Quick and Easy Breakfasts

Dear Readers,

In today's newsletter, you'll find more quick and easy breakfast recipes and tips.

Today on the blog, we are talking about the cost of Sweet Tea. If this is a favorite drink in your house run over to the blog and check it out.

Have a wonderful weekend!

-Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com

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If you would like to reprint any of the articles, tips or recipes from our newsletters for your newsletter (print or on-line), website or blog you may as long as you credit and link back to www.LivingOnADime.com .

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Today's Tips:

• Keep a large container of cinnamon and sugar mixed together (about 1 tsp. cinnamon to each 1/2 cup sugar) to use for all kinds of things. Pour in a shaker and use for cinnamon toast, sprinkle on French toast or oatmeal. When you need it for recipes like today's biscuit recipe, pour some in a bowl to roll them in. You can also pour it in a bowl to roll snicker doodle cookies or balls of bread dough for making monkey bread.
  


• You don't have to buy frozen waffles and pancakes. Make your own and freeze them. When you have time, make a double batch, one to eat and one to freeze. If you prefer, just place those three or four leftover pancakes you always have in a bag and freeze. Keep adding to the bag and at the end of a couple of weeks you will have enough for a whole meal. You can also use them for snacks for the kids.
  


• If your family loves banana muffins try adding a few chocolate chips to your batter for a special occasion or just for something different. Don't forget-- you can make any muffin batter special by adding different things like dried fruits, white chocolate chips or butterscotch chips to it.
  


• When making monkey bread or any recipe that calls for cutting dough, try using your pizza cutter. It makes the job quick and easy!
  

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At almost 500 pages, Dining On A Dime includes over 1200 recipes and tips like these to help you keep more of your money.

The recipes are easy to cook and can be made with ingredients you can actually find at your local grocery store!

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Today's Recipes:

This week, I am continuing to give you breakfast recipes. Some of these are old stand-bys, which may be very simple to some of you. I'm including them here because we can get overwhelmed with the millions of recipes we have to choose from and can forget that our families often love the old favorites.

All of these recipes but the monkey bread can be found in our Dining of a Dime cookbook.

Cinnamon Biscuits

1 can refrigerator buttermilk biscuits
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) margarine, melted
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 cup sugar

Mix cinnamon and sugar. Roll biscuits in melted margarine and then in cinnamon and sugar mix. Place in an 8x8 pan. If you have any margarine left, pour it over the top of the biscuits. Bake at 375° for 10-12 minutes or until brown. Serve warm.

Refrigerator Donuts

1 can refrigerator buttermilk biscuits
Oil for frying
1 cup powdered sugar or 1 cup granulated sugar and
1 tsp.cinnamon

Place sugar into a sack (I use a paper sack but you can use plastic), so that it is ready to use. Punch a hole in the center of the biscuit either with you finger or a doughnut hole cutter. Heat oil to 350° on medium heat. Drop donuts in oil and fry until golden brown. Then flip to the other side until brown. Set on a paper plate or towel while you place more donuts in the pan. Then, while the second set is cooking, shake the previously cooked donuts in the sack with the sugar to coat them.

Note: The sugar that is left in the sack can be saved in the sack and reused the next time.

Breakfast Sausage

Years ago, I asked myself, "Why should I make my own sausage?" until my daughter made this recipe. Then I fell in love with homemade sausage. It is amazingly easy to make-- even easier than meatloaf or meatballs. You can use or store it just like regular sausage after you make it.

1 lb. ground pork
1/4-1 tsp. sage (to taste)
1/4-1/2 tsp. marjoram
1/4-1/2 thyme (optional)
1 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
1-3 Tbsp. water

Mix and knead until blended. Refrigerate in an air tight container for 2-3 days for flavors to blend. Make into patties and fry until golden brown.

