With Thanksgiving and the December holiday season right around the corner I’ve been thinking about great holiday moments I’ve enjoyed growing up as a kid.

Inevitably many of these moments revolved around the kitchen – memories of family and relatives laughing, talking, and joking as they prepared mouthwatering ham, succulent turkey and delicious side dishes like sweet corn, yams, and potato salad.

Yet my fond kitchen memories are not simply relegated to the holidays. Saturday mornings I spent with my father and siblings as we enjoyed fun adventures making pancakes, eggs and bacons – time spent bonding and creating wonderful memories.

Nowadays, however, it seems like the concept of family cooking and eating is rapidly fading away. With today’s fast paced, “instant” society its more likely we’ll swing into the local fast food place or whip out the frozen dinners than cook together as a family.

In essence, it seems that dinner has become a chore, work to be dreaded and dispensed with as quickly as possibly, rather than a destination to be savored and enjoyed.

We’d much rather rush through dinner to get to our favorite episode of Lost or American Idol. In fact, its estimated that the average American spends nearly three hours a day watching television. Yet, the average parent spends only seven to twenty minutes a day engaged in meaningful conversation with their children.

Perhaps this explains why a 2007 study conducted by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found that family dining is associated with lower rates of teen smoking, drinking, illegal drug use and prescription drug abuse. In fact, teens in families that frequently dine together are three and a half times less likely to engage in illegal and prescription drug abuse.

Perhaps then family time spent cooking and eating together is not only a chance to nourish the body but to nourish the soul of the family as well. A chance for the family to spend the quality time together that is so often absent in today’s on the run society.

Instead of rushing through dinner to catch the latest episode of Grey’s Anatomy or Desperate Housewives, perhaps the company of our loved ones should be the entertainment we seek.

When we’re on our death beds will it be the episode of CSI that we remember or the time we spent with those we truly cherish – the time that making and eating dinner as a family allows.

I haven’t even mentioned the financial savings. A typical family meal made at home can easily cost one half to one third the cost of meals eaten out. This saves the typical family hundreds if not thousands of dollars each year!

Better yet, meals made at home are generally healthier than food at a restaurant or food found in the frozen section of the supermarket.

I understand that finding the time to get together as a family to make dinner can be hard. We live in hectic times and all family members, even young children, face demands and pressures unseen by generations before.

Yet time spent cooking and eating dinner as a family, even a few times a week, can create priceless memories and save you money.

What do you think? Do you spend time as a family making and eating dinner together? Would you like to do it more often? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

In today’s economy the value of cooking meals right at home has become crystal clear. Home cooked meals cost a fraction of the price of restaurant bought meals. They are also far more healthier, exposing your family to fewer preservatives, salts, and artificial ingredients.

Yet the price of cookbooks has skyrocketed. Even the average run of the mill cookbook can set you back $18, $20, or $25 dollars. More complete and in-depth cookbooks can easily run $50, $60, or more!

Your local library can be the source for some great cookbooks. The problem is that you have to be careful not to get anything on the pages. Not an easy task in the typical kitchen where spills, dustings, or splatters can easily stain a cookbook.

There is another option for getting great recent edition cookbooks at ridiculously low prices – Your Local Friends of the Library Book Sale. Here you can easily purchase best selling cookbooks for $1 or less a piece.

Most libraries have a volunteer group that helps the library raise money for improvements or the purchase of new books or equipment. These volunteer organizations are called Friends of the Library. The most common fundraiser for these volunteer Friends of the Library organizations are book sales. Volunteers will collect and organize book donations from the local community. Then once or twice a year they sponsor a book sale open to the general public.

This is a classical win-win situation. The Friends of the Library raise money for the library and you get recent, up to date books for a mere fraction of the cost. Generally soft cover books will run you 50 cents to $1 while hardcovers generally will set you back $1 or $2.

Among the thousands of books on every subject imaginable, you’ll find a literal treasure trove of cookbooks usually assigned to their own section of the book sale.

