Cheap Date Night

If you've ever felt that dates were too expensive, or if you are saving for a big goal and need to cut costs but don't want to cut out the romance, or if there is just too much month and not enough paycheck, this list is for you. Here are some of my favorite free or affordable dates.

* Check out a movie from the library. Pop popcorn on the stove top or in an air popper.
* Have a campfire in the backyard. Roast marshmallows and snuggle under a blanket.
* Take a long walk through the neighborhood (provided you aren't saving money by living in a dangerous area). It's a great way to spend time talking and be active together.
* Call area museums and ask about free days. Some museums have free days weekly, monthly or annually. Have fun, get a bit of exercise while walking around and learn a little something.
* Go to a concert or poetry reading at a coffee house. Unlike a concert at a bar, you can get away with buying one drink and nursing it through the evening, or get a bottomless cup of regular coffee. For $5 you can have a night out.
* Look for special promotions for area restaurants. Some that we've enjoyed: free coffee at a chain coffee house on Earth Day when we brought in reusable mugs, free coffee and samples at a cafe when they were rolling out a new menu, $.50 iced coffees on the first day of summer at a fast food restaurant, free small lattes when McDonalds was starting McCafe, $.25 kiddie cones on Wednesdays at a chain ice cream shop, $1 coffees at another chain one day each week.
* Go to a second run theater for special promotions. My area theater sells tickets for $1.25 one day a week and $1.75 all other days. Skip the popcorn and soda.
* Go to the beach for swimming, tanning and playing.
* Have a do-nothing day. Don't get dressed. Don't run errands. Simply hang out at home, cuddle, talk, eat junk food, take a bath, whatever. Relax and enjoy each other.
* Go for a bike ride.
* Make a good meal together, especially a labor intensive one. Trucker and I like to make Chinese food together. He'll chop the veggies and meat for stir fry while I'm assembling egg rolls and crab rangoon. We get to talk and giggle together while preparing the food, and the cost and taste are far superior to what we find at our area Americanized Chinese buffet.
* Go to an antique mall and explore. There are many things to amuse or awe you. We look out for antique kitchen wares that are affordable and in good, usable condition. You don't have to buy anything though, so this can be a free date.
* Take a drive. While high gas prices make this less of a good deal than in previous times, this is still a fun date. Drive out of the city to explore the countryside or drive through the woods during autumn for a color display. A favorite of ours when we were saving for our house was to drive through different neighborhoods and discuss whether we would buy a house there and why.
* Take the bus to a new neighborhood with a set amount of money in cash, say $10, and see how long you can make it last. Explore the neighborhood on foot. Stop in every store and look around. Spend your money on small things, like the $.50 rack of books outside the used bookstore, penny candies, or a bagel to split from the small corner bakery.
* Go to a used book store and look around. Look for bargain racks or clearance sections.
* Look for coupons in the Sunday paper for restaurants. Once, I found Buy One Get One Free coupons for Caribou Coffee. I dived a recycling bin for extra coupons and for months we had $1 dates (Two regular coffees using coupon, plus additional money off for bringing reusable mugs and correctly answering trivia questions).
* Sign up for thrift store newsletters and text alerts. A few times a year, our favorite thrift store sends out coupons for $5 off a $10 purchase. We go to the thrift store and try not to spend over $10 so we can get half off. We score some great finds, but don't fall into the trap of buying a ton of stuff because it's so cheap.
* Go for a hike/nature walk. Most cities have a decent metro park system and you can find lovely walking trails. Take your camera for nature shots and silly pictures. Look for interesting plants or weird bugs.
* Have a picnic in the park or the backyard.
* Go to a free concert or play in the park. In my city a theater troupe puts on Shakespeare in the Park. Some people go all out, bringing little tables in and setting up elaborate picnics complete with wine.

What are some of your favorite affordable dates?

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The Welcoming House Welcoming Wednesday

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Practically Free Chicken Noodle Soup

As a follow up on my post on Making The Most of my $.20/lb Chicken, I wanted to share how I made a nice pot of chicken noodle soup almost for free.

After we had finished cutting off chunks of chicken for different meals that we made, I put all of the bones (along with the bits of meat I couldn't quite cut off) into my stockpot and simmered them with onion skins and carrot peels for a few hours. By this time the last bits of meat had fallen off of the bone.

