Many people don’t bother to clip coupons for various reasons, mostly revolving around the belief that a fifty cent coupon doesn’t make it worth the effort. On the surface, I agree - without a very clever coupon strategy, it’s probably not worth the effort.

About two months ago, I was talking about this very fact with a friend of mine who works for Hy-Vee, the large grocery store chain here in Iowa. He gave me a tip: he said to take the coupon section out of the Sunday paper and put it aside for four weeks - don’t even bother to look at it. Four weeks later, open it up and clip everything that’s even remotely of interest, whether you’d buy it normally or not.

At that point, take the wad of coupons to the store and just look at the shelves. Magically, most of those coupons you have will sync up very well with stuff that’s already on sale on the shelves. When you combine the sale price and the coupon, you’ll usually be able to get items for next to nothing.

I tried this myself, actually. I saved the flyers from mid-December and then just cut them up earlier this week to take them to the store. What did I find? About 40% of the coupons I cut out matched up with items on sale. I wound up getting T. Marzetti salad dressing for less than a dollar, a package of diapers at the cheapest rate I believe I’ve ever bought them for, and a container of quite good vanilla ice cream for $0.19 - and those are just the ones I remember.

Why does this work? Coupons in the newspaper are usually the first wave of a product push from large companies. They’ll put out coupons to start bumping up the sales, then they’ll move onto sale prices later on in the promotion. The reason for doing these in waves is so that the overall product sales trend looks solidly positive and not just a big spike with a fall-off. Plus, coupon users who use the product, like it, return to the store, and notice the item on sale are often willing to buy the item again. I’ll admit to noticing this working for me in the past with products like V-8 Fusion.

After discovering this nifty attribute, I’ve quickly moved to a big adjustment in my usual grocery shopping strategy. It no longer matters whether I “sync up” with the arrival of the Sunday paper - I just need to clip the coupons roughly a month after I receive the flyer and use them the next time I go to the grocery store.

So, as before, I make a shopping list each week. I just keep writing down staples that are getting low along with ingredients needed for any meals that I’m thinking about making. I usually use a notepad on the refrigerator for this, along with Remember the Milk.

Sometime shortly before I go, I get out a month-old coupon flyer and clip everything that might match something on my list. I’ll also clip anything that I know we can always use - like diapers - along with anything that’s a potentially reasonable purchase, like salad dressings because we often eat salad.

After that, I head out to the store when it’s convenient (often early on Saturday mornings) and use the coupons effectively. Whenever you see a sale item that you also have a coupon for, you’re usually doing quite well and can often get a pretty good item for just pennies - or at least far cheaper than the normal price and usually notably cheaper than the generic version.

This technique saved me about $20 during my last grocery store visit - compared to normal retail prices - for about thirty minutes of extra effort at the breakfast table, cutting coupons and putting together the grocery list. That $20 doesn’t include the fact that the grocery list kept me on task at the store, helping me find items I actually needed and ignore items I don’t. That’s a worthwhile frugal activity, in my opinion.

Many busy familes (even on occasion, our own busy family) often resort to prepackaged skillet meals in order to get a hot, prepared meal on the table quickly at dinnertime. With both parents getting home at five or later and a desire to get a meal on the table early enough so that there is some semblance of a family evening, it’s not surprising that the ease of preparation, the speed, and the relative healthiness of prepackaged skillet meals have become popular.

There are a few problems here, though:

Prepackaged skillet meals are often very expensive for what you get. Skillet meals are almost always at least $6 and often cost significantly more than that. Pick up five of them at once and you’re talking a bill of $35 or so. The food in the bag often adds up to less than a pound in total weight.

Such meals are often laden with preservatives and “industrial” ingredients. As a rule of thumb, if I don’t know what that ingredient is, I don’t like to eat it. Using that rule, pick up pretty much any prepackaged meal you can find and read that ingredient list. My stomach is flopping.

Such meals are often not very healthy in terms of fat, sodium, etc. These meals are designed to be tasty, not to be healthy. Based on the nutrition facts on these items, I’d have to say that most of them don’t worry about healthy too much at all.

