I got a big bag of bananas for 39 cents a pound the other day and the kids didn’t get to them all. So, I needed to come up with some ways to use bananas, or at least save them for later use. Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem. We’d make banana bread. However, normally, it isn’t over 100 degrees outside! No way was I heating up the kitchen with the oven.

Do you dehydrate your ripe bananas? Photo: SXC

I sliced up the rest of the bananas into 1/4 inch rounds and made dehydrated banana chips. Now, if you’ve never tried homemade banana chips, you probably aren’t too excited by the thought of dehydrating bananas. The thing is, these banana chips are nothing like those rock hard things you buy in the store. We dehydrate ours at 135 degrees for about 12 to 14 hours. They come out smelling and tasting just like banana bread. Sooo good. Since they aren’t completely dried out, I recommend freezing your chips instead of just sticking them in a jar in the pantry. We usually don’t end up with enough to bother freezing, though. I stick the bag in the fridge and they are devoured in a few days.

I know. What a corny, corny title, right? But they really were cheap little cheepers! We hatched them ourselves from our own eggs so the only cost was the price of the electricity for the incubator. They are just the cutest things around. Fingers crossed that at least most of them don’t ever emit even the tiniest crow. They come from show quality stock, but it is still really hard to place a rooster in a non-chicken sandwich home and I’ve already been informed that no rooster eaters will be allowed within ten feet of these cuties.

White Rock Bantam Chicks

While these peeps were hatching out, I was making my own cheese. I was going to buy a $50 DIY kit, but it seemed so unthrifty. I did a bit of improvising and a bit of researching and ended up spending $11 total, which included a gallon of whole milk, a container of lemon juice and a packet of rennet tablets. While they can sometimes help you save, kits usually are code for more expensive than doing it completely on your own. Before you spend a ton on something that you may or may not fall in love with, think about whether the original “manufacturers” had all those gadgets. With cheese, the answer was no, so I knew I could scrounge what I needed (except for the rennet.)

I’ve talked about crock pots before, but I thought it was worth talking about them again during all this hot summer weather we’re having. I don’t know how you feel, but if I come home after a hard day’s work, the last thing I want to do it heat up the kitchen. It is really easy to decide to swing by the grocery store to grab some expensive prepared food, like subs, potato salad and a big container of stuff from the salad bar when you are worn out and don’t want to go home to root through the cupboards. That stop can really wreck your budget, since convenience foods have a high price tag attached to them.

photo via amazon.com

Some meals, like the pulled pork recipe from All You magazine I want to try require additional prep work and cooking time. For days that are busy, I prefer easy crock pot recipes that don’t involve the extra work and time. Here’s a family favorite that is super simple:

1 chicken cut up or a package of chicken breasts
1 can cream of celery soup
1 can cream of broccoli soup
1 cup of rice

Cook on low heat for eight hours.

If I have time, I start the chicken and soup first and then add the rice around lunch time. This way, I am not putting rice in with raw meat, which grosses me out, and I can see if I need to add some water for the rice to absorb. If you prefer, you can just cook the rice as you normally do and serve the meat and “gravy” over the rice.

What is your favorite easy crock pot recipe?

This is one of my posts from Simply Thrifty that is still very useful for anyone shopping for an American Girl type doll for his or her child. I thought all my readers here would enjoy it, too:

So, your little one is just longing for an American Girl doll. You’d really like to get one, but the price tag is about 5 times what you can afford this Christmas. Are you going to have to crush your child’s dream? Well, that depends.

Is your child extremely name brand conscious? If so, the only help I can offer is a suggestion to request a gently used doll through Craigslist for around $20. Then, head to the American Girl website and shop the sale page for a reduced outfit so she’ll have something brand new to open. There is usually a sale code of some kind floating around, so you should be able to at least cover shipping costs. (Or check out outfits that fit American Girl dolls on Etsy. There are some adorable clothes there!)

