Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

This Week at Heavenly Homemakers: What You Can Cook, Read, Serve, and Craft for a Dollar or Less

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Over the weekend I had a fun idea to highlight some of my fun money saving ideas for you. So this week, I’ll be posting:

  • Meals you can serve your family for a $1.00 or less per plate
  • Crafts you can make with your kids for $1.00 or less
  • Ways you can serve/bless others for $1.00 or less
  • Random $1.00 or less tips
  • Freebies

It’s going to be kind of hodge-podge because I’m trying to keep you on your toes. Or maybe I’m just unorganized. (Hey, I’m working on it.)

$1.00 or Less Recipes, Crafts, Gift Ideas, and more!

First a fun craft and service idea for around a dollar or less

You all know I’m not the craftiest gal among us. But I can cut and glue, so there’s that. I had fun making these fun Owl Gift Sacks a couple years ago. You’ll find the free printables for this project here. Print ’em off, cut, glue, and fill the sacks with a treat to share. Get your kids involved. Have fun!

Owl Gift Sacks Free Printable

Now how about a recipe?

It’s the perfect time of year to put Garden Veggie Chicken Skillet on your menu frequently. This is a one-dish meal. It uses many vegetables, you can make it to your family’s liking, and it doesn’t cost much to make. I’ve calculated that it costs $1.00 or less per plate!

Garden Veggie Chicken Skillet 2

Want more inexpensive recipes?

You’ll get this eBooklet for free when you sign up to be a part of the Homemaker’s Savings Club. That’s the newsletter where I keep you up to date on all the best homemaking deals I find!

Top 10 Money Saving Recipes cover

Stay tuned all week for many more fun $1.00 or less ideas!

Subscribe here to make it easy to keep up!

The running list:

I’ll continue to update this post all week with the newest links to $1.00 or less ideas shared!

~ Tuesday: Bread, Recipe Card Craft, Service Ideas, and More

~ Wednesday: All Chocolate, All the Time

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Burning Barns, Talking Spiders, and Loving Literature With the Kids

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I’ve loved the Charlotte’s Web classic book since I was a little girl. I wanted to get my own baby pig and find a cool spider in my own barn. (I also wanted a pet monkey, thanks to Curious George.)

As it turns out, I actually did have pigs, which turned out to be – something else. But we’ll stop there. I mean, should we even talk about what happened with our barn? (Really. It’s fine. I’m over it.)

And that's where the barn was...

Just last week my brother took his kids to the property where he and I grew up.
My sis-in-law later posted this pic to Facebook and tagged me with the caption,
“And that’s where the barn was…”
I can’t stop laughing at this.

(What? You don’t know my barn story? Go read this.)

Seeing as my pigs were not cute, nor did they talk, and the actual spiders in our barn (may it rest in peace) creeped me out – I lived vicariously through Fern, Wilbur, and Charlotte. Did you, too? Did you love this book?

Do you still love this book?!!

Ahhh, Charlotte’s Web

I have read this book to my kids several times through the years. Last summer, I picked it up again to read to Malachi. He saw the cover – with a girl and a pig on it – and he was like, “Meh. I don’t think I’m going to like this book.” I told him to give it a try with me and see if he didn’t change his mind. I’m pretty sure I had him hooked about three sentences in.

Main point of this post: Read with your kids, enjoy books with your kids, love experiencing life through books with your kids. But now back to Charlotte’s Web…

wilbur and charlotte

We had so much fun reading this book together that it wasn’t long before we started creating projects. Then games. Then snacks. Then I thought of some learning activities he could do as we read. (There are some great vocab words in there. Malachi uses the greeting, “Salutations!” regularly now just because he loves the word, thank you, Charlotte.)

Activities and projects and games and “recipes” and crafts turned into 41-pages of family fun and learning. We decided to put it all together in a book and share it with you. This is THE BEST way to make learning fun.

Since creating this book was quite a labor intensive project – and turned into 41 pages worth of educational fun – I can’t give this to everyone for a $0.00 price-tag like I’ve been able to do with several of the learning packets I’ve created the past few months. (I’ve got more of those freebies in the works, by the way.) Instead, we came up with a better idea, in which you and I both win!

