Nessa is a full time wife and mama of two. She shares her love of family, cooking, and the frugal life on her blog Ramblings of a Texas Housewife . Catch up with her on Twitter @Nessa_TX.

During the summer months we do a lot of cooking outside. One of my favorite foods is chicken. I love it done BBQ style, grilled, or smoked. chicken is a great budget meat and very versatile.

I love it grilled with simple seasonings, slathered in BBQ sauce, or seasoned and tossed on the grill. I want to share with you some tricks I’ve learned for cooking a tasty bird.

Chicken Marinade Tips

For grilling, I usually throw the chicken in a gallon size zipper bag with my marinade of choice the night before cooking. You can buy jumbo packs of chicken then divide into meal size servings and put in large freezer bags with your favorite marinades. Toss these in the freezer, then when you want to cook them up, place in the fridge to thaw and it will marinate while it defrosts.

If we don’t use a marinade then we normally just season with salt, pepper, and garlic. It is simple and quite tasty.

BBQ Style Chicken

When it comes to BBQ style, it is very simple. We usually just grill it and baste often with BBQ sauce, either homemade or store bought. This is a simple, frugal meal that tastes delicious! Be sure to have plenty of napkins handy, as this one will get you a bit messy.

Recipe: How to Cook Smoked Chicken Outside

When smoking a chicken, I use a variety of spice blends. The only thing that never changes is my use of butter and onions. You can easily make a seasoning blend to suit your family’s tastes, just be creative and use spices you enjoy.

For this chicken I used sea salt, coarse black pepper, dill, and garlic.

	1.  Soften a stick of butter then mix desired seasonings into it.2.  Using your hands, loosen the skin all around the chicken, then shove your seasoned butter mix under the skin.
	Do this to both sides of the chicken, the legs, and all over. This will season the meat rather than just the skin. 3.  Then spread any left over butter and seasoning all over the outside of the bird.
	4.   In the cavity I place a stick of butter and half an onion, cut into quarters. 5.  Then place on the smoker.  This method is also great for grilling poultry.
	6.  As far as cooking times and temperatures go, it depends upon your cooking method. When smoking, I keep the temperature at about 250 degrees and it takes quite awhile.

My favorite piece of cooking equipment when it comes to outside cooking is a meat thermometer. Just cook until the thermometer reads done for chicken. You can’t go wrong this way!

Did you like this In the Kitchen with Nessa article?  Stay tuned next Monday for Nessa’s new column, Grilled Tuna Steaks.  Make sure you subscribe to our free updates so you don’t miss any of her great kitchen how to articles!

Find more cooking articles at Kitchen Tip Tuesday, Tasty Tuesday, Tempt my Tummy Tuesdays, and Homemaker Mondays.

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How can you use fruits and vegetables in a hurry to keep them from going to go to waste?  In this method, you’ll either need to have a blender, food processor, or some similar kitchen tool. 

For large quantities, such as a whole bag of oranges or several bunches of bananas, I’ll use a larger food processor or blender.  In that case, cutting the fruit into smaller pieces usually isn’t necessary, which saves time.  When I’m doing small batches of fruits or vegetables, I prefer to use the Magic Bullet, which is a handy mini food processor.  (My husband and I bought this gadget years ago and it has come in handy over and over again!  I used it to make all of my homemade baby food.) 

A perfect way to save overripe fruits and vegetables at the last minute is to puree and freeze them to be incorporated into cooking later.  Freezer produce will have a much longer storage life than fruit stored either in the refrigerator or out on the countertop. 

If you like this kitchen tip, please be sure to bookmark it at StumbleUpon, then get more kitchen tips delivered to you for free.

To avoid fruits and vegetables from being wasted, use the following preservation trick with step by step instructions.

To prepare:

1.  Wash the fruits or vegetables.

2.  Cut up the fruit in half or into smaller pieces, depending on what kind of machine you’ll be using.

3.  Using a blender or food processor, puree the fruit under creamy and frothy.  Aim for the consistency of applesauce.

4.  Pour single size servings of a few ounces into small plastic containers with lids that are freezer-safe.  Don’t fill the containers all the way; the puree will expand when frozen, so make sure to leave a little extra room in the container.

