Frugal Holidays, Sweet Potatoes and Butterflies- HBHW Newsletter

October 7th 2009

Editorial

I can’t believe this, but I completely forgot to mention that I am posting across various other blogs this month. I meant to mention it in last week’s newsletter and then it slipped my mind. Thankfully it’s still early in the month and you’ll have plenty of time to follow along. Start by reading why I’m going on the road so to speak with my blogging.

I spent last week at Christine’s blog on Menu Planning Central sharing some meal planning information (scroll down to get to my articles).

Why am I doing this? There are several reasons. First and foremost, it’s a lot of fun. I get to hang out with a few of my best blogging friends and of course meet some new people (both bloggers and readers) along the way.

Secondly it helps me reach more people and help them live more frugally and make homemade meals from scratch. I don’t have to tell you that this is a topic I feel passionately about and that I love to write about it.

My third reason has to do with my grandmother. She is a breast cancer survivor and each October during breast cancer awareness month I try to do something to help. This year I decided to go on this blog tour and donate 20% of all my profits from ebook and HBHW membership sales to the the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

I’d love to be able to write them a large check and to do that I’m not only spreading the word about the HillbillyHousewife.com website through this blog tour, I’ve also sat down and worked hard on three new ebooks that will be available in the next few days. One is a Meal Planning Guide I’ve been working on for quite some time, the other ones are a crockpot cooking guide and a pressure cooking guide. Look for an email announcement about those later this week.

That’s it for this week. I hope you’ll follow me along on my blog tour this month and leave plenty of comments. My stop this week is at Showmomthemoney.com. Two of my articles on that site are this week’s featured articles in this newsletter.

That’s it for this week. As always, I welcome your comments and suggestions. Feel free to email me at susanne@hillbillyhousewife.com

Warm Regards,

Susanne – The Hillbilly Housewife

P.S. Remember to do regular monthly breast exams and contact your physician right away if you feel a lump. Early detection and treatment are your best bet for surviving breast cancer.

Inspirational Quote

“It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.” – Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Ready to make a Halloween costume with your child? Homemade Halloween Costumes – no sewing required.

Reader Question

recently got a bushel of sweet potatoes, I shared them with friends but I have quite a few left over and I need to know if I can store them in the freezer. Do they freeze well?

Pat

Hi Pat,

yes, you can freeze sweet potatoes. Here’s how to do it. Wash and boil your sweet potatoes until they are fairly soft. Allow them to cool until they are comfortable to handle. Peel them and either slice them or cut them into chunks. If you’d like you can dip the sweet potato slices into a mixture of water and lemon juice to keep them from browning. If you are making mashed sweet potatoes to freeze (for making pies later for example), add a little dash of lemon juice to the mashed potatoes to keep them from browning as well.

Allow the sweet potatoes to cool completely, then transfer them into freezer bags. Be sure to leave some room to allow the frozen product to expand (I leave about 1/3 of the bag empty). Freeze.

Susanne

News From The HBHW Club

This is a new section of the newsletter. Each week I’m going to share some tidbits of what’s going on at the HBHW Club with you. I hope you enjoy these extra tips, recipes and ideas and of course would love to have you join the club.

As a HBHW newsletter subscriber, you can join for only $10 per month here: http://www.hillbillyhousewifeclub.com/special.html

And to make it even easier, I’ll let you try it out for just a dollar for the first 7 days.

Here’s one of the recipes that were submitted this past week.

Split Pea and Cabbage Soup
* 1 cup yellow split peas (soaked covered with water for at least 8 hours before cooking)
* 3 cups fresh cold water (for cooking in)
* 2 large Yukon Gold potatoes, scrubbed and diced (you may peel them if you like)
* 2 cups of water
* 1 tablespoon margarine or butter
* 3 slices of bacon, cut into small pieces
* 1 large yellow onion, diced
* 4 cups chicken stock or broth
* 1/2 medium size head cabbage, shredded (or about 1/2 pound)
* 1/4 tsp black pepper (more or less to taste)
* 1 (16 oz) pkg of good quality  sauerkraut (do not drain)
* (optional: throw in some cooked chicken, sausage, ham, or other meat if desired)

Soak the split peas covered in cold water overnight or at least 8 hours, then drain and put in pot with the 3 cups of fresh water and bring to a boil, then simmer for about 20 minutes or until nice and soft.

