by Carrie on March 12, 2010
Disclosure: Some links in the post are affiliate links and I will receive a small compensation if you make a purchase or sign up for a service by clicking through those links. Affiliate links are an easy way for you to support It’s Frugal Being Green at no additional cost to yourself.
by Carrie on February 17, 2010
In the office supply/stationary section at Target, you can find these pads of grocery lists from Real Simple. Meal planning helps me figure out what ingredients I need for my main dishes each week, but by using this preset list I’m reminded to fill in with extra fresh produce, breakfasts and snacks, and pantry staples. And the pads last forever, I shop almost weekly and the pad on my fridge right now is going on almost two years now.
The Real Simple version I use is currently only available at Target. For others that you can order on Amazon right now, here are some cute options:
I also keep a magnetic pen cup like kids would use in their lockers on my fridge to keep pens, Sharpies, and scissors for clipping coupons handy.
Disclosure: Some links in the post are affiliate links and I will receive a small compensation if you make a purchase or sign up for a service by clicking through those links. Affiliate links are an easy way for you to support It’s Frugal Being Green at no additional cost to yourself.
by Carrie on February 11, 2010
Early last year, I got it into my head that I wanted all the recipes from all my cookbooks and magazine tear outs indexed in one place on my computer so that it was easy to pull together a meal plan. At that time, I decided to start by listing them all out by dish type in a basic text editor.
More recently, I was browsing around the blogosphere and came across Mommy Snack’s Menu Planning Recipe Box and I loved the spreadsheet idea but it needed a little tweaking to work for me.
Here’s what I came up with (click the image to enlarge):
Download the .xls file so you can play around with it yourself.
I’ve got several columns for sorting the data in various ways, left to right they are:
- a place to mark which recipes I’d like to use on my next meal plan
- name
- type of dish (main, side, salad, dessert, etc)
- protein
- produce
- starch
- tried/favorite
- notes (seasonal info or cooking notes if I want to make changes to the recipe in the future)
- source
Rather than using Google Docs (which I love because I can access my files easily from multiple computers), I decided to go with Microsoft Excel. Excel does a couple things that made my digital recipe box easier than it would have been in Google Docs: 1) it remembers what you typed in the same field in rows above so that you don’t need to type the same cookbook name over and over again, 2) it has filters so that once all my recipes are in, I can easily narrow it down to just chicken dishes, just desserts, just recipes I’ve marked as favorites, or even search for recipes with the word chocolate in the title.
by Carrie on December 31, 2009
As 2009 comes to a close, it’s time to sum up the year in statistics and lists.
Top 10 Most Viewed Posts in 2009
- iTunes Tip: Storing Your Media on an External Hard Drive
- 30 Quick, Green, and Frugal Meal Planning Resources
- Arm & Hammer Clumping Cat Litter Coupon
- Dyson vs Hoover Showdown
- Use Aliases and Filters to Get More Out of your Existing Gmail Address
- Oven Barbequed Chicken
- Cleaning Silver with Baking Soda and Aluminum Foil
- Homemade All Natural Face, Body, and Foot Scrubs
- How I Organize My Coupons
- Grasshopper Pie
Most Commented on Post
Top 10 Blogs Sending Traffic to It’s Frugal Being Green (Thank you!)
- Money Saving Mom
- I’m an Organizing Junkie
- Get Rich Slowly
- Coupon Geek
- Make It From Scratch
- Life as Mom
- Deal Seeking Mom
- Cheap Healthy Good
- $5 Dinners
- My Frugal Adventures
Things You Can Do to Support It’s Frugal Being Green
- Spread the word about It’s Frugal Being Green. If you see a post that makes you think of a particular friend or family member, email them a link to it.
- Subscribe via RSS or email (both are free).
- If you have your own blog, link to posts that strike a chord with you like I do in my biweekly What I’m Reading posts, add me to your blog roll, or grab my button.
- Become a fan of It’s Frugal Being Green on Facebook. Once you are a fan, use the “suggest to friends” link on my Facebook page to tell a few friends about It’s Frugal Being Green.
- Follow me on Twitter. This is my new favorite way to connect with people in 2009.
- Click through my links whenever ordering from Amazon or iTunes or sign up for and become a regular user of Ebates or Swagbucks. These are just a couple ways you can support It’s Frugal Being Green financially at no additional cost to you.
- Comment on posts you like or posts you don’t like or anytime you have something to add or a question to ask. I want It’s Frugal Being to become a conversation.
by Carrie on October 9, 2009
I’m not actually reading this but I’m dying to tell you about my favorite new kitchen gadget: Oxo Good Grips Jar Opener. I used to frequently hurt my hands and/or teeth (bad, I know) and then totally give up opening a jar but I’ve had this for a couple weeks now and now I have the power to open anything. I often use Oxo products as filler items to get my Amazon orders up to that $25 free shipping threshold.
Now on to another round of my favorite recent articles on the web:
Need a Weekly Meal Planner, a Grocery List, or Price Books? We Have 36 of ‘em. @Cheap Healthy Good (While I love the idea of printables, I just ordered one of these magnetic weekly menu planner pads myself because I just love a notepad that’ll stick to my fridge. Try out Swagbucks as your search engine so you can earn some Amazon giftcards and score items like this for free.)