I strained the broth off and packaged it into a few re-used plastic food containers. I picked through the bones for the last little bits of meat. I packaged that into another container and put it all in the freezer to make soup later.

Last night I pulled the containers out of the freezer to thaw. Today I scooped the fat from the top of the containers and dumped the broth into my slow cooker. I added the chicken pieces.

During one grocery shopping trip, I got a coupon for a free 1 lb bag of baby carrots (I got organic ones since the coupon didn't have any restrictions printed on it). I used about 1/4 of the bag cut into coins.

The only ingredient (besides seasonings) that I paid for was the onion. I paid $.11 a pound at Aldi by stocking up when they were selling 3 lb bags for 3 for $1. I used about 1/2 an onion. I sauteed this in a little bit of vegetable oil before adding it to the slow cooker.

This cooked on low heat for several hours. When I make soup for dinner, I usually get everything going while I make my breakfast and let it cook all day.

For this soup, I added the pasta about 20 minutes before we were ready to eat. Any sooner and it would get way too soggy. I used bits of different kinds of pasta: broken spaghetti or fettucini noodles, or bits of pasta that weren't enough for a meal, but were too much to throw away.

At the same time that I added my pasta, I added seasonings. Tonight it was simply a bit of salt, garlic powder (free from a previous employer of Trucker's), a pinch of cayenne pepper and some Italian seasoning blend. Before serving, I ground some black pepper and it was done. It turned out pretty good. I added a bit too much cayenne pepper (I admit, I accidentally added more than a pinch), but it was okay since Trucker's had a bit of a cold. Sinus busting power soup!

I love that all told, this soup cost around $.25 including seasonings for 4 meal-sized servings of soup. It was a perfect meal with some garlic toast made from bread I got for free (job benefit of being a baker!)

What are your favorite practically free meals?



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Homestead Barn Hop

Rolling With the Punches

As some of you may remember, I recently purchased a house. With that has come the awesome and terrible responsibility for taking care of everything that breaks. Oh boy. And, of course, everything breaks within the first 3 months. Right now my oven is not working. The stove top works, but not the oven. I have the part to fix it, and Trucker has done all of the research. We could easily fix it. Fear of accidentally blowing up the neighborhood has thus far kept us away from what should be a simple fix.

For now, I'm using my stove top, microwave, slow cooker, waffle iron and electric wok to make most of the meals we enjoy. There are some meals that we have always baked in the oven, and for those, we've had to get creative.

Baked potatoes are a great cheap meal. Mum gave me a little cloth pouch that you put the potatoes in, and microwave for 7-10 minutes. It steams the potatoes really well. While not as amazing as baked, it is still great. A bonus is that it uses little electric. We will continue to use this even after we get the oven fixed, as it seems a shame to fire up the oven to bake two potatoes.

Pizza is a favorite in this house. When the oven first crashed, we started ordering out. A lot. While we used coupons, and went with a local pizza joint that offered low prices, it added up quickly. We decided that that had to stop, but giving up pizza just wasn't an option. I have learned to make Stove Top Pizza. I make my usual crust, and roll it into a circle a bit smaller than my saute pan. I add a good amount of shortening, bacon fat, or veggie oil to the pan and heat over medium heat. I place the crust in the pan and cover it. I let the crust get nice and golden, then flip it. I quickly add sauce, toppings and lots of cheese and cover again. I let the other side of the crust get brown and the cheese to melt. It actually turns out pretty good. The crust is very sturdy and crisp. My only complaint is that the cheese doesn't brown, and has a different texture due to the steam, but it is not too big an issue. This summer, I'll still use this on those sweltering days when I'm craving a pizza, but can't stand the idea of turning on the stove. This will save us some gas, and will definitely keep the house cooler.

We hadn't had homemade cookies since before we moved, so tonight I was craving them. Again, I turned to my stove top. I made a regular cookie dough, rolls it into little balls and fried in a pan like pancakes. They taste great. They look weird. And I made the dough balls a little too big, so when the cookies were brown on both sides, the inside was still a little doughy. Next time I'll make smaller cookies and cook over lower heat to allow it time to cook through. However, I got my chocolate chip cookie fix and
used negligible energy.

