Your Cheaskates Club Newsletter 21:20
In This Newsletter
1. Cath's Corner
2. From the Tip Store - Miracle Pan Release; Re-purposing Jars into Classy Dessert Dishes; Healthy, Light MOO Pizzas
3. This Week's Winning Tip- Changing Envelope Budgeting to Card Budgeting System
4. I Want Your Tips - Share your best money saving tip to be in the chance to win
5. On the Menu - Mexican Lasagne
6. The $300 a Month Food Challenge - Convenience Foods: Potatoes
7. Cheapskates Buzz - Cheapskaters are talking in the Forum and on Cath's blog
8. The Cheapskates Club Show - Rebuilding the Stockpile
9. Ask A Question - Have a question? Ask it here
10. Join the Cheapskates Club
11. Frequently Asked Questions
12. Contact Details
1. Cath's Corner
Hello Cheapskaters,Enjoy your newsletter, it's full of good ideas and one of my favourite winter recipes.
It has been so nice to chat to everyone again via our Tuesday night shows, I hadn't realised I missed everyone so much. If you missed Tuesday's show, you'll find it listed in the Latest Shows a little further down. Click the image to watch.
And a big thank you to everyone who has offered to help with the website updates. I apologise if I haven't replied to you yet, we had two unexpected deaths in our family last week and so my mind has been elsewhere. But I will be getting back to you very soon.
And I still want your tips! If you have a great money, time and energy saving tip that's just right for a Cheapskate, enter it in our Tip of the Week competition.
Have a great week everyone.
Happy Cheapskating,
Cath
2. From The Tip Store
Miracle Pan Release
I found a recipe for this stuff called Miracle Pan Release and you use it to coat all your baking tins and trays instead of using butter/margarine and flour. It is 1 cup of butter or margarine, 1 cup of Copha or any solidified fat and 1 cup of plain flour. Beat all together until it is creamy, looks like whipped cream. Store in a jar in the cupboard. When you want to use it just use a pastry brush, folded paper towel or your fingers to coat the insides of your tins or trays, just like you would if using butter/margarine and flour for dusting. Be careful though, this stuff works so well that the first time I used it my cake fell out of the tin and onto my stove smashing my cake. I only made a half batch the first time in case it didn't work but this time I will make a full batch because it works so well. Keep in the cupboard and it lasts a long time.
Contributed by Sian Carson
Re-purposing Jars into Classy Dessert Dishes
Approximate $ Savings: $20
My daughter needed to make 9 very small choc-orange mousses for a dinner party as it would be a buffet type dessert bar. We were having difficulty finding small enough containers and when we did, they were around $3 each. I ended up buying 10 jars of baby food for $10, peeling off the labels and freezing the puréed apple in the jars to use as apple sauce, and using the cute little jars as dessert dishes.
Contributed by Catherine Schembri
Healthy, Light MOO Pizzas
For a cheaper pizza, we use Mountain Bread, cover with tomato paste, cheese, any cold meat you have or mince also works, then any other left over things you have hanging about in the fridge that would normally get tossed out at the end of the week. We have this quite often, and can be served with a salad if you wish.
Contributed by Colleen Thompson
Editors Note: Buy your Mountain Bread direct and save 30%, postage is free. Minimum order is 8 packets, but don't forget Mountain Bread has a very long shelf life (simply because it's properly sealed and has so few ingredients). There is a new style made from Spelt flour too - another great addition to the Mountain Bread range. Cath
Add a Tip
3. This Week's Winning Tip
This week's winning tip is from Leanne Gardner. Leanne has won a one year Platinum Cheapskates Club membership for submitting her winning tip and is in the running to win the Tip of the Month with a prize of $50 cash.
Changing Envelope Budgeting to Card Budgeting System
I used to use the envelope system to budget, then changed to the purse system when I joined Cheapskates. Now with what happened with the virus and a lot of places only accepting card payments I’ve changed my system again. I opened a debit card account with my bank (no fee account) and then added sub accounts for e.g. fuel, medical, hair etc. All I do is when I’m going to get fuel, for example, I transfer the amount out of the fuel sub account into the debit account and I'm ready to pay for my fuel.
Contributed by Leanne Gardner
Congratulations Leanne, I hope you enjoy your Cheapskates Club membership.
