This is just a little reminder for everyone to take your turkeys out to start thawing Friday or Saturday if it is about a 20 lb turkey. I would start thawing all turkeys at the latest on Sunday. I like to have my turkey thawed at least a day or two ahead of time so I can get it all prepared, in the pan and ready to just pull out and stick in the oven. I have so many things to do the day before Thanksgiving that this is one less thing to worry about.

For all you new or inexperienced cooks be sure to take out the “guts” or giblets as most people call them and neck which are usually stuffed inside of the turkey.

If you are needing to dry bread for your stuffing lay it out this week end to get good and dry. Break it up, place it in the bowl you are going to be mixing it in and have that much done ahead of time.

This week end get your linens for the table washed and ironed and your silverware and dishes organized.

Do as much as you can ahead of time. Clean the veggies for the relish dish and salads or sides on Wed.

If you are making something like a sweet potato casserole get it all prepared and ready on Wed. so all you have to do on Thanksgiving is to pop it in the oven.

If you don’t want to be mashing potatoes two minutes before you sit down; mash them and place them in a crock pot on low to keep warm. You can keep them in there beautifully for 1 hour but no more because past that they get “yucky” fast.

Most of all for you new cooks or those of you doing your first Thanksgiving don’t panic. It is really no different or harder then any other regular meal, you just are maybe preparing more of everything.

If you are really nervous do a trial run this week end. Practice by roasting a chicken, making mashed potatoes, do one or two sides and a dessert. It’s just like a mini Thanksgiving.

If something goes wrong and most of us have had something happen once in awhile just laugh about it. It usually is the Thanksgiving everyone will remember and they will remember it with fond happy memories. It will give you something to tell your future daughter in law, granddaughter or daughter about.

I remember being so scared my first Thanksgiving cooking alone. My friend who was older and going to be one of my guests told me how on her first Thanksgiving everything was perfect, the table looked great everyone was laughing, joking and enjoying the food but half way through the meal she noticed something - she had forgotten the turkey. She had set it on top of the fridge to move it out of the way for a minute and had left it there. No one either didn’t notice or were too polite to say anything.

Things happen but you will do fine.

Jill

I have a problem. I have had this same problem for many years and can’t seem to get over it. I know many of you have the same problem. What is it? I love clipping recipes. I can’t stop myself. If I see a good recipe I have to write it down or tear it out because I am convinced I will try it some day. My problem is worse then most because I have the excuse my readers would love this so I will tear and write guilt free now.

Here are two of the latest I have added to my collection. I wanted to share them with you because if I don’t get to make them maybe some of you will. My timing is perfect because this week cream cheese is on sale and either of these would be nice for Thanksgiving or Christmas.

PS. If you use a lot of cream cheese you might want to stock up. It, like cheese, has a very long shelf life and will last you clear into next year.

This first recipe reminds me a little of those yummy pumpkin rolls but without as much work. I would add nuts to this recipe but you don’t have too.

Also you could add a little of cinnamon or nutmeg to some Cool Whip and top each cupcake with that when it is cool or just sprinkle with powdered sugar. Don’t forget too you can add cinnamon to your Cool Whip for your pumpkin or apple pies.

Creamy Pumpkin Cupcakes

1 pkg. spice cake mix

1pkg. (3.4oz) vanilla instant pudding

1 cup canned pumpkin

1 pkg. (8 oz) cream cheese

1/4 cup sugar

1 egg

Mix cake mix as directed on package. Add dry pudding and pumpkin. Mix well. Pour into 24 paper lined muffin cups. Beat cream cheese, sugar and egg together and drop a spoonful into the center of each cupcake. Swirl gently with spoon. Bake at 350 degrees for 18-21 mins.

Phily Apple Crumble

1 pkg. (8 oz) cream cheese, softened

2 2/3 cup vanilla wafers, crushed

4 cups baking apples, chopped and peeled

1/4 cup sugar

2 tsp. cinnamon

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Mix cream cheese and vanilla wafers. Do Not over mix.

in a greased 1 1/2 qt. baking dish mix other ingredients. Sprinkle with cream cheese mix.