I generally like most of the prepackaged skillet meal offerings, I just wish they were healthier - and preferably cheaper. As a frugal parent, I’d like to find a better solution to this situation. I’d like to have a healthy and tasty meal that I could prepare quickly.

My solution? Make a whole bunch of them in advance.

All you have to do is find a good skillet meal recipe, quadruple the recipe, prepare all of the ingredients, then fill four freezer bags with the meal. Then, when you’re ready to eat them, get that bag out of the freezer, thaw it, and then cook it in the skillet until it’s nice and warm. Done!

You can find countless skillet recipes online. My usual technique is to cook the meat in advance, then add all of the needed ingredients to the ziploc bags. Here’s an example:

Trent’s Beef and Vegetable Skillet Meal

The normal recipe involves the following:

3/4 lb. lean ground beef
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped green pepper
3 1/2 cups diced tomatoes
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1 cup peas (frozen ones are okay)
1 cup chopped carrots
1 cup uncooked rice
1 1/2 cups water

I add everything but the ground beef to each bag. Then, I cook up three pounds of ground beef and drain it, then add a quarter of that beef to each ziploc bag. On the outside I write “beef and vegetable skillet - simmer 40 minutes” on masking tape (so I can reuse the bag for another meal later) and I toss the bags in the freezer.

When I come home, I get out a bag, run it under hot water for a bit so that I can easily get the contents out, then I put it in a skillet on high until it’s just barely boiling, then I drop the heat until it stays just barely boiling. I cook it for about forty minutes or so, then it’s ready to serve.

A similar philosophy applies for pretty much any skillet meal you might prepare. They all work pretty well.

Making skillet meals in advance actually makes for a great weekend afternoon project that saves money and helps you to eat healthier. The meal above is really healthy - it’s loaded with vegetables and, if you cook lean ground beef and properly drain it, it’s very low fat, too.

Plus, the ingredients all together cost only a bit more than one ordinary skillet meal. Compared to the cost of four typical skillet meals, the needed ingredients save about $15, and you can have the bags ready to go into the freezer in less than an hour. That’s $15 saved (compared to prepackaged skillet meals) even without considering the positive health effects - quite a bargain in my eyes.

Many of you are sitting there browsing The Simple Dollar but thinking about tomorrow’s Thanksgiving dinner and wondering how you can make it even better. Here are some quick tips you can add to your meal to make it cheaper, tastier, and perhaps a bit faster.

For the first thirty minutes of cooking a turkey, put the temperature 50 degrees F (or 25 degrees C) higher than the directions recommend. After that, lower the temperature and follow the directions. Why do this? It makes the skin crispier and more flavorful and makes the turkey underneath slightly juicier, too. My family actually cooks the turkey at a very high temperature all the way through, reducing the cooking time, but it’s very easy for this to end in disaster if you’re not highly diligent with the turkey.

Use the bath tub for thawing/defrosting a frozen turkey. Really, nothing works better that I’ve ever tried. Fill a bathtub up with cool water (that feels nice and cool to the touch, but not quite freezing), then plunk the turkey (in the plastic wrap) in there late in the evening. You can defrost a pound of turkey every thirty minutes using this technique, so a fifteen pounder will defrost in about seven and a half hours. Don’t use warm water for this or else you’re begging for bacterial growth.

Stuff a turkey with ice. This goes a long way to improve the moistness of the turkey. Put several ice cubes in the cavity of the turkey just before you toss it in the oven and when you baste it mid-cooking, squirt some of the extra liquid back up in the cavity. It will form steam in there, adding moisture back to the inside of the turkey.

Stuff a turkey to flavor the meat, not to eat. I don’t recommend eating turkey stuffing, as I mention above, but if you’ve put ice in there, you can put in a lot of spices too solely to add flavor to the turkey. I usually put in two cups of chopped onions, two cups of celery, one teaspoon gfound sage, about a teaspoon of crushed black pepper, and a teaspoon of garlic salt. Put it right in there with the ice, and it’ll be amazing (the stuff will steam up in the cavity).

Measure every dry ingredient for everything the night before. Put them in baggies or cups and leave them out to use the next day. This makes the actual day far less chaotic. I also find that digging out all of the Tupperware you’re going to use for leftovers and matching them to their lids the night before is also very useful.

