Money Saving Monday
This week's money saving tips:
1. Use beans to stretch your meat. Most hamburger is almost $3 a pound right now. Dry beans which you have to cook yourself are the most economical, but the prepared canned beans are also less expensive then beef. When I make taco meat, I often add one can or about 1 1/2 c. of cooked kidney beans to each pound of hamburger. This enables me to use about four pounds of beef rather then eight pounds. It cuts the cost from about $22 to $16. That's an amount worth saving.
2. Save #10 cans to use around tomato and pepper plants in the garden. We live in town. The cost of water is high. We had previously watered our garden by running the sprinkler on it. Last year we found that it was much more economical to change our watering habits. We saved #10 cans (which I have a lot of because we buy green beans, pineapple, re-fried beans, etc. from Sam's Club). Using the can opener we remove both ends of the can. After planting the tomatoes and peppers, we place a can around each plant. Then when we needed to water, we have the children fill each can to the top two times. It seems to be the perfect amount of water, and our plants have thrived. Besides our water bill being lower, another plus is that the cans keep the birds from pecking the plants off during those first few weeks when they are so tender and small.
1. Use beans to stretch your meat. Most hamburger is almost $3 a pound right now. Dry beans which you have to cook yourself are the most economical, but the prepared canned beans are also less expensive then beef. When I make taco meat, I often add one can or about 1 1/2 c. of cooked kidney beans to each pound of hamburger. This enables me to use about four pounds of beef rather then eight pounds. It cuts the cost from about $22 to $16. That's an amount worth saving.
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| Crock pot full of hamburger and kidney beans. |
2. Save #10 cans to use around tomato and pepper plants in the garden. We live in town. The cost of water is high. We had previously watered our garden by running the sprinkler on it. Last year we found that it was much more economical to change our watering habits. We saved #10 cans (which I have a lot of because we buy green beans, pineapple, re-fried beans, etc. from Sam's Club). Using the can opener we remove both ends of the can. After planting the tomatoes and peppers, we place a can around each plant. Then when we needed to water, we have the children fill each can to the top two times. It seems to be the perfect amount of water, and our plants have thrived. Besides our water bill being lower, another plus is that the cans keep the birds from pecking the plants off during those first few weeks when they are so tender and small.
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| Pepper plant growing in its can. |
What an interesting water tip.
ReplyDeleteI use black beans to stretch our taco meat, we all like it. I've even used just black beans to make black bean burritos and my husband asked me for more meat. I was laughing as I told him it was just beans.
I have a recipe for vegetarian taco salad that we like. It uses cabbage, red peppers, onion, black beans, seasoning, etc. It's much less expensive then meat and yummy too. I'll have to share it sometime soon.
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