Hurst's Pizza Beans

Hurst's Pizza Beans

I made Hurst's Pizza Beans for dinner on Saturday night. They were very good and hearty and I will be adding these to our menu rotation. 
You can find the recipe by clicking on the link above or here. 
Ingredients:
1 package HamBeens® 15 BEAN SOUP®1 white onion, diced2 green bell peppers, diced3 cloves garlic, chopped1lb. ground Italian sausage (mild, sweet, or hot)6oz. sliced pepperoni, cut into quarters7 cups chicken stock24oz. of your favorite marinara sauceShredded mozzarella for topping
Directions:
Rinse and sort through the beans. Check for any debris and discard. Pour beans into a large bowl or pot, cover with water by 2" and allow to soak overnight (or at minimum 4 hours). When ready to cook, discard the excess water.
Turn stove to medium-high, and in a large Dutch oven sauté the ground sausage and pepperoni until sausage is completely browned.
Spoon out the meats, pour off any excess grease, then add the onions, peppers, and garlic. Cook for 5 minutes, then add the chicken stock and turn heat to high. Use your spoon to scrape off any browned bits on the bottom of the pot as this will add great flavor. Add the meats & soaked beans (no marinara yet!) back into the pot and bring to a boil.
Cover the pot and place into a 350º oven for 2 hours, stir the beans halfway through the time.
When beans are completely tender, stir in the marinara sauce. Put pot back in the oven for an additional 20 minutes, then turn oven to warm until ready to serve.
The recipe can be very versatile. For example, the recipe calls for green peppers, which I like, but other family members don't and they do tend to permeate a dish when they are included, so I simply left them out. 
There is a list of suggested add-ins at the recipe site, which includes black olives. As we were eating these I was thinking black olives would be a good addition. 
The recipe actually says to add any of your favorite pizza toppings to the beans. 
My daughter said the dish reminded her of lasagna. Probably because of the use of the marinara sauce. We didn't even use much cheese either, just a small sprinkling on top, so there is a big savings on cheese for this dish verses actual lasagna. 
And of course using beans instead of noodles helps to keep my blood sugar stable. 
Please let me know if you decide to try the recipe and what you think of it.   :)
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

It's Not All Bad News

This past week was Fall Break from school, so I had some extra time to get some things done around the house. 
One job was to take my old car to the tire shop to repair the tire with the slow leak. 
This tire had a nail in it and was breaking down inside, which meant it could not be repaired. Rather than go with a new tire for $87 I bought a used tire for $25, which saved me some money. I only drive this car for certain errands and as a backup vehicle, so this works for me. 
Another thing I did this week was to hand wash my old car. It had several areas that were really dirty and moldy and it definitely benefited from hand washing. It looks so much better and didn't cost me anything except a few sore muscles. Getting older is not for the faint of heart.  :)
In other bad news this week, the breaker on our freezer tripped last week and we did not notice until it was too late. So, I had to throw away all the food inside and clean it out. 
This freezer sits on our back porch, which is located on the second floor of our home. I was able to bring the outside hose upstairs to clean it out, which helped a great deal. It was a big job, but I'm glad it's done. I have it plugged in again, but will not be using it until I purchase a freezer alarm for it. 
This is the time of year where one of my favorite apples is available, which is the honey crisp apple, but they can be expensive. I've seen them priced at $2.99 and higher. 
However, I have found one way to save money on them. Since these apples are expensive, I figure that not many people are buying them, so they tend to be the type of apples that I find on produce markdown shelves. 
I went to Food City today to pick up a prescription and naturally went to check the produce mark downs and sure enough there were two packages of Honey Crisp Apples on markdown. 
I was apple to get 12 apples for $2.98 or 25¢ each, which is a great deal and much cheaper than paying for them at the regular retail price. 
Blog Business
For the time being I wanted to let my readers know that I've turned the comment section from being able to post automatically to moderated for the time being. I had spam from the same user on multiple posts, which have already been deleted. 
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Weekend Shopping

It was a busy week here as I worked four days this week and have four planned for this coming week. Now that I am back to work it's time to stock up my pantry again after being in use it up mode all summer long. 
I received a free copy of the newspaper this week and scoured the sale ads and made a list of items I wanted to get. 

My first stop was at Fresh and Low because they have the best price on bread and black olives. Bread and hamburger buns are $1.00 here, and black olives are 88¢, which is much cheaper than every store in town. I also picked up a jar of pickles. Total spent was $10.30.
My next stop was Food City for store brand canned salmon for $1.99, but they were sold out, so I picked up a rain check. The manager then offered to sell me the Starkist salmon for the same price, so I bought four cans and he told me to keep the rain check for next time. Sweet. I also picked up apples, strawberry preserves, and some seasonings and spent $16.02. 