Last week I visited one of the book sales held in a Chicago suburb. I was amazed at the number and variety of cookbooks arranged neatly in their own little section of the sale. Literally hundreds of cookbooks were available for the bargain basement price of $1.

From Emeril Lagasse to Rachel Ray. Vegetarian cooking to seafood cooking. Fine French dining to cooking on a dime. There were cookbooks of every variety imaginable. Many of the cookbooks were the very same ones I had recently considered paying $20 bucks or more at the book store.

These Friends of the Library book sales allow anyone to try new chefs or new styles of cooking all at a dirt cheap price.

So how do you find out about these super frugal book sales? Simply go to booksalefinder.com which will allow you to locate the book sales in your city and state. I’ve been using this website for the last three years to locate great book bargains.

One final thing about these book sales. Many of the sales feature a preview night open up only to Friends of the Library members. The great thing is that anyone can become a Friends of the Library member and they actually encourage you to join. There’s no commitment required (unless you want to) but it will usually cost $5 or $10. This is another way the volunteers make money for the library.

By going on the preview night you get the best crack at the newest books and also get put on the library’s mailing list for upcoming sales and special events.

While wandering around one of my favorite thrift stores I ran across the book We Had Everything But Money. This book is a collection of first hand accounts of life during the Great Depression.

If you think we’re experiencing difficult financial times now, consider what the nation faced then – a complete collapse of the banking system, 35% unemployment, and a severe drought that devastated farmland in the Midwest.

Yet the way in which Americans adapted to such extreme economic calamity provides insights and lessons that we can benefit from today during our economic downturn.

In their own words, those that lived through the Great Depression provide us with valuable lessons on how to feed our families for less.

“For school lunches, my mother would make my favorite: dandelion sandwiches on fresh baked bread. After the dandelions had been cleaned and boiled, she’d squeeze out the juice and fry the greens in olive oil, seasonings, salt and hot red pepper. We saved the juice, too, and drank it like hot soup with a dash of olive oil and salt.”

The great depression reminds us that even the simplest of ingredients can be seasoned and cooked in a way that makes them delicious affairs.  No, I’m not suggesting that you go pull up a batch of dandelions for dinner, but do consider simple unprocessed ingredients like rice, beans, and vegetables.

While our pre-packaged, ready to eat in an instant lifestyle frequently shuns these simple ingredients, the rest of the world has been using them to create incredible meals for ages,  at a fraction of the cost of our highly processed American diet.

Cookbooks like More-With-Less by Doris Janzen Longacre show you how to turn basic low cost ingredients into savory meals. Alternatively, vegetarian cookbooks can teach you how to turn grains and vegetables into meals your family will love.

The same can be said for international cookbooks that illustrate how to prepare simple ingredients with spices and other flavorings to create cheap, delicious meals.  Not only are meals prepared from simple unprocessed ingredients cheaper, they’re also healthier as well.

“Parents learned tricks that cut the food bill. You parked outside the grocery until 10 minutes before closing time on Saturday night and then hurried in to snap up bargains on fresh produce. It was priced for quick sale because it wouldn’t keep over Sunday in those unrefrigerated times.  I remember Dad buying an entire sack of bananas for 10 [cents]. We feasted on them for nearly a week.”

Smart shoppers are using this very same trick today. They simply know the time of day when their local grocery store marks down the day’s baked goods, roasted chickens, pre-made sandwiches and other perishable items. Then they scoop in to grab the bargains. Its not hard. Simply ask the bakery or deli manager when items are marked down for the day.

Other savvy shoppers make special note of when the grocery store marks down the meat that’s approaching its sell-by date.  Meat is then purchased at a steep discount and either made into a meal shortly after the purchase, or placed in the freezer for later use.

“The first day we’d have beans. The second day Mother would add water and elbow macaroni to the leftovers. The next day she’d add a can of tomatoes. If there were any left after that, she’d add more water and drop dumplings into it. Seems like we ate beans all week, but they were filling and helped us survive the Depression!”

Beans may be one of the most unappreciated food sources in all of America. Our depression era forebearers knew full well the benefit of beans. Dirt cheap, especially when purchased in the bag, beans are chock full of nutrients.