The price is low, but the value is high in our Learning Through Literature packet focused on the marvelous Charlotte’s Web classic book!

Grab your packet today and start using it with your entire family!

Our Heavenly Homemaker’s Club Members have access to this amazing resource plus ALL of our eBooks, eCurriculum, printables, and so much more – for one very low price! Join us here!

Or purchase separately below:

Charlotte’s Web ~ Learning Through Literature
$7.95

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Veggie-n-Egg Scramble ~ A Great Last Minute Meal Idea

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I think this Veggie-n-Egg Scramble might become one of my favorite and most relied upon go-to meals.

Veggie and Egg Scramble

Yum

I used to make something like this years ago, but kind of forgot about it. Weird how that happens.

A few weeks ago, I needed a quick meal before we headed out to a soccer game. I didn’t have time to cook meat, but I did have a fridge full of veggies and a few dozen eggs. I called the boys into the kitchen and started throwing vegetables and knives at them. Hold on. That didn’t come out right. I didn’t throw knives at them. (Peppers maybe, but not knives.) I’m just saying I started handing out jobs and we all worked together to make this quick and nourishing meal.

Everyone started chopping until my big electric skillet looked like this:

Veggies for veggie scramble
All the veggies are good in this Veggie-n-Egg Scramble, but I will suggest that onions are a key player. Onions give this dish such amazing flavor! Sweet peppers are a close second. Broccoli, asparagus, zucchini, and spinach come next. The beauty is that you can use whatever veggies you like and whatever you have on hand.

Saute the veggies in olive oil or butter until tender. Scramble in some eggs with salt. Toss in a little cheese for extra amazingness. So much deliciousness. Very little work. Extra wonderful nourishment.

Veggie-n-Egg Scramble ~ A Great Last Minute Meal Idea
 
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Author:
Serves: 3-4
Ingredients
  • 4 cups chopped veggies (onions, sweet peppers, zucchini, asparagus, spinach, broccoli, or any others you like in any combination)
  • 3 Tablespoons butter or olive oil
  • 6 eggs
  • 2 Tablespoons milk
  • sea salt to taste
  • shredded cheese to taste
Instructions
  1. Saute vegetables in oil or butter until tender.
  2. Meanwhile, crack eggs into a bowl and whip with milk.
  3. Pour egg mixture over cooked veggies and salt as you like.
  4. Scramble the eggs with the veggies until they are cooked through.
  5. Sprinkle cheese on top to melt.
  6. Serve

I at least double this for my family of 6 big eaters. Plus we serve it with fresh fruit. Buttered toast also helps fill them up. Seriously. We really do eat and keep eating at our house.

TIP: If you happen to have leftover ham or bacon – even chicken or beef – hanging out in your fridge, those would be a wonderful addition to this dish.

This meal has become one of the easiest ways to get my family to eat a big variety of veggies in one meal. It ranks right up there with Easy Noodle Stir-Fry.

Easy Veggie and Egg Scramble

Do you ever make a meal like this at your house? What veggies would you or do you include? 

It’s meals like this that make “teaching our kids about nutrition” quite natural.

P.S. It is worth noting that this dish makes it possible to feed my family very well for about $1.00 per plate. (We won’t talk about how many plates we go through during a meal…)

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How We Teach Our Kids About Nutrition

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Our family has been on our healthy eating journey for over 10 years now. Yep. I’ve been shunning the margarine and pushing the veggies and serving the spinach and delighting in the free-range eggs for over a decade.

As a result, all of my kids hate junk food. They snack on huge bowls of greens and never ask for chips. They read all the labels and become excited when they know asparagus is on sale.

If you believe that, you should probably go read this post. 

The Truth About My Family and Junk Food

The truth is, my kids like Doritos and store-bought pizza just like most. I’ve chosen not to freak out about this, seeing as freaking out is rarely a blessing for anyone. And also: you should go read all of these thoughts. That’s where I’ve chosen to land.

