Stuffed Bell Peppers

Just thought I would share a "recipe" I recently made for dinner. I say recipe loosely because its not something you have to strictly follow to get these to turn out great. 

Stuffed bell peppers

What you'll need:

Bell peppers, any color but green are usually cheaper

Assorted in season veggies, I used asparagus, yellow squash, zucchini and onion

Rice (could substitute with cauliflower rice or omit for low carb)

Cheese 

Butter

Garlic

Salt&pepper

Diced tomatoes-frozen, fresh or canned all work

Chicken, beef or pork (or omit for a veggie version)

Chicken stock or water

Worsetshire sauce

Step 1:

Crash and cut your peppers in half, scoop out the membranes and seeds, be careful not to make a gigantic hole like I did, oops! 

Step 2: steam the peppers until they are slightly tender, about 10 minutes.

Step 3: sauté the butter, minced garlic and onions for about 2 minutes. The onions were in the freezer from last years garden.

Step 4: add your veggies and pre-cooked meat, they are diced in roughly 1/2" pieces. I also added worsetshire sauce and salt and pepper

Step 5: add chicken broth and a handful of rice, cover and allow to simmer until rice is done.. Shorter for minute rice, longer for traditional rice 

Step 6: after about 20 minutes my rice was done and I topped with shredded cheddar and mozzarella cheese and mixed it in well, it was nice and gooey! 

Step 7: fill peppers 

Step 8:  at this point you can go one of 3 routes

1. Pop in a preheated oven at 350 for 10-15 minutes

2. Wrap in foil and freeze for later

3. Put in the fridge for dinner later.

At our house this was a big hit! A very pretty and somewhat healthy meal. Best of all it was cheap and delish!

Cost for 6-1/2 peppers or 3 servings : less than $3!! 

Peppers-$2 for 3

Rice-$.33

Asparagus-$.75

Tomatoes, onions, squash & zucchini all came from the garden (this years or frozen from last year) so FREE

Garlic-.10

Cheese-.50

Chicken stock-free from the freezer

Butter and other assorted spices:.25

Sneak Peek

I haven't had the time to sit down and upload all the pictures from what has been going on, not to mention trying to remember to take pictures when you are in the middle of a project.. so here is a little peak into what has been going on in the Ren household.

The upstairs wall and flooring has been repaired. This hole is the result of a roof in the leak that was ignored by the previous owners, they replaced the roof and siding but didn't fix the damage.  Eric had to go in and remove some of the studs and replace them along with some other fancy crap that I have no idea about.  That was last weekends project, that fake wall there was apparently holding up our house while he was doing that work. Right now it is all fixed except there is still a big hole in my master bedroom wall where he needs to replace the dry wall. 

And since we are on the subject of holes.. check out this one.  Before we were moved in we came over on day 3 to find that the upstairs toiled had a leak and caused this damage.. or so we thought. Turns out this is actually the result of a rotted out "p" trap in the master bathroom. The pipe had a hole the size of a quarter so the water was flowing in one end and out the other into the vanity and through the floor.. hence the hole in my ceiling. Both leaks are fixed but I still have a hole in my ceiling.

This was my project, I am happy to say it is now done. This wall is our living room wall, we removed the wall paper and this is pre-painting. It is now a pretty shade of gray with bright white trim. It looks fantastic! I am very proud of my paint job, so much that I haven't let Eric hang anything on the walls yet because I don't want to put holes in them!

There are lots of other things going on incuding:

Fence has been staked out, now comes the fun part of digging the post holes
painting upstairs

finishing up the downstairs bathroom

lots and lots of unpacking

Garden Update-6/10/13

I am feeling a little bad, the garden plot is getting neglected with all this new home owner stuff going on. Yesterday we were finally able to make a brief pit stop at the garden on the way home from Wal-Mart, I say we because with Charlie in tow it is nearly impossible to get any gardening done since if I set him on the ground he will literally be eating dirt and we have been getting so much rain that he would be a muddy mess (although I am sure he would enjoy it)

Our tomatoes are HUGE, but not a red one in site.. lots of little green guys though. I pulled the remainder of the radishes, I don't think I will grow those anymore, they get big, take up space and I don't even like eating them! They grow so fast that they make me feel like I actually have a green thumb. The onions are about ready to be pulled and the lettuce and spinach's days are numbered.. it is mid-June after all. The peppers are small, not sure why but I just can't grow peppers.. last year I didn't get a single bell pepper, hoping to get some this year!  And that brings us to the green beans, they just aren't doing well.. first we had bugs so I used an organic spray and they still seem to just be hanging in..they have what appear to be blooms but I don't see any beans!  The bed next to ours has tons of beans! What am I doing wrong??