Banana Monkey Bread

1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
2 cans buttermilk biscuits, quartered
2 bananas, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup nuts (pecans or walnuts)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 400°. Grease a loaf pan well.*

Place sugar and cinnamon in a bag and mix. Add biscuits, bananas and nuts. Coat well with sugar and pour into pan. In a sauce pan, melt butter and brown sugar until dissolved. Add vanilla and then pour over biscuits in the pan. Bake 30-40 minutes until golden. Let set for 10 minutes before serving.

*Note: Bake on a cookie sheet covered with foil because this sometimes boils over and it will make the cleanup easy.

*If you find that it is too sweet for your taste, you can cut the brown sugar and butter in half.

Old Fashioned Chicken Pot Pie, Marinated Tomato Salad and Sour Cream Apple Squares

Hi Everyone!

In today's newsletter, you'll find a delicious menu, including a wonderful old fashioned chicken pot pie recipe and a "quick" version for when you need a great meal fast!

Today over on the blog we are talking about tithing. You'll also find a link to our 2009 budget there so be sure to check it out.

Enjoy today's newsletter!

-Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com

Permissions:

If you would like to reprint any of the articles, tips or recipes from our newsletters for your newsletter (print or on-line), website or blog you may as long as you credit and link back to www.LivingOnADime.com .

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Today's Tips:

• When I boil my chicken for something like chicken salad and I don't need the broth I always freeze the broth to use later in recipes like the Old Fashioned Chicken Pot Pie. To make things easier and faster I measure the broth in 1 cup containers or measure it in the amount I need for my favorite recipes.
  


• Add your own spices to canned foods to make them taste more homemade. In the second pot pie recipe in today's newsletter we add thyme to the canned soup. You could add some grated cheese to cheese soup or chunks of leftover chicken to chicken and rice soup. You can add vanilla, peppermint, orange or any flavor you like to canned frosting to make it taste more homemade.
  


• Add your own extras to frozen things too. Sprinkle a little extra cheese, pineapple, mushrooms, and olives or add some leftover hamburger, ham, and chicken to a frozen pizza or lasagna.
  


• Chicken Measurements:
  
  
  • One 2 1/2 -3 lb chicken = 2 1/2 = 3 cups cooked
    
  
  
  • Two chicken breast (1 1/2 lb. with skin and bones) = 2 cups cooked
    

Today's Menu:

Today's menu includes Chicken Pot Pie. Don't be afraid of it. There really isn't a big mystery in making this good old-fashioned dish and it is quite simple. If you need a recipe that is faster, I will also give you our instant version from the Dining on a Dime Cookbook. If you use leftover chicken, the quick version takes only 5 minutes to mix and pop in the oven.

Old Fashioned Chicken Pot Pie*
Marinated Tomato Salad*
Sour Cream Apple Squares*

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Learn to save, stretch and get more for your food dollars!

Grocery Shopping On A Budget includes lots of tips to reduce your grocery bill, menus and recipes to get you in and out of the kitchen fast, tips to help you save on meats and cleaning supplies and more. Learn More Here!

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Today's Recipes:

*Old Fashioned Chicken Pot Pie

1 1/2 cups fresh mushrooms, sliced
1 cup fresh carrots, sliced
1/2 cup onions, chopped
1/3 cup butter or margarine
1/3 cup flour
1 /1/2 cups chicken broth
1 1/2 cups milk
4 cups chicken, cooked, cubed
1 cup frozen peas
1 tsp. salt
1 can refrigerator biscuits*

In a saucepan, saute mushrooms, carrots and onions in butter. Sprinkle with the flour and gradually add broth and milk. Blend, bring to a boil and cook 2 minutes or until thickened. Add chicken, peas and salt. Pour into well greased 2 1/2 qt. baking dish.
Top with biscuits. Bake uncovered at 400° 15-20 minutes until biscuits are golden brown.

*You could make homemade biscuits to use in this recipe, if you like.

Chicken Pot Pie

This is the pot pie recipe from our Dining on a Dime Cookbook. In the book it calls for using biscuit mix biscuits but I am going to use canned biscuits today, which will allow you to make the whole thing in less then 20 minutes, including the baking time. This is a great way to use leftover chicken, turkey and veggies.

