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Continued from Part 1

Pasta. There are many different pasta choices and all have great uses. Manicotti can be stuffed with tomato sauce and cheeses. Macaroni can be used to make a creamy salad and also is great combined with cheese or spaghetti sauce. It can be used for noodle pudding as well for dessert. Spiral pasta is used in many different pasta salads. Spaghetti can be used in a casserole topped with cheese or in the traditional way with tomato sauce and meat. It can also be used as noodles in chinese dishes.

Spices. There are other ways to season food besides salt and pepper. In fact, many spices taste better than salt, and are better for you if you are worried about high blood pressure and stroke or heart disease. Even diehard salt-a-holics won’t miss the salt in foods if other seasonings are used. Cayenne pepper, chili powder, oregano, and garlic powder are all useful tools in your flavor arsenal to give foods a fresh new taste.

Nutmeg, cinnamon, and the secret pumpkin pie spice mace can be used in many desserts. Spices are also a great way of helping you lose weight—a tasty meal is more satisfying than a bland and dull one.

Beans. Beans can top your salad (edamame), make an awesome dip (black beans), and go well with grilled foods (baked beans). They are terrific in chili, using kidney beans, pink beans, pintos, whatever you like. White kidney beans are terrifically versatile, hot, or cold in salad. They provide a good source of protein with very little fat. Beans are good in soups, stews, and over rice for a simple yet filling meal.

Garbanzo beans, also known as chick peas, are great as a dip, or in soup with pasta, or in Indian food, as are kidney beans. They are brilliant in Mediterranean food, as are white kidney beans and pink beans.

Best of all, beans are not only healthy, but they can be very cheap. You can buy them dried, in very large quantities, very inexpensively. Just make sure you follow the package instructions on how to cook them before they go into your recipes. If you are pressed for time, the canned kind are excellent these days.

Do you have these staples in your kitchen? You can probably think of several more that will enhance your pantry and save money. Start with these and grow your own list of basic kitchen staples that are versatile and economical, to get the most out of your grocery budget.

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Save Time And Money By Planning Your Meals

Ever wonder how our forefathers and foremothers always seemed to have food on the table even in lean times?

When we are go to the grocery store every week and get hit up to the tune of hundreds of dollars, we long to know their secret.

Actually, it isn’t a secret at all. It was merely good planning and preparation on their part, and an attitude of letting nothing go to waste.

Once we adopt this mind set, and focus on the essentials of good nutriion, we too will see our grocery dollar stretch further and our meal times more stress free.

The items that we have on hand are what determine what we can cook, and how far our food will go.

Filling your cabinets or pantry with a few useful staples can be the difference between a trip to the grocery store each and every week for a huge load of shopping, versus once or twice a month apart from a quick trip for fresh milk, bread, and meat.

Stocking up just a few choice items is all you need to create wonderful meals.

Flour. Flour is a starter item for many recipes. You can add it to some water and make gravy in the pan for many meat dishes. Flour is used to make bread (biscuits, rolls, loaves) and to coat chicken. It can also be used to coat a round or square cake pan to prevent the cake from sticking. Of course, one of the favorite uses for flour is in cookie recipes that make scrumptious desserts without you spending a fortune on ready-made.
Yes, there are a lot of pre-packaged convenience foods out there, but if you are also weight conscious as well as budget conscious, then take control of your health by making it yourself fresh, instead of pulling it out of a package and eating food laden with preservatives and high fructose corn syrup.

Rice. My mother loves rice so much that we once bought a fifty pound bag from a grocery store. Rice is a side dish, but it doesn’t have to be plain. It can be jazzed up with veggies to accompany dinner. Spanish rice can be made with finely diced peppers, tomatoes, and a dash of turmeric.

My sister-in-law is from Indonesia, and she uses leftover rice for a dessert called sweet rice. Just add evaporated milk and some sugar to a bowl of rice and warm it in the microwave. It is a tasty treat for after dinner. She has rice in the house all the time, which she cooks in an electric rice steamer. She eats it with every meal, including eggs at breakfast. It is certainly cheaper than bread!

Another popular dessert is rice pudding. Rice can also be mixed with leftover meat and a cream soup to form a casserole. Rice has many uses as a thickener in soups and so you can be sure to find a few that your family will love.