In other happenings Eric built me a raised bed this weekend for me to plant asparagus in, he is going to build another one next weekend for strawberries. I got these plants 75% off at Lowes so I am really hoping they grow!  The beds cost about $15 each and are 6'x2'x17" high.  This was the cheapest way i could figure out to build raised garden beds and I am overall pretty happy with them. Right now they are sitting empty because we need to get dirt hauled in to fill them.

Here is my updated garden harvest, my goal is 200lbs of produce from my gardens in 2013.

What has been harvested
April ?? : 8lb of carrots ( these were a surprise, we planted them in the fall after Charlie was born and never checked on them!! They were huge)
May 4: 8 oz of radishes
May 8: 7oz of radishes & 7oz of lettuce
May 19: 7oz radishes & 1lb lettuce
June 9: 8oz banana peppers
Total: 11lb 5oz
To Go: 188 lbs 11 oz... hope I can make it!

I still need to plant cucumbers and squash and maybe more beans here at the house.. we haven't harvested any heavy produce yet and I am sure the bulk of the weight will come from tomatoes and squash if I can ever get them in the ground.

We did it!

We did it, we bought a house! Actually we bought a house almost 5 days ago but things have been so ridiculously busy that I have not had time to update. Closing was a breeze, I have never been in a law office but I'd imagine this it was the most laid back law office ever. We were greeted at the door by a dog and the paralegal who walked us through closing was wearing yoga pants and the lawyer was on speaker phone. It took us about 30 minutes and then we were back home to get Charlie and Grandma Ren and off to cleaning we went. Day 1 we ripped down wall paper and cleaned the windows. Day 2 / day 3 we shampooed carpets, filled in wall paper holes, started demoing the bathroom, started cleaning up outside ( they left us with 3' of weeds!) we moved a load of stuff over and did a coat of paint on the living room. Day 4 was fun, we came in to water dripping through our downstairs ceiling from the toilet upstairs so we now have a 3' hole in the ceiling and some pipes that need to be fixed! I finished painting upstairs, trim is all that is left and Eric finished demoing the downstairs bath and painted the vanity so it's ready for flooring and to be installed tonight. Well better get to work, going to run Eric lunch and then over to the house for the Internet to be hooked up and to organize the mess of boxes downstairs! 

A new place to call home

Eric & Charlie infront of the house

After living in a series of really bad rentals during college and apartment living for the first 2.5 years if marriage Eric and I finally decided we were ready and able to buy our first home in January. We started searching the houses in our price range (under $90k) and realized that the only way we were going to get anywhere near all of our wants and needs was with a foreclosure so that's where we focused our search. Told you i was cheap. ;) 

After viewing what seems like a million houses (really more like 20) and driving by over 100, and 3 offers we finally got a house, and we got a great deal. The house does need work but overall it is in pretty good condition and the best part about it? We got it half off! We paid $60k for our house that last sold in 2005 for $135k. Now that's a good deal in my book. 

We have so many DIY projects in store for this house that I can not wait to share with you. For now it's packing and prepping for the move which is just a few days away. We close on May 23rd and have 1 week to move everything from our apartment over to the house and then it's time to let the projects begin. Here is a sneak peak of our new home: 

Dining room and living room, The door on the left is to the kitchen, the stairs go up to the 3 bedrooms and 2 full bathrooms. 

Kitchen view from the dining room, the stairs in the corner go down to the den, a half bath and the laundry/mud room.

The Den (check out that paneling! ha) and main bathroom (upsatirs)

Not shown are the 3 bedrooms, master bathroom, mud room and downstairs bathroom.