Set your table the night before, too. Many people like to use elegant dishes and nice place settings for Thanksgiving. You can save a lot of time if you just set the entire table the night before, place settings and all.

Serve appetizers. At first, you might think this adds expense and also adds effort to your day, but the actual effect saves money and time. You can make appetizers in advance, first of all, and just set them out for people to eat when it’s convenient. This will keep them out of the kitchen, meaning you can work more efficiently. Even better, it will take a serious edge off their hunger, meaning they’ll eat less at the actual meal where the food is more expensive per bite.

One final tip: don’t throw out leftovers. There are always things you can do with any amount of leftovers. Last year, I wrote about seven great things you can do with them, but my favorite is taking leftovers to shut-ins in the community, people who are unable to enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner for whatever reason.

Over the last year, I’ve gradually moved more and more towards making my own food at home. There are several reasons for this: it tastes better, it reduces preservative intake, it’s more nutritious, and it’s often substantially cheaper than what you find in the store. It does take time, but once you get used to it, most food preparation doesn’t take much more time than going to the store, buying it, taking it home, popping it out of the package, and following the directions.

Breadmaking is a prime example of this phenomenon. Homemade bread is substantially tastier than store-purchased bread, isn’t laden with preservatives, is very inexpensive to make, and doesn’t take all that much time, either.

The Problems With Industrial Bread

Most people in the United States today view the bread purchased at the supermarket as what bread should be. The actual truth is that the bread you buy in the supermarket has the texture and substance that it has for one reason and one reason alone: so that it can be made on an industrial scale and not grow “old” on the shelf at your supermarket.

There are two big explanations for this. The industrial scale process is designed to maximize profit while still producing an edible loaf of bread on the table. This is done by using an excessive amount of yeast in order to create lots of air bubbles in the bread, hence the “light” texture of store-purchased bread. It also allows for the use of lower-quality grains because of this yeast abundance, thus the bread is far from nutrient-rich. In the United States, most recipes are trade secrets, but in the United Kingdom, the standard recipe, known as the Chorleywood Bread Process, is widely known. The goal of this process is to make a loaf of bread as cheaply as possible, foregoing flavor, nutrition, and texture along the way.

The other bothersome part of industrial breadmaking is the appearance of a healthy dose of preservatives. These preservatives are there solely to extend the shelf life of the bread, again reducing costs for the manufacturer. Every time you eat a piece of store-purchased bread, you’re getting a healthy dose of preservatives with each bite.

Take a look at the ingredient list from a loaf of Home Pride butter top honey wheat bread, a fairly standard store-purchased loaf in my area. I bolded some of the ingredients.

Enriched wheat flour (flour, barley malt, ferrous sulfate (iron), “B” vitamins (niacin, thaimine mononitrate (B1), riboflavin (B2), folic acid)), water, sweetener (high fructose corn syrup or sugar), yeast, wheat bran, whole wheat flour, wheat gluten, molasses. Contains 2% or less of: soybean oil, salt, sweet dairy whey, butter (cream, salt, enzymes), maltodextrin, honey, corn syrup, calcium sulfate, soy flur, dough conditioners (may contain: dicalcium phosphate, calcium dioxide, sodium stearoyl lactylate, ethoxylated mono and diglycerides, mono and diglycerides, and/or datem), yeast nutrients (may contain: ammonium sulfate, ammonium chloride, calcium carbonate, monocalcium phosphate, and/or ammonium phosphate), cornstarch, wheat starch, vinegar, natural flavor, beta carotene (color), enzymes, calcium propionate (to retain freshness), soy lecithin.

That’s what a slice of store-purchased bread contains.

How to Make Your Own Tasty Homemade Bread, Easily and Cheaply

What I’ve found is that many people are simply intimidated by the seemingly complex and work-intensive process of making bread. It seems difficult and loaded with steps and significant work.

In fact, bread is quite easy to make at home, and you only need a few staple ingredients to make a simple loaf. Here’s exactly how to make a delicious loaf at home from scratch.

