Bake Day

One of my challenges this week is to spend only $20 on groceries. My pantry is full of the basics and I have plenty of meat in the freezer. I have to buy milk, cat litter and hopefully some bananas. We have gone through most of the convenience items that we put in lunches. This means I have to make them from scratch.

Where we live, our electricity usage is charge by time of use. This stinks. Low lowest rates are all weekend and between 7pm & 7am Monday-Saturday. Basically, I pay a lot more if I use my oven or do laundry when I want to. All of that to say that today is bake and laundry day. I've spent most of the day in the kitchen with the laundry going in the background. (That's going to be a very large pile to fold tonight.)

I started with granola bars. I've tried a few recipes before and wasn't really happy with them. The one I used today I came across on-line and thought I'd give it a try. With Strong-Willed One's help, they were in the oven in no time. They came out beautifully.

The best part was when the girls tried them and asked if I'd make them all the time instead of buying them! Makes my frugal heart smile. I even like them and I don't usually care for granola bars.

We are also nearly out of bagels. Not a necessity, so it doesn't go on the grocery list. I made bagels once when I was in high school, but not since. I found a recipe for Bread Machine Bagels on a blog and started that before we began the granola bars. Soon after the bars came out of the oven, the bread machine beeped. I quickly formed the bagels before lunch and left them to rise while we ate.

After lunch, Kiddlet helped me boil the bagels, then they went into the oven. They came out nice and golden, but not very pretty. They smell delicious, though.

While to bagels were baking, I began the dough for Cowboy Cookies. Another new recipe. (I clearly hadn't thought this through. What if they all flopped?) I picked this recipe because it used shortening rather than butter. I didn't want to mess with softening butter. And I had found a pound of shortening for $.75. Why use costly butter if I have that in the cupboard? The cookies aren't bad and I got 5 dozen out of a single batch. Plenty for now and to freeze for later!

I'm finally done baking for the day. I do still have all the dishes from the cookies to wash as well as all the baking pans, but I can do that while dinner cooks. Which is going to be Oktoberfest Sausage cooked in the oven, buttered rice and frozen green beans cooked in the microwave.

I actually threw together a coffee cake last night for dessert. I figured since I already had the oven on to bake the dinner rolls.... We all had a piece after lunch today and the way Little Guy ate it had us all laughing.