In fact, the USDA cites beans as one of the foods highest in cancer fighting anti-oxidants. They are also loaded with fiber, essential for lowering cholesterol.  Combined with rice or other grains, beans serve as a nutritional replacement for meat, providing the benefits of meat at a fraction of the cost.

“WE OFTEN made a meal of sliced raw potatoes, onion and, on occasion, a few strips of bacon. We added some water and cooked everything together in a covered pot. It was really good. In fact, we still make “Depression soup” today!”

Even today, soup is one of the most cost effective and nutritious meals you can feed your family. I’m not talking about the expensive, salt-laden, canned version. Making home made soup has never been easier.

You can easily boil leftover turkey or ham bones with some vegetables to make a cheap soup broth. Save left-over vegetables and meat in your freezer until its time to make a nice big pot of soup. Add some herbs, spices, and seasonings and you have a meal fit for a king. For extra hearty soup, add rice or pasta.

If you’re new to making homemade soup check out homemade-soup-recipes.com. They have complete easy to follow instructions on how to make a variety of homemade soups, as well as tutorials on soup making basics.

“Most people had gardens. Big gardens. They not only provided vegetables and berries and rhubarb for the summer months, but also raw material for canning.”

Gardens provided a cheap and nutritious source of food for families during the Great Depression. Its no wonder then that gardening is making a come back during these current tough economic times. According to the National Gardening Association 43 million US households will engage in some form of gardening in 2009, up 19 percent from 2008.

Gardening is a great way to grow your own pesticide free, organic vegetables that taste better and cost a fraction of the price of supermarket produce.

Even small spaces can be used to grow huge quantities of produce. Don’t have a back yard – consider small container gardening to grow fresh herbs instead of paying outrageous prices in the grocery store.

Don’t know where to start – check out these great websites:

The National  Gardening Association Website.
The Vegetable Garden Guide.
The Vegetable Gardening Guru.

These websites feature comprehensive content that will have you growing your own healthy food in no time.

During the Great Depression families did more with less and still were able to serve healthy meals. Their lessons in frugality still serve us well today.

What are the frugal food lessons passed down from your grandparents and great grandparents that are saving you money today? Share your thoughts. Feel free to leave a comment below.

You’re home from work late. Its dinner time and the family is hungry. As you look in the fridge all you see are yesterday’s leftovers. 

Do you risk a family mutiny and serve the leftovers or do you reach for the phone to order expensive take-out?

Well if you have one of these sure-fire ingredients on hand you won’t have to do either. With these ingredients you can use your leftovers to whip up new culinary creations QUICKLY and CHEAPLY.

Eggceptional Value  

Eggs can be a quick and convenient life saver,  giving a new spin to tired  leftovers. Simply use your eggs and leftovers to create delicious dinner omelettes. 

Almost any leftover meat can be diced or shredded and used in an omelette, from corned beef, ham, and chicken to steak, hamburger, and turkey. 

And don’t throw out  last night’s vegetables. Dice these as well to add delicious flavor to your omelette.

Need a source of cheap eggs? Check out Aldi supermarkets. They often offer eggs for as little as 79 cents a dozen – less than half the price of comparable supermarkets. 

Salad Surprise

Meat leftovers and salad greens make a perfect match. The heat of the meat makes a delectable contrast to the coolness of the salad greens. 

Add some leftover vegetables for added crunch. Don’t waste money with pre-packaged salad. Whole heads of lettuce are much cheaper and easy to prepare. 

Potato Pizzaz

Potatoes are one of the cheapest food items around. Pop some into the oven or microwave (make sure to poke some holes into the potatoes first) and get ready for a dinner time treat. 

Almost any sauce from the previous night’s meal can be layered over a baked potato.  Even leftover chili makes a great potato topper. Shred or dice leftover meat, add some cheese and you have a delicious culinary second act.  

By having these three cheap ingredients around – eggs, salad greens, and potatoes – what I call leftover extenders, you can make quick and cheap second meals, saving your family money in the process.