If you'd like to know more about our budget purses, check out our YouTube video here.
The Cheapskate's Club website is thousands of pages of money saving hints, tips and ideas. There are over 12,000 tips to save you money, time and energy; 1,600 budget and family friendly recipes, hundreds of printable tip sheets and ebooks.
Let's get together and make the Cheapskates Club Australia's largest online hint, tip and idea library. Share your favourite money saving, time saving or energy saving hint and be in the running to win a one-year membership to The Cheapskate Club.
4. I Want Your Tips!
I want your tips!
We are rebuilding the Tip Store, removing all the old tips that are no longer relevant to living the Cheapskates way, and deleting double-ups. This means you'll see changes in the Tip Store, with one being the total number of tips will go down. And that means there will be room for new tips!
So, I want you to share your best money, time and energy saving ideas, there will be a weekly prize of a one year Cheapskates Club membership and a monthly prize of a one-year Cheapskates Club membership and $50. T
Prizes will be announced in the newsletter each week, with the prize for the tip of the month announced in the first newsletter of the next month.
It's easy and the rules are simple:
The tip must be cheap a genuine money, time or energy saver.
The tip must be of a practical nature.
The tip can be for anything home, garden, car, budget, children etc.
Please be specific in your tip i.e. "use vinegar and bi-carb for cleaning" won't win you a prize.
Remember, you have to be in it to win it!
Enter your tip here!
5. On The Menu
Mexican Lasagne
One pot dinners make life easy, especially if they're tasty and budget friendly. My Mexican Lasagne has evolved over the years and is now very different to the original recipe that had lots of ingredients and took hours to prepare.
Ingredients:
500g mince beef, lamb or chicken
1 cup TVP*
1 cup boiling water
1 cup water, extra
1 tin tomatoes
3 tbsp MOO taco seasoning (or 1 pkt taco seasoning)
1 cup grated cheese
1 pkt Mountain Bread – corn
Method:
Soak the TVP in the boiling water for 5 minutes. While the TVP is soaking, brown the mince. Add the TVP, tomatoes, taco seasoning and the extra water to the mince. Mix and simmer for 20 minutes until the mixture is cooked and slightly thickened. Spray a lasagne dish with cooking spray and spread 1/4 of the meat mixture in the bottom. Cover with two sheets of the corn mountain bread. Repeat the layers, finishing with the sauce. Sprinkle with the grated cheese. Bake in a moderate oven 25 – 30 minutes until the cheese is golden and the sauce is bubbling.
We have this with a green salad on the side - lettuce, spinach, celery, cucumber, tomatoes if they're in season, thinly sliced onion drizzled with a balsamic dressing.
Next week we will be eating:
Sunday: Roast Chicken
Monday: Corned Beef & cabbage
Tuesday: Spaghetti & Meatballs
Wednesday: Sweet'n'Sour Chicken, fried rice
Thursday: MOO Pizza
Friday: Mexican Lasagne, Salad
Saturday: Muffin Surprise
In the fruit bowl: oranges, bananas
In the cake tin: Choc Mint Yum Yum Balls
There are over 1,700 budget and family friendly recipes in the Cheapskates Club Recipe File, all contributed by your fellow Cheapskates, so you know they're good.
Add A Recipe
Recipe File Index
6. The $300 A Month Food Challenge
Convenience Foods: Potatoes The supermarket freezers are like an Aladdin's cave of convenience for most of us. Apart from the usual frozen peas and corn, and chips, there are so many other things that should make life in the kitchen easier. Perhaps they do - but those things come at a huge cost!
One that caught my eye is frozen mashed potato ready to just heat and eat. What a time saver for busy sports nights. The convenience factor had me almost jumping for joy. Until I saw the price. $10.50 for a 1 kilo packet of mashed potato. When I can buy a 5kg bag of potatoes from our local greengrocer for just $3, that's an incredible 17.5 times the price per kilo just for convenience.
So I thought I'd simply do a cook-up and freeze mashed potato in serving sizes myself. It was simple and didn't take long to do. The hardest part was peeling the potatoes. There are some things to remember when you freeze potatoes, but they do freeze very well and knowing that this staple veggie is ready to heat and eat really helps with menu planning too.