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Our little garden plot

LSince this blog is about saving money I thought I would share our garden. (insert pic) when we moved out to North Carolina in 2011 we rented an apartment in a huge complex, we love our apartment and while it does have an outside area it gets zero direct sunlight. I grew up gardening, Eric and I have had a garden of some sort since the first summer we dated. The first year it was in a raised flower bed at the 50 year old house we were renting and we grew tomatoes and peppers. The next year we were in a hundred year old house and grew a few things in pots and tried hanging tomatoes and failed horribly, the next summer before we moved out to North Carolina we planted a small garden in a few pots and one of those raised kiddie pools. We got a late start that year and moved early August so we didn't see very much for us efforts or expenses. Last year around December I was reading about gardens and stumbled across a post on community gardening-that was new to me, I had never heard of such a thing. I did some research and found that they are becoming pretty popular in cities and even smaller towns and even better a city recreation center about a mile from ur apartment was starting one. I immediately signed Eric and I up for the first informational meeting where we paid our $15 annual fee. For such a low fee we couldn't pass it up. We got a 4'x22' raised garden and as an added bonus they hosted planting parties and even provided lots of free seedlings and seeds as well as guidance for inexperienced gardeners. Last year we loosely based our planting off of the square foot gardening method and while we did have some issues we were overall pleased with the outcome and had a great yield. I froze so many tomatoes that I am still pulling them from the freezer!

Anyways on to this year, I will admit I didn't quite have the time to plan out this years garden and pretty much completely missed out on cool weather veggies (except lettuce, spinach and radishes) but I have no doubt that we will once again have a fantastic turnout. This years decided to set a goal of 200lbs of produce from our garden, I am not sure if we can reach that goal but I sure hope so.

Here is what's already planted
Tomatoes : 4 varieties for a total of 7 plants
Peppers: 3 varieties for a total of 10 plants
Lettuce:4 rows of leaf lettuce (4' rows)
Spinach : 1 row
Radishes: 1 row
Bush beans: 6 hills
Onions: 16 square feet of onion sets

What still needs to be planted
Cucumbers
Carrots
Squash (1 plant only!)
More beans (probably pole beans)

What has been harvested
April ?? : 8lb of carrots ( these were a surprise, we planted them in the fall after Charlie was born and never checked on them!! They were huge)
May 4: 8 oz of radishes
May 8: 7oz of radishes & 7oz of lettuce
Total: 9lb 6oz

 

Lettuce from today's harvest. I trim lettuce with scissors so it will grow back in a couple of weeks! 

Carrots from earlier in the season

Charlie's first harvest! 

The girl behind the blog

Hi everyone, thought I would take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Sara and I am a 20-something stay at home mom. I have a wonderful 7 month old son, Charlie, an awesome husband, Eric, and 2 fur babies, Molli and Luci.

I have a BS in Business Management from Missouri S&T but rarely use it, but happy that I have it. . . not so happy that I have the student loan debt that came along with getting it but as my Grandma told me "no one can ever take it away, its yours forever"

 I am a DIYer.. I am in love addicted to pinterest.. I think I spend at least an hour a day on there searching for new money saving ideas, new crafts, new recipes, home projects.. you name it. Eric makes fun of me because he will bring up a project and I say I have a pin for that!  I am a small business owner and I love it! I am a half decent cook. I love to garden, I love the fresh produce and I love that its cheap!

Welcome to my blog

Hi Everyone, Welcome to my blog! I will admit I have tried several times over to blog but I just can't stick with it. Frankly I wont be very surprised if I don't stick with it this time either.. but I think things are finally balancing out in my life where I actually have something interesting to write about and Charlie is starting to self entertain.  So what am I going to blog about? Well if you read the title of my blog you can probably guess-cheap stuff! I am cheap, frugal, crunchy.. whatever you want to call it I am that! Its not that I don't like shopping and nice new stuff its that I hate spending money on the stuff I want so I am all about finding the least expensive way to get what I want and keep money in my pocket (or my husband's pocket since he's the working one)! In this blog you will find all kinds of money saving tricks that I use (and some that I don't use), shopping deals, couponing tricks and some of my hauls.  I hope you stick around and maybe some of my frugalness will rub off on you!  Thanks for reading, if you want comment and let me know where you need help saving some money, I'd love to hear from you.