Just a note

After fielding blog-related emails from my personal account for several months, I realized it might be nice to have a blog-specific email address. If you'd like to contact me for any reason, you're free to email me at budgetconfessions @ gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you!

Additionally, my email address will now appear under the "Contact" section of my profile.

Okay, end administrative nonsense.

Frugal holiday decorating

In addition to our usual Christmas decorations, we stumbled upon several (free!) decorating solutions this year.

Jason's dad took a wreath-making class and brought us this beautiful wreath:



I dug up this pretty green glass vase in the utility room, paired it with a frosted glass candle plate and a (free with gift card) pine-scented candle, and slapped them on the kitchen windowsill. I really like how they contrast with the oranges and clementines in the basket. They're festive without screaming "Christmas":



I peeled the sticker off this Glade candle and put a (also free with gift card) pine-scented votive inside. It works well with the frosted glass candle plate on the other sill:



Jason's parents gave us this poinsettia. I put it on the table and surrounded it with our old placemats for a little Christmas cheer:



Not bad for free!

Frugal Meatless Meals: Rajma

This is a dish I cooked a lot when I was vegan in high school. Unfortunately, I couldn't find my old recipe, so I adapted one from New Indian Home Cooking. We liked it a lot. It was good, cheap, and extremely filling. It also helped along my goal of learning to cook Indian food.



Ingredients:
2 cans red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
2 medium-sized onions, finely chopped
2 large tomatoes, diced
1 can diced green chilies
6 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tbsp fresh ginger, chopped
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp garam masala
1/4 tsp turmeric powder
1/4 tsp Indian chili powder
Salt to taste
3 tbsp fresh chopped cilantro, plus more for garnish (optional)
Rice (I used about 1 cup of Basmati)

Directions:
Heat the oil in a deep pan and fry the onions until soft and brown. Add garlic and ginger and fry for 2 minutes. Add the green chilies, tomato, cumin, turmeric, Indian chili powder, and garam masala. Fry. Add the red kidney beans and salt and cook for approximately 10 minutes, or until beans are very soft. Add cilantro and coarsely mash some of the beans. Serve over rice and garnish with cilantro. Serves 6.

For more meatless meals, please check out the rest of my Frugal Meatless Meals series. You should also visit Meatless Monday's recipe archive.

This post is linked to Tasty Tuesday and Tempt My Tummy Tuesday.

Menu Plan Monday

A more normal week this week--my sister flew back home Sunday evening, so it's just us again. Simone will be eating peas (she loves them!) and then we might try feeding her applesauce again. We think she found the tart flavor a little off-putting, if not altogether unpleasant.

Breakfast:
-Banana nut bread
-Buttermilk bran muffins (from the freezer)

Lunch:
-Clementines/pears, broccoli, cheese and crackers (Jason)
-Clementines, leftovers (me)

Dinner:
-Nachos supremos with tortilla chips
-Darlene's potato soup with cheesy jalapeno beer bread
-Snappy salmon fillets with garlic couscous
-Pasta with red sauce and pull-apart garlic bread
-Black beans over sour cream cornbread

Dessert:
-Butterscotch pennies
-Chewy cocoa cookies

The change cup

Or vase, as it were.

We don't use cash much--we pay our bills online when we can, use checks for those that must be mailed in, and utilize our debit cards for most everything else. However, we do use a cash system for our fun money, as well as the farmer's market.

So whenever we break a bill into change, that change goes into the change cup. When it's full, we head down to the nearest Coinstar and cash it in. We've ended up with $40-50 in there before!

In the past, we've used this money for fun things: milkshakes, a new CD, dinner out. But now that we've gotten serious about paying down our debt and saving for a house, I'm toying with the idea of sending the money towards our medical bills. Every little bit counts!

This is much better

Don't you think?

Before:


After:

December Goals

1. Continue learning to cook Indian food. I'd like to try two new main dishes (one meatless, one not) and learn to cook naan. I tried making naan once and it tasted like French bread. Obviously it's time to try again.

2. Snowflake $20. We've been so thrilled to see my little debt ticker inch along as we find a little money here and a little money there to push towards debt. Right now we're trying to get into gear and pay it off as quickly as possible so that saving for a down payment can become a reality. We're both aching for a house.

3. Sell/donate items that are cluttering up our utility room. I tried doing this last month, but had some trouble. There are a few things in the mix that I'm loathe to donate because of how much I paid for them, but if I can't unload them soon, it'll be off to Goodwill/freecycle.

4. Enjoy the holiday season!