Best Pico de Gallo Recipe for a Cookout, Party, Tailgate, or Just Because

Pico de Gallo is one of my favorite types of salsa because it is chunky and not as soupy as traditional salsa (which nine times out of ten means you can always tell I ate some salsa because I’m wearing it.) Not to mention, Pico de Gallo is a quick and easy recipe that uses up a summer garden bursting with fresh tomatoes, cilantro, and peppers.

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Pico de Gallo is also an easy mix and match recipe to make for a party that allows your guest to tailor it to their own tastes:

10 Ways to Reuse Plastic Takeout Containers

One of the ways my husband and I save money and reduce household waste is to try to get an extra reuse out of everything within reason before it goes into the trash or recycling bin. 

Lately, we've been doing Quarantine Takeout Date Night as a replacement for our regular weekly date night and to help keep our local restaurants in business especially those that are now doing takeout to survive. Some of the food containers we can compost in our compost bin. Others are the hard plastic type we cannot compost or put in our city recycling bin because they are made from number 5 plastic.

Lucky for us, plastic takeout food containers are extremely easy to repurpose which makes them very, very useful.

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If you’re looking for ways to recycle those food takeout containers into something useful, we have you covered!

10 New and Easy Ways to Repurpose Empty Plastic Containers

How to Make Instant Pot Yogurt with Powdered Milk

I keep a small box of powdered milk in our pantry for bread machine recipes and for my husband to use in his coffee on those rare, pre pandemic occasions when we are out of milk.

Which is coming in handy now that we are out of milk.

I planned ahead when I placed our latest Instacart grocery order (you can learn about Instacart here) but Ohio’s latest quarantine order limits the number of people allowed inside a store at one time. I’m pretty sure that is going to  make our hard working grocery delivery hero’s job harder and we’ll have to wait a little bit longer for the delivery. It’s understandable. I’ll pivot. (Disclosure: I am including affiliate links in this post for your convenience.)

Can You Make Yogurt From Dry Powdered Milk?

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5 Easy Bread Machine Recipes You Have to Try Right Now!

I absolutely love the taste of home baked bread. Unfortunately I also have some horrible affliction where I cannot correctly proof bread dough to save my life. Fortunately there is a remedy for that - a bread machine.

I got my first bread machine as a wedding present and love that I can make all sorts of fancy pants bread recipes for a fraction of the cost of a loaf in the bakery or grocery store. I used my bread maker so much I wore it out. Bread maker Number Two is happily chugging along and providing us with yummy bread. Which to be honest, we’ve been eating more of paired with soups and stews to stretch out the time that we have to order groceries using Instacart (learn more about it here). (affiliate link for your convenience.)

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But mostly, like everyone else who has gone on a bread baking kick during quarantine, we just like the comforting smell of warm bread baking in the kitchen. In fact I have a load of bread started in my bread maker right now as I type that is destined to accompany a big batch of my husband’s  chili for dinner tonight – yay!

The Best Bread Maker Recipes for Beginners

16 Ways to Save Money That Don’t Cost Any Money at All

I find that the cheapest way to save money is with new habits because habits are FREE!

I like free.

Free is good. 

Free habits are also the easiest way to unintentionally spend more money if you break them. Or in my case, I tell myself the ol’ Oh not doing that frugal thing this one time won’t hurt – which sometimes gets me out of my good habit until I double check a utility bill. Oops!

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This is a list of ideas, not money saving absolutes. Some you might already do. Others may not apply to you. You might do something that is even better than what I have here and if you do, please share it with us in the comments below!

Quick and Easy Instant Mashed Potato Pancake Recipe

When my husband and I eat fresh potatoes (which is always), we cook them in a Microwave Potato Bag similar to this one for four minutes and then pop them in the toaster oven to crisp the skin while the rest of dinner cooks on the stove because we generally don’t have the time to bake potatoes old school in the oven.  Mashed potatoes are pretty much off the table due to my severe dairy intolerance because let’s face it loads of butter and cream is what makes mashed potatoes taste like heaven. (Disclosure: I am including affiliate links in this post for your convenience)

Which is why my husband was baffled first time he found a box of instant mashed potatoes in the kitchen. Why do we have this when we have real potatoes?

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How Much Emergency Food Storage to Buy and How Make It Last

When I was trying to get the hang of paying attention to seasonal sale cycles to help my family save money on groceries, I typically bought the household staples we used all of the time, for example like toothpaste, every time I saw it on sale. That way I’d have a sale priced backup on hand when we run out. In theory that should work just fine. In practice I seemed to always have too many of one thing on hand (like  toothpaste) and not any of another when I need it most like my DIY laundry detergent. This grocery buying strategy didn’t help me one bit when it came to having an extra two weeks of food in my pantry for emergencies because I had weird amounts of stuff that didn’t always go together to make a meal.

Reading advice from food storage moms about how many extra pantry items to have on hand in case of emergency (we have storm related blackouts here) didn’t help much either because the amounts they suggest are for families much larger than mine or for food we don’t typically eat, like Jell-O and desserts. The first thing preparedness folks tell you is to store the type of food you typically eat.


That’s great advice but the food some of them suggest are not the things we typically or are interested in eating. For example keeping giant sacks of wheat berries and grinding my own flour is not practical during a blackout when I have an all electric kitchen but having enough oatmeal on hand to keep making our morning oatmeal for hopefully less than a week using the overnight oats method (soaking the oats overnight in milk or water) instead of a the stove is much more practical for us. (As always your mileage and desires my vary.)

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Determine the what to keep on hand is easier than the how much. How do you determine when you have too much of something and it spoils vs not having enough?