And the prizes go to...

The following people have been contacted (check your email and/or blogs

Heidi
Katie Stacey
Deborah
The Green Yak
rlgrady

Congratulations!!!

and from those 5, one person was randomly selected for the grand prize - $20 to use at Cooking.com! That person is... HEIDI!!!!!!!

Who said,

"Fun, the book and recipe both look great. I would give the gift card to my husband, he has quite a wish list of items he would like to pick up for the kitchen and I LOVE when he cooks!

Suggestion for topic, and this is a tricky one! We have several friends that must eat gluten free and we are constantly searching for recipes or "safe" foods we can keep on hand for when they are over. Most of these families just recently learned of the gluten issue with their children so they are also searching for ideas as they make this huge change in their diets. Any ideas?"

Congratulations all and thank you to everyone who entered and stopped by! I have loved reading each of your comments and look forward to using some of your ideas as inspiration for future entries!

(And to answer your question, heidi, check out the great blogging from Hold the Gluten and the Gluten Free Girl!)

Recycle Those Pumpkins!

I am so pleased with the response so far to my very first giveaway! Don't miss it - you still have almost two whole days to enter! I am loving all of the comments I'm receiving and thank you so much everyone for the great content suggestions! I understand now why people love doing giveaways - I want you *all* to win! :)

To keep you excited for the Dining on a Dime cookbook and all things frugal, here's another article by Tawra Kellam to enjoy! Stay tuned for more pumpkin recipes soon! 'Tis the season!

Recycle Those Pumpkins !

Peter Piper Picked a Profoundly Plump Pumpkin -- Now what does he do with it?

How to Roast a Pumpkin

You can only do this with a freshly carved pumpkin! Do not use on a pumpkin that has been carved and sitting out for several days.

To bake a fresh 6 to 7 pound pumpkin, halve the pumpkin crosswise and scoop out the seeds and strings. Place halves, hollow side down, in a large baking pan covered with aluminum foil and add a little water. Bake, uncovered, at 375 degrees for 1 ½ to 2 hours or until fork-tender. Remove. When cool, scrape pulp from shells and puree, a little at time, in food processor or blender. Mix with a little salt.

To freeze pumpkin puree. Put 1-2 cups in freezer bags along with spices and use in pies. To use pumpkin puree for recipes: Line a strainer with a double layer of cheesecloth or a flour sack dish towel and let the pumpkin sit to drain out the extra moisture BEFORE cooking with it. Pumpkin is very moist, so in order for your recipe to come out correctly, you MUST strain it.

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Boil seeds in water for 5 minutes. Drain well. Sprinkle with salt or seasoned salt. Place a thin layer on a cookie sheet. Bake at 250 degrees. Stir after 30 minutes. Bake ½-1 hour more or until crunchy.

*Squash seeds may also be used.

Pumpkin Smoothies

1/2 cup pumpkin 2 tsp. brown sugar
3/4 cup milk or vanilla yogurt 4 ice cubes
1/4 tsp. cinnamon whipped cream (optional)
1/8 tsp. nutmeg sprinkles (optional)

Place all ingredients in a blender. Blend until smooth. Pour into 2-3 glasses. Serve with a small amount of whipped cream on top. You may also add orange sprinkles if you like. Serves 2-3.

Visit www.LivingOnADime.com in the press room for a text version of this article and recipes.

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Tawra Kellam is the publisher of the website www.LivingOnADime.com and the author of Halloween On A Dime and the cookbook Dining On A Dime: Eat Better Spend Less.

Frighteningly Frugal Fun!

By Tawra Kellam of Living On a Dime.

The average American family spends over $100 per year on Halloween goodies. As your kids drag you through aisles full of ghosts and goblins, the scariest thing about Halloween is threatening to leave bite marks in your pocketbook. No wonder so many moms flee screaming from the store... It can be much less expensive and a lot more fun to devise your own chilling creations. Here are a few tips that you can use to stave off the greenback gremlins and exercise your creative muscle. It won’t hurt a bit! These and other free frugal tips are available at www.LivingOnADime.com.

Face Paint

1 tsp. corn starch 1/2 tsp. cold cream
1/2 tsp. water food coloring

Mix all ingredients together in an old muffin pan and you are ready to paint. This amount is for each color.

