Daily Accounting: Tuesday 4/22

Earned: $0 Spent: $97 Saved: $0

Another grocery day today. I could have put $41.21 in the “Saved” column because that’s how much Krogers said I saved. However, I only budgeted $90 for the week, so that savings just kept me on track rather than going over. I did get some really nice deals, including one of those automatic air fresheners for 99 cents rather than $9.99 and three boxes of cereal for $2.50. We are now swimming in cereal. It’s so hard not to buy it when it’s a great deal! That’s one of the dangers of stockpiling, I suppose. I did buy Chex cereal this time, so I’ll make some party mix with that this weekend for a snack. The other $7 was for lunch in the faculty dining room and postage for another sale on Amazon. One more snowflake for the TV fund!

Today, two carnivals went up with posts of mine. On Financial Success posted a pretty cool Festival of Frugality with every link written into paragraph form. Very unique! You can read my post “Kid-Friendly Frugal Fun” along with this great post by Save and Conquer about the life during the Great Depression.

Can I Get Rich on a Salary hosted this week’s Carnival of Money Stories. Through his “once upon a time” story, you’ll find my thoughts on shopping from “Can Anthropologie be a Frugal Choice?” Happy Tuesday!

Homemade Crackers

When I saw this post, “Maybe This is Why We Should Stick with Buying Saltines,” on Money Saving Mom, I had to chime in with our cracker success. I make crackers from scratch almost every night. Once you get the hang of it, it is so simple. I use this wonderful stone-ground whole or rye wheat from a local mill, but you can make them with all-purpose flour or regular whole-wheat flour. I’ve adapted the recipe from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything. I’m writing it up here because I’ve put my own twist on it.

Ingredients

1/2 c stone-ground flour
1/2 c all-purpose flour
2 TBS. butter
pinch of salt
1/4 c water

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Put all ingredients except for the water in a food processor. I usually chop the butter up into smaller pieces. Pulse the processor two to three times to blend. Add the water and run the processor until the dough forms into a ball. Flour a wooden board, dump the dough on it, and roll it as thin as you can (I usually get it about 1/8″ thick). I then slide the dough onto my pizza stone in the oven, but you could bake them on a cookie sheet. They just might not be as crisp.

Bake 15 to 18 minutes. Let cool and cut with a pizza cutter or break into smaller pieces.

The great thing about this recipe is its simplicity. You can add any herb or spice or salt that you want. Sometimes, I put in a pinch of cardamon. Sometimes, I sprinkle salt on top. What I love about these is that you get the flavor of fresh bread in about 15 minutes. I often roll these out, slide them in the oven, and then cook dinner. Sometimes, we eat them with dinner and sometimes, the future husband has them as his midnight snack. He loves to eat crackers and Laughing Cow. In fact, we had to have a little financial summit about how much his crackers were costing us. Now, I make these for him most nights, and the fancy store-bought flatbread crackers that he likes last us two to three weeks rather than one!