So what about nutrition? How do we teach our kids about nutrition?

I hadn’t found any books that I felt taught nutrition they way I wanted. So instead, we’ve done what has come naturally:

1. We talk about it 

As you can imagine, food is a popular topic in the Coppinger household. Mom loves nutrition and cooking. Dad and the boys love to eat.

Through the years I’ve shared what I’m learning about nutrition while we hang out in the kitchen or while we’re eating together. I don’t force the information, but they’ve caught the gist: Real food is where it’s at. Please pass the butter.

2. We focus on making our nourishing food taste good

Yes, our boys like candy. But they also love nourishing food because what’s not to love about Strawberry Cheesecake Parfaits and BLT Tossed Salads?

One of the things I love most about real food is that the more nourishing it is, the better it tastes. There is so much good flavor in natural foods! Imagine that. We don’t have to create tasty food in a factory. God already made food amazing.

3. We model it

We continue to add more and more fruits and vegetables to our diets. Matt and I load up our own plates, and get excited about food from the garden or from Bountiful Baskets. We drink several glasses of water every day.

Ultimately, our kids are learning about nutrition because of what they see and what is available in the home. Not to worry. They also see us sometimes compromising on food choices. I like to think that since we do this without freaking out, they will have a healthy understanding of what it means to enjoy treats and will hopefully keep a relaxed perspective on food instead of making it an idol.

Why I Usually Don’t Like Books About Nutrition

I’ve had two major issues with books that teach about nutrition:

  1. They are too heady and overwhelming to hand to a kid. (I’m talking to you, Nourishing Traditions.)
  2. Or, they are based on FDA standards, which focus on eating low fat, counting calories, and eating a lot of grain products. Basically they give a lot of information as “fact” that I very much disagree with. (Dare you actually tell my child that margarine is a better choice? Oh. I don’t think so.)

So we’ve just stuck with talking about nutrition and making sure our kids eat salads and fruit and good eggs and meat, etc.

I found a book!

When I was prepping for this week’s homeschool curriculum sale, there were some books with fruits and veggies that jumped out at me (surprise, surprise) in one of the Unit Studies Packets. I contacted the author, Amy Blevins, and she was kind enough to send them to me before the sale started so I could look them over so I’d know what to tell you about them.

nutrition-set

I knew the art work would be great. But would the nutrition information be overwhelming? Would I agree with it?

Well, it’s all I can do to wait until fall to start working through these with Malachi. (Does he really need a summer break? Fine. So do I. We’ll start in the fall.)

Man, this book is good. I’m mostly talking about the “Learning About Nutrition” section of this book (though the coloring and dot-to-dot books are fantastic for additional fun). There were just a few points I didn’t agree with, but I think those points will be good to bring up for discussion and further research.

This book is very thorough while being incredibly kid friendly. It’s just over 532 pages (some of it is just for parents), and I feel it will be such a nice unit to study with Malachi – taking just a few minutes each day to increase his knowledge of nutrition and to get him thinking more on his own about good food choices.

I really love how the book is laid out with light reading and small activities throughout (NOT just busy work, thankfully!!). There are even fun writing exercises sprinkled in. Really, I think they’ll be fun – food and creativity and nutrition can actually go together because she wrote this so well.

As you know, nutrition is one of my biggest things so telling you that I like this book kind of means something. :)

Fruits and Veggies Curriculum Sale

Just like all the 200+ books in this week’s curriculum sale, you’ll be amazed at majorly discounted prices. This Nutrition Unit Study pack comes in a set of 14 other unit study books – and they are all 91% off! The complete set costs less than one book normally costs.

TIP: Have big kids and little kids? That’s going to be perfect with this unit study. Littler ones can color and connect the dots while your entire family reads and studies the Learning About Nutrition book. That’s the beauty of unit studies – the whole family can learn together.

ANOTHER TIP: Pick two more bundles to go along with this one to take advantage of the Buy-2-Get-1-Free offer. Then you’ll save even more. It’s almost crazy.

The links in this post are my affiliate links.