What you see on the table there is every ingredient and piece of equipment that you need to make a loaf of bread (except the oven). Nothing complicated at all, just basic ingredients that you can often get very inexpensively at your local grocery store. In fact, the ingredients on that table (except for the yeast) is enough to make several loaves of bread.

Here’s the equipment you need…
One large mixing bowl A second one is useful, but optional - you can get by with one if you’re willing to wash it in the middle of the process.
One spoon You need a spoon to stir the dough.
One measuring cup A 1/4 or 1/2 cup measuring cup will do the job.
One measuring spoon A one-teaspoon measurer will be just perfect.
One bread pan Obviously, to bake the bread in.
One hand towel This is just to cover the bread dough as it rises so it doesn’t get drafts or dust or anything on it.

That’s all you need, and it’s all stuff that’s pretty common in most kitchens.

Now, for the food ingredients…
1/4 cup milk
5 teaspoons sugar (or 1 1/2 tablespoons)
1 teaspoons salt
5 teaspoons butter (or 1 1/2 tablespoons)
1 package active dry yeast (you can get yeast near the flour at your local grocery store)
2 1/2 to 3 1/2 cups flour (get unbleached white for your first attempt)
Corn starch or nonstick cooking spray (just to prevent the bread from sticking to the bowl or pan)

That’s all you need for homemade bread, period. There are some neat things you can do with added ingredients, which I’ll talk about later, but all you need is that stuff. Nothing complicated or “secret” or confusing at all.

Ordinarily when baking bread, I would mix the dough with my KitchenAid stand mixer, but making bread is easy enough that this is just a convenience, not a requirement by any means. Basically, instead of doing the kneading and stirring described below, I just flip a switch and this machine does it for me.

OK, let’s get started. First, you should warm up the bowl - the best way to do that is to just fill it with hot water, then dump out the hot water, leaving the bowl rather warm. Then, mix up the yeast according to the directions on the packet. Usually, it will say something along the lines of “add a cup of warm water to the yeast and stir.” What you’ll end up with is some tan-colored water with some bubbles in it, as shown above. You should stir this until there are no lumps in the yeast.

Melt the butter in the microwave, then add it, the milk, the sugar, and the salt to the yeast liquid and stir it up until everything looks the same (a very light tan liquid). Then add two cups of flour to the mix - don’t add the rest yet. Your bowl should look something like what’s shown above, where I have the spoon on board ready to stir.

Start stirring, and then add the flour about 1/4 cup at a time every minute or so. It will stick to the spoon big time at first - don’t worry about it. Keep stirring and adding flour until the dough is still slightly sticky, but it doesn’t stick to your hands in any significant way. Also, it should largely clean the sides of the bowl, leaving just a thin layer of floury stuff. It’ll look something like the above.

Now comes the fun part: kneading. Take a bit of flour between your hands and then rub them together over the top of an area on the table where you’re going to knead the dough. Do this a few times until there’s an area on the table lightly covered in flour. Then grab the dough ball out of the bowl, slap it down on the table, and start beating on it. Do this for ten minutes. Just take the dough, punch it flat, then fold it back up into a ball again, and repeat several times. I also like to take it in my hands and squeeze and twist it.

When the ten minutes are up, shape it into a ball (like shown above), then either clean up the bowl you were using before or get out another bowl. Either coat the inside lightly with corn starch or nonstick cooking spray, depending on your preference, then put the ball of dough inside the bowl.

Put a cloth over the bowl and sit it somewhere fairly warm for an hour. If you have a warming area on your stove top, that’s a great place to put it - set the warming area on as low as it will go, as I’m doing in the picture above. This is a good time to clean everything else and put the stuff away, but leave the flour out and the floured area on your table untouched.

Here’s what the dough looks like before rising…

… and then an hour later after rising, still in the bowl…

It should be roughly double the size that it was before, but don’t sweat it too much if it’s larger or smaller than that, as long as it rose at least some amount. Punch the dough down (three or four good whacks will cause it to shrink back down to normal), then lay the dough out on the floured area and spread it out in a rectangle shape, with one side being roughly the length of the bread pan and the other side being about a bread pan and a half long.

