One Hundred Dollars a Month - I am your typical housewife living in high maintenance suburbia. I have a handsome husband, 2 kids and a flock of pet chickens. I try and feed my family with $100 a month. With the help of coupons, gardening and bartering I am able to squeeze the most out of our grocery budget and still manage to have a little fun along the way.

10 Fun Facts About Peas!

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By Mavis Butterfield on March 21, 2019 · 3 Comments

I like produce. I like to grow it. I like to eat it. I like to create recipes with it. I’m also kind of a nerd and like to get to know my produce. I like learning new or fun tidbits of info about the produce I’m growing/eating/baking. If you’re a weirdo like me then buckle up for this new series as I dive into a plethora of produce facts and share them with you. Here we go:

1. In 1984, Janet Harris broke a Guinness World Record by consuming 7175 peas in 60 minutes using chopsticks.

2. The green pea as we know it today is only green because it’s picked when it’s still immature. A ripe pea is yellowish. Eating peas when they are green became fashionable in the 1600s and 1700s but the French thought it was madness to eat them green.

3. Clarence Birdseye froze the first peas in the 1920s. Raise your hand if you’ve had a Birdseye veggie product! *raises hand* Also, freshly frozen peas are actually frozen within just two and a half-hours of being picked. Flash freezing locks in all the nutrients.

4. One serving of peas contains the equivalent Vitamin C as 2 large apples and a 100 calorie serving of peas contains more protein than a whole egg or tablespoon of peanut butter. Who knew?

5. A 3000 year old pea was found in Thailand. How they know it was that old I have no idea! I’ll research it and report back.

6. Pea leaves are considered a delicacy in China.

7. The value of edible pea crops in the United States is over $85 million with almost 400,000 acres planted.

8. The average pea weighs between 0.1 and 0.36 grams. They are tiny little buggers!

9. The less water you use when cooking peas, the less vitamin C is lost.

10. Peas were used in the early exploration of genetics. Basically Gregor Johann Mendel used peas to lay the foundation of the modern science of genetics!

Had you heard any of those fun facts before? Do you have any of your own to add? Is there a particular produce item you want to know more about? I take requests!

Grow on,
~ Mavis

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Double Chocolate Cheesecake

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By Mavis Butterfield on March 20, 2019 · 9 Comments

I don’t know about you, but I absolutely LOVE a good chocolate dessert. So when the HH asked me what I wanted anything special for my birthday a few weeks ago, I told him I wanted him to make a chocolate cheesecake for my big day.

Why a chocolate cheesecake? Well, one… I love chocolate. And two… I knew I’d be able to FREEZE the leftovers. 😉 If I had requested a chocolate cake or something, the sweet treat would have only last a few days…. But with a cheesecake, I knew I’d be able to snitch slices from the freezer for months to come.

And with gardening season only a few weeks away, the thought of being able to walk in the garage after spending a few hours outside and having something delicious waiting for me… well, the idea of a cheesecake for my birthday, it sort of sealed the deal. {Pretty clever, don’t you think?}

So. About this cheesecake. It’s pretty freakin’ AWESOME. You should make it. 🙂 Just be sure and hide a few slices for yourself for later on. You’ll be so glad you did.

Ingredients

1 ¼ cups chocolate wafer cookie crumbs
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 cup + 2 tablespoons granulated sugar, divided
1/4 cup hot, brewed coffee mixed with ¼ cup very hot water
¼ teaspoon salt
14 ounces 70% Dark Chocolate Bars
16 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
4 large eggs, room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions

Preheat oven to 325°F.

Mix cookie crumbs, melted butter and 2 tablespoons sugar in a bowl until combined. Press mixture onto the bottom of the 9″ springform pan and set aside.

Dissolve salt in hot coffee mixture; set aside.

Coarsely chop 12 ounces of the chocolate bars saving the remaining 2 ounces for garnishing the cheesecake.

Place chopped chocolate into a microwave-safe bowl and microwave on medium for 1 minute. Stir, and continue to heat in 30-second intervals until the chocolate is almost completely melted {you want a few small chunks remain}. Stir chocolate until smooth, and cool slightly {about 3 – 5 minutes}.

Using an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese at low speed until creamy {about 2 – 3 minutes}. Gradually add the remaining 1 cup of sugar and beat until well blended {at least 2 minutes}. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Reduce the speed to low and slowly beat in the coffee mixture and vanilla extract. Drizzle in melted chocolate and beat until blended. Pour mixture into the prepared crushed chocolate wafer cookie crust.

Bake the cheesecake for 55 to 65 minutes or until cheesecake is puffed and center is set, but slightly wobbly {do not overcook!}. Cool the cheesecake completely in the spring form pan on a wire rack {about an hour or so}. Then cover the spring form pan with aluminum foil and refrigerate the cheesecake for at least 6 hours or overnight.

This is a very rich cheesecake, and you can easily get 16 servings out of this recipe.

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Succession Planting – Why It’s Awesome and How to Do It

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By Mavis Butterfield on March 19, 2019 · 11 Comments

If I could teach you one tool and only one tool to maximize your garden’s harvest, it would be succession planting! Technically succession planting is putting in a new bed of the same vegetable at intervals throughout the growing season. Basically it’s continuous planting or staggered plantings so that you get a constant harvest of a particular fruit/veggie, rather than a one and done type planting/harvesting.

When I had a large square foot garden, I utilized succession planting constantly. It allowed me to take full advantage of my garden space the entire growing season. You can easily fill those spots that previously harvested food left behind, like during the transition from early spring crops to summer crops. Maximized garden spots means maximized garden yields.