I’m excited that there is so much goodness being offered this week in this sale, at such incredible prices! So tell me – how have you been teaching your kids about nutrition?

Visit the Build Your Bundle Curriculum Sale Here.

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Low Sugar Flourless Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies

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If we can make Low Sugar Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies, then surely we can add a little cocoa powder and make Low Sugar Flourless Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies, dontcha think??

It’s too easy.

I had the grand idea of baking these in muffin cups so that they’d take on the look of a peanut butter cup. Too bad that didn’t really work.

low sugar chocolate pb cookies1

They look kinda cute in the muffin liners, but they didn’t really flatten enough to take on the shape of a peanut butter cup. We ate them anyway. It wasn’t a problem.

Low Sugar Flourless Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies

Get my Homemade Natural Peanut Butter Recipe here. You’ll be amazed at how delicious homemade peanut butter tastes (and how easy it is to make)!

Low Sugar Flourless Chocolate Peanut Butter CookiesYum

Low Sugar Flourless Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies
 
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Author:
Serves: 15-20
Ingredients
  • 2 cups natural peanut butter
  • ⅓ cup sucanat, honey, or brown sugar
  • ¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 egg
Instructions
  1. Mix the ingredients together until smooth.
  2. Use a small or medium scoop to place dough balls on a cookie sheet, about two inches apart.
  3. Bake in a 350° oven for 10-12 minutes or until cookies are lightly browned.
  4. Allow them to sit on the cookie sheet for a few minutes before removing them to cool on a rack.

The flavor of these cookies is super delicious. These will give you a great chocolate peanut butter fix, without all the sugar or even flour!

I know I just shared this low sugar cookie list last week, but when it comes to cookies and cutting sugar, I want to be sure you know I have your back.

More Low Sugar Cookie Recipes

I get many of my best ideas from YOU. What other cookie recipes should I play with to see if I can create a low sugar version?

 

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Ways Our Family Saves Money on Homeschool Curriculum

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Here are two things I’ve learned when it comes to buying homeschool curriculum:

  1. Homeschooling should be looked at as an investment.
  2. Homeschooling doesn’t have to be expensive.

In my 14+ years of homeschooling I’ve learned to recognize that just like with healthy eating – it is worth it to invest in the good stuff. Spending money for great curriculum is as worth it as spending money for great food. Ahhh, books and butter. Curriculum and vegetables. It all goes hand in hand, right? Buying high quality is worth the cost.

But there are also many ways to keep your curriculum costs down so that maybe, just maybe, we can enjoy good books and save money too. (Well, of course.)

How to Save Money on Homeschool Curriculum

How to Save Money on Homeschool Curriculum

Here are several ways I’ve saved money through our homeschooling years:

1. Use the Library

This one is too obvious, but still worth a mention. While I have really appreciated owning lots of great literature and having it on our shelves to grab at any time – there are plenty of books we have simply checked out from the library as needed. Cost is free, unless you forget to take the books back on time and have pay late fees. I know nothing about this.

2. Buy Used

Every year, I sit down with a list of books each of our kids will be reading during the school year. If we don’t already own it and I prefer not to have to get it at the library, I check on Amazon and see if I can find a used copy. I have saved so much money doing this.

Occasionally I’ve found needed books at garage sales or I’ve bought curriculum from other homeschool families who are cleaning the closet. (I’ve even been blessed by people handing me their used books for free!) As long as the book isn’t falling apart, buying a used book is just as nice as buying a new book – and you’ll save a few bucks per book too!

books

3. Borrow and Share

One of the best ways I’ve found to save on big ticket items (like Teaching Textbooks or Apologia Science books) is to borrow and share with friends. This only works if our kids are in different grade levels and will therefore not be needing the same books or software at the same time. But coordinating with friends (i.e. I’ll buy the 5th grade book and you buy the 6th grade book, then we’ll swap next year) can be a huge money saver.

4. Divide the Dollar Amount by Number of Kids in Your Family

It has helped me “justify” a quality purchase when I do the math – knowing that I will eventually use each item for all four of my kids. Therefore, if I spend $40 on something, I know it really breaks down to just $10 per kid. Make sense?