Fake blood- mix 2/3 cup white corn syrup, 1 tsp. red food coloring, 2-3 drops blue food coloring to darken and 1 squirt dish soap (helps blood to run well).

Deviled Eyeballs - Make deviled eggs. Then add a green olive with pimento in the center for an “eyeball”.

Bloody eyeballs- Boil cherry tomatoes 30 seconds. Allow to cool; then peel skin.

Radioactive Juice- mix equal parts Mountain Dew and blue Kool-Aid

Toxic Juice- Add some green food coloring to lemonade for a spooky color!

Brains- scramble eggs with some green, yellow and blue food coloring

Worms- Cut a hot dog in 1/8ths. Boil until they curl like worms.

Vomit- Salsa in a bowl.

Bloody Popcorn- Add red food color to melted butter and pour over popcorn.

Visit www.LivingOnADime.com in the press room for to get more free Halloween make-up and food recipes.

###

Tawra Kellam is the publisher of the website www.LivingOnADime.com and the author of Halloween On A Dime and the cookbook Dining On A Dime: Eat Better Spend Less.

***Don't forget to enter our drawing to win a copy of the Dining on a Dime ebook and a $20 gift card to Cooks.com! Click Here!

Very First Giveaway!

******Update: this giveaway is now closed, thanks!!******

I have wanted to participate in Bloggy Giveaway's carnival for a year and am finally prepared! Are *you* ready? :)

You've read about Living on a Dime here before and I said I'd refer to that site, and specifically the Dining on a Dime cookbook a lot in the future. I received an autographed copy of the cookbook, co-authored by Tawra Kellam and Jill Cooper as a wedding present from my aunt and it remains on of our most-used gifts from that day! It really is an invaluable resource as it is full of all kinds of wisdom about cooking with what you have, saving on grocery bills, and even how to clean with items from your pantry! And of course... recipes! :) Here's a taste:

Pumpkin Cookies

1/2 cup shortening   1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup sugar    1 tsp. soda
1 cup pumpkin    1 tsp. brown sugar
1 cup raisins    1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 cup nuts    2 cups flour



Cream shortening, sugar and pumpkin in a bowl.
Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well.
Drop by small spoonfuls onto an ungreased cookie sheet.
Brush tops with milk.  Bake at 375 degrees for 8 minutes. Top with frosting.

They are good - believe me!!!

And now, Tawra Kellam has generously agreed to giveaway 5 copies of the ebook version of Dining on a Dime to my readers!!!! One of those 5 readers will also win a $20 gift certificate to Cooking.com to stock up on some of the pantry goods they will need for the meals you'll be making from the book! Cooking.com also has a great selection of everything else you need for the kitchen if you are good on food.

To enter, please leave a comment telling me what you would do with the $20 over at Cooking.com by Midnight EST on 10/30/o8.

For extra entries: subscribe to my RSS feed (on the right under my profile blurb) and tell me so in a separate comment. AND you can receive a THIRD entry by leaving another comment with a pantry-related content suggestion or question that you would like to see me blog about. That's three chances to win and there are 5 prizes to be had! Pretty good odds! :)

NOTE: Because both prizes are electronic (the gc will be delivered via email) *anyone* is welcome to enter - regardless of where you live! yay!

I will contact the winners and post them here on Halloween (Oct. 31st) so make sure you either leave me some way to contact you (blog address, email, etc.) or check back here!

And stay tuned throughout the week for some more great seasonal tips from Living on a Dime - including what to do with all those great big pumpkins you are seeing for sale besides carving them!!

More giveaways at the Bloggy Giveaways Quarterly Carnival!

Foodbuzz on YouTube

Pantry Bytes

More pantry goodness from around the web:

Saving Money Through "Stockpiling"

How to Cook During a Recession

Once a Month Shopping - Save More by Shopping Less

Make Do With What You Have

Julie's Orange-Honey Muffins

The last thing I expected to find in a beautifully illustrated knitting book was a pantry recipe. What a pleasant surprise! Greetings from Knit Café is a great book in general, but this recipe endeared it to me even more. If I have fruit on hand I can make up dessert or a sweet breakfast dish pretty much on the fly - but without fruit or chocolate I'm pretty much out of ideas. The minute I read this recipe from Julie Stark I knew that if it tasted as good as it sounded, it would be a regular treat. It far exceeded my expectations!


