Belinda's Cheese Dip

This week I experimented with making a new cheese dip that was more affordable. 

This recipe called for pepper jack cheese, but I used American cheese slices instead of pepper jack cheese, which made it more affordable. 

Also, I only made half of the recipe, which only required about 6 slices of cheese. You can add more or less according to your taste. 

Belinda's Cheese Dip 

Ingredients: 

1 lb pepper jack cheese
8 oz cream cheese
½ cup sour cream
1 - 10 oz can original Rotel, drained
4 TBSP whole milk (if needed)
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp chili powder 1 tsp cumin 

Directions: 

In a medium bowl, combine the cheese, cream cheese, sour cream, and Rotel and microwave in one minute increments, stirring well each time. 

Let the mixture heat until the cheese melts and a smooth sauce forms, stirring often. Add spices if desired, and add milk if needed.

Once melted, serve immediately, or transfer to a slow cooker with a “warm” setting to keep dip warm and melted. 

Enjoy with tortilla chips if desired. 

Belinda 

~ Living within our Means 

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Barbara G's Homemade Beanie Weenies

Today I'm going to share a very frugal recipe with you for homemade beanie weenies from my late friend Barbara Garrett. She was a former poster on the old AOL tightwad boards who passed away a few years ago. This is a very affordable recipe that you can make to feed your family inexpensively. 

The remainder of this post will be in Barbara's own words. 

Beans and franks. The very name conjures up frugality carried to dirt-cheap eating levels, but not necessarily tasty eating. Keep the price low AND improve the flavor by shoving aside the canned version and making up your own fresh....from dried beans. 

 Even without being on sale, the ingredients don't cost much, but if you can find the franks on special, you can make up a whole 5-quart slow cooker pot full of these for well under the $4.75 it cost me to make these. Even so, this is a HUGE pot of beans. It will feed at least eight to ten hungry adults generously, especially if you serve it with cornbread and a salad. Even better, the inclusion of the franks makes this feel like junk food, so Americanized kids will likely adore them.


Incidentally, if your larder is truly bare, the beans are fine all by themselves without the wieners, although I think you'd want to add at least a little meat flavor in the form of bacon drippings. I made it through the first two years of college in the 70s on meatless Crockpot-cooked barbecued beans and boxed mac and cheese. I usually did NOT have the bell pepper and celery on hand, but if the budget allows and I have them in the house, I greatly prefer the flavor with them included. In lean times or when there's none in the house, don't worry about it. There are plenty of flavors going on here to carry it.

Let me tell you, though, a pot of barbecued beans goes a long way when it's just one person eating it! These freeze fine, but let them thaw overnight in the fridge and then rewarm. They'll be a bit mushier, but just as delicious.

Barbara G's Homemade Beanie Weenies

The beans are quite tasty enough without the bell pepper, celery or Louisiana hot sauce, so omit them if little ones in your family object, or you just don’t have any in the house. If you like peppery hot beans, then try using the hot-style franks. Tabasco really is not a substitute for Louisiana hot sauce, as the hot sauce contributes more of a full pepper flavor and not just heat, whereas Tabasco is mainly just heat. My opinion, of course.

Ingredients:

2 lbs dried white beans–navy or Great Northern (about 5 cups)
1 bay leaf
1 packet onion soup mix, (OR one chopped, sauteed onion plus 2 beef bouillon cubes)
1 1/2-2 cups ketchup
1/4 cup yellow prepared mustard
1/4 cup brown sugar OR 2 T. sugar plus 2 T. molasses
6-8 frankfurters sliced into thin "coins" (good-quality)
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
½ large green bell pepper, chopped (optional)
2 stalks celery, chopped (optional)
2 cloves garlic, chopped
Dash or two Louisiana hot sauce (optional)
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

Pick through the beans and discard any deformed or split beans or foreign particles. Rinse well. Put beans into a largish (at least 5-quart) slow cooker with the bay leaf, and fill about 2/3 full of water. Cook on “Low” overnight, or until beans are just tender. Sometimes I add the garlic here. It's up to you. It'll cook out to have a slightly more mellow, sweeter flavor.

