Contributed by member SwapSavers owner of www.swapsavers.com

Cook your own meals: The only way to truly know the calorie content of what you eat is to prepare the meals yourself. By cooking your own meals you can substitute for less fattening or lower calorie choices when necessary. Most recipes list calories, fat grams and other useful information to help you keep track of your daily intake. When you eat at restaurants or fast food places you eat more calories and fat grams since the portions are typically larger then what you would have at home. Furthermore it is difficult to keep track of calories or fat gram intake. Cooking at home is significantly less expensive then eating at restaurants or fast food places.

Drink Water: Tap water is free and free of calories. If you were to only drink water for a week you could probably save at least $20 or more depending on your current drinking choices. Most drinks contain 200 calories or more, whereas drinking water has zero calories. Water has numerous health benefits. By drinking water you eat less since people tend to think they are hungry when they really need water. Water helps your body to break down fat which increases fat loss.

Turn off the TV: If you eat meals while watching TV, you are often unaware of how much you eat. Research by Eliot Blass found, people eat between 31 and 74 percent more calories while watching TV. Most people watching TV are motionless which burns few calories. In terms of energy consumption, watching TV will cost you about $100 per year in your electric bill and your cable bill about $600 per year.

Workout with a friend: Working out with a friend will help you stay motivated and provides extra support or new ideas to keep your workouts interesting. You can carpool with your friend to the gym to save on gas.

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Tags: Cooking, Loose Weight, Meals, Motivation, TV, Water, Weight Loss, Workout
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Cook quickly and efficiently with this 2-tier food steamer from Oster. 

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Tags: Amazon, Cooking, Coupons, Deal of the Day, Deals, Oster, steamer
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The prices of ground beef can be pretty high with non-sale prices in some areas as high as $5.00 a pound. Good sales can be few and far between but if you are willing to put a little effort into saving on meat you can shave some of the cost on ground beef.

1. Invest in a meat grinder. You can find a hand cranked meat grinder for about $30 retail or if you have a Kitchen-Aid stand mixer you can purchase a very nice meat grinding attachment for about the same price. Also check thrift stores, consignment shops and eBay for a deal on used meat grinders.

2. Watch for rock bottom prices on whole cuts of meat. This week my local store had rump roasts for $1.99 a lb. which was much cheaper than the $3.99 for pre-ground beef.

3. Purchase whole cuts of beef in bulk as your budget allows. With the sale price of $1.99 I went ahead and bought 3 large roasts at around 5 pounds each.

4. Grind your meat and package for freezing. First cut your meat into chunks small enough to fit in the grinder and follow the manufacture instructions and grind it up. The instructions for the Kitchen-Aid attachment says to grind the meat twice. Then package your meat for future use. Use quality freezer bags, vacuum sealer bags, or freezer containers to freeze your raw hamburger meat. For easy meals you may wish to brown some ground beef and freeze crumbled unseasoned or seasoned (think taco meat) for meals. Additionally you can pre-make meatballs and meatloaf too and freeze it for easy meal preparation.

In all grinding and packaging your own beef only takes 20-30 minutes and can the cost of the meat grinder can easily be recouped after just a few pounds of grind at home beef!

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Tags: Cooking, Cooking & Kitchen Tips, Frugal Living, Ground Beef, Hamburger, Kitchen-Aid, Meat, Meat Grinder, Meat Prices
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Did you make a resolution this year?  If you did, how’s it working for you?  I made one, and I’m going to keep it!  I’ve got a secret - it’s the same resolution I’ve made for the last five years, and I’ve kept it every year.    

I resolved to manage my money to the very best of my ability, providing my family with the very best I can while saving for the rainy day that we all will see one day. 

I think New Year’s resolutions fail mainly because they are often HUGE changes in our lives, hard to maintain and depriving us of comfort and enjoyment.  For that reason, I have made some very subtle changes which when you combine them, make a big difference in our household bottom line.  There are some really simple things you can do to save money in 2009 without feeling deprived.

 If you’re like my family, a huge portion of your monthly expense is your utilities. You need to reduce that bill as much as possible, but still keep warm during the winter months and cool in the summer. The first thing I did was to call my power company and request an energy audit. Most companies provide this service for free, and they will send someone out to look at your power/gas consumption and make suggestions to lower your bill. Additionally, studies have shown that you can reduce your heating bill by 10% if you lower your thermostat 5 degrees at night and 10 degrees when you are not home. If heating is half of your power bill, and your bill normally runs $200 in the winter, you’ll save $10/month just making a small change in temperature.

