Burgers You’ll Love

As a couple, we face a particular dilemma. I eat enough food for two people, three if we are having crepes. We face a dilemma of making an inexpensive meal for four, because when we make dinner we try to cook enough to have some left over for Jamie Lee to take to work for lunch. So we need enough food for three people at dinner time (I count as two, don’t forget) plus one portion for the next day.

With these issues in mind, it is rather difficult to make a meal for under ten dollars. I tried eating less, but found I was spending more on cereal to eat before I went to bed, which defeated the purpose of trying to save money. We’re still thinking of ways to solve the problem, but one solution that we have come across involves using what we have in combination with some fresh items that we buy. This is a nice idea, because it allows us to be inventive about our meals without breaking the bank, as I am tempted to do every time I go to the grocery store. It’s a fun challenge and a nice diversion when we’re bored at work to think of what we can make with the stuff in our fridge or freezer. Combining what we have with fresh ingredients makes us avoid feeling like we are eating leftovers, which I HATE. I know it’s thrifty to eat leftovers, but come on. I feel like I’m eating garbage and nothing I do can get me past that.

Example! We had a large dinner party with a pasta dish as the main entrée. This dish had meatballs, but we did not use all the meat. Instead, we had about a half pound each of ground turkey and ground beef in the freezer. It had been in there for a while, but thanks to Ziploc, the meat was still in really good shape.

We added some shredded cheese from a few nights back when we made tacos to make some really good burgers.

What’s nice about this recipe is how surprisingly good the burgers were – they were very different from pure turkey or beef burgers. Turkey burgers are generally bone dry, especially on the grill, and beef burgers taste good (of course) but red meat is not the best thing for you. So this little combination gave us less red meat with all the moisture of red meat. These paired with homemade oven bakes fries made for a delicious dinner!

Looking for more tips on cooking for less? Try here!

Paint Cures All

When Clay and I decided to refinish his dresser it was in pretty sad shape. There were dents and scratches all over and, as you can see in the picture below, one of the handles was missing and one was mysteriously upside down. Strange.After our attempt to stain the beat up dresser failed, we decided to hide all of our mistake with paint–but first we wanted to challenge ourselves in one more way. The pulls that Clay found to replace his old ones required holes that were wider apart than the originals. Instead of searching for pulls that fit the preexisting holes, we decided to patch the old ones using Elmer’s Wood Filler. The process was simple. Fill the holes with putty and let them dry for 2-8 hours (huge window, I know). We left them overnight just to be on the safe side. After the putty dries, you sand off the excess until only a smooth surface remains.

We also did this with some of the major scratches and dents on the outside of the dresser.

After two quick coats of paint and the not-so-quick process of re-drilling holes appropriately sized for the hardware, Clay’s dresser had a brand new look.

I think the handles were meant to go on the other way but Clay preferred having them look like they pointed at one another. Overall, we’re really pleased with the way that it turned out. The dark color balances the curves of the wood making it feel more masculine. It’s definitely more suited for a guy’s room.

Staining is Hard.

This weekend I flew to Lubbock, TX to visit Clay. Clay has owned the same dresser–a hand me down from his older brother–since before I met him five year ago. I never knew the dresser to be without dents or scratches or even to posses all six of its handles.

So Friday I turned to Clay and said, “You know we could replace the hardware on your dresser this weekend.”

He shrugged, “We could…”

I started getting excited, “We could also paint it!”

More shrugging followed by, “We could–or we could stain it.”

Neither of us had ever stained anything before but we were confident in our ability to figure it out. We called around for advice, bought the necessary supplies, and got to work.

Everyone that we talked to seemed to disagree on how much you should sand a piece of furniture before staining it. Feeling lazy, Clay and I opted to go with the school of thought that preached lightly sanding rather than completely sanding down to the bare wood.

Unfortunately, for our project, I think we chose wrong.  The thing to remember about staining is that any imperfections that result in areas with more exposed wood will absorb the stain at a different rate that the rest of the surface area.

If we had spent the time sanding the wood to a more uniform state, then the stain would not have highlighted the imperfections in the way that this attempt did. In the end we opted to paint over our mistakes. Comeback tomorrow to see how it all turned out. Have you ever stained anything before? Tell me it turned out better than this!

Special thanks to Clay for understanding my weird definition of a vacation.

Four Easy Tips for Getting Started on Low Cost Meals

I do most of the cooking at home and we try to make low cost meals be the rule. Doing so is good for two reasons. First, when we do splurge on something, like fresh tuna steaks, it is extra special. Second, it makes it easier on our budget to have friends over for dinner. Here are some helpful bits of information that can get you started on making low cost meals.

One of the easiest ways to make low cost meals is to invest in fresh herbs that you can grow in your home. Indoors or outdoors, most herbs are hearty and grow quickly. Having your own herbs saves lots of money at the grocery store. Herbs also drastically improve a dish. They don’t just look cool.

Recipes (especially stews and sauces) will often call for dried herbs and the best way to handle this side of cooking is to purchase a set of spices. It is pretty easy to find an eighteen spice set, which often comes with its own rack. It is especially helpful to get one of these if you are beginning to cook, because you will learn pretty quickly which spices you use the most, and can avoid stocking up on spices you will never use. We got one of our first spice racks from Costco. Then as we wanted to try new spices, we bought them in bulk, sometimes with a friend so that we wouldn’t have to worry about using the spices before they went bad and we could share the cost.

Unless you are roasting garlic, buying, storing, and cutting whole cloves of garlic wastes time and money. We bought a large jar of minced garlic and cannot tell the difference between the jar and the chopped garlic I have repeatedly labored over in the kitchen. Having worked in numerous restaurants, I can attest that they have all relied on this method as well, because chefs do not have the time to cut their own garlic for all the dishes they make.

If you are tight on cash, it is tough to get over the fear of cooking something that might taste bad, but you will save money in the long run. Start simply and make one dish repeatedly, and practice until you start to improve. The dish should be relatively cheap, like pasta with fresh tomato sauce, which does not require very many ingredients and can be made in small amounts.

Images courtesy of The English, Garden, The Flying Pig and Eathy Finds.

Microfiber Dusting Cloths

Impulse buy of the week: microfiber dusting cloths. I never feel compelled to dust but when I was wandering around Home Depot  (I swear they make all hardware stores convoluted to increase impulse purchases) I fell in love with the Method microfiber dusting cloths. I quickly realized that there were inexpensive options. The color of the budget cloths wasn’t nearly as pretty as these :

But I thought of Kasey and went with the neon budget cloths. I think she would be proud. Instead of one Method cloth for $5 I bought three for the same price. Now I’m noticing dust everywhere, but even things like the lamp shades on our shelf that I thought would never live to see a clean day are looking so much better! Look at all of the disgusting dirt and grime in this before picture:

Here is the much cleaner after. It’s not perfect but between the new filter and these great dusting cloths, I’m beginning to think that the air we are breathing is much cleaner.

Any recent impulse buys out there in the blogosphere? Given the chance would you buy it again or did you find yourself wishing that you could return it?

Image courtesy of About.com.