Taking care not to mash them or to burn yourself, pour warm cooked beans gently into a colander to drain off most of the liquid. RESERVE THE NUTRIENT-FILLED LIQUID. Add all the remaining ingredients at once to the pot and stir to combine them. Add the beans and stir gently to distribute the sauce and vegetables throughout. Taste for seasoning and adjust with salt and pepper or hot pepper sauce. If the tomato flavor is too anemic or the beans are not saucy enough for your taste, add a little more ketchup. Continue to cook on “Low” for 2-3 or more hours, or until flavors meld and vegetables are done to your liking. Add reserved bean liquid as necessary to keep beans loose enough to be saucy, but not soupy.

Cool and refrigerate, then freeze leftover bean liquid for a grand soup starter, or season it up as a broth soup unto itself, perfect for the sniffles.

Lazybones alternative, with some risk: If there is too much liquid and the beans are only barely done and you don't feel like draining them, then cook on “High” for an hour with the cover ajar to assist evaporation. If you do this, gently stir the beans from time to time, scraping the sides to keep it from scorching, while taking care not to break up the beans any more than necessary. Of course, if you do break them up and the beans turn to mush, just call it baked bean soup. :D Remove the bay leaf before serving.

Serve as a main course with a green salad or vinaigrette-dressed cole slaw and a big chunk of Southern (NO SUGAR!) cornbread. If you can take the heat, even better is spicy Mexican cornbread. Some chilled fresh fruit afterward will be appreciated, but keep it simple. A big slice of watermelon, for instance, or a handful of frosty grapes straight from the freezer. These rewarm nicely, as long as you don't stir them too much so as to break up the beans. They'll keep fine for 2-3 days in the fridge; two-three months in the freezer.

A super cheap wiener tip: You can get by with using fewer wieners if you cut the "coins" extremely thin. Nobody has to know you cheated.

Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~ My Linktree

Thank you for using my Amazon affiliate link when placing your Amazon orders. I earn a small percentage that doesn't increase what you pay and it helps me to earn a living here at Frugal Workshop.

Frugal Friday ~ March 27, 2020

Hello to all my frugal friends. Thankfully we've made it to Friday again. I hope and pray that all of you and your families are safe and sound and healthy. 
The news in the world is about the same as last week. Schools here were closed due to Spring Break, but we would have been closed due to the Coronavirus Pandemic anyway. 
I've gotten the official word that schools will be closed here now until at least April 24th. I had been scheduled to work next Thursday and Friday, but that will not be happening now. 
I'm trying to keep my routine as normal as possible. I wake up and shower and have a to do list on my phone that I accomplish each day. I've been keeping myself busy and reading more than I normally read. 
This week we listened to The Secret Garden for free on Audible.com this week. 
I also completed the 2020 census during my down time this week. 
My eye doctors office called and cancelled an appointment I had for Friday. This was fine with me because I was going to call and cancel anyway because of the virus.
My paycheck came in the mail this week. The thought of going out when we have been self quarantining bothered me, however. 
What I ended up doing was taking a photo of my check and depositing it in the bank via my smartphone. I had no idea I could do that until Bailey mentioned it to me.  
See, the school district has direct deposit for faculty and staff members, but not for substitute teachers. 
On payday I have to drive home, get my check out of the mailbox, drive to town and deposit it, which is a 45 mile round trip. Being able to do this on my phone saves me gas and wear and tear on my car, which is a win- win situation. 
In the kitchen I've been cleaning, organizing, taking pantry inventory, cooking and all the other little tasks I find to do in there. I love puttering around our home cleaning and doing things to make life here better. This is a perfect time to do things just like this. 
-Some time ago I bought a container of soy sauce packets from Amazon, so I could take them in my lunch box. Little did I know how long it would take to use those up. 