Muffins:

2 c flour
1/2 c uncooked oatmeal, not instant
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 c brown sugar
2 large eggs, slightly beaten
2/3 c orange juice
zest of 1 large orange
1/4 c honey
5 - 1/2 T butter, melted

Icing:
1 - 1 1/2 c powdered sugar
1 T orange juice

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 12 cup muffin pan well, or line with muffin papers.

Combine flour, oatmeal, baking powder, salt and brown sugar in a large mixing bowl and stir. Add the eggs, orange juice, orange zest, honey, and melted butter and stir just until mixed. Spoon the batter into the muffin cups about 2/3 full. Bake 20 - 25 minutes or until very light golden.

To make icing: Combine powdered sugar with orange juice until a smooth glaze is formed. Drizzle over warm muffins. Muffins are best eaten warm.

Makes 12 muffins.

Foodbuzz Publisher Community Launches

LAUNCH OF GLOBAL FOODBUZZ BLOGGER COMMUNITY

LEVERAGES REAL-PEOPLE, REAL-TIME POWER OF FOOD PUBLISHING

San Francisco – October 13, 2008: Foodbuzz, Inc., officially inaugurates its food blogger community with more than 1,000 blog partners, a global food blogging event and an online platform that captures the real-people, real-time power of food publishing in every corner of the world. At launch, the Foodbuzz community ranks as one of the top-10 Internet destinations for food and dining (Quantcast), with bloggers based in 45 countries and 863 cities serving up daily food content.

“Food bloggers are at the forefront of reality publishing and the dramatic growth of new media has redefined how food enthusiasts access tasty content,” said Doug Collister, Executive Vice President of Foodbuzz, Inc. “Food bloggers are the new breed of local food experts and at any minute of the day, Foodbuzz is there to help capture the immediacy of their hands-on experiences, be it a memorable restaurant meal, a trip to the farmers market, or a special home-cooked meal.”

Foodbuzz is the only online community with content created exclusively by food bloggers and rated by foodies. The site offers more than 20,000 pieces of new food and dining content weekly, including recipes, photos, blog posts, videos and restaurant reviews. Members decide the “tastiness” of each piece of content by voting and “buzz” the most popular posts to the top of the daily menu of submissions. Foodbuzz currently logs over 13 million monthly page views and over three million monthly unique visitors.

“Our goal is to be the number-one online source of quality food and dining content by promoting the talent, enthusiasm and knowledge of food bloggers around the globe,” said Ben Dehan, founder and CEO of Foodbuzz, Inc.

The Foodbuzz blogger community is growing at a rate of 40 percent per month driven by strong growth in existing partner blogs and the addition of over 100 new blogs per month. “The Foodbuzz.com Web site is like the stock of a great soup. The Web site provides the base or backbone for bloggers to interact as a community, contribute content, and have that content buzzed by their peers,” said Mr. Dehan.

Global Blogging Event

Demonstrating the talent and scope of the Foodbuzz community, 24 Meals, 24 Hours, 24 Blogs offered online food enthusiasts an international, virtual street festival of food and diversity. The new feature showcased blog posts from 24 Foodbuzz partner bloggers chronicling events occurring around the globe during a 24 hour period and included:

• Mid-Autumn Festival Banquest (New York, NY)

• The "Found on Foodbuzz" 24-Item Tasting Menu (San Francisco, CA)

• Aussie BBQ Bonanza – Celebrating Diversity (Sydney, Australia)

• The Four Corners of Carolina BBQ Road Trip (Charleston, SC)

• Criminal Tastes – An Illegal Supper (Crested Butte, CO)

• From Matambre to Empanadas: An Argentine Dinner (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

• A Sweet Trompe l’oeil (Seattle, WA)

“24 Meals, 24 Hours, 24 Blogs” captures the quality and unique local perspective of our food bloggers and shared it with the world,” said Ryan Stern, Director of the Foodbuzz Publisher Community. “It illustrates exactly what the future of food publishing is all about – real food, experienced by real people, shared real-time.”

About Foodbuzz, Inc.

Based in San Francisco, Foodbuzz, Inc., launched its beta Web site, foodbuzz.com, in 2007. In less than a year, Fooduzz.com and its community of over 1,000 exclusive partner food blogs have grown into an extended online property that reaches more than three million users.