However, if you are shopping for a child who isn’t fixated on name brands, you can find very similar dolls on sale in the $20 price range. They will fit American Girl clothes, including the matching outfits for dolls and girls. (There are many other similar doll lines out there, but they seemed to be almost as expensive as American Girl dolls and I’m trying for thrifty here!)

photo via amazon.com

At Target, we found a really nice line of Our Generation dolls. They are on sale in stores this week for $19.99 and on the website for $21.99. In person, they were cute enough that my mom ended up buying one for a five year old little girl who’s requested an American Girl doll who looked like her. (Update: She’s now almost 8 and still playing with her doll, which held up quite well. For her upcoming birthday, she wants more outfits. When I checked Target the other day, it looked like the doll prices have gone up a few dollars, but they are still a great deal if  they all hold up as well as this one.)

At Toys “R” Us, we found an 18″ Madame Alexander doll line for $29.99 that looked very nice. We actually preferred it, but decided that the child my mom was shopping for would prefer the Our Generation dolls, which came with more accessories to start. These very nice looking dolls are on sale this week for $24.99.

Do you have any thrifty tips for little girls with American Girl wish lists? I’m assuming the desire to own one will spread like the plague on Christmas morning when the other girls see this one’s doll. One thing I am planning is to start sewing some outfits for the doll for a birthday gift. (and maybe at least one matching outfit for her new “mama” as well.) I did this when my sister wanted an American Girl doll when she was little. My home ec teacher was quite impressed because I turned in two pieces for one assignment. I bet I even have the patterns somewhere…In fact, I just found free 18 inch doll clothes patterns to download online!

I just planted a second crop of summer squash in June. June? Yup. June. I had some seeds left over and just read an article that says squash borers won’t harm squash you plant later. This way, I can be completely organic still. If the squash borers got my older plants, new ones can just take over. I hope.

Slugs and flies are yummy treats when you're a duck.

Another tip? Chickens (and ducks) like slugs. Ick. They shake their beaks to get the slime off, but they gobble them up. I can hardly bear to watch, but I guess it is no worse than us eating snails and oysters. I don’t have any big slugs in the garden anymore and they really have to search for the little ones. (I also don’t have any lettuce. It was about to bolt, so I didn’t chase the hens off when they started pecking it.) They are also huge fans of pill bugs, but seem to avoid beetles. I still had to pick potato beetles and Japanese beetles off my plants this year.

The last tip for today is to recycle your cardboard right into your garden. I put a layer down under raised beds before I fill them with soil and compost. I also line paths between the beds with cardboard pieces and cover them with straw or gravel to make them easy to walk on.

Hmm. Frugal gardening and organic gardening have a lot in common, don’t they? All these things also make it possible for me to avoid either pesticides or herbicides.

I am trying to grow a lot of our produce to avoid pesticides and yucky bacteria, but I’m not there yet. So, I was really excited that I was able to get the most enormous bunch of baby carrots for 99 cents the other day. (I love hitting my grocery store right after produce has been marked down. I get perfectly ripe organic bananas for a few cents a pound and bucket loads of produce for so much less than it normally costs.) Then, I had a slight problem – what to do with that many baby carrots? I don’t want everyone turning orange from an overload of carotene!

Photo: SXC

I ended up using the new dehydrator my awesome family gave me for my birthday to dehydrate five trays of carrots to use in soups during the winter. When I ran out of trays, we snacked on the leftover slices I’d made. Still too many. So, I did something I’ve been longing to do ever since I read Wild Fermentation a month or so ago – I made carrot kraut. Now, to see what becomes of it.

To make the kraut, I put the carrot slices in a ceramic bowl with a lid. I added a tablespoon of salt and pounded the carrots for a bit to get the juice moving. I was concerned that there wasn’t a lot of juice and added another tablespoon of sea salt and two cups of water. Then, I made sure all the carrots were pushed down into the brine and put the lid on. In three days, I’ll see if I have carrot sauerkraut or a big mess.

What do you do when you have a plethora of baby carrots?

I think I’ve mentioned before how much I love the 8×10 collage prints at Walgreen’s, so I was thrilled to see they are offering a free collage print to Facebook fans through Saturday in honor of Father’s Day. I always pick up in store to get the print completely free, but you can choose to pay for shipping to have it sent directly to you or to the recipient if you want to share some cute photos with your family.