You may need to put a bit more flour on it and on the table to prevent sticking. Then, roll it up! The roll should be roughly the same size as the bread pan, as shown below.

Tuck the ends of the roll underneath, with the “under” side being where the seam is. Then spray the bread pan down with nonstick cooking spray (or coat it with cornmeal) and put the loaf inside of the pan.

Cover that loaf up with the towel, put it back where it was before, and wait another hour. This is a good time to clean everything up, then go do something else fun. The loaf should raise some more:

Put that loaf in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit (200 degrees Celsius) for thirty minutes. When it’s done, pull it out and immediately remove it from the pan to cool. It’ll look something like this, hopefully.

Let it cool down completely before slicing.

This bread will make mind-blowing toast. Seriously, pop a slice in the toaster, get it golden brown, and spread a bit of butter or margarine on it. Truly, truly sublime.

On Beyond the Basic White Loaf

If you get into making your own bread (and why not? It’s inexpensive, tasty, and healthy), you’ll eventually want to start experimenting. Here are some tips I’ve learned over the last year or so.

Different flours work differently. If you try making a rye bread or a whole wheat bread, you’ll discover the flour has different properties. Just stick with adding it slowly to the bowl until it’s just barely not sticking to your hands, and you’ll be fine. Whole wheat flour, for instance, generally requires about half a cup less flour than white flour to reach the right point.

For a delicious Italian bread, replace the salt with garlic salt and before you start stirring, add in some Italian seasonings, like oregano and rosemary - or an Italian seasoning mix.

You can easily double this recipe and make two loaves at once. The time investment is virtually the same and you get twice the bread.

Eventually, you’ll start really experimenting. Making pizza dough from scratch is similarly easy, as are cinnamon rolls. I’ve reached the point where I feel confident making most bread recipes in the oven (except for sourdough loaves, which always seem to turn out wrong).

What’s the take home? Baking homemade bread is a very worthwhile thing to try. It’s inexpensive, healthy, and teaches you a lot about how to cook at home. Best of all (for me, anyway), it makes mindblowingly good toast - I love to start off my day with a slice of toast made from homemade bread and a cup of tea.

Shannon writes in with the following lament:

Is there any advice you can give for giving up the Starbucks addiction? I’ve slowly been gaining control of my financial life, but Starbucks seems to be the bain of my financial existence–the only thing I cannot give up.

Starbucks is a particularly pesky thing to give up because it has (at least) two major psychological tools working in its favor. First, the product itself is addictive - caffeine is both a physically and psychologically addictive substance. Second, the routine factor: many people simply grab coffee from Starbucks as part of their daily routine, and this itself is hard to upset even without the caffeine addiction factor.

Thus, my tips for helping to get past the Starbucks habit break down into two separate groups.

Seven Ways To Beat Caffeine

Talk to your doctor Seriously. Beating any addiction is challenging, even if it seems like a trivial thing. Ask whether B or B-complex vitamins will help, and also ask about nasal sprays. Also, ask whether a gentle anti-depressant would help, preferably something natural and gentle like St. John’s wort.

Drink plenty of water and fruit juice Most people don’t drink enough water anyway, but the period when you’re fighting a caffeine addiction is the best time to really get into a much better habit, that of drinking several cups of water a day.

Get extra sleep Caffeine withdrawal will make you lethargic, so plan for extra sleep for the first month or so when you’re kicking the habit.

Don’t be afraid to use mild painkillers Advil and Tylenol also help during withdrawal - headaches are a common complaint, and these will help with any headaches you might have.

Try decaf If you like the flavor of coffee, try making your own decaf. You can use this to directly substitute for your morning coffee routine, severely reducing your caffeine intake.

Get some low-impact exercise Do simple things like taking a short walk or stretching to get the blood flowing through your body. It’s an amazing natural fix to the doldrums you may feel during withdrawal - or doldrums during any normal day.

Get some support by talking to your partner and your friends Ask for them to support you in this change, and most of them will step right up to the plate and help you. I helped a friend kick an alcohol addiction once - we just talked to her constantly and engaged her as much as possible and celebrated her successes.

