I’m really not a huge fan of lentils. I try to like them. I try lentil recipes now and then because they’re so healthy and so darned affordable. But honestly, I’ve never been much of a fan. This is a soup recipe for people like me…who don’t really like lentils, but who WANT to like lentils. It’s also a tastey and filling meatless dish, making it perfect for Lent. Print Smokey Lentil and Hominy Soup Author: Ashley M. Recipe type: Soup Cook time: 45 mins Total time: 45 mins Serves: 6-8 servings Ingredients 1 cup lentils 6 cups water (or chicken stock) 2 bay leaves 2 lg garlic cloves, or 2 tsp garlic powder 1 T chopped cilantro 1 T smoked paprika 1 medium onion, chopped 2 medium carrots, chopped 1 celery stalk, chopped 2 cans diced tomatoes, drained 1 15 oz. can hominy, drained Salt and pepper to taste Optional: Grilled chicken or browned italian sausage is great in this soup if you want to add meat. If using water instead of stock, consider adding 2-3 bouillon cubes while cooking lentils. Garnish with fresh cilantro and/or a squeeze of lime. Instructions Rinse lentils Cook them in water or stock, bay leaves, garlic, and cilantro. Bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer for 15 minutes. Set aside, DO NOT drain. In a 6-7 quart soup pot or dutch oven, saute onion, carrots and celery in oil until onions are translucent. Add in diced tomatoes, smoked paprika, and hominy. Add lentils and cooking liquid. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Simmer 20-30 minutes. Optionally garnish with lime and a bit more […]
Frugal Fridays #15
I started off this week kind of slow with a pretty bad migraine (I’ve suffered with hemiplegic migraines since I was a teenager, and they increase in frequency during pregnancy for me). Once I recovered from the migraine, though, I actually had a bit of an energy boost. I think maybe the nesting thing is starting to kick in with 5 weeks left (or less. hopefully less). We’re getting slammed with snow, which is typical for New York winters and doesn’t really phase me much…except that I tend to want to hibernate more than usual. I’m a homebody to begin with, but being hugely pregnant leaves me with very little motivation to climb snow drifts. 😉 Anywho, I think it was a pretty good week overall.: Successes: I dehydrated celery to use in soups. My mom brought over some celery a couple of weeks ago for a snack (veggies and dip), and this was the leftovers. I didn’t want them to go bad, so I chopped it up and dehydrated it. I swapped 4 books on paperbackswap.com and used the credits to purchase more books for our homeschool shelf. I got an e-mail from paperbackswap.com a few weeks ago stating that they were going to start charging .50 cents (or so) for book swaps. At first I was really disappointed, but then I read that if you print your shipping labels/wrappers right from their site, then you get to forgo the fee. I’ve always printed my wrappers on their site anyway, so I’ll continue to swap books for free (plus the cost of shipping, which is usually about $2-3 per book…much cheaper than […]
Frugal Fridays #14
Our lives have been a flurry of doctor’s appointments lately. Midwife prenatal visits, annual check-ups for the kids, ENT and orthodontist consults. We’re also a one-vehicle family at the moment, so I’ve been needing to get up early to drive my husband to work on the days when we have appointments. It’s just been one of those crazy months. When I wake up each morning looking at the mountain of cleaning, laundry, meals to be prepared, appointments to shuttle all of my kids to (because none of them are old enough to stay home yet), the garden that has yet to be planned, seeds that have yet to be started, school lessons to be planned and followed through on…and start to feel defeated before my feet have even hit the floor, I remind myself of Philippians 2:13: “For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to His good will.” Douay-Rheims Bible I can truly only try my best, and accept my own short comings. I’ll never be able […]
Homemade Cleaner Round Up
Cleaning supplies can be pricey and full of mystery ingredients/chemicals. I wanted to share some of the homemade cleaners that I use on a regular basis in my house. ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Dishwasher Detergent: 2 parts Borax and Washing Soda 1 part salt and citric acid (I buy mine here) Use 2 tablespoons per load. I find that using vinegar in the rinse agent compartment helps prevent water spots or cloudiness. Laundry Detergent: (This usually lasts us about 4-5 months for our family of 6, plus we cloth diaper) 3 bars grated soap (I usually use Fels Naptha) 1 Box Borax 1 Box Washing Soda 2 containers of Dollar Tree OxyClean Combine in a large plastic tub and use 2 tablespoons per load (we have a top loader, non-HE washer) Multipurpose Cleaner (I also use this as glass cleaner): Equal parts vinegar and water. Sometimes I will add 20-30 drops of essential oils (lemon, eucalyptus, tea tree, lavender etc.), or infuse the vinegar with citrus peels for added scent and cleaning power. Combine in a spray bottle. Stain Spot Treatment: (Recipe from One Good Thing by Jillee) 2/3 cup dishwashing soap 2/3 cup ammonia 6 Tablespoons Baking Soda 2 Cups warm water Mix all ingredients and combine in a spray bottle. Apply to stains the same way you would any other spot treatment. I have successfully removed these types of stains from our clothing so far: Melted crayon (dryer incident) chocolate tomato sauce a grease stain that had already been washed and dried Underarm sweat stains Dirt Porcelain Sink Cleaner: Baking Soda 2 tablespoons of bleach diluted in 2 cups of water I absolutely […]
Frugal Fridays #13
Successes/Blessings: I was able to barter with a friend. She gave me a pack of onesies, and in return I gave her a container of peanut butter. I know that this friend would have just given me the onesies because she was going to donate them anyway, but I really like bartering whenever possible. I think it’s something that people could/should do more often. It’s old fashioned, but really, people these days are struggling in ways similar to the way they did “back in the day” with too much month at the end of their money. So if I have something that someone needs, and they have something that I need…why not barter?! I made 2 loaves of peasant bread to eat with a pot of soup. I don’t have the correct size pyrex containers that this woman uses, so I just baked the bread in 9 inch pie dishes … like a faux focaccia. My husband and kids go crazy for this bread! We’ve kept the furnace off except at night thanks to the pellet stove. I cleaned out 3 drawers of my dresser to make room for some baby clothes/diapers etc. This is in place of buying another dresser for baby for the time that he is sleeping in our room. I’ll be brainstorming clothing storage ideas for the boys’ room since there will be 4 of them in there! But I wasn’t about to go out and buy a new dresser, or pay $20 for a plastic storage drawers that my boys would inevitably destroy anyway. Someday I’d love a family closet… I got hubby 3 large tubes of […]
Frugal Fridays #12
We are healthy. Finally. It feels good to say that. Cold/flu season isn’t over yet, but hopefully we can stay healthy for the remainder of it. Mostly healthy anyway. I am very much feeling the 3rd trimester at this point, so I’m not able to be as productive as usual, but we’re getting by fine. The house is less clean, the kids are eating more peanut butter and jelly, and I leave my house as few times a week as possible due to lots of low back/pelvic pain (this is typical for me due mostly to the fact that I tend to have pretty big babies. My midwife has confirmed that I’m not dilating or anything like that. So no worries, just discomfort). Starting around week 34, I usually start obnoxious amounts of prodromal labor that doesn’t go away until baby is born. So I’ve got that to look forward to. Yay. 😉 Successes/Blessings: I knitted a sleep sack and a baby cocoon for the little one- pictured above. I didn’t use a pattern for the sack (blue), just kind of went with it, and the yarn was given to me in a box of mystery yarn by a friend of my mom’s. For the cocoon (white and green), I used this pattern. I don’t normally pay for patterns, but this one is going to be for baby’s Baptism, so I didn’t mind a little bit of a splurge. I purchased that yarn on sale and have plenty left over to make another sleep sack and some hats. It was my first time doing colorwork. Aside from a bit of puckering, I think it […]
Frugal Fridays #11
We’ve finally started to turn the corner with this virus that’s been coursing through our house since December 26th. We’re not totally healthy yet, but the fevers and constant runny noses are gone, the ear infections and pink eye are healed, and just a typical cough remains. Thank God! I hope this is the last time we’re sick this season, as I’m about 9 weeks out from my due date and really need to be healthy when baby comes. I also need to be healthy enough to start getting things in order for his arrival. I need to sew some sheets for the play yard, and crochet some baby cocoons. I also need to buy a new car seat, and some baby socks and onesies. And I’m hoping and praying to have the extra time, energy, and money to stock up a few freezer meals. We’ll see. 😉 Here is my frugal report for the week: Successes/Blessings: We used a gift card to purchase more pellet fuel. We ordered a pallet (52 bags) at the end of Summer, but we’ve already burned through that. Next year we’ll need to save up enough to purchase 2 pallets worth. Even though the wind chills have dipped to -25 degrees, we’ve managed to keep our furnace off most of the time thanks to our pellet stove! I made a large batch of laundry detergent. I use this recipe, minus the Purex crystals. I earned 2 credits on paperbackswap.com when I posted a couple of old books I found in my closet. I used the credits to purchase books that we’ll be reading next in our US […]
