Food at $75 Part 2 and Pinto Beans Cheap and Easy

I'm still roaming' my other bogs. I realized I did not quite complete my talk about groceries at %150 a paycheck, so I have a Part 2. BTW- I really welcome more ideals from you all over there as to how you save money so please comment!
Also, I have been asked by a few friends how I do my beans. The recipe is in the Cupboard.
OH, and you have to check this out...it's so cool!

Pumpkins, Recipes and a Blog Tag

We had a great pumpkin farm day this year. Unfortunately we don't have a lot of great pics though. Princess was feeling sick and had a bad headache. By the time the trip was nearly over she was in the car with a fever. She ended up having what Superkid did last week. These long incubation periods bug me because you think it's over but it's not. She did good just to be trying to smile in the photos. Lilo was fighting off tears moments before these were taken (the first two anyway) because we were not able to fit in the hay ride this year. So, they sat on the tractor for a pic and had to try to look their happiest. They did have a great time the rest of the day though. We were so glad Rick was able to go and we went with the G. family from church (not sure if you use last names Christina...so being careful:)

The yearly tradition of a honey stick is always appreciated too.:)
We came home and made Chocolate Pudding Cake to top off the day! Superkid was thinking it was heavy, thus the strain to smile for the picture. :)*

We came home and incorporated the tiny pumpkins into the dining room decor. Wow, lovin' the orange. The do get carried around and played with most of the time too. When I talked about baking the larger ones, Superkid acted like I was going to murder something. I told him, we would wait until the last minute possible before the pumpkin would be going bye bye anyway. I think he things they last forever.
After the pumpkin farm, we went to get apples with our friends and now have some great crispy sweet ones in the fridge. I'm hoping to post some apple recipes in the Cupboard soon. In the meantime there are a bunch of new ones:
Florentine Chicken Ring

Chili Skillet
Trial Mix Cookies (originally from Christina)Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

And...finally today...I'm getting FINALLY to a blog tag from my friend Nicole. Sorry it's taken me so long Nicole!

Rules:
1. Post the rules on your blog.
2. Write six random things about yourself.
3. Tag six people at the end of your post.
4. If you are tagged, JUST DO IT, and pass the tag along.

Six Random thing about me:
1. I have to put lotion on my hands every time I fold laundry. Otherwise, I hate the way the static in the clothes feels on my hands.
2. I can't seem to get through a movie anymore. I can strain my eyes to watch one episode after another online for Lost, or CSI, or Heroes , but movies has lost my attention. If I do watch it, is is nearly always in two segments.
3. I am trying to grow my hair down past my back. I'm half way there.
4. I sometimes hate that my brain thinks too much. Sometimes it wears even me out, but there is no off button.
5. I'm achin' to make some apple cider in my crockpot soon. I found some cinnamon sticks in my spice cabinet and will be putting it on my next grocery list to get apple juice and lemons.
6. I have never completely fit in to one group anywhere in my life. I always manage to find a faithful handful of friends. Wow, that's pensive. I'm all deep now.

If your a blogging buddy...tag, you it.:)


Well, gotta run and make another batch of those trail mix cookies before the kids get home from school. They ate them all yesterday! Good thing they are healthy.

Menu In The Cupboard

Monday's my brain is on food. It's the day I fine tune the menu, and if it's needed, look over coupon deals, and shop for groceries. Every other Monday is only fine tuning whats in the house till pay day. That is this week. So, I thought I'd take the time to start posting the menu. It's in The Cupboard , along with links if the item has a recipe in the Cupboard as well. Please let me know if you have trouble with any of the recipes or if you kick them up a notch!

Thank you for sending me some food links Christina and Christy! That's my next step is adding that to blog. I have to do one thing at a time right now to avoid being in front of the computer too much. Now...off to make that Tuscan Bean Soup and throw it in the crock pot cause I'm off to Tricia's house after picking the girls up from school!

Some Tid Bit's and Pictures

Some announcements first:

If you read often here, feel free to join the new "followers" group on the left side bar. I personally feel they should have chose a better term than "followers".... this is no movement people, just my brain and life in type...nothing more. "Readers" would have sufficed! Anyway, it's a new fun feature through blogger I thought I'd try out.

