31 Days to Financial Freedom, Day 25: Bourbon Chicken

I had been craving bourbon chicken from the Chinese food place in the mall for a very long time, and by Monday I wanted it so bad I was coming up with excuses to go to the mall an hour away from our house.  Instead of driving 120 miles for chicken, I decided to make my own.  I had everything I needed in the house already with the exception of apple cider vinegar, so I decided Monday night was the night. 

I fed the kiddos some grilled cheese and soup, because I wasn't going to fight with them to eat something I didn't think they would like.  #1 had tried bourbon chicken before and didn't care for it, and I'm not in the habit of making things for dinner I know my kids won't enjoy. 

Ingredients:
3 - 5 Chicken breasts
1 garlic clove, or a sprinkling of garlic powder
1/4 tsp ginger (I used ground ginger)
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 c. apple juice
1/4 c. light brown sugar
2 tbsp ketchup
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 c. water
1/4 c. soy sauce

I used the frozen boneless skinless flavorless chicken that comes in the bags for this particular meal.  Fancy, I know.  I had five breasts left, and I cut them into bite size pieces.  In a bowl, I added all the ingredients.  I didn't use a whole garlic clove because I was afraid it would burn, so I just used a sprinkling of garlic seasoning.  I also found out that I didn't have any crushed red pepper flakes, so I just used a shake of hot sauce.  I whisked the ingredients together, then marinated the chicken in it for about 30 minutes.  You could also do that in the morning and marinate it all day, but the chicken wasn't thawed in the morning, and my mornings are crazy enough, thank-you-very-much.

I took the chicken out of the marinade and put it into a hot skillet with vegetable oil.  I browned the chicken, then added the marinade.  At first I was concerned because the chicken was an odd color and the marinade was just bubbling, but then it started to thicken and reduce, and the chicken slowly started to turn the right color!  I had it on the stove top for about 20 minutes, and it looked like this:

 

I used too much oil in the pan as you can tell by the picture.  The brown sugar caramelized on the chicken and gave it the color I associate with bourbon chicken.  We cooked some white rice to go with it.  I'll be honest, I was expecting to throw this out and have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner.  Hence my shock when it ended up being pretty gosh darn good.  Good as the mall's chicken?  Is anything better than the mall's chicken?  But it satisfied my craving.  Plus, it gives me something else to make with the boneless chicken breasts!

 



31 Days to Financial Freedom, Day 24: Tortillas

Homemade flour tortillas . . . if you are buying the stuff in a package at the grocery store, you just don't know what you're missing!  It's easy.  It's cheap.  And it's delicious.  The next Taco Tuesday, I dare you to make your own tortillas!

Ingredients:

3 and 1/2 c. AP flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
7 tbsp vegetable shortening or vegetable oil (I used shortening)
1 cup very hot water

Mix first four ingredients together into a bowl.  Pour the hot water slowly over the mixture while using your hand to mix it together.  Yes, this part hurt a little, but only for a second. 

Knead the mixture for three minutes in the bowl once the water has been added, forming into a giant ball. 

Cover the dough and let it sit for 15 minutes.  Once 15 minutes are up, separate the dough into small portions.  I started out using my cookie scoop, but switched to just grabbing small sections of a dough.  Roll them into balls and cover until ready to use them. 

At this point, I started browning the taco meat.  I add water to my taco meat once it's cooked to create a sauce, and I cooked the tortillas while I was waiting for the water to cook off.  See my taco recipe here!

Using a rolling pin, roll the dough out into the shape of an oval.  The first tortilla I made was too thick.  This will make between 15 and 20 tortillas, so use this opportunity to experiment with the thickness of the tortilla.  For us, it was the right thickness when we could see the pattern of our counter top through the dough.

To roll it out, first roll into an oval shape, turn the dough 45 degrees, and repeat until whatever shape you want it to be. 

Start rolling it into an oval . . .

Turn 45 degrees, and roll again.

Tortillas are not all supposed to be the same size and shape! I made three tortillas that were smaller for the kiddos.  Husband and I developed an assembly line for this part.  He would roll the tortilla, then I'd cook it while he was rolling another one.  I cooked one tortilla at a time in a hot non-stick skillet. 

Put your tortilla into your pan.  After about 5 to 7 seconds, air bubbles will start to form. 

Bubbles!  Bubbles!  My bubbles.

Flip the tortilla once you see the bubbles.  Once flipped, the tortilla will fill with air.  Use your spatula to flatten it as much as you can. 

 

After 10 seconds or so, check the bottom of your tortilla.  Are there brown marks on it?  Flip it over!  Cook for another couple of seconds to get brown spots on the other side, then remove it from the heat.  It took me less time to cook the tortilla than it did to roll out the next one to cook!

Mmmmm . . . delicious.

 

This made about 17 tortillas for us.  We ate seven tortillas for dinner, then my husband ate another taco that night as a midnight snack.  The tortillas have flavor, so you can use them for more than just tacos!  I had a wrap on one the next day, Piglet 1 had a "pizza shell" for lunch, and my husband put peanut butter and jelly on them the next day.  I don't think we'll ever go back to buying tortillas in the bag.  Seriously - sooooo good!  Try it!