5. Use and Reuse

With many of our consumable books through the years, I had our oldest kids leave the book blank and write their answers in a 20¢ notebook instead. That way I could save the consumable book to reuse – instead of having to buy it over and over each time another kid needed it. Yay for Malachi. The youngest kid gets to write in his books.

6. Go Digital

I’m learning to love digital books more an more for these reasons:

  • They save bookshelf space
  • I can organize them easily on my computer
  • They save money
  • I can use them over and over as needed for my family

Last year when the Build Your Bundle Homeschool Curriculum Sale was offered, I grabbed several packages to use for my younger two boys. Ah-ma-zing. Throughout this school year I supplemented our regular curriculum with eBooks I had picked up last year for cheap!!

What great ways have you found to save money on books?

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How Price-Matching Helps Us Eat Real Food

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Price-matching helps us eat real food. That’s all there is to it.

How Price-Matching Helps Us Eat Real Food

Some people live in a big town with many big grocery store options. I do not. Well, it’s more than what tiny towns offer, but still. The closest big name store is an hour away from where we live. In my town we have a Wal-mart and two locally owned stores that have decent deals sometimes.

Before I discovered price-matching at Wal-mart, I skimped on fresh produce purchases. I didn’t even realize I was skimping because I was just doing my best to stick to the budget. I bought the fruits and veggies I could afford, then we rationed them out to make them stretch.

groceries apr16 (1)

About a year and a half ago I discovered price-matching. I don’t know why I hadn’t checked into it before.

Yes. I do know why. I assumed I could only price-match processed foods like boxed cereals and hamburger helper. Therefore I figured it wouldn’t help me much.

Enter: Aldi. The city an hour away from us built its first Aldi store. That’s when I started hearing my friends say things like, “I price-matched Aldi avocados and got them for 39¢ each.” Wai-wai-wait. You did what??

And that’s when I finally started paying attention to what price-matching was.

groceries mar21

Wal-mart accepts price-matches from stores that are as far as one hour away. This is a huge benefit to me, because not only is there an Aldi an hour away, there is a Super Saver, a Hyvee, and now a Fresh Thyme Market! (Several other stores too.) I check Price-Matcherz every week because they do the hard work for me by providing a list of all the best deals. Sure, there are plenty of processed foods to wade through. But the produce!!!

I used to have to pay at least $2.48 for a pound of strawberries in season. Now I can often get them for $1.29! I often get pineapple for $1.29 and cantaloupe for 99¢. I’ve price-matched asparagus for 88¢/pound and 3-pound bags of apples for $1.50.

feb 5 groceries

Not only am I now able to buy oodles and gobs of fresh produce for my family each week, I sometimes even have enough room in the budget to buy some for our local Mission. Price-matching saves us loads of money and ensures that our home is filled with nourishing food.

Read the how-to of how price-matching helps our family.

What grocery store options do you have where you live? Are you a price-matcher or is that something you haven’t needed to mess with?

A couple of other produce money-saving options:

  • I love the savings and quality of Bountiful Baskets. If you’re brave, you can watch as I unpacked our latest BB box. (Beware because out of nowhere I started to boohoo at the end because it was the day before Mother’s Day and I can’t talk about Mother’s Day without crying no matter how hard I try. Facebook Live makes a girl vulnerable. It’s a good thing we’re friends.)
  • I clip coupons when I find them. They are rare.
  • I’m trying to get the hang of Ibotta. Usually there are produce rebate offers! I use the app on my phone to make it easiest. (If you want to try it out, you can get an instant $10 rebate if you sign up through my referral code and redeem a rebate within 2 weeks).

Some of these links are affiliate links.

 

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Low Sugar Flourless Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe

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Low Sugar Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies and my Mother’s Day flowers!

Low Sugar Peanut Butter Cookies

About the time I think I’ve cut the sugar in every recipe that would possibly work, I find another that works just as well.

Do you remember my Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies? One cup peanut butter, one cup sugar, one egg. They’re delicious. They’re naturally gluten free so I can make them for my GF friends. They’re incredibly easy. And they have a very high sugar content.