Treating a Ear Pain Naturally
It’s the worst feeling in the world when your kids are sick and you’re limited in what you can do to help them. This winter has been a doozy for us. We’ve been sick almost nonstop, regardless of any preventative and natural remedies we’ve put into place. I’m not one to run to the pediatrician’s office at the first sign of illness. Two of my 4 kids have never been on antibiotics before. Not because I’m staunchly anti-antibiotic or anything. It’s just that we haven’t needed them. We don’t get sick often, and when we do get sick, it’s usually something that I can treat at home. But in this case, my 2 year old’s fever was getting pretty high, and he was in a lot of discomfort and had been getting progressively worse despite all of my mama-made efforts and prayers. So, we went to the pediatrician, who confirmed my suspicion. We had a viral respiratory bug (aka: a nasty cold), which had caused bacterial infection in little man’s ear and eyes. He wrote us a prescription for “the pink stuff” to help with the ear infection, and antibiotic eye drops for the eye goop. However, he also told me that a lot of the pink eye and ear infections he’s treated this season have been very antibiotic resistant. In some cases it has taken 3 rounds of antibiotics to kick them. So if we didn’t see any improvement in 48 or so hours, to call him and we’d try something else. Great. So we went home and gave him his first dose and then settled in for the night. Around 2am, I heard […]
Creamy Butternut Squash and Broccoli Pasta (An *almost* one-pot dish!)
This recipe evolved out of many of the One Pot dishes that I’ve been seeing on Pinterest lately. I was looking for a pasta dish that was creamy, but didn’t require a lot of heavy cream or butter, both for nutritional and budgetary reasons. I also had particular veggies in mind that I’d like to use, namely butternut squash and broccoli, because that’s what’s in season right now and affordable. So this is what I came up with…and it was a real hit! The kids loved it, and my husband was pleasantly surprised – he gets a little skeptical whenever he sees more than one veggie in the same dish ;). Cooking the pasta in the milk makes it quite creamy, but the butternut squash adds even more creaminess without the added guilt or expense. 5.0 from 1 reviews Print Creamy Roasted Butternut Squash and Broccoli Pasta (An *almost* one-pot dish!) Author: Ashley M. @ www.growpraybuild.com Ingredients 1 small butternut squash, peeled and chopped Oil for roasting Salt and pepper to taste 1 pound frozen broccoli 4 Cups Chicken Broth 2 Cups milk 4 tablespoons butter 1 lbs pasta of choice (uncooked, I like farfalle) ½ cup parmesan cheese dash garlic powder Salt and pepper to taste Instructions Preheat oven to 375. Peel and dice the butternut squash in ½ inch cubes. Toss in oil, salt and pepper, and spread in a single layer on a cookie sheet. (Tip: I like to line the cookie sheet with parchment paper if I have it as the squash tends to stick.) Roast the squash for about 20-25 minutes, stirring every so often. At the 20 minute mark, […]
Frugal Fridays #10
Oh my goodness! This winter has been tough on us with all the colds. It started the day after Christmas, and hasn’t let up yet. We’ve been doing all the natural and homemade remedies, but it just doesn’t seem to be cutting it. I finally broke down and pulled out the Lysol and bleach to disinfect the house when it became apparent that the vinegar and essential oils were not going to kick this thing. I also had to take the 2 year old to the pediatrician when his cold turned into pink eye and a bad ear infection. This is the first time in almost 4 years that any of my kids have been on antibiotics, just to show you how stubborn this thing is! Since I’ve been running around for the last nearly 3 weeks either being sick myself or taking care of sick kiddos/husband, I haven’t accomplished most of the goals I’d hoped to accomplish. That’s okay, though. There will be time for projects and to-do lists later…right now my kiddos just need a mama to cuddle them and take care of them. Successes/Blessings: We ate leftovers for several lunches and dinners this week. We’ve been eating a lot of soups, which I’ve made double or triple batches of because I knew I wasn’t going to have a ton of time to be in the kitchen with all of these sick babies around. I stopped for coffee after a midwife appointment, and they made a mistake with mine. They realized the mistake before they even handed me my coffee and remade it for me…and gave me both! So I was able to […]