5.  Seal containers tightly.

6.  Label each container on the outside with freezer tape or masking tape.  List the contents and today’s date.

When Ready to Use:

1.  Remove container from freezer and put into the refrigerator to thaw.

2.  Fruit can be microwaved (as long as the container is microwave-safe) to heat or finish defrosting.

3.  Mix the pureed fruit or vegetable into your favorite food or serve straight. 

Here are some different ways that pureed fruits and vegetables can be incorporated into your cooking:

• Hot Breakfast Cereal.  Mix apricots, apples, nectarines, peaches, and other fruits into oatmeal, cream of wheat, grits or porridge.
• Spaghetti and Pasta Sauce.  Mix pureed spinach, tomatoes, squash, or zucchini into spaghetti sauce. 
• Cream Sauces / Alfredo Sauces. Mix pureed cauliflower, broccoli, or acorn squash into your cream sauces for a heartier and more nutritious option.

Love kitchen tips?  You should read our kitchen tips on How to Protect Produce From Spoiling with Sponges and why you would want to  Freeze Extra Food in Ice Cube Trays.  Stay tuned for more helpful kitchen tips to make your life easier each Monday.  Thanks to Kitchen Tip Tuesday for having us over!  Get more Homemaker Mondays at 11th Heaven.  Photos ©Homemaker Barbi.

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How to Keep Lettuce Longer

Food storage questions are common, especially since certain foods are difficult to keep fresh.  We frequently receive similar questions and concerns from homemakers about the same subject: how do you keep lettuce fresh?, how to keep lettuce longer, how to keep lettuce from turning brown, and how to keep your green lettuce – well, green!  Understandably, no one wants to throw away the hard-earned money they’ve spent on groceries.  We’re here to help with how to keep your lettuce longer!

Moisture is the number one enemy of your lettuce, spinach, and other green leafy cruciferous vegetables, plain and simple.  The secret to storing your lettuce properly so that it will not turn brown is controlling the moisture.

Many people choose lettuce at the grocery store and place it into a clear plastic bag from the produce section.  They then bring it home and place it in the refrigerator, still in the plastic bag, without special preparation.  A few days may pass, and then looking at the lettuce will be disappointing: brown lettuce, or worse- wilted, slimy, rotten lettuce.  There is most likely a wet layer on the inside of the bag, a tell-tale sign of improper storage. 

We’ve just described one of the top causes of uneaten lettuce being thrown in the trash: food storage gone wrong.  Unless you want brown lettuce, you’ll need to plan ahead and prepare your lettuce to live long enough in your refrigerator to be eaten!

The tip for how to keep lettuce fresh longer is this: Use paper to absorb moisture from your produce.  This helpful kitchen tip will allow you to keep spinach without it getting slimy as well.  The method below shares step by step instructions to keep lettuce from browning.

Kitchen Tip: How to Keep Lettuce Fresh Longer

1.  Remove lettuce from plastic wrapping or package, if there is one.

2.  Wrap the head of lettuce completely in one layer of paper towels, newspaper, or scrap printer paper.

3.  (Optional) Put the wrapped lettuce into a large plastic Ziploc bag.  Press excess air out of the bag, then seal the top.  This step is optional because you can go directly from step 2 to step 4 without making your lettuce brown much faster.

4.  Prepare your refrigerator’s produce drawer (crisper drawer) to store the lettuce and other leafy veggies.  Line drawer with paper towels (or newspaper or printer paper) on the bottom and around the edges.

5.  Place your lettuce in the drawer, wrapped and packaged from the previous steps, until ready to eat.

We recommend that you do NOT wash the lettuce until you are ready to eat it.  Even then, do not wash the entire head of lettuce.  Only tear off the leaves you’ll be using for that meal, wash and dry them.  Keep the remaining head of lettuce refrigerated according to the instructions above.

If you liked this kitchen tip on how to keep lettuce fresh longer, please link to this article for your readers!  The permalink is http://www.homemakerbarbi.com/how-to-keep-lettuce-fresh-longer/.  Thank you for your support!  Check out Kitchen Tip Tuesday and Homemaker Mondays at 11th Heaven.  Photo by KATHRYN….