What are some of the ways you give new life to leftovers? How do you make sure your leftovers don’t go to waste?

Its amazing how habits formed in childhood continue to persist well into adulthood. Unfortunately, many bad habits related to food and finances persist into adulthood as well.

Here are a few ways to teach your kids some great habits that will save them money and promote good health as they grow into adulthood.

Serve Dinner on a Smaller Plate

At one time or another we’ve all heard that familiar phrase spoken by mom’s nationwide, “You can’t leave the table until you finish your plate.” The problem is that we’re forcing our kids to finish off larger and larger plates.

Like everything else, our plates and cups have become super-sized. In the past, 10.5 inch dinner plates were common. Now 12.5 inch dinner plates are commonly used. Its no wonder that the levels of child obesity have exploded over the last decade.

Purchase smaller dinner plates or reduce portion sizes by making sure food covers only 2/3 of their plate (if your kids are still hungry they’ll ask for more). This will both save you money, and more importantly, it will get your kids in the habit of consuming appropriate meal portions.

Serve Water with One Meal a Day

Drinking the appropriate amount of water is key to healthy living. Serve water instead of juice with the same meal every day. It will save you money and develop healthy drinking habits in your children. Alternatively, insist that your children drink water instead of juice with their between meal snacks.

Dilute Your Children’s Juice

Consider this. The average juice drink is chock full of sugar and artificial flavors and colorings. Simply dilute your juice by adding 20% water. Your children will hardly notice the difference and you’ll instantly save money.

Have Your Children Pay for Junk Food

As a parent it can be difficult controlling the amount of junk food your kids eat. You can provide cheap, healthy junk food alternatives like raisins and hot air popped popcorn. Still, from time to time, your children are going to crave those candy bars, cookies, and chips that seem to be everywhere.

Try this. Don’t ban junk food from your home. Instead allow your children to buy these treats using money from their own allowances.  You may soon realize how much they like the healthy alternatives after all.

Make a Game Out of Grocery Shopping

Many financial experts say that you should leave your kids at home when you shop for groceries because children cause you to spend more. I tend to think that, with kids who are a little older, you can create a great learning environment by having them join you when you shop. They key is to make it fun. Kids love games.

Have them search the store for the lowest priced dish detergent or lowest priced cereal. If the kids are older give them a small calculator and let them find the lowest priced cereal per unit cost.

Make a guessing game out of how much all of the purchases in your grocery cart will ring up for at the register. The child closest to the actually amount wins. Alternatively, make a game out of finding which crackers have the lowest amount of salt or which cookies have the lowest amount of cholesterol.

Even consider providing your child with a small purchase as a reward if they do an especially good job. You can make shopping a fun experience for your children, while at the same time teaching them effective lessons and habits in frugal, healthy shopping.

What do you think? Do you have food habits that you’ve fostered in your children to make them healthier and more financially fit? Leave a comment below.

Update: We’d like to thank the Expanding Life website for including this article in the Carnival of Family Life blog carnival.

In a recent post I talked about how the rush to provide dinner in the mist of hectic lifestyles leads to expensive restaurant meals, overpriced take-out, and pricey processed frozen dinners. Our budgets take a severe beating as a result of these last minute dinner options.

One method people successfully use to provide great home cooked meals in the face of tremendous work and family pressures is the practice of make-ahead dinners.

These are meals that you prepare when you have ample time – a lazy Sunday afternoon for instance.  You then freeze the meals for use later in the week when your schedule is hectic and time is short.

Two major variations of the concept exist. One involves making the complete meal ahead of time and simply defrosting and reheating right before dinner. A hearty soup is one such dish that comes to mind. Pancakes are another meal you can make ahead of time and then pop into the toaster or microwave when needed.

The other variation on make-ahead meals involves preparing the ingredients and making a significant portion of the meal before freezing. On the day that you actually serve the meal you combine all the pre-prepared ingredients and finish the cooking. This usually takes a short amount of time – say 15 to 20 minutes.