Baked Oatmeal

My friend Christy passed this recipe along to me and I've made it twice now. She described it to me as tasting like a "big crumbly oatmeal cookie," and she was right, but it's oh so much more! It reheats well but we haven't had to do much reheating since it's gone in little more than one sitting! :)

The first time we made this we ate it all up plain. This time we took Christy's suggestion and served it warm with milk and oh wow! When we added home-canned peaches it tasted like a cobbler! We had it for breakfast but it could just as easily have been dessert! Enjoy, and tell me if you like it!

Pennsylvania Dutch Baked Oatmeal

Ingredients:
1/3 c. oil
1/2 c. sugar
1 egg
2 c. uncooked oats
1 1/3 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2/3 c. milk

Directions:
Combine oil, sugar, & egg.
Add rest and pour into greased bread pan or 9x9 dish
Bake @ 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes.
Serve plain or with milk (and brown sugar, or peaches, or what have you).

Pantry Tip #4

Storage of pantry goods part 1

Tight budget or no, who wants food to go bad before it can be consumed? Our dependence on refrigerators and the accessibility of foods in and out of season has meant that most of us have forgotten the art of food storage.

There are many aspects of food storage to explore - emergency"survival" storage, canning an drying at home, rotating stored goods on a schedule, and more. I hope to cover all of these over time as I learn about them myself. I have to admit that the books I've read so far about canning are intimidating. I just keep thinking about how I have *zero* space for something like that and how at this point, without a garden of my own, purchased canned goods are more practical (though vastly inferior). I *will* tackle that one eventually though.

Today I just want to cover some of the basics of effective food storage - things that will lengthen the shelf life of your pantry goods no matter the quantity or source.

Dedicated pantry space: setting aside an area, a cupboard, a shelf, or a closet, for pantry goods is important if your goal is to keep a stock of non-perishables. I'd encourage this for anyone no matter how small their budget as it allows for adding a variety of flavors to otherwise basic and "plain" ingredients. You want those ingredients to be easily accessible and organized, however, or you will forget to use them. No matter where you choose to store them, make sure the area is out of direct sunlight, cool, and fairly dry. Avoid the cupboards above the oven, or a shelf directly opposite a window. For accessibility, it's nice to use shelves rather than a cabinet with a door, but if your kitchen happens to be like mine - facing southeast with lost of windows - you may want to make that sacrifice to keep the temperature down. The best case scenario is a closet area off of the kitchen.

Containers: store opened packages of sugar, flour, rice, beans, noodles, cereal, etc. in airtight containers rather than in their original packaging. Not only will this keep your dry goods from going stale before you can use them, it makes an appealing visual display. If you use transparent plastic or glass containers, you'll be able to tell immediately where your desired ingredient is and how close you are to needing to restock.

For plastic containers, consider Tupperware Modular Mates, Click Clack Canisters, Lock 'n Lock, and then of course there's The Container Store.

Crate & Barrel has an excellent selection of plastic and alternatives as does World Market.

Expiration Dates: you may want to label containers with the date of purchase and/or the date of expiration in black marker on scotch tape so that they are visible (and removable for reusable containers). At the very least, go through every once in a while and check dates and throw away items that are bad, use items that are going to expire soon, and rearrange items if necessary so that the things that will go bad soonest are most accessible.

Here are some sites from around the web with guidelines as to how long pantry items stay fresh:

comprehensive list
Spices
Veggies

Stretch Week September

Well, this week was hectic - as I mentioned in the last post - and it was the last week of the month (which means stretching to stay within our budget) to boot! I didn't get any photos taken (sad day!) and I didn't do a very good job recording what we ate (lots of granola bars on the run), but here's what I can remember:

Mac 'n Cheese w/canned turkey and peas (this is comfort food for me - and pantry friendly!)

Grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup (Rob's favorite)

Frittata w/zuchinni, italian sausage (on sale!), onions, and garlic

Tuna salad sandwiches (made a large batch - 5 hardboiled eggs, 3 cans of tuna, and lotsa mayo)

Japanese curry w/chicken (leftover pieces from cheap thighs), potatoes, and red peppers

This is the brand I use:

Deli meat sandwiches (a treat but I wasn't here to cook most nights)

lots of fried egg sandwiches

And for dessert - unsweetened Crockpot Applesauce! This is the best thing ever - check the recipe out over at the Crockpot Lady's blog.

We managed to end the month with $2.08 left in our budget! wohoo!