Bake 15-20 minutes until golden brown and apples are tender. Serve warm. Store leftovers in fridge.

Do you know how yummy these would be with a cup of coffee or tea on a snowy afternoon with a friend or what they would smell like when the kids come in from school?

Do any of you have a recipe like this?  One you would love to share with a friend or to have with a cup of tea on a winter afternoon? If so pop in and share it with us.

Jill (gaining weight just thinking about these) : )

Just a little reminder for those of you who haven’t peeked at the newsletter yet we are having our big Christmas sell this week. We often get asked when is it going on sale again and the time has now arrived.

We often want our children to be given lots of opportunities, to be exposed to and to try so many things. We spend hours and lots of money taking them to music lessons, karate lessons, football practice, dance lessons so they will be well rounded when they grow up.

Sometimes though we get so busy doing all these things we can forget or don’t have the time to teach them basic life skills. Two of those are cooking and being a wise steward of their money. Dining on a Dime helps with both of those so this Christmas instead of giving your collage age child another CD, DVD or electronic toy why not give them a copy of Dining on a Dime to help and encourage them in both areas.

It would be an unexpected gift for that young man moving out on his own and of course don’t forget your mom, sister or best friend. It would even be fun to give a young girl along with a set of tea towels to add to her hope chest.

If you know someone who has lost their job or are struggling financially right now toss in a copy of Dining along with a bag of groceries to help them learn how to stretch those groceries.

Don’t forget to stock up too for the coming year for birthdays, showers, wedding gifts etc. and as a gift for our older cooks. I’m so surprised at how many seasoned (70, 80 years old) cooks we get who say they have learned so much from Dining.

Hope we can help you get a nice chunk of your holiday shopping done this week and to save while doing it.

Jill

One of the main ways I save on groceries is something every one has done since shopping was invented and that is making the most of things which are on sale. Now I know the first thing you all are thinking is “I know buying on sale saves me money so I don’t need to read this.” But stay with me for a moment.

What I want to do today is to help you get more ideas on how to get the most use of your sale items mainly in the area of groceries.

Last week they had half gallons of chocolate milk on sale for $1.00. That is a really good deal if you consider how much it would cost you to use regular milk and mix it with Nestle’s or Hershey’s syrup. Something like this would be good to stock up on especially since you can freeze it (shake it well when you thaw it). Now so far all I have said is pretty obvious but let me take you a little farther and help you think out of the box.

I don’t drink a lot of chocolate milk which might be the case for many of you so at first you think this really isn’t a good deal for you and your family but let’s look at it and see if you could still make it work for you.

1. If you like cocoa it would be great to use hot with marshmallows or served at a holiday get together.

2. Use for making chocolate pudding one night by replacing regular milk with the chocolate milk.

3. Turn your regular bread pudding recipe (or use the one in Dining on a Dime) and kick it up a notch by replacing the regular milk with the chocolate and adding some chocolate chips.

4. If you find it on sale in the summer make Pudding Pops (also found in Dining..). You just add 1 small pkg. of chocolate pudding to 3 cups of the milk and freeze for extra fudgy popsicles.

5. Replace the regular milk in any chocolate recipe you are making like chocolate cake, cookies, frosting with the chocolate milk.

6. If your love cereal like Cocoa Puffs use the chocolate milk when they eat those. The milk turns chocolaty anyway.

What it amounts to is you are replacing your more expensive regular milk when you can with the cheaper chocolate milk. Now don’t have a heart attack over serving your family chocolate milk. It really won’t hurt to do it for a week or so.

The main point I want to get you to see is to look at the regular things you see on sale all the time in a different light and think how can I use them in a different way or can they be preserved.

Jill

P.S. I just told my mom about my good buy and she said they like to pour a glass of chocolate milk and add a dollop of ice cream to it. She said it tastes just like a Wendy’s frosty. You might like to try it.