1 2/3 cups frozen veggies, thawed
1 1/2 cups chicken or turkey, cooked, cubed
1 (10 3/4 oz.) can cream of chicken soup
1/4 tsp. dried thyme
1 can refrigerator biscuits (8 biscuits)

Combine everything in a greased 9 inch pie plate. Top with biscuits. Bake 15-20 minutes at 400° until biscuits are golden and veggies tender. Serves 4-6.

*Marinated Tomato Salad

Marinade

1/4 cup oil
1 Tbsp. sugar
3 Tbsp. vinegar
2 tsp. parsley, finely chopped
1 tsp. green onion, finely chopped
1/8 tsp. garlic salt
1/8 tsp. dried basil
Dash dried oregano
Dash pepper

Salad

12 cherry tomatoes
4 cups torn lettuce
1/2 cup croutons
2 oz. Swiss cheese slices, cut into strips

In a large bowl, mix marinade ingredients. Add tomatoes and stir to coat. Cover and chill 8 hours or overnight. Just before serving, drain tomatoes, reserving marinade. Add salad ingredients and add more marinade to moisten.

*Sour Cream Apple Squares

2 cups flour
2 cups firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 cup nuts
1-2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup (8 oz.) sour cream
1 tsp. vanilla
1 egg
2 cups apples (2 med. apples), peeled and finely chopped

Preheat oven to 350°. Mix first 3 ingredients on slow speed until crumbly. Press 2 1/4 cups of the mixture into a ungreased 9x13 pan. To remaining mixture add everything else but apples and mix well. Stir in apples. Spoon over base. Bake 25-30 minutes until toothpick inserted in middle comes out clean.

You can serve this with whipped topping, ice cream, caramel sauce or all three.

Homemade Christmas Cookies - December 4, 2008

Good morning!

Don't forget to check out the "Grocery Shopping on a Budget" e-course! It is available at the introductory price with all of the bonus items until Tuesday, Dec.9th. Learn about it here. Several readers asked if it was available in print form but, unfortunately, we only have them as e-books.

We are adding new Christmas money saving and organizing tips every day the blog. Through Christmas, we'll be including them every day on top of our regular recipes and tips. If you have a Christmas Tip or recipe to share, please send it our way and we'll post it on the blog.

So far we are moving along on our Christmas shopping. I was able to get several things for free using gift cards from my SwagBucks. For a tightwad, free is the best way to buy Christmas gifts! LOL To try it yourself, check it out here.

If you are wondering what SwagBucks are, you can read my blog post about it here.

One last thing: I am looking for a good gazpacho recipe or something similar. I haven't been feeling all that great so veggies are the last thing I want to eat. I was thinking if I could drink them in a soup or V-8 type concoction then that might help. So far the recipes I have tried haven't been that great. If you have any you could send my way I would be most grateful!

Have a great day and enjoy mom's wonderful cookie tips!

-Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com

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Homemade Christmas Cookies

Start Now

If you haven't already started baking your holiday cookies you need to do it now. At the very least you can get a head start on things with a little planning.

• List what cookies you want to bake for the holidays.
  


• Divide the list into cookies you will give away, cookies for parties, cookies for school activities, etc. and also list the ones you will be serving for your own family closer to Christmas.
  


• Make the list of ingredients you will need and then go buy them so you will have them on hand. Stock your pantry.
  

Get as much as you can done ahead of time (now).

• Most cookie dough can be refrigerated or frozen so mix as many batches as you can. Some great doughs for this are basic chocolate chip or sugar cookie dough. You can take these two and add almost anything to them: chips, dried fruit, candy etc.
  


• Freeze the dough in small batches. If you only want to bake one or two cookie sheets at a time you don't have to thaw the whole batch. I do this all year around. I keep small rolls of dough in my freezer. When I hear the grandkids are on their way, I pull out the dough and have a hot pan of cookies when they get here. It makes the house smell good for them, too.
  


• If you will be using colored sugar or coconut, mix it up now. To make either one, place the sugar or coconut into jars with a couple of drops of food coloring and shake. Store it in there until ready to use.
  