Today I decided I was tired of the little packages, so I took the packets, cut the tops off and put them in our regular soy sauce bottle. I washed the jar they were stored in and quickly found a better use for that jar. 
-I went looking for and found my sour cream containers. A bad habit I know, but I wasn't putting them in the same place after they were washed, but that is fixed now. 
I don't want to throw these large containers away and contribute to the landfill as I know someone will have a good use for them and probably ask for them someday. 
So far I have given large glass jars and egg cartons to teachers at school. It's because I save these items that I'm able to donate them when a request is made. It's been my experience that teachers are thrilled when a request like this is fulfilled.
- On Sunday I took our last chicken out of the freezer to cook for dinner. I decided right off the bat that I would stretch the chicken like nobody's business. 
I cooked the chicken in my Instant Pot and added onions and several spices (salt, pepper, paprika, Weber's garlic and herb) along with enough water, which ended up making a very rich broth. 
On Tuesday I made a chicken pot pie using Bisquick instead of a pie crust since that is what I had on hand. I used part of the rich broth for the pot pie and froze the rest of the broth for a later time. 
My bank offered "relief of fees" due to the Coronavirus Pandemic this month, although you had to ask for it. They kindly refunded my service fee for March, which is savings for me of $8.00.


I cleaned up and organized my spices this week. I emptied several of the same spice into a larger mason jar and labeled it. I had a couple of glass spice jars that I cleaned up and will save for another purpose. 

The following tip comes from Chef AJ. She saves her spice bottles when they are empty and reuses them. 

She says that research shows that most people don't eat 30 distinct and different meals each month, but rather repeat their favorite meals every week.

Chef AJ says her Red Lentil Chili is no exception. Instead of measuring out all 7 of the spices every time she goes to make it, she uses several empty spice bottles and makes them all at the same time. Then all she has to do is grab one and put them in her pressure cooker with the rest of the ingredients.

I do this with taco seasoning mix that I make up, although I just place them into small bowls. I make about 10 at a time and it is a big time saver, but now I'm saving my glass spice bottles for this purpose. :)

Gas is down to $1.39 per gallon here.

We watched A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood for our family movie night this week. If you like Mr.Rogers you'll like this movie.


I cleaned out my e-mail box of any unwanted subscriptions. Not knowing what is on sale where will help me save money. 

We did a curbside pickup this week at Piggly Wiggly and Kroger. The reason I did this at two stores is because they were out of stock of several items we needed. 

We used our last roll of toilet paper on Wednesday. Piggly Wiggly's website sold me toilet paper, but when I got there they didn't load it into my cart. Turns out, they were out of it, but I am grateful for the items we did get.

Finally, we’ve been drinking herbal tea every day through quarantine. It’s healthy, hydrating, and a great self care routine. My favorite is the Peppermint. What’s your favorite herbal tea?


Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~ My Linktree

Thank you for using my Amazon affiliate link when placing your Amazon orders. I earn a small percentage that doesn't increase what you pay and it helps me to earn a living here at Frugal Workshop.

Something to Share from the Front Line of the Coronavirus Pandemic

Some things are so beautiful they need to be shared. This is how I feel about this video, which was broadcast on World News Tonight With David Muir who stated, "That landed today when I saw it".

Here is Dr. Elvis Francois singing a rendition of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” accompanied on the piano by Dr. William Robinson, both of the Mayo Clinic after working their shift during the Coronavirus Pandemic.

And finally, Dr. Elvis Francois's words on his Instagram post where he shared the video: 

Imagine all the people...
—-
In life, there are so many things that divide us. Religion, race, politics, social status and many more....But today a global pandemic brings us all together as one.
—-
Over the next few months our health care system will be tested. Many lives will be lost. Health care providers will be under an incredible amount of stress to save thousands of people. But when times are as dark as they are today, nothing shines brighter than the human spirit. —-
There is something beautiful about a collective struggle. And the beauty in what we are facing today is that the only way to overcome this pandemic is for us to all come together as one....
—-
Nurses, doctors, students, research scientists, politicians, Uber eats drivers, cashiers, factory workers etc.....Getting through this will be hard but one thing is certain...the only way we will get through it is together, as one
—-
“You might say that I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one. I hope some day that you will join us...and the world will live as one....”

Thankful for my brother @w_a_robinson on the piano.

Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~ My Linktree

Free Audible.com during Coronavirus Pandemic

Audible is making hundreds of titles available for free during the coronavirus pandemic.Simply visit stories.audible.com from any web browser to get started. No log-ins, credit card or passwords needed.

https://stories.audible.com/discovery

We've been listening to The Secret Garden this morning.

Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~ My Linktree

Thank you for using my Amazon affiliate link when placing your Amazon orders. I earn a small percentage that doesn't increase what you pay and it helps me to earn a living here at Frugal Workshop.