Don’t forget to hit the after Halloween sales. You can get many other things there besides candy:

Packages of little toys for party favors.

Cupcake wrappers. Ones with pumpkins can be used all the way through Thanksgiving and if it is just for your family most kids don’t mind if their cupcakes have a pumpkin wrapper on it even in January.

Have a graduation coming at the end of the school year and the school colors have black buy your plates, napkins, streamers etc. now. Do this after each holiday. School colors red (Christmas, Valentines), silver (New Years), green (St. Patties day).

Get costumes for next year or pick up odds and ends if your kids are big into drama. We always kept a costume box. It had a lot of basics; black cape, sword, cowboy hat, cowboy vest, clown wig and nose, black gloves etc.

Check out today’s newsletter for some more ideas. Like one year they had a 24 bag of lunch chips for a dollar. This was cheaper then me packaging them up myself.

Happy Hunting,

Jill

You can’t escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.

Translated in “Jillese” If you pay for something on credit today you will have still have to  pay for it tomorrow. You aren’t getting it for free. The same goes for all those buy now and you don’t have to pay until the year 2011 ads.  Be careful.

I’m not sure why but when we started using credit cards we lost all responsibility for our money. Holiday shopping is already starting so be very careful and think about things each time you pull all that credit card to pay. You will be responsible for it tomorrow (or next month).

That quote goes for other things besides money. You may decide you aren’t going to do the dinner dishes today but trust me they will be there in the morning for you (I hate to be the one to break it to you but there really aren’t any house fairies who come in the night and do them) :) And one day you will have to break down and clean out that closet.

I think you get my drift. It’s Monday so try to get up, make a plan and then work it. Set your home in order for the week.

Jill

I love the big holidays this time of the year, including Thanksgiving and Christmas. In our family we always cook some big holiday meals and I don’t have to tell you that that’s a lot of work, even if you aren’t doing all of the cooking yourself. I started using freezer cooking to allow me to spend more time with my loved ones on the holidays.

Here are a few of the things I make ahead of time and freeze:

Breads and Rolls
There’s just something about homemade bread, rolls, biscuits etc. with a nice holiday meal. Make your dough ahead of time, form your loaves and rolls (or cut out your biscuits) and then freeze them on a cookie sheet. Once they are frozen solid you can toss them in a freezer bag for easy storage. When you’re ready for them pop them in the oven and bake.

Casseroles
Most casseroles freeze well. I would stay away from those containing pasta, but most others will be fine. Prepare and cook your casserole, then freeze. If it has a cheese topping, leave that off. Thaw your casserole in the fridge overnight then bake to reheat.

Pies
I always have a couple of pies in the freezer. I cook them all the way and then just freeze. Most pies can just be thawed on the counter. If the pie has a whipped cream topping, leave it off and add it after the pie has thawed. For pies that taste best warm (think apple pie), briefly reheat them in the oven after they thawed completely.

Remember, it’s easy to make multiple versions of the same dish. This comes in handy when you know you’re supposed to bring a casserole to your mom’s house for Thanksgiving and your sister-in-law’s for the day after Christmas.

I also like multiple versions of side dishes, rolls and desserts in the freezer to go with leftovers. And speaking of leftovers, don’t forget to turn them into freezer dishes as well. No need to eat ham and turkey 7 days a week. Freeze it and use it a month or two from now when you’re actually looking forward to those meals again.
Susanne Myers – The Hillbilly Housewife

P.S. As a special thank you for reading this blog and Tawra and Jill’s newsletter, we put together a deal on my popular Freezer Cooking ebook and the recipe collections I’ve developed for it. Until midnight on October 19th 2009 you can get my entire freezer cooking system for 75% OFF (yes, you read that right)
Here’s where you can grab your entire freezer cooking system for a fraction of what you’d usually pay for it.