An example of this might be Cherry Skillet Chicken in which you tenderize your chicken and make the cherry sauce on the preparation day. The cherry sauce is then combined with the chicken in a freezer bag.

The day before your meal is needed you defrost the meal in the refrigerator. The next day you would then cook the meat in a skillet, cover with the cherry sauce and let simmer for 12 to 15 minutes. Total preparation time on a busy weekend night would amount to 20 minutes.

One of the major benefits of make-ahead meals is the absolute peace of mind knowing that you have a great homemade meal nearby when you need it. Make-ahead meals are like a convenient fast food restaurant located right in your freezer. Your budget will also love it because you save money as a result of skipping expensive take-out or overpriced frozen dinners when you’re short on time.

We have come across two extremely popular and highly rated make-ahead cookbooks that make the whole process easy.

Fix, Freeze, and Feast by Kati Neville and Lindsay Tkacsik contains 125 delicious recipes that you prepare ahead of time and then place in the freezer for later use when time is scarce.

The authors place a special emphasis on saving money by using warehouse clubs to buy in bulk, especially bulk meat purchases. Several make-ahead dinners can then be made at the same time with your bulk purchases.

Recipes are easy to follow and the authors tell you exactly how to freeze each recipe and re-heat or cook it on the day its needed so that it tastes its absolute best.

This book is extremely popular. I searched seven different libraries for the book and at each library it was checked out.

Don’t Panic – Dinner’s in the Freezer by Susie Martinez, Vanda Howell, and Bonnie Garcia is similar to Fix, Freeze, and Feast. The authors feature recipes designed to be prepared in quantity and frozen ahead of time. They stress preparing make-ahead meals based on the “loss-leaders” advertised in your local supermarket’s weekly fliers.

They claim that most entrees in the cookbook should average between $3.50 to $4.25 to feed a family of four.  Extremely cheap in my opinion as this is per family and not per person.

Don’t Panic – Dinner’s in the Freezer also provides easy to follow directions on how to freeze the components of each meal, as well as directions on how to thaw and prepare the meal when you need it.

Do you have experience with make-ahead meals? We’d love to hear from you. Leave us a comment below.

A recent United States Bureau of Labor Statistics study reveals that 44% of our food dollars are spent on meals made outside of the home! Not only are these meals generally less nutritious, but they’re usually much more expensive than meals made at home. Consequently, we can save a tremendous amount of money simply by replacing these meals with home cooked ones.

Yet with today’s hectic lifestyles its no wonder that we have to rely on meals made outside the home. Between dealing with pressures of work, taking the kids to a multitude of activities, and keeping up with the other challenges of life, the thought of dinner doesn’t usually come up until its actually time for dinner.

The result – convenient but expensive trips to the local fast food place, meals at the local restaurant, or orders from the trusty standby take-out menus located in the kitchen drawer.

Even in our fast-paced, pressured filled lives, however, there are ways to save money by cutting down on food made away from home.

The first money saving step is to plan ahead. On Sunday afternoon or evening take a look at your schedule. See which days are going to be especially hectic – what day do you have a late night meeting or which day do the kids have a late evening soccer game.

Its on these nights that you want to take a few of these simple steps to create quick convenient dinners without resorting to expensive take-out or restaurant meals:

Use a Slow-Cooker: Slow cookers allow you to spend 10 to 20 minutes preparing ingredients in the morning or night before. You then place all of your ingredients in the slow-cooker. When you get home from a hectic day at the office you’ll have a delicious meal ready and waiting for you.

Enjoy a Smorgasbord Night: Don’t throw away those left-overs. Place them in the fridge or freezer. On an especially hectic day let your family enjoy all of the left-overs on a “left-over night”. Your kids will love it, picking and choosing from amongst their favorites. Its quick, convenient and helps you save money.

Serve Breakfast for Dinner: Breakfast can make a cheap and quick dinner. Oatmeal takes only minutes to cook in the microwave. Add brown sugar, raisins, and cut bananas and it becomes a delicious meal. English muffins and bread take only a few minutes to toast.