Potatoes freeze well for up to 2 months, so you can prepare and cook in bulk if you have the freezer room. The trick to successfully freezing potatoes is to cook or partially cook them before freezing. Use old potatoes rather than new as they definitely freeze better. And red potatoes don't freeze as well as brown, but they are ok if they are fully cooked.
You can freeze:
mashed potato
partially cooked potato cubes
partially cooked chipped potatoes
browned grated potato for hash browns, fritters etc.
baked potato
whole potatoes for stuffed potatoes (can be frozen as is or stuffed)
potato patties
potato soupHow to Make Frozen Stuffed PotatoesMicrowave large potatoes according to the directions for your microwave. Cut a cross in the top and squeeze the sides to open the potato up. Scoop out the flesh, leaving the skin as a shell. Mash the flesh with some butter and sour cream. Spoon back into the potato skin shells. Top with grated cheese. Flash freeze on a cookie sheet until frozen, then pack into plastic bags. Can be cooked from frozen or thawed and heated in oven or microwave. Great for a meal on their own with other toppings or as an accompaniment.
Frozen convenience doesn’t have to be bought at a hefty price.
The $300 a Month Food Challenge Forum
The Post that Started it All
7. Cheapskates Buzz
From The Article Archive
5 Misconceptions Teenagers Have About Money
Give yourself a MOO Manicure On A Budget
Minimising Your Laundry Costs
This Week's Hot Forum Topics
Dehydrating for Shelf Stable Food Storage
Crazy Cake
Scenario: Living on WWII Rations
Most Popular Blog Posts This Week
10 Ways to Reuse Egg Shells
Fruity Tea Cake
How to Pay Bills During Financially Hard Times
8. The Cheapskates Club Show
Join Cath and Hannah live Tuesdays and Thursdays on You Tube at 7.30pm AET
Join us live on YouTube every Tuesday and Thursday and see how we are living debt free, cashed up and laughing - and find out how you can too!
Show Schedule
Tuesday: Around the Kitchen Table - join Cath and Hannah for a cuppa and a chat around the kitchen table as they talk about living the Cheapskates way.
Thursday: Cheapskates in the Kitchen - want to know how to cook delicious, healthy and cheap meals? Watch Cath and Hannah as they create cheapskates style cuisine and share their favourite recipes.
Coming Up
Tuesday 26th May 2020: Dehydrating: From Fresh to Shelf Stable
Latest Shows
1. Cath's Corner
2. From the Tip Store - Miracle Pan Release; Re-purposing Jars into Classy Dessert Dishes; Healthy, Light MOO Pizzas
3. This Week's Winning Tip- Changing Envelope Budgeting to Card Budgeting System
4. I Want Your Tips - Share your best money saving tip to be in the chance to win
5. On the Menu - Mexican Lasagne
6. The $300 a Month Food Challenge - Convenience Foods: Potatoes
7. Cheapskates Buzz - Cheapskaters are talking in the Forum and on Cath's blog
8. The Cheapskates Club Show - Rebuilding the Stockpile
9. Ask A Question - Have a question? Ask it here
10. Join the Cheapskates Club
11. Frequently Asked Questions
12. Contact Details
1. Cath's Corner
Hello Cheapskaters,Enjoy your newsletter, it's full of good ideas and one of my favourite winter recipes.
It has been so nice to chat to everyone again via our Tuesday night shows, I hadn't realised I missed everyone so much. If you missed Tuesday's show, you'll find it listed in the Latest Shows a little further down. Click the image to watch.
And a big thank you to everyone who has offered to help with the website updates. I apologise if I haven't replied to you yet, we had two unexpected deaths in our family last week and so my mind has been elsewhere. But I will be getting back to you very soon.
And I still want your tips! If you have a great money, time and energy saving tip that's just right for a Cheapskate, enter it in our Tip of the Week competition.
Have a great week everyone.
