A Fun Way to Make Some Money

Good Morning Everyone!!! I don't know about you, but I enjoy making easy money every once in awhile. If you have been following me for awhile, you will remember that I once wrote a post about ways that I save money. One of those ways was adding some income and Swagbucks is one way that I do this.

Swagbucks works by giving you "bucks" for different things you do on their website. For example, every day I go to the homepage and answer a daily poll question, and follow a No Obligation Special Offer trail where I click "No, Thanks" a few times and then I get some bucks!

So, every day I am guaranteed at least 3 bucks. Then I also use this website as a search engine instead of google which can randomly win bucks and also watching videos, doing surveys, clipping coupons, and many other things give you those bucks. If you are at all interested in signing up you can use the previous link or this link which is a referral link. You can also refer your friends and family and you will be given your own link and can get bucks from them if they sign up. Let me know if you have any questions I would be more than happy to help. Also, the Swagbucks Facebook page is a great resource :)

Have a great day!

Bringing Indian Food Home

How many of you like Indian food out there? It seems to be very hit or miss, but in this household it is a very big hit! We love Indian food, and one of our favorite restaurants in the area is an Indian restaurant. We love it so much, we decided to try making it at home for a date night. It can get pretty expensive to eat it at a restaurant often, but the ingredients at home aren't so bad. For this particular meal we made a variety of recipes. We have chicken mukany, aloo gobi, naan, jasmine rice and dal. We usually wouldn't eat this much, but it was a date night and we wanted to go all out, then we had to try each dish so it looks like a lot.

We will start today with my personal favorite....Aloo Gobi! This is a tasty vegetarian dish made from cauliflower and potatoes. Pictured on the bottom left next to the naan and across from the rice if this seems completely foreign to you. I found this recipe on food.com!

Ingredients
1/4 cup olive oil
1 white onion, diced
1 head of cauliflower
3 potatoes
1 15 oz can diced tomatoes
1 tsp ginger
2 cloves garlic, smashed
1 tsp cumin
2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp salt
2 tsp garam masala

Directions

Heat oil in an large pan. Add the onion and cumin to pan, stir until onions are golden. In the meantime, chop potatoes and cauliflower into large chunks. Then add turmeric and salt. Add tomatoes, ginger, and garlic and mix thoroughly. Then add the cauliflower and potatoes. Stir until fully coated in sauce.

Cover and simmer for 20 minutes for potatoes to fully cook. Then add garam masala. Let sit for awhile before serving, it really get the flavors mixed together.

This was a serious hit! I love aloo gobi and it's so easy to make at home :) Even the husband liked this veggie side dish!

My First Try At Homemade Bread

I know, I know. If you cook so much how on earth have you not tried bread before now? Well, let me clear this up. I have made bread. I've made some delicious zucchini bread, pumpkin bread, and any kind of bread with no yeast necessary, but I've always been so afraid of yeast! Silly, I know. Even sillier now that I know how easy it is to make bread on my own!! So, I tried making my very own sandwich bread, and let me tell you I hope I never have to go back to store bought. It is so tasty, easy, and so much less stuffed with words I can't pronounce that I can't imagine buying it again :) So, with that being said you should definitely try this out yourself!

I found this recipe on Pinterest from this Blog 

Here is how mine turned out:

SUPER TASTY!!! Also, it made two loaves, so that is even more exciting :)


Ingredients
3 cups luke warm water
1 packet instant rise yeast
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup oil
1 Tbsp salt
6-7 cups flour

Directions
To start, mix the water, sugar, and yeast in a large bowl. I let it sit about 10 minutes, if you use fast rise/instant yeast you probably don't need to let it sit, but I do anyway. Then add oil. Add all the dry ingredients together and mix until smooth.

Begin kneading dough until everything is well incorporated and smooth. If it feels too sticky, add a little more flour. The dough should be slightly sticky and should also pull away from the sides of the bowl. Then set in the oven covered with the light on until it rises to the top of the bowl.

Remove from oven, punch the dough down. Divide the dough into two loaf pans. Then let rise again until it reaches about an inch above the pans.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Let bake for 25 minutes until a nice golden color. Remove from oven, immediately remove from pans and place on cooling rack.

Eat when warm if you can bear to touch it ;) So tasty with some good whipped honey or jam! Yummo! Also, we used it as sandwich bread all week and it was such a hit with both myself and my husband all week long!

Have a great weekend!!!

This Week's Menu

Hello! We were out of town all weekend which always gets me a little behind. Then today I had someone come in to evaluate my class, which is routine, but also pretty frightening. So, as much as I wanted to stay on top of this more, there will just be days that I miss between posts :) Today I am posting our weekly meal plan and what we are purchasing. If you don't remember we stay within $45 a week. It used to be $50, but with tax increases our budget has changed a bit. It has been interesting staying within these means with buying healthier food, but I haven't had a problem so far. So, here it is...

Tuesday:

                Breakfast: smoothie

                Lunch:  rice and beans

                Dinner:  date night...Noodles & Co with our birthday coupon!

Dessert:  chocolate muffins

                                       

Wednesday:

                Breakfast:  lime greek yogurt

                Lunch:  cheese sticks and kashi bar

                Dinner:   black beans, corn cakes

Thursday:

                Breakfast:   greek yogurt

                Lunch:    chili, cornbread

                Dinner:   chicken with sundried tomato basil sauce, cauliflower steak

Friday:

                Breakfast:  cereal

                Lunch:   cheese stick, granola bar

                Dinner:  chili, cornbread

Saturday:

                Breakfast:  smoothie

                Lunch:  creamy avocado rice

                Dinner:  tacos

Sunday:

                Breakfast: smoothie

                Lunch: PBJ

                Dinner: cauliflower gratin, hamburgers

Monday:

                Breakfast: yogurt

                Lunch: cheese sticks, granola bar

                Dinner:   on your own! leftovers from freezer

Groceries: cheese sticks (2.49), kidney beans (.59), white beans (.59), black beans (1.2), bananas (2.00), otis spunkmeyer (coupon), atkins meal (coupon), avocado(.39), milk(1.49), cauliflower(1.69), greek yogurt (3.29), tortillas(1.69), rice(1.79), lime juice (.99), frozen fruit(2.19), sugar (1.42), lunch meat (2.49), popcorn (1.88), orange juice-2 (1.88) rice cakes-2(2.6), shredded cheddar (2.99)

Grand Total: 33.72...even some to spare! I may just have to use that for something fun for my hubs for valentine's day :)

You may notice some random items on the list, these are free coupons I have gotten in the mail and even though they aren't particularly healthy, an unhealthy snack from time to time isn't going to kill us, and in fact, it might even help us stay on the path to eating more healthy food without feeling burned out. Also, there are things we already have in our pantry like sundried tomatoes which I make myself, I will post on it someday probably. Also, I make my own bread now so I know what is in it, which is why we don't purchase any bread for sandwiches. Again, I know this is not perfect health wise, but we are trying to incorporate more real foods into our diet and decrease sugar and processed food. We can't afford all organic, but perhaps one day we will. For now, we have seen the changes just by eating normal portion sizes and eating less processed food!