Five Ways To Change The Starbucks Routine

Use a different route This is extremely effective. If you drive by a Starbucks as part of your routine, change that routine so that you avoid the Starbucks. Find an alternate route to and from work so that you avoid the temptation.

Replace Starbucks with a different beverage I often start my day off with tea at my desk (instead of coffee), but that may be harsh for some. Instead, perhaps find a non-Starbucks beverage you enjoy and make that part of your morning routine.

Find the non-coffee aspects of your routine and duplicate them elsewhere Do you often stop and drink while reading the newspaper? Get a newspaper anyway and read it elsewhere while enjoying a different beverage. Look at the routine you follow at Starbucks and retain elements of that theme, merely removing Starbucks from the equation.

Think about it when you “automatically” stop Sometimes, people seemingly “automatically” stop for things that are part of their habit. Whenever you even think about doing such a thing, take a moment and think about it. Even if you catch yourself already in the parking lot, do the smart thing and just drive away.

Set goals and give yourself rewards for meeting them Make yourself a deal - no Starbucks for a month, and you’ll use half of the money you saved on something pleasant for yourself. Pick out the item, even, and use a picture of it to remind yourself of the goal. After a month, the habit will be largely crushed.

After partially implementing Volumetrics and seeing some success with it, I’ve made a realization that for my health to really kick into high gear, I need to look at making some bigger changes. I’m not obese, I’m just somewhat heavier than I was, say, when I first started dating my wife, and I’d like to get back to that weight and level of fitness (I did push-ups on our first date, actually). However, every time I look at various methods for getting into shape, the costs of it make me cringe, especially the maintenance costs like meeting fees and gym fees.

Thus, I sat down and spent some time looking over my various options and have come up with a plan for getting in better shape that I believe will work for me. Here goes.

The first step was visiting my doctor, which I’ve already done. We went over my current health situation in quite a lot of detail, and he suggested several things to try.

First and foremost, he recommended an aerobic exercise regimen. He recommended some sort of method where I could easily track my progress and something to keep myself motivated - he actually directly suggested that I pay for a medium-level aerobics class at a local gym. I can’t even conceive of myself actually going to an aerobics class, let alone paying the high costs associated with it, so I started to look for other solutions.

My frugal solution to an aerobic exercise regimen is the same solution that worked for me in college: Dance Dance Revolution. For those unaware, Dance Dance Revolution is a video game that comes with a floor mat. This floor mat has four arrows on it: up, down, left, right. When you play the game, a song plays and you simply step on the arrows in time with the music. On the screen, arrows fly up to the top and when they cross a line at the top of the screen, that’s when you step on that specific arrow. So, when the up arrow crosses the line on the screen, that’s when you step on the up arrow on the pad.

When you get familiar with it, it becomes rather good aerobic exercise, to the point that the Wii version of the game includes a “Workout mode” that keeps track of calories burnt and time spent exercising - that mode basically keeps tossing songs at you until you stop. Even better, the Wii version includes using the normal remote as well, requiring you to get arm motions into the exercise. Basically, the game provides its own motivation. The best part? I can do all of this in the privacy of my own basement. The startup cost is a bit high, but the maintenance cost is nil - you don’t have to keep paying gym fees or class fees when you have DDR at home. Cost: $69

Second, he recommended plenty of water intake. He encouraged me to drink between 12 and 16 cups (2.8 liters and 3.8 liters) of straight water each day, and directly replace any sodas in my life with that amount. A typical can of soda is 1.5 cups, so this replaces somewhere between 8 and 11 cans of soda a day. While I do drink some soda (with a strong personal preference towards Hansen’s Natural), I don’t drink nearly that much and the rest of my fluid intake is almost entirely water and milk (and the occasional glass of wine or craft beer).

