shopping twice a week (milk run is the second trip for the most part), so what I find on my "small" shopping trip for milk or my big shopping trip for the week is how my 25.00 gets spent (or not spent) for that week.

I was also going to use some of the remainder to buy a 25 lb bag of AP flour, but found a 5 gallon bucket full of flour in with the last of my food storage (we were following a gluten free diet for a while, so I had put it away for safe keeping).  If you would want to buy a 25 lb bag of flour at Costco or another bulk store it really is not bad at all (8.00 and something was the price when we went to Costco last week).