• If you love shortbread and like to give it as gifts, do it now and store in an airtight container. Shortbread cookies are one of those cookies which are better if they are aged for at least a couple of weeks.
  

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Baking

• Be sure to use what the recipe calls for, whether it is butter, shortening or margarine and never use margarine that is whipped, soft spread or reduced fat. Your cookies will spread everywhere if you do.
  


• Pre-heat your oven
  


• It is best to bake only one sheet of cookies at a time but if you must do more, leave a couple of inches around the sheets for air circulation.
  


• Let the baking sheet cool between batches because placing dough on a hot sheet can make the cookies spread too much.
  


• If your recipe calls for oatmeal or nuts, toast them before using them.
  


• Fill a container that has large holes (like a sugar shaker) with flour to sprinkle your board before rolling out cookies.
  


• Make sure when you roll out cookies to cut that they are all the same thickness. Each individual cookie must not have thin or thick spots either or they will bake unevenly. You can buy rubber bands to put on your rolling pin to get an exact thickness, but they are expensive.
  
  I have always used 2 strips of cardboard (the thickness that I need) covered in foil and just lay them on each side of the dough with each edge of the rolling pin laying on a strip.
  


• If you don't have cookie cutters or enough time to use them, just roll out your cookies and cut in squares or diamond shapes with a pastry cutter or pizza cutter. Sprinkle with colored sugar and bake.
  


• Use a wire cheese cutter to slice chilled refrigerator cookie dough.
  


• If you are making huge batches of cookies and do a lot of baking, you might try using old oven racks to cool them on. Just place something under each corner to make sure it is raised up slightly off of the table.
  

Storing and Shipping

• Cookies keep very well for a very long time without freezing. Most cookies don't have ingredients the health department calls "toxic" (their words not mine) and are very safe to keep for long periods.
  


• Always completely cool cookies before storing and never store crisp cookies and soft cookies together. Store soft cookies in an air tight container and crisp cookies in a container with a loose lid.
  


• I find that tins work best for storing cookies because sometimes the cookies pick up the flavor of plastic ware if it was previously used to store something like spaghetti with garlic. This is especially true if the cookies have a lot of butter.
  


• If you have cookies that have ingredients like cream cheese, they will need to be stored in the fridge, but the recipe will usually tell you if you need to do this.
  


• You can freeze cookies up to 3 months.
  


• When shipping cookies, be sure to give them plenty of time to get there and always mark "perishable" on the package.
  


• Soft moist cookies, cookie bars and drop cookies ship the best.
  


• Metal tins are really the best shipping container for cookies, but if you don't have one then a sturdy cardboard box will work. Line the box with plastic wrap or foil then place the cookies in it. Crumble up wax paper to place on top sides or anywhere you need cushioning. I then slip the whole thing into 1 or 2 plastic bags.
  
  I wrap that box in bubble wrap and place inside another box. You could also use newspaper, peanuts or even popcorn for cushioning at this point.
  

Misc. Tips

• Cookie ingredients can be very expensive, especially for Christmas cookies. If you need to save money, choose your family's favorites that have the least expensive ingredients.
  
  For example, my family loves sugar cookies about the same as chocolate chip cookies. The sugar cookies cost much less because they don't have things like chocolate chips and nuts in them, so I would bake the sugar cookies.
  


• Another way to save on ingredients is to use less of things like nuts and baking chips. You really can get by with putting half a bag of chips instead of a whole one into chocolate chip cookies. The same goes for nuts. If that same recipe calls for 1 cup of nuts, use just 1/2 cup.
  


• When giving cookies as a gift, make them look more attractive by putting them in cellophane bags and tying with a ribbon.
  


• Instead of just slapping cookies on a platter for your Christmas dinner or party, add a couple of votives or one large candle in the center of the platter for a more festive look.
  


• Save those dried out cookies or that handful of leftover cookies. Freeze them and use them in place of any recipe or dessert that calls for a graham cracker crust.