This week I hope to add some new features to The Cupboard. One will be my menus for the week or two weeks even at times with links if the recipe is on there (I'm really hoping to slowly excel the content of that site), and second will be a link list for some other favorite recipe sights. Please, if you have links you love, let me know here and I'll check them out! I'm looking for links that allow you to throw together what you have left in your cupboards and make a dinner with it. I know some of you know those....where are they?

If you did not read the previous (long) post. You may want to to understand what I'm hoping to write during the week.

So...on to pics.

Last week today, we went with my friend Shonda to the Dennis the Menace Park in Monterey. Her goal was to have a family outing day and escape our 108* temps. It worked. It was gorgeous there! I debated going because last week was my funk week and I had so much housework to do. Then, I remembered my favorite poem on my wall:

"cleaning and scrubbing can wait for tomorrow,

for babies grow p, we've learned to our sorrow."

And I knew the housework would always be there...so I went.

It was so fun!

Here are the pics.

Lilo loved the rock climbing wall.

Lilo and Superkid
Lilo and Superkid on the big beautiful train.
Superkid striking a pose for mommy.

The very fun shrub maze.
Superkid is hiding from some boys he's playing hide and seek with.

The train
Lilo with Dennis the Menace

Princess on the long bridge.
The view of the park from the long bridge.
The Monterey Bay in the very far distance.
Superkid
Princess going down the wiggle slides.

For some reason blogger is not letting me put up the last three pics. I will try to put them in a separate post.

Perfect Bread Machine Whole Wheat

I am trying hard....hard to be frugal, and the wheat prices have finally trickled down to the supermarkets. The other day I bought some cheap bread and it was so sad, it was collapsed before I got home and it was not even near stuff to squish it! Sad. I love TJ's bread but I've noticed it dries out fast and even molds faster than my own stuff. It's had a few days traveling before it gets to me. I go through spurts when it comes to bread. I almost got rid of my bread machine because I was doing the multiple loaf in the oven thing through the fall last year. However, something told me to not be impulsive on this one and I'm glad I listened to that voice. See, when it's 107* you just don't feel like baking, so I've pulled out my little helper and she is turnin' out some great loaves.

The other problem I was having was with whole wheat not being fluffy enough for my little picky one who does not like chewing more than she has to evidently.

Here is my perfect formula right now for everyday sandwich bread:

3 cups whole wheat flour (I mill mine....store bought should work too)

1/4 cup gluten (you could leave this out if you just milled it because gluten levels are high...also, get in bulk if you can to make it cheaper)

1 1/8 cup warm water

3 Tbs. Canola Oil

3Tbs. Honey

1 tsp salt

2 tsp yeast

No, I don't use dry milk, and I don't use butter. Oil is cheaper and milk does not make enough difference to me and we would rather have it on our cereal thank you very much!:)

Order to put in machine is my own way:

water

honey

yeast (why? yeast loves sugar...makes it happy. it does NOT like salt so we want to keep it away from it's enemy)

flour

gluten

salt

I'm hoping to add this to the Cupboard soon. I've had so little time for my other blogs lately (like the past six months:). I'm also hoping to get some awesome home made ranch on there soon.
Oh, and I'm putting some local alerts on What's The Deal in an hour or so unless something else happens to me in life, which is a possibility.:)

(I borrowed the pic from Google, but it looks like that:)

Let's Talk Food

It's Wednesday and I see no one has a recipe yet for breakfast........
okay, lets just try a favorite recipe. Does anyone have anything that's a favorite they would like to pass on. A great, works every time and brings much happiness to the pallet recipe? Do you guys like to cook? Hmmmm....

I beefed up The Cupboard again. A new look, a little change. Ah, nice.


I love Pyrex so I found a cute pic to top off the new look just right. I was going vintage kitchen...let me know what you think.





So, I want to kick off the site with a bunch of new recipes. I'm going to go by category and I will post your recipe on the Cupboard blog to share with all! If you have a pic paste the URL for it on your comment with your recipe and I will post that too!





So, Let's Start with breakfast. What is one of your favorite breakfast recipes? One of mine is this one. It can be coffee cake, egg bakes, muffins, special pancakes, quiche...whatever!!


Just post your favorite one on comments here or you can email me at happyhomebody@yahoo.com.


Thanks, I look forward to it!