31 Days to Financial Freedom, Day 23: Last week in review

I lied!  The homemade tortilla tutorial will be tomorrow's post.  In flipping through my pictures, I realized I didn't take any pictures of the actual tacos done, but since we're making them again tonight (very excited!), I'll take some more pictures so you can see the finished product.

I do this thing where I audit my spending at the end of every week.  For me, a week runs from Sunday to Saturday, just for simplicity sake.  This is an audit of our spending from October 14 - October 20.

Debit	-21.22	Groceries -   IGA	10/14/2012	354.19
Debit	-49.11	Fuel - A	10/14/2012	305.08
Auto	-94.87	Car Insurance	10/15/2012	210.21
Debit	-1.69	Snacks	10/15/2012	208.52
Auto	-59.76	Student Loan - A	10/16/2012	148.76
Debit	-1.69	Snacks	10/15/2012	147.07
1099	-40.00	Babysitting	10/15/2012	107.07
Debit	-32.44	Fuel - Me	10/17/2012	74.63
Debit	-1.69	Snacks	10/17/2012	72.94
Deposit	331.47	Paycheck - A	10/18/2012	404.41
Debit	-33.69	Groceries - Walmart	10/18/2012	370.72
Debit	-1.79	Groceries - D&R (AP Flour)	10/18/2012	368.93
Debit	-6.82	Groceries - IGA	10/18/2012	362.11
Debit	-5.00	Groceries - Family Express (Milk)	10/18/2012	357.11
Debit	-3.21	Eating out - Pizza Hut	10/18/2012	353.90
Debit	-4.71	Eating out - McDonalds	10/18/2012	349.19
Auto	-317.61	Car Payment	10/18/2012	31.58
Deposit	973.97	Paycheck - Me	10/19/2012	1005.55
Auto	-200.00	First Federal	10/19/2012	805.55
Auto	-40.00	Account #2	10/19/2012	765.55
Debit	-16.77	Eating out - Pizza Hut	10/19/2012	748.78
Debit	-24.60	Diapers	10/20/2012	724.18
Debit	-29.28	Joann Fabrics - Halloween	10/20/2012	694.90
Debit	-11.24	Lowe's (Dryer)	10/20/2012	683.66
Debit	-191.89	Couch	10/20/2012	491.77
Debit	-0.95	Snacks	10/20/2012	490.82
Debit	-25.00	Fuel - Me	10/20/2012	465.82
Debit	-6.93	Ace (Dryer)	10/20/2012	458.89
Debit	-14.96	Halloween	10/20/2012	443.93
1100	-29.00	Chinese Food	10/20/2012	414.93
Deposit	29.00	Deposit for Chinese Food	10/20/2012	443.93

Our income for the week was $1305.44, which was under for what I had budgeted.  My husband came home early from work sick on day, cutting his paycheck by about $70.  Not good! 

We spent $68.52 on groceries, $31.48 under budget.  Woohoo!

We reached our budgeted amount for snacks this week.  In total, we spent $6.02.  This was mainly because of the baseball games I was watching every night.  $1.69 will buy my husband and I two 32 oz. sodas.  OR we could buy a 2 liter for $1.  Doy!

We have also reached our budgeted amount for eating out for October.  We bought pizza one night, and then ate out one other time.  We also purchased Chinese food, but we were reimbursed for that in cash.  Free meal!

I also forgot to pay our daycare bill that week.  Duh!  So two checks will be on the next week's register. 

Our car payment was $34 more this month because we had previously made two late payments (after the 10 day grace period), and had to pay late fees.  I love throwing money away!

Income:    $1,305.44
Expenses: $1236.92

So it wasn't a super successful week, but it wasn't a fail either!  Auditing our expenses really helps me to see where we're at with our money, and how we can do better.  I hope you'll try it with your own spending! 

31 Days to Financial Freedom, Day 22: Money is still tight

My husband and I have been talking lately about how much we're saving.  $240 of my paycheck is now direct deposited into our savings account, for a total of $480 per month.  I've been looking around online, and the majority of the websites I have found encourage people to put 10% of their paycheck in the savings account, but we're closer to about 13%.  So are we saving too much? 

Even though we've cut eating out by a big margin, as well as other extra items, we're still coming in way under what I would like this month.  Trying to save up a month's worth of expenses in our checking account is proving to be more difficult than I thought.  At the end of this month we should only have $100 left over.  That's less than we had leftover in September, which means we've spent all the money we made in October and then some.  Not cool.

Extra expenses we've had so far this month:

Extra box of diapers - $20
Supplies to install an electric dyer - $18
Halloween - $54
Couch - $192

In looking ahead to November, I already know that we will not be able to make our car payment on time (again).  I also know that Christmas is coming up, and even though we're scaling way back, there will still be extra expenses tied to that.  I'm wondering if we should cut the amount of money we're saving for the time being until we have a bit more in our checking account.  But then I'm scared that if it's in there, we'll spend it just like we always used to do!

I guess right now I'm feeling discouraged.  It seems like we're doing everything right, but there's still not enough money left at the end of the month.  My husband also told me this weekend that instead of getting overtime like we had expected, there's talk about cutting his hours at the beginning of next year.  Aaarrrggghhh!!!

I'm sorry today's post is kind of a downer!  Tomorrow I'll show you how to make handmade tortillas.  Yum!