When I was in high school, living with my parents, we had a crazy ice storm that left us without power for 2 weeks. My parents supplemented their furnace with a wood stove, and so I learned to cook on that. I made rice and veggie stir fry and always had a pot of water on the stove for added moisture and for tea. I also made my first cookie/pancakes during that time. While most families on our street were eating cold canned goods with white bread, we were eating fairly well.

When Trucker and I moved into an apartment once, the gas had been turned off. By the time the gas company came to turn it on, then found that there was a leak, then we fought with the landlord to fix it, then the gas company found another leak, and we fought to have that one fixed, we were without gas for 3 weeks during a very cold October. We refused to take frigid showers and get ourselves sick. We had an electric stove, so we got out our pots and heated water to a boil on the stove top. We would then carry the pots all the way upstairs to dump in the tub. We were able to take lukewarm baths. We also heated water on the stove to use in washing dishes.

It is never pleasant to have an appliance break, or to have an emergency take your utilities away. However, if you foster a bit of scrappiness, you can more easily weather these difficult times. You will get through the difficult time without spending all of your savings, racking up debt or being completely miserable. You can also learn new ways to do things that can be useful later. And you'll definitely have some fun stories to tell.

Making the Most of My $.20/lb Chicken

Last week I went on one of my late night grocery trips. I go to my 24 hr grocery store at 3:00-4:30 AM because that's when all of the best mark downs happen (as the night crew restocks shelves, and marks down the items nearing the sell-by date or that have damaged packaging) and I can walk out with almost free food. I was armed with a sales ad and lots of coupons. One of the coupons that I had was a Catalina coupon from a previous trip. It was good for $2 off any meat or seafood purchase. It didn't have any restrictions on how much I had to spend to use the coupon.

After I finished most of the grocery shopping, I stopped by the meat department to look for some great bargains. I lucked out! There had been a lot of markdowns that night in the poultry department. I found a 4+ lb package of chicken quarters for $2.89. I used my $2 off coupon and got it for $.89, or around $.20 a pound.

That night I cooked up all of the chicken on the stove top. Once it was cooked through, I cut it into bite sized pieces. Over the next few days, this was used to make stir fry twice (for two) and once for wraps with lettuce, tomato and cheese (for two).

After that, I was left with the bones and skins. I put it all in a pot along with the onion skins and carrot peels left over from the stir fry, and covered with water. I covered and simmered for 3 hours. I strained the resulting broth and poured it into re-used plastic containers.  I got around 1 1/2 quarts of broth. I put the broth into the freezer for later use in soup making. I picked through the bones and was able to salvage around a cup of meat. This meat was just bits and pieces, but that's perfect for soup. I put that in the freezer also. I will be able to use the broth and chicken, along with carrots, onions, celery and pasta, to make 4 servings of chicken noodle soup.

So for $.89, I got enough chicken to make 10 meals (5 meals for two), for a cost per serving of $.09. To keep my meat costs low, I first look for a great deal when purchasing the meat. Then I chose meals that use meat as simply an ingredient, rather than the main course. Meals such as stir-fry, soup, casseroles, omelets, wraps, and tacos can use meat for flavor but not as the main ingredient. Then I make sure that I don't waste anything.


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Not Buying It

I don’t shop on Black Friday (and definitely not on Gray Thursday). I like to save money, and I love to find a good deal, so why wouldn’t I love Black Friday?

Most of my purchasing is for things that I need, but I also do allow myself some things that are just wants. However, I do not buy things that I don’t really want. Black Friday and related days are about buying stuff that I’m supposed to want.

Most people buy things that they think they want, things they are told they need: fancy cell phones, flat screen TVs, and high-power blenders; 50 pairs of jeans, 100’s of T-shirts and even more shoes; New luggage, new computers, and new gaming systems; DVDs, name-brand sneakers and toaster ovens.

Do these things really make anyone happy? Has anyone ever gotten a high out of using their new blender? Do you watch all of your new movies and conclude that your life is awesome? Do you jump higher when wearing your new basketball shoes? Does your new cell phone really make you more connected? Do your family members enjoy those Christmas gifts so much that they are glad you skipped Thanksgiving dinner so you could go buy them?

Black Friday is a scam. Just like television commercials and programs that show us all of the wonderful, shiny, delightful things we just must have, Black Friday is about making us think that our lives will get better if we buy this stuff. Our food will taste better when prepared with power blenders and fancy coffee makers. Our friendships will be richer once we have an iPhone to chat with others. Our sex will be better if we wear the right underwear. We’ll finally feel rested if we cover our bed with the right high-thread count sheets.