My next stop was Piggy Wiggly where they had Oscar Meyer bologna on sale for 99¢ for the one pound package. My daughter is tired of PB & J sandwiches, so this will be a welcome sight. I picked up ten packages spending $9.90 and placed nine of them in my freezer.

I also stocked on on Luck's chili beans for 50¢ a can. Chili Beans are one of the very few canned beans I will purchase if the price is right. They have a thick chili sauce that we enjoy. Most all of the beans we have here are soaked and cooked from dried beans as they are the most economical. 

My next stop was Publix where I bought pasta, granola bars, Campbell's Beefy Mushroom soup (for cooking), Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and Cheese-It crackers. I had $8.40 in coupons for the granola bars, soup, cereal and crackers and spent $31.94 there. I was really able to stock up here. 

My next stop was at Food Lion because they had their store brand products on sale and if you bought four items they would take 25¢ off each one. 

I bought eight cans of corn and should have paid 43¢ each, but it didn't work and they couldn't explain it to me. They told me it was "probably" added to my MVP card and if it didn't come off next time to save my receipt and they will fix it, so they owe me $2.00. 

 When I was at Food Lion I was looking at the produce and saw a sign on the 5 pound packages of Ruby Red grapefruit which read 99¢ a package. When I checked out, they rang up to $5.99, so I explained it to the cashier and after checking the price she honored the 99¢ price. So, I got 10 grapefruits for less than $2.00 making them 20¢ each. 
What a steal! 
I was going to buy some oranges on my list today but no need to after finding this deal. 

We also managed to get to Kroger this weekend. I just love Kroger. They had their half gallon sizes of milk on sale for $1.00 this week. They were out of skim milk, so we bought 1% instead, and also chocolate and buttermilk. 
They have such great deals on markdown. Here is a bag of romaine marked down to 99¢ and the photo underneath is a pork loin roast, already cooked, marked at $3.99.

This was the weekend for the cereal deals. I combined a couple of sales with some coupons and bought all of these cereals for a little over $1.00 each. 
Cereal can be so expensive, but when combined with a sale and a coupon it is more affordable and fits into my budget easier. I would not pay the regular retail price for most cereals, but when I can get it for close to $1.00 a box then I will buy it. 

My neighbor blessed me with two more butternut squashes this week. 

Kroger had their store brand of chips on sale for $1.00 a bag this week. Chips are a rare treat here, but $1.00 is an acceptable price to me, so I bought several bags for lunches this week. 

I found a package of eight half-pound burgers this weekend for $9.79 which worked out to $2.44 a pound. Of course I will stretch this to use not only for burgers, but maybe a meatloaf and tacos as well. 

I know this post is long. so I will wrap this up. We are definitely stocked up for a good long time now.  I wanted to share my deals with you and hope that you are inspired to save as much as you can on your grocery budget as well. 
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Sunday

Aldi has their two pound bags of carrots on sale this week for 49¢ each. No limit on these, so I bought six bags or twelve pounds. 

Food City has their 14.5 ounce cans of tomatoes on sale this week for 39¢. There was a limit of 12 cans, I bought 12 cans for my pantry. 
I did my usual Saturday chore of taking the garbage yesterday. I take the older car to do this and since it was practically empty on gas, I took it for a fill-up and paid $1.98 a gallon, so $20.00 to fill it up. The last time I filled it up was in the spring, so this will last a long time. 
I made a stock pot full of vegetable soup today like I did last weekend. It was great to come home and be able to heat this up all week, so I'm repeating the process this week.  
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Monday - Labor Day

Last week I was able to work four days while this week I am scheduled to work two days so far, although that changes from day to day. On two days  last week we went swimming after school and even with having dinner planned we ate very late on a couple of nights. 
Today I made several dishes that can be reheated during the week, so we are not eating so late in the evenings. I made spaghetti with Italian sausage, homemade vegetable soup, two pounds of soup beans (great northern), and two pounds of pinto beans. 

For lunches I made tuna salad and pasta salad.  I put the pasta salad into individual bowls so they can be grabbed to go in the morning. 
I also popped two containers of popcorn to have in place of chips since I don't have any of those on hand. There is fresh bok choy I chopped up into celery like sticks and I made some hummus for that. There are clementines and apples to take as well .
For dinner tonight I have some country style pork ribs cooking in the crockpot with some barbecue sauce.  There will be leftovers of those to use through the upcoming week as well. 
Planning our dinners for the week helps me save money by not eating out at a restaurant or bringing home take out food. 
And the food I prepare at home is so much healthier than anything we can order outside our home.  
My daughter and I both noticed that we lost about 10 pounds each this summer while only eating at home. :)
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~