Happy Cheapskating,
Cath
2. From The Tip Store
Miracle Pan Release
I found a recipe for this stuff called Miracle Pan Release and you use it to coat all your baking tins and trays instead of using butter/margarine and flour. It is 1 cup of butter or margarine, 1 cup of Copha or any solidified fat and 1 cup of plain flour. Beat all together until it is creamy, looks like whipped cream. Store in a jar in the cupboard. When you want to use it just use a pastry brush, folded paper towel or your fingers to coat the insides of your tins or trays, just like you would if using butter/margarine and flour for dusting. Be careful though, this stuff works so well that the first time I used it my cake fell out of the tin and onto my stove smashing my cake. I only made a half batch the first time in case it didn't work but this time I will make a full batch because it works so well. Keep in the cupboard and it lasts a long time.
Contributed by Sian Carson
Re-purposing Jars into Classy Dessert Dishes
Approximate $ Savings: $20
My daughter needed to make 9 very small choc-orange mousses for a dinner party as it would be a buffet type dessert bar. We were having difficulty finding small enough containers and when we did, they were around $3 each. I ended up buying 10 jars of baby food for $10, peeling off the labels and freezing the puréed apple in the jars to use as apple sauce, and using the cute little jars as dessert dishes.
Contributed by Catherine Schembri
Healthy, Light MOO Pizzas
For a cheaper pizza, we use Mountain Bread, cover with tomato paste, cheese, any cold meat you have or mince also works, then any other left over things you have hanging about in the fridge that would normally get tossed out at the end of the week. We have this quite often, and can be served with a salad if you wish.
Contributed by Colleen Thompson
Editors Note: Buy your Mountain Bread direct and save 30%, postage is free. Minimum order is 8 packets, but don't forget Mountain Bread has a very long shelf life (simply because it's properly sealed and has so few ingredients). There is a new style made from Spelt flour too - another great addition to the Mountain Bread range. Cath
Add a Tip
3. This Week's Winning Tip
This week's winning tip is from Leanne Gardner. Leanne has won a one year Platinum Cheapskates Club membership for submitting her winning tip and is in the running to win the Tip of the Month with a prize of $50 cash.
Changing Envelope Budgeting to Card Budgeting System
I used to use the envelope system to budget, then changed to the purse system when I joined Cheapskates. Now with what happened with the virus and a lot of places only accepting card payments I’ve changed my system again. I opened a debit card account with my bank (no fee account) and then added sub accounts for e.g. fuel, medical, hair etc. All I do is when I’m going to get fuel, for example, I transfer the amount out of the fuel sub account into the debit account and I'm ready to pay for my fuel.
Contributed by Leanne Gardner
Congratulations Leanne, I hope you enjoy your Cheapskates Club membership.
If you'd like to know more about our budget purses, check out our YouTube video here.
The Cheapskate's Club website is thousands of pages of money saving hints, tips and ideas. There are over 12,000 tips to save you money, time and energy; 1,600 budget and family friendly recipes, hundreds of printable tip sheets and ebooks.
Let's get together and make the Cheapskates Club Australia's largest online hint, tip and idea library. Share your favourite money saving, time saving or energy saving hint and be in the running to win a one-year membership to The Cheapskate Club.
4. I Want Your Tips!
I want your tips!
We are rebuilding the Tip Store, removing all the old tips that are no longer relevant to living the Cheapskates way, and deleting double-ups. This means you'll see changes in the Tip Store, with one being the total number of tips will go down. And that means there will be room for new tips!
So, I want you to share your best money, time and energy saving ideas, there will be a weekly prize of a one year Cheapskates Club membership and a monthly prize of a one-year Cheapskates Club membership and $50. T
Prizes will be announced in the newsletter each week, with the prize for the tip of the month announced in the first newsletter of the next month.
It's easy and the rules are simple:
The tip must be cheap a genuine money, time or energy saver.
The tip must be of a practical nature.
The tip can be for anything home, garden, car, budget, children etc.
Please be specific in your tip i.e. "use vinegar and bi-carb for cleaning" won't win you a prize.
Remember, you have to be in it to win it!
Enter your tip here!
5. On The Menu
Mexican Lasagne
One pot dinners make life easy, especially if they're tasty and budget friendly. My Mexican Lasagne has evolved over the years and is now very different to the original recipe that had lots of ingredients and took hours to prepare.
