Monday, January 19, 2015

The Potato Doughnuts


Some of the finished product
  My grandmother and our family have been using this potato doughnut reciepe from her 3rd Edition Barbour Cookbook for YEARS. Probably as long as I can remember. They stay super moist because of the potatoes, and the deep fat frying gives the outside this chewy almost crust. We haven't made them in a good 5 or 6 years, but as soon as I made them yesterday I basically flashed back from when my siblings and I would help my grandmother make them in a neat little assembly line. She used to double the recipe, I used a single recipe yesterday and yielded a good batch for a family with two young kids.


  If your kids are like mine, they LOVE Tim Bits, keep the doughnut holes that you cut out to make your own homestyle Tim Bits and let the kiddos put sprinkles and whatnot on top!

Here's the no fail recipe for potato doughnuts.


4 medium sized potatoes (I used 3 large) 
Butter the size of a small egg (I used a HEAPING a tablespoon)
1 1/4 cup sugar
3 eggs
3/4 cup of milk 
4 rounded tsps baking powder
This is only half of what we made yesterday

 Enough flour to make a non sticky dough. The recipe didn't have an exact flour amount.

Pinch of Nutmeg, Pinch of salt.

Boil potatoes, and mash until there's no lumps. Add (in this order): butter, sugar, milk, eggs, stir until creamy. Add nutmeg, salt, baking powder and stir again until it's all combined. Gradually add flour until you form a dough that sticks together. Transfer onto table dusted with flour, and knead more flour in until you get a non-sticky dough ball. Roll out and cut out using a doughnut cutter (I used a dessert bowl and a shot glass!).


 
Pan fry, or use deep fat fryer to cook until a little darker than golden brown, but not TOO much darker. Decorate however you want!

I attempted to make a cream cheese frosting for a cake last week, but ran out of icing sugar (my grandmother actually ran out of icing sugar.....since we were at her house when I was making the cake!), so I put it all in a margerine container and saved it, we ended up using this as a glaze for our doughnuts and they turned out SOOOOO GOOOOODDDDDD. 

They're golden brown in that T-Fal deep fat fryer (bought at Canadian Tire)

Friday, January 9, 2015

What's In The Redplum?!

Sometime either late last night or extremely early this morning, I recieved my Redplum along with my big ol bag of flyers. Here's what's in it:

-Some Burger King coupons for Free Sandwiches with the purchase of a meal, and a page of lots more meal coupons

-Save 1.00 on Palmolive

-1.00 off any 2 singles or 1 value pack of Pure Protein

-3.00 off any Ester-C product

-1.00 off any 2 singles or 1 value pack of Balance Bar

-1.50 off any disney or starwars kids gummy vitamins

-1.50 off any Natures Bounty product

-1.50 off any Hair &Nails or Hair, Skin & Nails product

-5.00 off any Osteo Bi-Flex product

-Save 50 cents on a Graves Product (selected variety, there's a list of what qualifies)

-BOGO Free Bag of Pedigree Vitality dry dog food.

-Free copy of Zoomer magazine (mail to redeem)

-Free copy of Saltscapes magazine (mail to redeem)



That's what you can redeem in your Redplum, there's some really great deals on this week too!!

Giant Tiger and No Frills are having their 88 sales....on the front page of the Giant Tiger flyer I noticed that Palmolive dish soap was on for 1.88....so it'll be 88 cents with your coupon!

At Target:

you can get Select Olay complete moisturizers for 8.49, there's a Smartsource coupon in the coupon portal to save 2.00......6.49

Pantene sale price 3.99, Smartsource coupon for 2.00 off......1.99


Shoutout to Shopper's 2 Day Sale (Sunday and Monday):

Gain detergent or Fleecy dryer sheets: 3.99
Coca-Cola or Pepsi 6X710 bottles: 1.97
2 for 4$ Ruffles or Doritos
Vim cleaning cleanser, Dawn and Ivory dish soap 1.99 each.
21.99 Pamper's super boxed diapers
2.77 Fructis or L'Oreal kids hair products
5.99 each Aveeno lotion or Olay Facial cleansers (the reason I didn't put a coupon is because it could be varied type and the flyer did not specify which Olay Cleanser....there ARE lots of Olay coupons on the coupon portal, so make sure you print them out!!)
5.99 Bic, Shick Quattro, or Gillette disposable razors


Keep in mind that Walmart and Target both pricematch, Target does Canada-wide and online pricematching. If you find a lower price for an item, let me know and I'll add it! 