Full-color sales ads are delivered to every house shouting out ridiculously low prices on great things. There are extremely low stocks of the “good stuff” for which people will wait in line for 12 hours, but that doesn’t stop the hunger for more goods. People trample each other, vying for the best position to get the newest gadgets. Fights break out. People die. Somehow we turn into more primitive versions of ourselves.

And at the end of the day, our cars are packed full of all these attempts at happiness. We drive home, unload the car and spend the evening alone in our house. Our only companions are silent; somehow they don’t seem quite as dazzling now as they did mere hours ago in the store. But never worry, soon the credit card bills will come in. The phone will ring off the hook as the collectors come calling.

Happiness is Recreating Memories

Tonight Trucker and I recreated a date night we had over 5 years ago when we had just moved into our first apartment together. We were hard up financially. I'd just moved from two states away and didn't have a job lined up yet. We had spent what little money we had stocking up the pantry with some of the basics, filling in the gaps with cleaning supplies and buying a new bed. So even though we were young and crazy in love, we didn't have any money for fancy date nights.

One of our early evenings in that first little apartment, I was craving smores. We didn't have a yard, let alone permission from the landlord to start a fire on his property. So we grabbed marshmallows, graham crackers, chocolate and chop sticks. We roasted our marshmallows over the flame on the gas range and giggled and talked while we ate our delicious snacks.

Now we're living in our first house together. And while our income is a little higher, we're spending every little bit of extra money painting the bathroom, putting up shelves in the laundry room and all the hundreds of little things that need done. And so tonight, we grabbed our marshmallows (on sale for $.79), graham crackers (generic brand $2), chocolate ($1) and chopsticks and made our smores over the gas range and talked about how far we've come.

Romance doesn't have to be costly. Sometimes the very best date nights are the ones where you spend nothing but time together.

Shared with: Penny Pinching Party

A Cheaper Cup O Joe

I love coffee. I especially love to go out for coffee. While at home there are many distractions, namely lots of renovations in the new house and an overly affectionate cat that wants to play fetch, at a coffee house, there are comfy seats, relaxing music and not a care in the world. I could spend every evening sitting in a coffeehouse. However, it is hard to justify when the cost of a latte is $4 plus tip. Here are some ways that I save money so I can go out more often:

* Drink regular coffee instead of espresso-based drinks to save a buck or two on purchase prices. Remember that frozen blended drinks are almost entirely half and half. Hopefully the caloric horror will be enough to convince you to order the regular joe.
* Find a coffee house that offers free refills on regular coffee or iced tea. This is especially great for entire afternoons spent relaxing with a novel. Chains that usually offer free refills: Caribou, Panera, McDonalds, Einstein Bros Bagels. Locally owned coffee shops usually offer free refills or a discounted price on refills.
* Bring a travel mug for discounts at many coffee houses. Discounts can be 10% off the bill, or $.50 off each drink. I have a coffee mug for hot drinks and a reusable cold-drink cup for those days when I just need an iced coffee.
* Take advantage of customer loyalty programs. Whether its buy 10 get one free or a percentage off when you use a mug with their name on it, you should sign up for the programs at any coffee houses you go to.
* Look for coupons in the paper. Once, I found a buy-one-get-one-free coupon for a chain coffee house near my house. I raided the recycling bin for several more coupons and got cheap coffee dates with Trucker for the next month.
* Ask about any special promotions. Panera currently has a promotion where you buy a travel mug for $10 and get free coffee refills until November 11. Trucker and I each bought one and they paid for themselves after 5 uses. We'll save around $40 each over the course of the promotion and still have use of the mug.
* On Earth Day, Starbucks often gives free coffee if you bring in your own travel mug.
* Check Groupon for specials. When a new coffee house opened in my area, I paid $15 for a punch card good for 10 drinks.
* Check the Entertainment Book (entertainment.com). My book has coupons for several coffee houses, and many more I can print from the website. I save enough on coffee to cover the cost of the book. Any other coupons I use are just extra.
* Go to a local coffee house on a night when they have live music or poetry readings. I discovered one of my favorite musicians at one such event.

Happy living!