Ingredients:
500g mince beef, lamb or chicken
1 cup TVP*
1 cup boiling water
1 cup water, extra
1 tin tomatoes
3 tbsp MOO taco seasoning (or 1 pkt taco seasoning)
1 cup grated cheese
1 pkt Mountain Bread – corn
Method:
Soak the TVP in the boiling water for 5 minutes. While the TVP is soaking, brown the mince. Add the TVP, tomatoes, taco seasoning and the extra water to the mince. Mix and simmer for 20 minutes until the mixture is cooked and slightly thickened. Spray a lasagne dish with cooking spray and spread 1/4 of the meat mixture in the bottom. Cover with two sheets of the corn mountain bread. Repeat the layers, finishing with the sauce. Sprinkle with the grated cheese. Bake in a moderate oven 25 – 30 minutes until the cheese is golden and the sauce is bubbling.
We have this with a green salad on the side - lettuce, spinach, celery, cucumber, tomatoes if they're in season, thinly sliced onion drizzled with a balsamic dressing.
Next week we will be eating:
Sunday: Roast Chicken
Monday: Corned Beef & cabbage
Tuesday: Spaghetti & Meatballs
Wednesday: Sweet'n'Sour Chicken, fried rice
Thursday: MOO Pizza
Friday: Mexican Lasagne, Salad
Saturday: Muffin Surprise
In the fruit bowl: oranges, bananas
In the cake tin: Choc Mint Yum Yum Balls
There are over 1,700 budget and family friendly recipes in the Cheapskates Club Recipe File, all contributed by your fellow Cheapskates, so you know they're good.
Add A Recipe
Recipe File Index
6. The $300 A Month Food Challenge
Convenience Foods: Potatoes The supermarket freezers are like an Aladdin's cave of convenience for most of us. Apart from the usual frozen peas and corn, and chips, there are so many other things that should make life in the kitchen easier. Perhaps they do - but those things come at a huge cost!
One that caught my eye is frozen mashed potato ready to just heat and eat. What a time saver for busy sports nights. The convenience factor had me almost jumping for joy. Until I saw the price. $10.50 for a 1 kilo packet of mashed potato. When I can buy a 5kg bag of potatoes from our local greengrocer for just $3, that's an incredible 17.5 times the price per kilo just for convenience.
So I thought I'd simply do a cook-up and freeze mashed potato in serving sizes myself. It was simple and didn't take long to do. The hardest part was peeling the potatoes. There are some things to remember when you freeze potatoes, but they do freeze very well and knowing that this staple veggie is ready to heat and eat really helps with menu planning too.
Potatoes freeze well for up to 2 months, so you can prepare and cook in bulk if you have the freezer room. The trick to successfully freezing potatoes is to cook or partially cook them before freezing. Use old potatoes rather than new as they definitely freeze better. And red potatoes don't freeze as well as brown, but they are ok if they are fully cooked.
You can freeze:
mashed potato
partially cooked potato cubes
partially cooked chipped potatoes
browned grated potato for hash browns, fritters etc.
baked potato
whole potatoes for stuffed potatoes (can be frozen as is or stuffed)
potato patties
potato soupHow to Make Frozen Stuffed PotatoesMicrowave large potatoes according to the directions for your microwave. Cut a cross in the top and squeeze the sides to open the potato up. Scoop out the flesh, leaving the skin as a shell. Mash the flesh with some butter and sour cream. Spoon back into the potato skin shells. Top with grated cheese. Flash freeze on a cookie sheet until frozen, then pack into plastic bags. Can be cooked from frozen or thawed and heated in oven or microwave. Great for a meal on their own with other toppings or as an accompaniment.
Frozen convenience doesn’t have to be bought at a hefty price.
The $300 a Month Food Challenge Forum
The Post that Started it All
7. Cheapskates Buzz
From The Article Archive
5 Misconceptions Teenagers Have About Money
Give yourself a MOO Manicure On A Budget
Minimising Your Laundry Costs
This Week's Hot Forum Topics
Dehydrating for Shelf Stable Food Storage
Crazy Cake
Scenario: Living on WWII Rations
Most Popular Blog Posts This Week
10 Ways to Reuse Egg Shells
Fruity Tea Cake
How to Pay Bills During Financially Hard Times
8. The Cheapskates Club Show
Join Cath and Hannah live Tuesdays and Thursdays on You Tube at 7.30pm AET
Join us live on YouTube every Tuesday and Thursday and see how we are living debt free, cashed up and laughing - and find out how you can too!