Eggs can be fried quickly. Add left-over meat and vegetables from previous meals and you can make a quick but tasty omelette. Pancakes can also serve as quick treats. Better yet, you can cook up a large batch of pancakes ahead of time, place them in freezer bags, and use them when you need them.

Use Your Own Frozen Meals: In addition to pancakes, a whole variety of meals can be cooked ahead of time, placed in your freezer, and then heated and served on hectic weeknights. Soup, for example, can be made in large batches, divided into smaller portions and frozen. When you need a quick meal, simply take a frozen portion out of the freezer and place into the microwave for an instant meal.

Become a Twenty Minute Meal Expert: Many complete dinners can be made from scratch in twenty to thirty minutes. This is less time than it takes to travel to your local fast food place. Many cookbooks like Robin Miller’s Quick Fix Meals and the Six O’Clock Scramble can provide you with a multitude of easy dinner recipes. Experiment and develop a small group of five or six quick meal recipes that your family enjoys. You can rely on these recipes again and again when time is short and your family is hungry.

By taking simple steps you can help prevent the urge to reach for the take-out menu or the urge to take a trip to the local restaurant after a crazy day. In the process, you’ll save hundreds of dollars a year and provide your family with more nutritious and healthy alternatives.

A USA Today newspaper series recently followed two families in their attempts to slash their grocery bills.  During the time that the selected families were followed the Jones family was able to reduce their food budget by 28%, in part through the use of a slow cooker.

More and more families like the Jone’s are realizing the huge benefits of cooking with slow cookers.  Slow cookers provide delicious, economical meals with minimal effort. They are the perfect complement for  today’s fast paced and hectic lifestyles.

Generally you take ten to twenty minutes to prepare your ingredients in the morning, place them in the slow-cooker, turn the slow cooker on and when you get home you’ll have a delicious, savory meal waiting for you and your family.

The long, low heat times of slow cookers are extraordinary at blending ingredient flavors and are the reason slow cookers make creating tasty meals easy.   When food is grilled or cooked over high heat the natural juices are caramelized, adding little to the food’s flavor.  Slow-cookers, on the other hand, allow the natural juices of the ingredients to cook and meld together, creating extremely tender, flavorful meals.

In addition to saving time, slow cookers save money.

Because of the long cooking times, tough cheap cuts of meat are perfect for slow cookers. Inside the slow cooker, meats tenderize in their own juices. This allows you to purchase otherwise cheap cuts of meat like beef shoulder, beef short ribs, and pork butt and make them taste wonderful when cooked in your slow cooker. As a result of using cheaper cuts of meat, you can easily save 40% to 50% off your meat costs.

You can also use tougher vegetables like beets, carrots, and turnips. These are usually cheaper than other produce and can easily be grown in your own garden.   As with meat, the long, slow cooking times allow these tough vegetables to become extremely tender.

With a slow cooker you need only a few minutes of time to prepare ingredients. You can then let the slow cooker do the rest of the work and  have a complete meal waiting for you when you get home. This makes it less likely that, after a hectic day at work or long day with the kids, that you’ll need to stop to pick up relatively expensive fast food or heat up expensive frozen dinners.

The range of recipes you can prepare with slow cookers is extensive, from black bean chili to rigatoni with cheese, apple-chicken curry to chocolaccino cheesecake.

Best of all, slow cookers are no longer just for families. Slow cooker units designed for one or two people are becoming increasingly popular. So whether you’re cooking for a family of eight or for a single person, you can take advantage of all the benefits of slow cooking.

To find out more about slow cooking check out Slow Cookers for Dummies or try one of the following cookbooks:

Slow Cooker Ready & Waiting: 160 Sumptuous Meals That Cook Themselves

Fix-It And Forget-It Big Cookbook: 1400 Best Slow Cooker Recipes

Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker: 200 Recipes for Healthy and Hearty One-Pot Meals That Are Ready When You Are

By using a slow cooker you can conveniently create delicious meals with minimal effort, all while saving your family money. If you have a slow cooking tip we’d love to hear from you, share your tip with others by leaving a comment below.