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Kitchen Tip: Make Ready-to-Use Frozen Pie Fillings From Scratch

Today’s kitchen tip will show you how to make fruit pie fillings from scratch that are frozen, space-saving, and ready to be used as needed.

If you’ve ever found a really good sale in the produce section, you know how tempting it can be to stock up.  Apples, raspberries, as well as many other fruits and berries, make fantastic pie fillings but can be tricky to use up before they go bad.  This especially holds true when purchased in large quantity.  

The steps below are really quite easy, and you can make as many pie fillings as you need without using a lot of space in your freezer (these frozen pie fillings will stack inside each other to save space).

To Make the Frozen Pie Fillings:

1.  Using your favorite fruits and/or berries, make the pie filling from your ingredients as you normally would.

2.  Get out a pie plate and roll of plastic food wrap.

3.  Cut a section of plastic wrap long enough to completely line the pie plate and have extra hanging off both sides that will double over and seal the top as well. 

4.  Center the plastic wrap in the pie plate and press it in to conform to the shape of the glass or metal.

5.  Pretending that the plastic wrap is actually the bottom of your pie crust, pour your pie filling into the pan just as you would when making the actual pie.

6.  Leaving the top of the pie unwrapped, place the pan in the freezer until the fruit mixture has frozen solid (usually a couple of hours).

7. Once the fruit pie filling is completely frozen, take the pan out of the freezer.

8.  Using the extra plastic wrap hanging off the sides of the pan,  lift the frozen filling up and out of the pan.

9.  Set the filling down on the counter.  Completely cover the top of the filling with the extra plastic wrap that is hanging over the sides.  The goal is to make sure that the fruit filling is completely sealed to protect it while in the freezer.

10.  Place the frozen, plastic-wrapped pie filling into the freezer to be used when needed. Repeat this process for as many pie fillings as you need to make.  All the frozen fillings will stack into each other in one tall tower, saving you tons of freezer space.

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To Use the Frozen Pie Fillings:

1.  When ready to bake a pie, make a pie crust as you normally would.

2.  Line the bottom of a pie pan with the bottom crust.

3.  Remove a frozen ready-to-use fruit filling from the freezer.  Unwrap completely and discard the plastic wrap.

4.  Place the frozen filling into the pie pan on top of the crust.

5.  Continue making pie by adding the top crust and finishing the edges.

6.  Bake according to your regular recipe, but keep in mind that cooking time may have to be adjusted to compensate for the fruit being frozen.  An easy way around this is to let the uncooked pie sit out until the fruit has defrosted before baking.

7.  Cool, serve, and enjoy!

Love kitchen tips? Read about no mess cupcake and muffin baking. 

Thanks to Kitchen Tip Tuesday for having us over!  Apple pie photo (top) by dailyinvention.  Berry pie photo by Caitlinator.  Apple pie photo (with logo) by L. Marie.

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When you are buying unripe bananas at the grocery store, ask the cashier at checkout for a full-sized paper grocery bag.  Once home, put the green bananas into the paper bag.  Close the top of the paper bag and roll it down to keep it from opening back up.  Keep rolling the paper bag down until you reach the bananas.  The goal here is to make sure that there is as little empty space inside the paper bag as possible.  You can put more than one bunch of bananas in the bag at the same time.  In fact, this will even speed up the ripening process.

Why it Works

Here’s why this works: bananas (and many other fruits) give off a gas called ethylene gas.  Ethylene gas is a plant hormone that causes “growth”.  What this means for produce is that any fruits or vegetables exposed to ethylene gas will have accelerated ripening.  You can use ethylene gas to your advantage in certain cases, by allowing it to ripen fruits and vegetables that were picked before their prime.

Produce that gives off ethylene gas itself can be enclosed in a container or bag, and essentially trapped in the gas it produces to speed up ripening.  Fruits and vegetables that do not produce ethylene gas can also benefit from this method.  To ripen them, simply place them in a bag or container with an ethylene gas producing fruit or vegetable, such as bananas, apples, peaches, avocados, pineapples or tomatoes.

Like this tip?  Subscribe for free to get more kitchen tips like this delivered to you as soon as they are available! 

Photo courtesy of stock.xchng.  Check out Kitchen Tip Tuesdays at Tammy’s Recipes.