Meanwhile, in a big soup pot, put the 2 cups water, potatoes, and margarine, bring to a boil, then cook at a low boil until the potatoes are tender but not mushy.

While that’s cooking, fry up the bacon with the onion until the bacon has gotten somewhat crispy and most of the fat has been cooked off.

Remove the cooked potatoes from the soup pot using a slotted spoon and set aside, saving the potato water in the soup pot.  To the soup pot with the potato water, add the chicken stock, cabbage, and the black pepper.  Bring back up to a boil, then down to a simmer and cook for just 5 to 10 minutes.

When the cabbage is tender, add the potatoes back to the soup pot, pour in the cooked split peas, water and all, and add the bacon and onion all into the soup pot.

To this mixture in the soup pot, add the sauerkraut and any leftover meat or chicken you might want to add.  Mix all together and bring soup up to a low boil, turning down again to a simmer and let it simmer together for about 5 minutes or until the soup is nice and hot.

This is a nice hearty and somewhat tangy soup.  Very warming!

And here are some of the other recipes that have been added in the past few days.

• Savory 3 Meat Meat Loaf
• 3 Layer Zucchini Oven Bake
• Super Easy Pork Chops And Rice
• Home Style French-Fried Onion Rings
• Baking Sheet Chocolate Cake Bars

All in all, we have over 200 new recipes in the member area already.

What else has been going on at the HBHW Club? We’ve been talking about becoming a stay at home mom and some of the challenges we all face with that transition, cooking smarter (and saving time and money in the process), household notebooks and more. I’m sure you have a lot to contribute to the conversation. Ready to join us? Try The HBHW Club for only $1. We’d love to have you! http://www.hillbillyhousewifeclub.com/special.html

Featured Article

This week I have not one, but two articles for you. Both of them are about the holidays and are part of my blog tour. Both of them are published on ShowMomTheMoney.com. Here they are:

• Easy Holiday Baking and Cooking – Use Your Freezer
• Frugal Holiday Gift Ideas From The Kitchen

Frugal Tips

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Do you have a tip to share? Fill out the submit a frugal tip form and I’ll be glad to add it to the site and share your tip in an upcoming edition of the newsletter.

Recipes

Here are some of the most recent recipes that have been added to the HBHW site. Enjoy!

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Do you have a recipe you would like to share? Click here to send it to me and I’ll be happy to add it to the website.

I’m Looking For:

This section is going to be all about you. If you are looking for a particular recipe or a tip on how to do something, submit it here and I will post it in an upcoming newsletter. I’ll give you my input and other readers of the newsletter will have the opportunity to share their recipes and tips as well. So take a moment to post your questions and of course if you have a tip or idea for any question posted in this section feel free to leave a comment under the appropriate post.

I’m Looking For Requests
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I’m Looking For Responses
Below you will find some of the recent responses to the “I’m Looking For” Requests. You may also want to go directly to this section and browse through all the recent submissions and replies. To do so, click on “I’m Looking for” here, and start looking through them.
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Inspirational Story

THE STORY OF THE BUTTERFLY
Author Unknown

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly.
One day a small opening appeared.
He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours
as it struggled to squeeze its body through the tiny hole.
Then it stopped, as if it couldn’t go further.

ButterflySo the man decided to help the butterfly.
He took a pair of scissors and
snipped off the remaining bits of cocoon.
The butterfly emerged easily but
it had a swollen body and shriveled wings.

The man continued to watch it,
expecting that any minute the wings would enlarge
and expand enough to support the body,
Neither happened!
In fact the butterfly spent the rest of its life
crawling around.
It was never able to fly.

What the man in his kindness
and haste did not understand:
The restricting cocoon and the struggle
required by the butterfly to get through the opening
was a way of forcing the fluid from the body
into the wings so that it would be ready
for flight once that was achieved.

Sometimes struggles are exactly
what we need in our lives.
Going through life with no obstacles would cripple us.
We will not be as strong as we could have been
and we would never fly.

Final Thought

That’s it for this edition of the Hillbilly Housewife Newsletter. I hope you’ve had as much fun reading it as I had creating it for you. I also hope that you have found the information helpful and useful. And by all means feel free to forward the newsletter to family and friends or even better, encourage them to subscribe to it.

Do you have a question, a tip, a recipe or a story you’d like to share with us? Email it to me and I’ll include it in a future issue. Can’t wait to see what you have to say.

Warm Wishes,

Susanne – The Hillbilly Housewife