These collages are great as the front of a really big homemade card (use a manila folder as your card and attach the print to the front of it) or as the start of a hybrid scrapbooking page. You can also frame them nicely to give as gifts.

Have you come across any other fun freebies for Father’s Day weekend?

I got a new dehydrator for my birthday, which was awesome because I wore the old one out! Around here, even the hundredth zucchini is warmly welcomed to the world because we can grate and dehydrate it to use in chocolate zucchini bread, soups and other delicious goodies all winter long. I don’t know how many of those things we’ll be enjoying this year unless we have a bumper crop, though. Thanks to Walnut Spinney, we’ve discovered dehydrated veggie chips. Yum!

Dehydrating is a great way for thrifty people to add healthy food to their diet year round. During the height of the gardening season, vegetables are literally free for the taking. Pause for a few seconds while stepping into or out of your car and gardening neighbors will rush toward you waving monster squash. Step into the break room at work and co-workers will pounce on you with a grocery bag crammed with produce. While some people refuse that delicious, free, organic bounty, frugal folks accept it eagerly and head to the kitchen to fire up their dehydrators.

Why dehydrators? Well, they’re easier than canning, especially on sweltering summer days. (Although I do plan to can a lot of produce this year, too.) You do have to blanch some vegetables, but, for most of them, you can use your microwave to do so. They also allow you to store a lot more food in a small space. Gallon glass jars can store a massive number of peppers, while frozen peppers used to take up half my freezer door space. You also don’t have to worry about losing all your preserved food to a power outage like you do if you freeze most of it.

Can you really dry zucchini? Yup. My dehydrator came with a nice little book that encouraged me to think about dehydrating a lot of things I wouldn’t have tried, like eggplant, zucchini and mushrooms. Online friends and books on preserving have encouraged me to dehydrate even more.

Have I convinced you yet? Are you ready to give dehydrating a try? I hope so!

(Photo via amazon.com)

We were hoping we’d get at least a few babies from our Coturnix quail egg incubation project. Boy, were we surprised to hatch out 28 babies! Sadly, one of them ran into the brooder wall at full force and we now have 27. We had marbles in the water dish so they wouldn’t drown, a soft top so they wouldn’t fly up and hit their heads, but there is no safe way that I can think of to pad the sides. Thankfully, none of the other chicks have done that.

Doesn’t this just make you say “Awww?”

I hope they all make it. They’re so fluffy and sweet and they, of course, have names already. Tux, Thing One, Thing Two, Stripe One and Stripe Two are the favorites.

I planted a three sisters patch in the spot where I dug up the new potatoes. Yellow squash plants, Kentucky pole beans and Japanese pop corn. We’ll see how it goes. I also put in a small row of Kamut, which is a wheat type grain said to originate in Egypt. I couldn’t find much on planting, but it is in the wheat family, so I planted it like wheat. It isn’t really the right time for a good wheat crop, but I’m not worried. I plan to feed it to the chicks for summer greens.

The amaranth is coming up really well. The second attempt at red cabbage isn’t doing much better than the first. I may just have to reseed in August for a late fall crop and cover the bed when it starts to frost.

How is your garden growing?

Guess what happened today? I was fussing with the brooder to get it all ready for the quail eggs, which I was hoping were fertile and were going to hatch tomorrow or Friday. Well, I heard a small racket coming from the incubator, went and looked in and some of my eggs are shaking and peeping like crazy. We’ve definitely got fertile eggs and there’s plenty of water in the incubator base, so I am getting optimistic about having some little quail peeps. (And a covey of quail running around pretty soon.) It is so fun for kids (and grownups) to watch the eggs wobbling and peeping!

I’ve got marbles in the water dish to keep them from drowning and I have the brooder warmed up. Now, I need to crush up the feed, because even crumbles will be too big for the newly hatched Coturnix. I suspect a watched egg doesn’t hatch, but that doesn’t stop me from peeking every few minutes. And just try convincing anyone under the age of ten to do something else! Everyone wants to be the first to spot a little beak poking out.