Do you ever wish you could take advantage of grocery sales more? How about the last time chicken breast went on sale for example. Unfortunately there’s only so much chicken your family can eat in a week (without complaining). Freezer cooking allows you to take advantage of these sales and enjoy the rewards for weeks to come. Here’s how…

Take a look at grocery sales flyers each week. I like to keep a price book to make sure a sale really is a good deal.
“Price Book – A small notebook you carry in your purse that contains prices of the items you buy most often. It allows you to tell at a glance if something really is a good deal or not”.

If it is, think about how many different meals you could make with that meat that your family enjoys. I usually stick to 4 recipes or less. Let’s look at some examples.

Ground Beef – Spaghetti Sauce, Tacos, Meat Loaf, Beef and Vegetable Soup

Beef Roast – Pot Roast, Sauerbraten, Crockpot Pulled Beef, Beef BBQ Sandwiches

Stew Meat - Beef Stew, Chili, Goulash, Beef and Potato Soup

Whole Chickens - Roasted Chicken, Chicken Salad, Curried Chicken, Chicken Enchiladas

By the way, if more than one meat is on sale, I choose the one that’s the best deal for this.

Next, decide how many of these dishes you can store in your freezer at any given time. It may depend on the size of your freezer, how much is already in there and depending on what you’re cooking how many dishes you have (for casseroles for example). You also want to make sure you only make and freeze dishes you think you and your family will eat within the next 3 months.

Then it’s time to shop. Be sure to get enough of the sale item and all ingredients to cook multiple versions of each of the dishes you’ve decided on. Get them all home and then work on a game plan. Are there any steps that you can combine for all or most of the dishes? In our ground beef example, 3 out of the 4 dishes require me to brown the ground beef first. In this case I’d go ahead and make my meatloaves first and store them in the freezer, then I’d brown the rest of the ground beef in two or three large pans and keep working on the dishes from there.

The more organized you are with this, the smoother the cooking process will be. The first time you do this you may want to focus on making just one or two versions of the dish. As you become more comfortable with it, add more dishes for a maximum of four.
Susanne Myers – The Hillbilly Housewife

P.S. As a special thank you for reading this blog and Tawra and Jill’s newsletter, we put together a deal on my popular Freezer Cooking ebook and the recipe collections I’ve developed for it. Until midnight on October 19th 2009 you can get my entire freezer cooking system for 75% OFF (yes, you read that right)
Here’s where you can grab your entire freezer cooking system for a fraction of what you’d usually pay for it.

The Different Methods Of Freezer Cooking

Susanne, The Hillbilly Housewife here with some more freezer cooking tips. I would like to thank Tawra and Jill for allowing me to be a part of the Living on a Dime blog this week and not only share a thing or two about freezer cooking but also spread the word about Breast Cancer Awareness. Please take some time today to do a manual breast exam (only if you’re a woman of course) and help spread the word during Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Yesterday we talked about how freezer cooking saves time and money , today we’ll dive into the various different ways you can start to freezer cook. My first exposure to this was the Once-A-Month (OAM) method where you cook all dinners for a month over the course of a day or two. It just didn’t work for me and I ended up giving up on freezer cooking completely. Before my daughter was born, I made a few casseroles and soups ahead of time and froze them to have during those busy first few weeks with a newborn.

I was nine months pregnant and constantly tired at the time, so I simply made double and triple batches of things I was already cooking or I would cook a similar dish along with the one I was making for dinner. It worked so well for me and my family that I continue to freezer cook to this day. Over the years developed several different methods of freezer cooking that fit our lifestyle.
Here are some of the most common ways to freezer cook.

Once A Week Or Once A Month Cooking
The main part of your dinner for the week (or even the month) are freezer meals. Your goal with this method is to cook all of them at once. Usually one day is reserved for shopping and one or two days are spent cooking all those meals. If you want to give this a try, I recommend you start with a week or less. It takes a lot of planning and preparation and the cooking day can be quite exhausting. Be sure you don’t have much of anything else going on during the day you are cooking, cooling and freezing all these meals.