If I follow his suggestion completely (and I plan to), this will eliminate almost all soda from my diet entirely. Not only is this strictly healthier, it’s also significantly cheaper, considering the amount of water I should drink in a day can be pulled from the tap for less than a cent, versus the cost of several cans of soda. I calculated the daily savings (versus buying soda in bulk), and I figure I’ll save somewhere around $2 a day doing this. Cost: -$2 a day

Third, he recommended eating a healthier diet. He felt that my current diet was the least of my problems, since I’m at least partially following the Volumetrics plan and I prepare quite a bit of food at home, but he encouraged me to prepare as much as I could at home and try to follow the Volumetrics principles. I asked him about a vegetarian diet and he said if I try that, I should make sure there are lots of beans in the diet as they’re the strongest source of protein in a vegetarian diet. I am going to attempt a one week trial run of eating vegetarian just to see how it goes, but mostly I’m going to focus on what I do now. Cost: Slightly cheaper, but negligible

Finally, he suggested that I set some specific, tangible, realistic goals. He suggested various things, like a certain number of aerobic exercise sessions a week, an avoidance of fatty foods for a certain period, and a certain number of days without drinking any fluids but water and skim milk. He also encouraged me to not set goals related to my weight, as a person’s weight on a day-by-day and week-by-week basis can fluctuate and not necessarily go down - he actually said it’s much like the stock market in a healthy economy in that it generally goes in the direction you want, but a given day or a given week, it can go in the opposite direction.

This made a lot of sense, so I prepared a small list of discrete goals for myself. Four sessions of aerobic exercise a week, 13.5 cups of water per day, and halving the number of meals I don’t eat at home (or in the form of leftovers). If I make all of these for a month, then I’ll reward myself in some amusing, simple fashion that I haven’t quite created yet, but the excitement of the goals themselves will keep me going at first, anyway. Cost: a little bit if I hit all my goals, but if I hit all of them, I’ll be healthier, so… negligible?

Except for the startup cost for DDR (and that’s mostly because motivation is a very key part of the puzzle for me and aerobic exercise), this is actually extremely inexpensive and in some ways saves money. The near-entire elimination of soda from my diet will pay for the DDR setup in a little over a month, so in the long run (if I stick with it), it shouldn’t be too bad at all. I think I have a pretty good likelihood of sticking with it, too, as I’ll just exercise in the morning as part of my routinie some days and I don’t really change my diet much at all except for the soda. Best of all, it’s not going to cost me much of anything.

A few of my friends are big believers in buying organic produce. They basically won’t buy anything at all that’s not certified USDA Organic, and they claim loudly and repeatedly that this is really the only way to go if you care about your health.

To me, it’s more a matter of personal preference than anything else. While there are some benefits to organic food, there are some serious limitations to it as well.

First of all, with regards to the question of whether organic foods are better for you, it’s pretty hard to trust most sources of information. Almost every source of information has a clear bias on the topic, from pro-organic folks listing lots of positive attributes to others claiming there are no health benefits at all. Both sides have significant scientific literature that “proves” their perspective.

What’s the actual truth? As usual, it’s probably somewhere in the middle - organic foods probably do have a small number of benefits over non-organic crops, but the claims that some make about the benefits of the foods are likely overblown. Almost always, when you have two sides shouting loudly with very different perspectives, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

What about the lack of chemicals in organics? That’s largely overrated, too. Take a look at the USDA regulations on what is considered “organic,” particularly starting on page 427, where it lists materials allowed for use in organic crop production. I’ve selected a few allowed items:

calcium hypochlorite
chlorine dioxide
soap-based algicide
ammonium
calcium polysulfide
copper sulfate
lignin sulfonate

I just pulled out a few, actually, from the first few pages of the list, largely to prove the point that claims that organic foods are free of chemicals is nonsensical. Sure, most of the items on this list are perfectly benign, but are you going to study each of these chemicals to make sure your food is safe? If you aren’t, you’re in the same boat of trusting the USDA and the FDA as you would be when you buy non-organics.

In a nutshell, organic foods are likely somewhat better for you than non-organics, and are likely better for the environment as well. Is it enough of a difference to account for the difference in price? Maybe, maybe not - it depends on your values - but to believe that USDA-certified organics are strictly and clearly superior to non-organics is a substantial overstatement, especially when you consider the dollar value of the food.

Here’s the real truth: if you are really committed to foods that are produced with the environment in mind, grow them yourself or participate in a co-op that grows them to a strict standard. The vegetables in my garden are fertilized by compost I make myself, and the only things I spray on them are vinegar-based bug and critter repellents that I make myself in the kitchen. That’s food I’m glad to feed my family. When you buy food, at some point you have to trust others, regardless of whether you buy USDA-certified organic food or not. As for me, I’m perfectly happy buying the non-organics and mixing them with the food I grow myself.

