Going Gluten free.

I recently started a gluten free lifestyle, and it is a lifestyle not a diet. At first it seemed simple enough just stay away from wheat. Turns out that it's a bit more complex, wheat, rye, barley are all on the forbidden list.

That doesn't sound so hard staying away from three foods right? SO WRONG.

Wheat is in everything, okay not in everything but in a lot of things that one wouldn't even think had wheat. Even some types of lip balm and hand and body lotions have gluten.

My first visit to a health food story to buy gluten free food, I felt like I had been transported somehow to an alien world and stumbled into their supermarket. I left with a box of cereal. Well a box of cereal and a sense of panic.

I don't know what to do with that food, how to cook it or combine it to make palatable, lucky for me I've family who are also changing over to gluten free, my sister and daughter and a cousin who has been gluten free for a year or so to run to when feeling overwhelmed.

I feel overwhelmed a lot, coupled with that is a feeling of determination.

Month two end of week one of the 460.00 challenge

Both hubby and I manage to keep our daily spending down under the 30 dollars each about last month, and we kept the rest of our spending down just under squeaked in at 398.76 dollars.
Whooo hooo
Unfortunately we don't seem to be doing as well this month, its the end of week one and we already spent 200.00.
Still we might pull it off you never know.

Week three

Been three weeks already, doesn't seem that long, and we are still on track,I think we are going to close out this month hitting but not under the 460.00 dollar amount.

We used almost 40 dollars in coupons, that is 10% of the budget we spend on grocery and household items per month. That about covers the taxes well almost, still have to work on increasing the amount of coupons we can use, this means more coupon trading.

I've gotten my first feedback from my very first trade so I'm not a zero any more, yay!

I still have a really low trade rating though, so still a bit of a struggle to get people to trade with me, oddly enough it's the people with the really high trade ratings that are easiest to talk to and get a trade going.

I've found more coupons at the store today, menthos .50 cents off coupon, I love menthos specially the fruit ones, finding coupons to trade is kind of cool but finding the ones that we will use is like picking up money off the ground. Got to love it!

Going on a train ride!!!

WHOO HOOO !!!
At Smart Canucks site there are these coupon trains, people send coupons to trade. It is very involved lots of rules and I think there might even be a secret decoder ring needed.

Trains normally require a good trade rating, which because I am new I don't have, but this train is different it is a Learning Train, I wonder if Thomas the tank, or the Little Red Engine pulls it. We are all new except for the conductor.

From what I have been able to piece together trains are started by the conductor then each person on the train adds to and removes coupons at agreed amounts but on this learning train, instead of sending the coupons from one person onto the next and so on, the coupons get sent to the conductor then she sends them out to who they are meant to go to.

Then everyone rates everyone else..... still unsure of how to do that, so if we don't mess up our trade rating goes up.

I use to love those surprise bags when I was a kid, my Daughter did to, and this has that same felling to it, you just know there is something good inside, but not entirely sure what.

460.00 up date.

We have made it half way through week two of month one of the 460.00 challenge and we are, ( drum roll please!) on track. One hundred dollars a week for household things and food is tricky but I think if I can improve on my use of coupons we will be laughing, ok maybe not laughing but not crying either.

Those people at SmartCanucks.ca blow my mind. Reading some of their brags and deals threads just makes me want to charge out there and save save save... but I'm afraid.

I've never ever in my life price matched anything from one store to another.
I've never tried to stack coupons, heck most of the time I didn't use coupons even if they were in my purse.
Until about three weeks ago I thought that those coupons in the little dispensers in the stores were for use only in that store and only for that shopping trip, collecting them and using them later never dawned on me.

I'd like to try coupon trading but again ... Scared!!!
I did join the free-cycle group here, Yay me!
Hubby is on board with the whole coupon collecting and saving money thing, he is far better then me at capturing those elusive coupons.

One of the tips I read about we did try the past two weeks, and I was sure that I would hate, is making a weekly menu, I've always avoided doing this in the past I'm not very good with schedules, thing is I found it has been really cool, I don't end up wanting to make something and not having half the ingredients, or having half of them frozen.

Hubby likes it too, but as we all know he LOVES schedules. He told me it's nice knowing he is going to be fed everyday, wait till he sees the wash your own fork night that is planned in there next week. ( wash your own fork night is... everyone fend for themselves night)

I've also printed off the form for price lists from our handy dandy SmartCanucks site, and have started to keep track of the different prices items are at different stores, and the different prices for the store brands.

I've a mini goal in the next two weeks I want to be able to save 50.00 out of the 200.00 left for food and things. I am getting desperate for new bathtub taps.

Fast food slowly

I hear a lot of people talking about how they don't have time to cook, and that is why they do so much take out. I can understand why after working all day, then driving home, maybe picking up kids from the sitters, or stopping to collect milk or bread for the next day, a person wouldn't want to spend hours and hours in the kitchen.

I remember coming home from work picking up my kid, her clamoring for food, the telemarketers calling, the next door neighbors cat jumping in through my kitchen window, and my crazy neighbor lady yelling at me for kidnapping her cat all while trying to put together something that would be tasty for both myself and a preschooler, as well as being healthy. All I wanted to really do was collapse on the couch, maybe play the cool new Super Mario, ( yeah I'm old).

Fast food is bad for us, we all know it, we see a the information put out by our govt. but sometimes a quick meal is just what we have time for. With a little planning, we can have the quickness of fast food at home but with out a lot of the nasty things like extra salt, fat and price that we would end up with if we ate out.

We could buy things like frozen hamburgers from a supermarket, those flat, sawdusty patties that are just as full of salts as the fast food place or....

Combine
1lb ground lean hamburger ( ground sirloin is a taste option)
1/4 cup minced onion
1/4 cup dry bread crumbs
1tsp Worcestershire sauce
one egg
bit of pepper.

Mix together and form into four patties, place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper( after the burgers are done cooking you can toss the paper it makes cleaning up easier) place the burgers into a 300 degree oven and cook till the burgers are dark on the outside and grey inside.

You can serve this with corn on the cob, a salad even french fries.
Cooking the burgers in the oven gives you time to make up lunches for the next day and set them into the fridge so when you are done in the kitchen you are done for the night.

You can increase this recipe up to four times the size and freeze the patties until you need them.

When I freeze these I cut out pieces of wax paper and set the paper on cookie sheets, then set the formed patties on the cookie sheets, cover with plastic wrap and freeze for a few hours, then take the frozen patties and put them into ziploc bags to store. 4 patties fit into one medium sized ziploc freezer bag. I peel off the paper and toss the frozen patties onto a pan then into the oven to cook right from frozen.

It costs about 10 dollars to make up 16 burgers, you know exactly what goes into your burger, there isn't a lot of extra salt or fat, its quicker to make then you might think. and taste better then those sawdusty burgers.

Fun when shopping.

Today hubby and I went out and picked up a few things at Save on Foods, we took the transit to and from the store. By the time we had dropped off library books, picked up a paper at the corner store and finished putting into our cart the things we needed from Save on Foods, we realized we had 45 mins to wait till the next transit, even accounting for getting our five items through the cash we knew we had a bit of a wait so, we went on a scavenger hunt.

We hunted down coupons, it was fun, hubby has a pretty good eye for finding them and once the whole concept was changed from gathering coupons to hunting them down and capturing them, he was really on board.

Lots of times in stores I think I've walked right by the coupons sticking out from the shelves not even noticing them. I bet there are a lot of people who are the same way, funny how a bit of new knowledge will change how we perceive the world we live in.