Show Schedule
Tuesday: Around the Kitchen Table - join Cath and Hannah for a cuppa and a chat around the kitchen table as they talk about living the Cheapskates way.
Thursday: Cheapskates in the Kitchen - want to know how to cook delicious, healthy and cheap meals? Watch Cath and Hannah as they create cheapskates style cuisine and share their favourite recipes.
Coming Up
Tuesday 26th May 2020: Dehydrating: From Fresh to Shelf Stable
Latest Shows
9. Ask A Question
We have lots of resources to help you as you live the Cheapskates way but if you didn't find the answer to your question in our extensive archives please just drop me a note with your question.
I read and answer all questions, either in an email to you, in my weekly newsletter, the monthly Journal or by creating blog posts and other resources to help you (and other Cheapskaters).
Ask Your Question
10. Join The Cheapskates Club
For just $25 a year, you can join the Cheapskates Club and get exclusive access to the Cheapskate Journal, the monthly e-journal that shows you how to cut the costs of everyday living and still have fun.
Joining the Cheapskates Club gives you 24/7 access to the Members Centre with 1000's of money saving tips and articles.
Click here to join the Cheapskates Club today!
11. Frequently Asked Questions
How do I change my email address?
This one is easy. When you login to the Member's Centre just click on your name at the top of the page to go straight to your profile page where you can update your details, change your password and find your subscription details.
Not a Cheapskates Club member? Then please use the Changing Details form found here to update your email address.
How do I know when my membership should be renewed?
Memberships are active for one year from the date of joining. You will be sent a renewal reminder before your subscription is due to renew. You can also find your membership expiry date on your profile page.
When you login to the Member's Centre just click on your name to go straight to your profile page where you can will find your join date and your expiry date.
What will you do with my email address?
We never rent, trade or sell our email list to anyone for any reason whatsoever. You'll never get an unsolicited email from a stranger as a result of joining this list.
How did I get on this list?
The only way you can get onto our newsletter mailing list is to subscribe yourself. You signed up to receive our Free Newsletter at our Cheapskates Club Web site or are a Platinum Cheapskates Club member.
12. Contact Cheapskates
The Cheapskates Club -
Showing you how to live life
debt free, cashed up and laughing!
PO Box 5077 Studfield Vic 3152
Contact Cheapskates
We have lots of resources to help you as you live the Cheapskates way but if you didn't find the answer to your question in our extensive archives please just drop me a note with your question.
I read and answer all questions, either in an email to you, in my weekly newsletter, the monthly Journal or by creating blog posts and other resources to help you (and other Cheapskaters).
Ask Your Question
10. Join The Cheapskates Club
For just $25 a year, you can join the Cheapskates Club and get exclusive access to the Cheapskate Journal, the monthly e-journal that shows you how to cut the costs of everyday living and still have fun.
Joining the Cheapskates Club gives you 24/7 access to the Members Centre with 1000's of money saving tips and articles.
Click here to join the Cheapskates Club today!
11. Frequently Asked Questions
How do I change my email address?
This one is easy. When you login to the Member's Centre just click on your name at the top of the page to go straight to your profile page where you can update your details, change your password and find your subscription details.
Not a Cheapskates Club member? Then please use the Changing Details form found here to update your email address.
How do I know when my membership should be renewed?
Memberships are active for one year from the date of joining. You will be sent a renewal reminder before your subscription is due to renew. You can also find your membership expiry date on your profile page.
When you login to the Member's Centre just click on your name to go straight to your profile page where you can will find your join date and your expiry date.
What will you do with my email address?
We never rent, trade or sell our email list to anyone for any reason whatsoever. You'll never get an unsolicited email from a stranger as a result of joining this list.
How did I get on this list?
The only way you can get onto our newsletter mailing list is to subscribe yourself. You signed up to receive our Free Newsletter at our Cheapskates Club Web site or are a Platinum Cheapskates Club member.
12. Contact Cheapskates
The Cheapskates Club -
Showing you how to live life
debt free, cashed up and laughing!
PO Box 5077 Studfield Vic 3152
Contact Cheapskates