I thought surely cutting the sugar in that recipe would mess up the consistency and turn out weird cookies – if they even turned out cookies at all. I am so happy to say, “I was wrong.”

The only thing that didn’t work when I cut the sugar in this recipe is that the dough didn’t allow me to do the cute little criss-cross fork squish thing. The dough was too sticky. Thankfully, life goes on and we’re all grown up enough to eat our peanut butter cookies without fork-squishing them, right? Thank goodness.

Low Sugar Flourless Peanut Butter CookiesYum

5.0 from 1 reviews
Low Sugar Flourless Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe
 
Save Print
Author:
Serves: 20ish
Ingredients
  • 2 cups natural peanut butter
  • ⅓ cup sucanat or brown sugar
  • 1 egg
Instructions
  1. Mix the ingredients together until smooth.
  2. Use a small or medium scoop to place dough balls on a cookie sheet, about two inches apart.
  3. Bake in a 350° oven for 10-12 minutes or until cookies are lightly browned.
  4. Allow them to sit on the cookie sheet for a few minutes before removing them to cool on a rack.

Get my Homemade Natural Peanut Butter Recipe here.

Low Sugar Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe

Matt and I are totally good with barely sweet treats. But the boys? Well, they’re a little more particular. Therefore, my kids are always the true testers for whether or not one of my Low Sugar Treats actually tastes good to other people.

I always hesitate to say these are low sugar, come try them because sometimes that makes the boys unsure from the get-go. But there I was, standing in the kitchen eating a peanut butter cookie. This made the boys suspicious. If Mom is eating it, it must be low sugar.

All that to say: These cookies smelled really good, which made my boys want some. Then they saw me eating them, which made them not so sure. I insisted they try a bite because I thought they were so good I could hardly stand it, and I knew they would like them once they tried.

What did they think?

Well, let’s just say that I had to stop them from finishing the entire batch in one sitting, and we all started shaking our heads once again at Betty Crocker for making us all think we needed eighty cups of sugar in cookie recipes just to make them taste good. C’mon, Betty.

You’ll want to look through all of our tried and true Low Sugar Recipes here. It is amazing how much sugar you can cut out of treats and still make them taste delicious! These Peanut Butter Cookies went from 2 cups down to 1/3 cup of sugar – and they are amazing.

Need more Low Sugar Cookie Recipes?

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Free New Summer Reading Challenge Printables For Your Family

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When my kids were little, we went to the library every week during the summer for the special Summer Reading Program they offered. This kept our boys excited about books and they loved the opportunity they had to win small prizes and meet challenges.

As most of our boys hit the upper grades and outgrew the library program, I saw that our younger two boys needed a little extra motivation to read during the weeks of summer they were home. (Our older two are welcome to participate also, but they tend to be gone more than they are home during June and July.) So we started creating our own Summer Reading Challenge here at home. I set up a simple reward system – tailor made to what I knew would motivate them! I wrote about this last year and offered some free printables. This year, I made more to share with you!

For you, Summer Reading Challenge Printables

Create Your Own Summer Reading Challenge

I’ll share how our family sets this up, then of course you can adapt it to meet your needs if the Summer Reading Challenge idea works for you!

1. Set up a system.

Decide how many minutes or hours your child needs to read before he/she earns a reward. Do the minutes/hours count if the child is being read to, or do they need to read on their own? How will you keep track of time spent reading? (I recommend using these charts!)

2. Talk to your child(ren) about what rewards would be fun motivation for them.

Our kids earn a prize after they have read for five hours. Typically our family’s prizes get a little bigger as they read more and more hours. Here are a few our kids came up with that they would enjoy:

  • Redbox movie rental
  • $1 ice cream cone from Runza
  • Choose something from the Dollar Store
  • Invite a friend for a sleep-over
  • $2 Happy Hour Big Pizza Slice at Pizza Hut
  • Drink from Captain Red Beard’s (our local coffee shop)
  • Still brainstorming :)

3. Put it all into a chart.

My oldest boys don’t care about a cutesy chart to log their hours, but Malachi (age 11) still enjoys one. (However, even the older boys need to at least log their hours in a notebook so they don’t lose track.) The rewards are usually listed on our fridge.