I typically start my succession planting with lettuce, which is a great place to start if you’ve never tried succession planting before. It’s impossible to eat all the lettuce a garden produces at once, so I began replanting smaller amounts every 2 weeks. I love it because I am able to have different types of lettuce that produced every couple of weeks.

Another benefit of succession planting is that it naturally breaks up your garden chores into smaller pieces. Sure I end up planting from March through the end of September, but because I’m only planting a small amount every week, it takes little time at all. Can you imagine doing all that planting at once? It’s a TON of work all at the same time. This way it spreads out the work and makes it more manageable. { I wrote post about the importance of using grow lights a while back, you can read all about that HERE}.

When it comes to getting a continuous harvest from a particular type of veggie/fruit, certain plants work better than others. Here’s a basic succession planting date guide for a continual harvest:

Green Beans – Plant every 10 days
Beets – Plant every 14 days
Cucumbers – Plants every 3 weeks
Kale/Collards – Plant every 3 weeks
Lettuce – Plant every 10-14 days
Melons – Plant every 3 weeks
Radish – Plant every 7 days
Spinach – Plant every 7 days
Summer Squash – plant every 6 weeks
Sweet Corn – Plant every 10 days
Carrots – Plant every 2-3 weeks {as weather allows, stop when it gets too hot and resume in late summer/early fall}
Cauliflower – Plant every 2 weeks {as weather allows, stop when it gets too hot and resume again in late summer/early fall}
Turnips – Plant every 7 Days

After you’ve decided on the veggies you want to plant, you need to create a planting schedule. Creating a detailed succession plan eliminates the guesswork of what and when to plant later on. You can do this by drawing a spring, summer, and fall map of each garden space or garden bed you have. Then plug veggies into the diagram, with early, quick crops followed by long-season ones. You’ll need to note transplant and harvest dates.

Once you have your plan, you can manage the succession of your crops by sowing small amounts of seeds or transplanting a few seedlings at regular intervals, either in the same spot or at different times in various parts of the garden. I’ve done both with great success.

Planting season, it has finally arrived! 🙂 {Even if some of us are having to start our seeds under lights}

What are YOU most looking forward to growing this year? Curious minds want to know.

~Mavis

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How Much We Spent on Groceries and What We Ate – Week 11 of 52

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By Mavis Butterfield on March 18, 2019 · 13 Comments

Market Basket $87.90

Last week the HH and I went grocery shopping at Market Basket together {he usually does the shopping alone these days, a total reversal from the past 25 years, when I was the only one who bought groceries, but I like it}.

It seems like hot dogs, Cape Cod chips and boxes of cereal are always high on his priority list, while I’m always on the lookout for butter and the boxes of Good and Plenty. We’ve been here almost a year now, and I am still learning where everything is in the store.

The HH though, he could probably be a stock boy there, he knows where EVERYTHING is. It’s hilarious.

Hey all you chicken mama’s out there… Peeps has a Chick’N Coop cookie building kit this year. Mrs. HB, have you seen this? I bet Little HB boy would love one. Amazon has them online, but they’re less expensive in the stores {$9.99 I think}.

ALDI $10.94

Those darn pita chip crackers! Tortillas were $0.99. Every time I see a package of tor-till-ahs in the store I think of that scene in Napoleon Dynamite where his mom is telling him to make a darn quesadilla. How you can walk thorough life pronouncing tortillas or quesadilla properly after watching that scene, I don’t know. The movie is 15 years old, and The Girl and I still say tor-till-ahs.

Mississippi Pot Roast.

I ate the leftover potatoes cold for breakfast the next morning and then made tor-till- ahs filled with leftover pot roast, guacamole, sour cream, salsa, tomatoes, and cheese for dinner. I tucked the extra meat and juices into the freezer for a soup sometime in the near future.

Pickety bits. The brie cheese was a new addition.

Big salad.

Creamy spiced red beans and lentils…. or as I like to call them, beans and rice, rice and beans.

Market Basket $2.99 {Doesn’t that seem cheap for 32 ounces of ricotta cheese?} I needed it for the Italian Ricotta Pie I made and so I had the HH pop by the store and pick it up. When I asked him how much it was I was surprised. I thought it would have been around $5 or so.

The increased amount of Italian and Irish products in the stores {at least in comparison to the PNW} is pretty noticeable. I mean, Bewley’s coffee and tea products? The last time I had a cup of Bewley’s tea was when I was in Dublin like 10 years ago. So to see their products on the store shelves here is pretty awesome {the Irish breakfast tea was always my favorite}. I guess the Irish and Italian population is big around here, and it shows on the grocery store shelves.

Breakfast date with the HH at the 1690 House. Those people, they sure know how to make a good breakfast sandwich.

As I was biting into my ham and brie croissant, I thought about my friend JJ and her quest for the perfect puff pastry and how I’d like to go down and sit in her kitchen for a few hours to sip tea and talk about random things. But I couldn’t very well visit JJ without stopping by to visit her mom and well since Zoë’s house is on the way, I’d have to stop there too and well then I couldn’t very well go to Zoë’s house and not stop at her parent’s place and before you know it I’d be gone for 5 days.

Good food, it reminds you of things. 🙂

How about YOU? Did you buy anything exciting at the grocery store this week? Did you make anything crazy good? I bet you had corned beef for dinner last night, didn’t you?
Have a great Monday everyone and

~Mavis

Total Spent on Groceries This Week $101.83

Total Spent on Groceries in March $204.14
Total Spent on Groceries in February $220.92
Total Spent in January on Groceries $41.19
Total Spent So Far on Groceries in 2019 $466.25 {Goal is to average $150 – $175 a month for the year}

You can go HERE to read more Shopping Trip Stories.

This post may contain affiliate links. These affiliate links help support this site. For more information, please see my disclosure policy. Thank you for supporting One Hundred Dollars a Month.

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