The weekend after next, we are expecting eleven houseguests who will be staying for varying periods of time ranging from two days to seven days. This means that on top of the challenges of having two children in diapers, we also need to plan ahead for food for that many guests. Since we’re frugal, that also means that we’re looking for ways to minimize the costs associated with that many guests. Here are our plans.

First, we’re going to prepare as much food in advance as we possibly can. Items that can be made and then frozen will be at a premium, such as pizzas, bread, cinnamon rolls, and other such items. We’re already at work on stocking the freezer with items that can easily be pulled out, put in the oven, and then be ready to go.

This requires some careful planning.

Our first step was to prepare a meal plan for every meal over this period of time, particularly the period with the full complement of guests in our house. We’ve sketched out Friday, Saturday, and Sunday’s suppers, Saturday and Sunday’s breakfasts, and Saturday and Sunday’s lunches in great detail, and other meals in lesser detail.

Our second step was to select meals with the “prepare ahead” perspective in mind. Meals like homemade pizza, cinnamon rolls, soups and stews, bratwursts, and so forth can be prepared partially or fully in advance of guests arriving. These can also be prepared from scratch, making them much easier on the ol’ budget.

Obviously, a very large grocery list follows from here, with all of the items we need for the meals.

For those interested, here’s our full meal plan for the weekend, along with tips for how it can be done in advance.

Friday supper Homemade pizza
There are two routes to go here. The crust can always be made entirely in advance, baked for several minutes on a pizza stone, then frozen. Alternately, one could make the entire pizza (raw) in advance and freeze it. The first option works better, but requires some later work, so I minimize that by browning sausage in advance for the meatier pizza and freezing it and having all other ingredients on hand, so the crust can be pulled out and the pizza assembled pretty quickly. For the vegetables, dicing them in advance and freezing them also works - a quick thawing and spreading them out on the pizza works like a charm.

Saturday breakfast Egg casserole and homemade toast
Two egg casseroles can be prepared entirely in advance, as can two loaves of homemade bread for toast.

Saturday lunch Soup, sandwiches, and relish tray
Most of the elements for the relish tray can be sliced in advance and stored in containers until needed. The sandwiches are very easy to assemble and the soups can also be prepared in advance and frozen in gallon Ziploc bags.

Saturday supper Bratwursts, baked beans, and sauerkraut
This is actually planned to be a party inviting even more people than our houseguests, so we’re going for very simple here. The bratwursts will all be boiled in advance and frozen so they can be pulled from the bag straight to the grill for grilling. The baked beans can be started in a crock pot before the party begins.

Sunday breakfast Homemade cinnamon rolls
These can be frozen for a short period after being rolled up - just unthaw them, slice them, and toss them in the oven to bake. This will be a very busy morning, so lots of coffee and a cinnamon roll to grab will be very convenient.

Sunday lunch Pulled pork sandwiches and homemade potato salad
The pulled pork can be prepared in advance and frozen, as can the potato salad. This will again be a somewhat large crowd, so the meal will be pretty simple.

Sunday supper Red wine beef stew and apple pie
The pie is already made and frozen, while the beef stew can be assembled and cooked in a crock pot pretty easily - it’s a matter of just putting in all of the ingredients and setting it on low.

There you go, an entire weekend of homemade food for a house full of guests. Now, if we only knew how much to buy for beverages…

You’ll notice three key elements for success.

First, we prepare and freeze as much in advance as possible. We do this in the week before the event so there is minimal long-term freezing effect on the food - it comes out quite well.

Second, we rely on the crock pot during several meals. A crock pot is an amazing device for preparing larger quantities of food in an easy way.

Finally, we focus on food that’s simple to eat. This minimizes clean-up time, enabling everyone to kick back and enjoy each other’s company much more than otherwise might happen if we made highly complex meals.

To me, this is frugality in action - homemade food that everyone can enjoy and doesn’t bust one’s budget.