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

E-mailing for Coupons! Guest Post by Justine Wright

I love to do alot of coupon trading, that is how i get alot of the same coupon, and I just trade ones I no I will never use, but another way I like to get high vaule coupons is to email companies that will send you coupons, when i emailed places I just wrote something short like, hey, i really love your products and I would love to keep buying, I was just wondering if you could send me some coupons if so here is my address (write address here) (if there was no wheres to write and address ) thank you so much!
so here is a list of compaines you can email:

smuckers-i always get booklets from them. http://www.smuckers.ca/Contact-Us-Form
Vlasic Pickles http://pinnaclefoodscorp.com/index.php/company/contact-us
Chapman’s ( Once per year) http://www.chapmans.ca/ContactUs
Cloverleaf http://www.cloverleaf.ca/en/contact/
Becel https://secure.becel.ca/en/contactus.aspx?currentworld=
All you Need is Cheese (magazine + cheese coupons) http://www.dairygoodness.ca/contact-us
Uncle Bens http://www.unclebens.ca/en-ca/Errors/Error404.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/About/ContactUs.aspx
Blue Dragon http://www.bluedragon.ca/contact
Driscolls Strawberries: tell them you are from canada. $1.00 coupon http://www.driscolls.com/contact-us
El Monterey Mexican food http://www.elmonterey.com/contactus/
Tetley Tea http://www.tetley.ca/en/about-us/contact
Melitta Coffee http://www.melitta.ca/contact
Duncan Hines http://www.duncanhines.ca/contact-us/
Johnson & Johnson ( free baby sample pack FPC & 2x$1 off coupon ) https://www.ccc-consumercarecenter.com/universal-contact-us/ca-jnjcanada-ucu/www.jnjcanada.com
Relvon http://www.revlon.ca/Revlon-Home/Revlon-General/Contact.aspx
Crayola .50 to $2.00 coupon http://www2.crayola.com/canwehelp/contact/ask.cfm
Pampers Diapers https://www.pampers.ca/registration
Heinz Baby http://www.heinzbaby.com/en_ca/
Milupa (free spoon + sample of baby cereal) http://www.milupa.ca/en/index.html
Kruger 1 x $1.50 off coupon valid on Cashmere, SpongeTowels,White Swan , Purex TP or Scotties http://www.krugerproducts.ca/english/contact.php
MOO (10 pack free business cards) http://ca.moo.com/partner/sample/

Newspaper Coupon Insert Schedule for 2015

Bookmark this post ya'll! Pretty soon the newspaper insert's will be here!! Smartsource coupon insert: January 10, 2015
January 31, 2015
February 7, 2015
March 7, 2015
March 28, 2015
April 4, 2015
April 18, 2015
May 16, 2015
June 6, 2015
June 20, 2015
July 25, 2015
August 22, 2015
September 12, 2015
October 3, 2015
November 7, 2015
December 6, 2015 Redplum Coupon Insert: January 10, 2015
February 7, 2015
March 7, 2015
April 4, 2015
May 2, 2015
June 6, 2015
July 4, 2015
August 8, 2015
September 5, 2015
October 3, 2015
November 14, 2015 PG Bransdaver: TBD.

A Post About My Health Journey.

Maybe it's just a New Year's resolution, but recently I got fed up with everything and started my family on this healthy eating-exercising thing. I've come to terms with a few things....like having a water retention problem is rediculously rediculous and while it SHOULD be easy to manage, I have the worst time in the world managing....and how good Vanilla Protein powder is in coffee (it's one thing I can't give up...). I mean, vanilla coffee is good on it's own, and I feel good thinking that I'm drinking a "healthy" Timmy-ho's double double.

My mother had a big weight problem when I was growing up, she struggled a ton with it and at her heaviest she also got diagnosed with MS, making it that much harder on everyone since over the course of 5 years she went from being independant to being completely dependant on other people to help her do things like use the bathroom. I don't know if there's a whole lot of research of weight problems being genetic, but after...ahem....puberty...I started having a huge problem with weight management (I suppose being pregnant twice didn't help....).

I don't want to eat right and exercise to specifically lose weight. I want to eat right and exercise to get healthy. If I lose a few l b's along the way, GREAT. If I don't.....I'll probably call my doctor and yell at her because there'll be something extremely wrong with me.

Also, I don't know if anyone's ever had those Arizona green tea with ginseng and honey drinks....but you can make your own at home with the tea bags (they sell green tea with ginseng and honey), a juice container, and a few sugar cubes (I like the cubes because I can monitor how much I put in.) for taste (not a huge fan of green tea.....never have been, trying to get used to it. My great-grandfather apparently was a tea taster for Red Rose back in the day, so I grew up drinking it just like my mother and grandmother.). 3 Teabags for 1 container (2L), and it'll last you a good few days depending on how much you drink it.


I also never thought I'd be doing so much research about Kale. Not that there's anything wrong with Kale, but I'm still wondering what's the deal with Kale....it just seems like there's a whole big world of greens out there, what's the difference between kale and regular mixed greens!? WHY IS KALE SO HOT RIGHT NOW?!

Cabbage is just the worst. I don't mind eating it, but there's some "detox" or "weight loss" reciepes that are like "eat this cabbage soup every day for a week and lose a guaranteed 10lbs." Of course you're going to lose weight with cabbage and nothing else....cabbage soup is awful.

So today, I'm putting a new board on the Thrifty Gal pinterest. Health and Fitness. You'll soon be able to check out all my awesome health related pins to find easy exercises, yum yum recipes (good for kids too!), and maybe even an inspirational quote or two.