This year, Malachi will use the Pirate Chart I made. (For some reason he didn’t choose the Flowers and Butterflies Chart?!?)

Free Summer Reading Challenge Printable Charts

I’ve made these charts as generic as possible so that you can use them in whatever way your family prefers. The Pirate Chart and the Flowers and Butterflies Chart can be used a little differently than the others that are for writing lists and checking off goals. Consider writing prizes on each cut-out piece for your child to glue onto the chart once they’ve earned that particular prize.

Grab your free printables!

These are free for everyone and will connect you to our fun Heavenly Homemaker’s Learning Zone. It’s free, of course.

Enter your email address here, then check your inbox for download instructions. Print one, print them all, use them in whatever ways work best for your family to enjoy reading this summer!

If you are already subscribed to Heavenly Homemaker’s Learning Zone, you should have received an email yesterday giving you instant access to this freebie. Look in your inbox for the subject: FREE Summer Reading Challenge Charts!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

What To Do With Milk You Need to Use Up

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Many people cringe when they think about the amount of milk our family must go through each week with our family of 3 teenage sons (plus a pre-teen). A gallon a day? Two? How in the world do I keep enough milk in the house for all my boys? I’ll tell you.

We go through exactly one gallon each week.

Disappointed? Sorry. That’s really all we go through.

milk (1)

I took this picture back when we used to get two gallons of milk each week. Pretty isn’t it?

What’s up with our tiny milk consumption in a household of enormous appetites? Well I really don’t want to get into a milk debate here because I have not landed anywhere concrete on the “we should be drinking plenty of milk no actually we shouldn’t” scale. I have researched and I have asked professionals and I am conflicted. Some say drink lots and some say don’t drink it at all. We land somewhere in the middle and we do our best to drink milk from good sources.

peach milkshakes 1

If you ever want to waste milk, simply put too much in your high power blender, then turn it on.
It will explode all over you and all over your kitchen and you will be cleaning it up for days.
This is not a recommended way to use up excess milk.

Here are the two biggest (but not very exciting) reasons we don’t drink much milk at our house:

1. Our natural doctor advised that our boys/men don’t really need much milk.
2. Our boys don’t love drinking milk.

That’s it.

While some kids love drinking milk and chug down several glasses full each day, our boys never have really cared that much about it. I take that to mean that their bodies really don’t need it. If you’ve seen any of them lately, you know that lack of milk consumption has done nothing to keep them from growing long legs. Good grief, their pants.

We get raw, organic milk from a local farmer and we drink it moderately. Actually, we mostly just cook with it.

So that’s our milk situation. What’s yours? Go through lots? Hardly go through any at all? Raw, coconut, regular, unleaded? (ew)

What To Do With Milk You Need to Use Up

Let’s just say you got a good deal on milk and bought several gallons. Or you got your regular allotted milk from your local farmer and you can’t drink it up fast enough. We typically finish off our milk just fine in one week (again, I mostly just cook with it). But every once in a while if we are out of town or the boys are at camp – we end up with extra milk we need to use up quickly.

What to do with Milk You Need to Use Up

Here are some ideas of what to do (not that you couldn’t just have a cookies and milk party for the neighborhood):

Freeze It

Milk freezes just fine, although we’ve found that it works best to first skim the cream off our farm fresh milk.

Culture It

I always keep Homemade Buttermilk on hand for baking and so I can quickly make Ranch Salad Dressing. It’s also super easy to make Kefir or Yogurt. If you culture your milk, it will keep longer in the fridge.

buttermilk

Make Shakes

We’ll go through a half gallon of milk pretty easily if I make it chocolate. :)

milkshakes

Cook or Bake With It

These recipes use quite a bit of milk (especially for my family since I usually double or triple or quadruple a recipe).

garlicchickenpastasm

Those are my go-to options when we need to use up milk. How about you? What do you do or make when you need to use up milk?

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