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It may be a great intention to make a frugal birthday or baby shower cake at home, that is- if the horses and flowers you draw on top of the cake really look like horses and flowers.  You want an inexpensive cake that agrees with your grocery budget, but that doesn’t look like your a school-aged child did the decorating!  If you are artistically challenged like me, but still don’t want to pay high prices for a bakery-decorated cake (bakery cakes can range from $12-$45- ouch!), this kitchen tip for decorating cakes is for you. 

Kitchen Tip: Use Cookie Cutters to Make Traceable Outlines

• Choose cookie cutters in the appropriate shape for your theme (baby items for a baby shower, crowns for a princess party, palm trees and stars for a Hawaiian luau, etc.).
• Bake and ice a cake as you normally would.
• Let the cake sit out uncovered for a few hours until the top layer of the icing starts to harden and form a light crust.
• Place the chosen cookie cutters on top of the icing and lightly press down about 1 1/2 centimeters, making an imprint of the shapes.
• Choose either a pastry tube with a decorating bag (shown at right) filled with colored icing, or different colors of store-bought icing gel (shown below) to decorate with.  

• Use the outlines you created from the cookie cutters to “trace the lines”.  Fill in the ridges of the outlines with colored icing or gel, then fill in the center of the shapes/animals with icing dyed with food coloring! 

Using the cookie cutters as “cheats” to create traceable outlines, cake decorating will be a snap – even if you’re not good at drawing.  Your shapes will come out perfect every time for a professional looking birthday, holiday, or baby shower cake on a budget!

Check out Tammy’s Recipes for more Kitchen Tip Tuesday tips!  Baby shower cake photo by yorkd.

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Kitchen Tip: Remove Fat From Roasts, Stews and Other Crockpot Meals

We frugal chefs love a good pot roast, and for more reasons than just the low price.  It’s true that roast meat is cheap and easy on the grocery budget, but crockpot cooking is also hassle-free, time saving, and almost no work!  The first time around, anyway.  Allow me to explain.

You have a delicious pork roast, simmering in a slow cooker, surrounded by sliced vegetables peeking out ever-so-subtly through the surface of the golden broth.  It’s steamy, it’s delicious, and it’s piping hot when you set it on the table for dinner.  However, this gourmet frugal meal will look quite different after you pack it away as leftovers!  No matter what kind of container you store your crockpot meal in, once the food temperature has cooled in the refrigerator, you will be left with a hideous layer of thick hard fat!  Now doesn’t that sound appetizing?!

There are few options for removing the fat from roasts, stews, and other crock pot meals.  The manual labor way (which we’ve all done before, including me) is to take a fork, spoon, or knife, and scrape the fat off – one scoop at a time.  While that method does work, it has its flaws.  First, it’s very time consuming. Second, it’s almost impossible to remove all the fat this way, since as soon as you start scooping, small bits of fat will break away and disappear into the liquid. 

If that method is not for you, we’ve got good news!  This kitchen tip will have you working smarter instead of harder in no time:

Kitchen tip: Before putting your crockpot leftovers into the refrigerator, cut a piece of wax paper that is large enough to cover the entire surface of the food in the storage container you’re using.  Lay the wax paper over the top of the food, face down, and then put the lid on as you normally would.  As the food cools in the refrigerator, the fat will begin to solidify.  With the wax paper in place, the top side of the hardened fat will adhere to the wax paper. 

After the food has completely cooled, you can remove the lid, peel off the wax paper, and stuck to the paper will be the layer of fat you’re wishing to discard.  Magic! 

Then you can pat yourself on the back, knowing that this little tip not only save you time in the kitchen, but it also helped you give a healthier batch of leftovers to your family.

Like crockpot cooking? Check out: Why you should leave your crockpot lid on and how to make crockpot meals the night before.

Homemaker Barbi Says:  Time-saving kitchen tips have you working smarter, not harder!

For more great kitchen tips, check out Tammy’s Recipes for Kitchen Tip Tuesday! Photo courtesy of Flickr’s Avoir Chaud under CC license.

Keep Rolls Warm with a Basket Liner and Lid

Serving hot biscuits or rolls at your holiday dinner?  Wish they stayed warm longer? Here’s a tip that will help!