 When you wash your clothes, use cold water. We do so much laundry that I wonder how in the world all these clothes fit in our closets. Normally I do two loads a day, and if I washed those in hot water, it would cost me about 38 cents each load. A load washed in cold water costs just 1.5 cents! So if you do the math, I’m saving 73 cents /day for 365 days a year, and that’s $266! See how small changes can add up?

 When you’re cooking, turn your oven off about 15 minutes before the baking time is up. The residual heat in the oven will finish baking your food, and you’ll be saving money.

 When you leave the house for an extended period of time (2 days or more), turn your thermostat to the lowest possible setting. Don’t turn the unit off; the low setting will keep your pipes from freezing. Also turn off your water heater. When you return, it will only take an hour or so to heat the water back up.

 If you have ceiling fans in your home, turn the switch on the base so that the blades push the warm air down on you rather than pulling it up.

We all love to make New Year’s resolutions, but keeping them is a different story altogether!  This year, it’s time to get excited about saving some money for your family, and keep your New Year’s resolution!

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Tags: Cooking, Energy, Frugal Living, Resolutions, Saving Money, Utilities
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Any way you slice or dice it, there are lots of ways to turn your leftovers into culinary delights. You’ll save you money in the long run by finding creative ways to cut the waste in your kitchen! Take a look at these five items:

Bread: In my mind, bread is anything made out of flour. The heels of loaf bread can be easily used to make croutons, be toasted for French onion soup, or in our house, we simply spread the peanut butter on the heel side and flip the softer bread side out so the sandwich looks like a sandwich. There are five of us and hamburger and hotdog buns come eight to a package. Use the leftover buns for garlic bread to serve with another night’s meal. One package then covers two nights worth of meals and the buns don’t go moldy in the breadbox.

Meat: You’ve got a half a steak left over from dinner; by itself, it won’t make a meal. If you’re like my family, half a steak is tossed in a ziplock bag and gets lost in the back of the fridge. Instead, chop it up and use it in a steak and egg omelet for breakfast or as a soup/stew starter for another night’s dinner. Or put it in a plastic container, top it with frozen mixed veggies and freeze for a lunch you can reheat at work.

Vegetables: You cooked a pot of green beans that didn’t get finished at dinner. Don’t toss them. Either put freeze in a Ziploc, or keep a big Rubbermaid container in the freezer for veggie orphans. When the container has enough assorted vegetables, make a veggie and rice soup, or use the vegetables for stir-fry.

Milk: Not enough left for a glass in the bottom of the jug? Don’t pour it down the sink. Put it in a zip-seal bag and freeze it for sauces and cream soups. When you’re ready to use it, melt it right in your pan from a frozen state—no need to thaw.

Eggs: Even if you don’t use all your eggs before the expiration date, they stay fresh for quite a while. Crack them in groups of three, scramble and freeze in a plastic bag to use later. Most cake and brownie recipes require three eggs so you can thaw the eggs in the plastic bag under cold running water in a matter of minutes. Or, thaw and scramble for breakfast.

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Tags: Cooking, Frugal Living, Left Overs, Leftovers, Meals
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If you planted a garden this past spring, you probably got to enjoy juicy tomatoes, crisp lettuce, and crunchy cucumbers.  In an expensive summer of high food prices your garden probably saved you more than a few dollars. And with all the food recalls we keep hearing about, knowing your food came out of your own garden probably gave you a little peace of mind.

But if you got a late crop and have more produce than you can possibly eat before it spoils, there are some things you can do to preserve your hard work and enjoy the bounty from your garden well into the winter.

Check out this site from Oregon State University, it’s one of the best resources online for food preservation on the web.  You can even get support from their hotline through October at 800-354-7319. This site has facts to guide you through freezing, drying, canning, smoking, and pickling the fresh goods from your garden.  Another good site you can check out is PreserveFood.com.

Stretch the produce by mashing tomatoes to freeze for sauces; drying and bottling herbs for cooking; cutting up or pureeing squash for soup; or grating zucchini and freezing for breads and muffins.

You don’t have to be Martha Stewart to get the knack of preserving food.  And with a few must-have tools like a food dehydrator, some zip-seal bags, and a roll of freezer paper, you’ll capture the maximum value from your garden and save money this winter.

Get cookin’ with these easy recipes:

Layered Vegetable Pie

Spinach Salad Dressing

Easy Garden Bake (Bisquick Heart Healthy Recipie

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Tags: Cooking, Cooking & Kitchen Tips, Frugal Living, Produce, Recipie, Vegetable
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