Continued in 5 Kitchen Staples to Help Stretch Your Food Budget Part 2

Save Time And Money By Planning Your Meals

Fruit Bran Milk Shake

One Serving
• 2 cups Skim milk
• 1/4 cup All bran cereal
• 1/4 tsp Cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp Vanilla
• 1 Medium apple (sliced)
Freeze 1 1/2 cups of the milk in a cube tray overnight. Put the bran, cinnamon, vanilla, and apple into a blender. Add the remaining 1/2 cup of milk. Blend for 20 seconds. Continue blending and slowly, one at a time; add of the frozen milk cubes.
Nutritional Facts Per Serving:
Calories 261
Total Fat 1 grams
Saturated Fat 0 grams
Cholesterol 10 milligrams
Sodium 320 milligrams
Total Carbohydrate 52 grams
Dietary Fiber 11 grams
Sugars 22 grams
Protein 17 grams

Save Time And Money By Planning Your Meals

Sunny Start Smoothie
Two Servings
• 1 cup of orange juice
• 2 bananas – cut
• 2 Tablespoons of honey
• 1 orange – peeled and cut
• 1/4 cup of granola
Combine all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth.
Nutritional Facts Per Serving:
Calories 296
Total Fat 2 grams
Saturated Fat 0 grams
Cholesterol 0 milligrams
Sodium 30 milligrams
Total Carbohydrate 71 grams
Dietary Fiber 6 grams
Sugars 27 grams
Protein 4 grams

Save Time And Money By Planning Your Meals

2 out of 5 stars
This is a  very very aromatic tea not for the faint of heart.  Though it comes with natural boysenberry and lavender flavor, the sage and nettle in it can’t really be avoided.  Even with sugar, this is an exercise in mind over matter.
I know one of Yogi Bhajan’s favorite sayings was “Keep up!” but in this case it has to be “keep down!”

Strawberry-Banana Breakfast Smoothie
One Serving
• 1 cup orange juice
• 3 tbsp nonfat dry milk powder
• 1/2 banana; cut into pieces
• 10 fresh strawberries; hulled
• 3 ice cubes
Combine all the ingredients in your blender.
Blend until thick and frothy.
Nutritional Facts Per Serving:
Calories 209
Total Fat 0 grams
Saturated Fat 0 grams
Cholesterol 0 milligrams
Sodium 70 milligrams
Total Carbohydrate 45 grams
Dietary Fiber 1 grams
Sugars 29 grams
Protein 7 grams

Save Time And Money By Planning Your Meals

1.0 out of 5 stars Less than glittering third book

I enjoyed the other two books in the series, having been given a recommendation in the American Library Association best romance of the year list.  While the first two were well exectuted (emphasis o the executed, since they are heavily plotetd) this one really cranked it out, but with about as much romantic/erotic tension as a wooden Indian.

The heroine is a bluestocking interested in social welfare and she s so virtuous, it is hard to believe she would just say, “Ok, come to my bedroom to have sex with me, I’ll be ready for you in half an hour.”

Which she does. We get more detail of her birth control practices than we do of her passionate interest for the hero. Ugh.

Our hero may be known as the Archangel and fabulously handsome and eligible, but he is thoroughly unlikable in my opinion. He is rude, patronizing, and above all, in love with another woman (another man’s wife) in the book throughout nearly the whole of it, whilst still deciding to put himself on the Marriage Mart with the help of his female secretary, whom he is trying to make into his mistress. Ugh again.

He also has a ex-mistress he spends more time with than the heroine, and is so patronizing towards her, it is a wonder she doesn’t kill him with her bare hands!

I don’t see anything passionate or sensual in this book at all. The ONLY love scene in the whole book happens on page 71. Any of the usual conventional ways of getting them romantically linked again are totally forfeited. The unchaperoned trip into the countryside, old deserted inn, all of them in peril…

Sound familiar? But it is all to try to discover who has tried to murder him. They never even so much as kiss!! Or hold hands or touch!

The book drags on way too long. The title is based on the costume she wears in the last 10 pages of the book, when he finally sees who she really is through her startling family resemblance to all the males in her family. Silly, really.

The fact that the heroine is supposed to have been in so much danger all these years that she walks around in dark glasses to hide her eyes, which only call attention to her appearance, and a terrible wig which also calls attention to her, is all the more absurd. Anyone else would have just sent her to America or India if it were that risky for her to be found.

All of this absurdity might have been overlooked if there had been some heat between the couple, but anything there was in the wooden, totally in the dark love scene which lasts a page or two without any sensuality, dies totally after page 72.

The so-called mystery is predictable, and not worth the time or effort to plow through the book.

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