Presenting homemade rolls or bread in a festive basket with a cloth napkin is a nice way to make them look appealing and evoke cozy Christmas meal memories.  However, the open top and slits in the basket can cause the rolls to lose a lot of heat and cool off fast.

To help insulate your biscuit basket, line the inside of the basket with aluminum foil (tin foil) before you put in the cloth napkin and biscuits.  The foil acts as a barrier to keep the warmth from escaping, keeping your rolls warmer and softer for longer. 

The foil method will also work for the top. To form a basket covering (lid):

1. Lay a piece of aluminum foil over the top of your filled basket (make sure it extends past the basket about 5 inches on each side).
2. Lay a cloth napkin or kitchen towel on top of the foil.
3. Starting at one end, start rolling the foil and napkin under, towards the basket. Mold the rolled end to the basket.  Repeat this action for the other sides as well.
4. The rolling of both layers will stick the foil and napkin together so they don’t come apart and the foil isn’t visible.
5. When ready to eat, simply lift the “lid” off!

Check out Tammy’s Recipes for more Kitchen Tip Tuesday tips!

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Use Popcorn to Save on Shipping and Save the Planet

The holidays are fast approaching and many of us will be packing up boxes of presents to mail out to loved ones.  Shipping materials can be expensive to purchase and usually are made of plastics that aren’t the friendliest on the environment.  There are many fillers that are used, such as styrofoam packing peanuts, plastic bubble wrap, plastic pellets, plastic bags filled with air, and newspaper.  Even used plastic grocery shopping bags can be used as stuffing in packages to keep items in place.

However, there is a better, cheaper, more environmentally friendly material to use as a packing material, and it’s in your kitchen.  Popcorn!

Kitchen Tip: Pop edible popcorn to use as packing material!

Why popcorn?  Popcorn is cheap, edible, and biodegradable.  Edible popcorn received as packing material in a shipped box can be easily reused or discarded without harming the environment.  After removing edible popcorn from a package, you can add it to a compost pile, put it into bird feeders, sprinkle it on the ground for squirrels and birds to eat, or string with colored thread for strands of old-fashioned Christmas decoration.  Go green this holiday season using environmentally friendly package stuffing!

How does it work?  Purchase large bags of popcorn at the store (typically, the larger the bag, the more you get for your money).  Don’t use microwave popcorn – it’s usually coated and expensive.  Pop your popcorn in an air popper (do not use butter or margarine).  Let popcorn cool fully before stuffing in packages, since the size of popcorn changes as the temperature changes (it shrinks as it cools).

Homemaker Barbi Says:  Instead of using expensive styrofoam packing peanuts or other shipping materials when mailing packages, turn to your kitchen for the right supplies.  Using edible popcorn as a packing material will intrigue the person receiving your package, and possibly encourage them to use it too!

Check out Tammy’s Recipes for more Kitchen Tip Tuesday tips!

Photo courtesy of stock.xchng.

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Valuable energy (and dollars spent on utilities) can be wasted by using your oven improperly.  Even energy efficient models of appliances are designed to be efficient only when used correctly.

Kitchen Tip:  Use Your Oven’s Peep Hole!

Exterior doors on homes and apartments have peep holes for a very good reason – so you can see what’s on the other side without having to open the door.  Kitchen ovens have a “peep hole” also (a window on the front door) for the same reason! 

Perhaps the most common mistake people make with kitchen appliances is opening the oven door every time they want to check on the food that is cooking.  This unintentional blunder can drive up your utility bill and force you to cook foods for longer times than directed in your recipes.  Heat escaping the oven can also make extra work for air conditioners in the summer months.

According to Newmarket Hydro Ltd., a utility company with great energy conservation programs in Ontario, Canada, opening an oven door while in use causes 20% of the heat to escape.  Calculations vary, with some sources saying the temperature drops as much as 25° each time the door is opened!  That heat loss means food will actually be cooking at a lower temperature, requiring time to be added onto the directed cooking time.  It is more efficient to look through the window and only open the door when the food inside must be stirred or toothpick-tested.

Homemaker Barbi Says:  Keep the oven door closed while cooking and use the conveniently located window on the front to view  food instead! 

Photo courtesy of stock.xchng.

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