Double or Triple Batches
A lot of freezer recipes can easily be doubled or tripled (or even more). Meatloaf for example freezes really well. The next time you make it double your recipe and freeze one for later use before you bake it. When you’re ready to use it just thaw it in the fridge and then bake as usual. This method also works really well for any type of casserole, soup or stew that freezes well.

Cook Along A Meal
When you know you’re going to be spending some time stirring pots, why not make another meal that uses some of the same ingredients. For example, if you’re cooking a beef stew, cook a pot of chili with stew meat at the same time. Allow the chili to cool while you enjoy your beef stew for dinner and then pack it up and freeze it when you’re done.

Cook Once Eat Twice
With this method you cook extra of one dish and then use the leftovers to make a freezer meal for later. A good example of this is meat sauce. If you are making spaghetti one night, make a double batch of meat sauce and put together a lasagna for the freezer after dinner.
Give these various methods of freezer cooking a try and see which one works best for you and your family.

Susanne Myers – The Hillbilly Housewife
http://www.HillbillyHousewife.com

P.S. As a special thank you for reading this blog and Tawra and Jill’s newsletter, we put together a deal on my popular Freezer Cooking ebook and the recipe collections I’ve developed for it. Until midnight on October 19th 2009 you can get my entire freezer cooking system for 75% OFF (yes, you read that right)
Here’s where you can grab your entire freezer cooking system for a fraction of what you’d usually pay for it:

Hi there, I’m Susanne Myers – better known as the Hillbilly Housewife.

This October I’m visiting various frugal living blogs to spread the word about frugal homecooking from scratch, meal planning, freezer cooking and also breast cancer awareness. My grandmother is a breast cancer survivor and I try to do a little something each October to help spread the word and help out breast cancer research foundation financially. This year I decided to donate 20% of all profits from my e-books and HBHW Club sales to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation.
Tawra and Jill were kind enough to invite me to share some of my favorite freezer cooking tips with you right here on the Living on a Dime Blog. Over the next couple of days we’ll talk about how freezer cooking can save you time and money, the different methods of freezer cooking, taking advantage of grocery sales and how freezer cooking can come in handy around the holidays.
Today I want to share with you how freezer cooking saves me not only a lot of cash, but also allows me to spend more quality time with my family, no matter how busy our week is.

Freezer Cooking Saves Money

Freezer cooking allows me to spend a lot less on groceries and it has allowed us to cut out takeout and convenience food almost entirely. Those are a special treat now instead of a necessity on busy days. Instead I make a few extra meals while I’m cooking dinner on nights when we’re not rushed and then stick them in the freezer.

On a busy day, I thaw them in the fridge and then put them in the oven or crockpot to cook while we do homework or just relax for a bit before dinner.
Freezer cooking also allows me to take full advantage of grocery sales. We’ll touch on some aspects of this in a little more detail in another post this week.

Freezer Cooking Saves Time

More importantly though than the financial savings, freezer cooking saves time. There are always ways to scrounge up a little more money if needed, but time is something we can’t get back and when you have young kids, it seems to fly particularly fast.
One of my favorite ways to prepare freezer meals is to cook several batches of the same thing. We have one for dinner and the rest go into the freezer. It doesn’t take hardly any longer to make 4 meatloaves or casseroles than it does to make one and dinner preparation is super-fast on the nights were we heat up the freezer meals, leaving me plenty of time to go read books or play hide-and-go-seak with my six-year-old.

Come back tomorrow and we will get started with some of my favorite tips.
Susanne Myers – The Hillbilly Housewife
http://www.HillbillyHousewife.com
P.S. As a special thank you for reading this blog and Tawra and Jill’s newsletter, we put together a deal on my popular Freezer Cooking ebook and the recipe collections I’ve developed for it. Until midnight on October 19th 2009 you can get my entire freezer cooking system for 75% OFF (yes, you read that right)
You can grab your entire freezer cooking system for a fraction of what you’d usually pay for it just go here.