newbie from Minnesota

**UUMomof3** · 11-10-2008, 08:56 AM

Hello!

I'm a newbie here. A little about me: I'm a SAHM Mom with three kids, ages 9, 7, and 5. The kids are home all day because we are using a virtual cyberschool. We've got two big dogs, and the kids and I are active in Girl Scouts. I love scouts because we can do so many different things without a ton of expense.

DH and I want very much to start paring down our debt. We've taken a lot of the obvious steps in recent months: not spending on non-essentials, setting the thermostat lower, secondhand shopping, sale shopping. Still need to do some insurance shopping and seriously look at our landline phone stuff. Do we need more than basic? I don't know. I know better than to bring up cable during football season.

The thing I'm really struggling with is the grocery bill. Generics, check. Cook for leftovers, check. Soups and stews, working on that. Bake our own breads and cookies, check. The big obstacle to doing more is my middle DD's food allergies. So many frugal recipes are heavy on dairy and/or egg. Finding recipes, adapting recipes, it's exhausting. Particularly when you don't feel you can afford a failure. We're cracking down hard on picky eating. I don't want to feed them things they truly find abhorrant (split pea soup will never make the regular rotation), but with these drama queens it's hard to tell what's truly intolerable and what's just not a favorite.

So that's me.
Amy

**ilovechocolate** · 11-10-2008, 09:11 AM

Hi and welcome. You'll find lots of great advice here.

**SandNOceanGirl** · 11-10-2008, 09:12 AM

to the Village Amy!!

**UUMomof3** · 11-10-2008, 09:32 AM

ah, I see I was supposed to use this form for my intro. I'll go ahead and do it now

How did you hear about frugal village?
searching yahoo groups for "frugal"

What interests you here?
advice, support, ideas, recipes

What will you contribute?
see above

Do you know any other members here?
not yet!

How many kids? Ages?
3: DD9, DD7, DD5

Tell us about yourself.
cyber schooling Mom, Girl Scout leader and volunteer (Day Camp Co-Director, Service Unit Team)

Do you own any pets?
1 Retired Greyhound, 1 Lab Cross, 2 Green Cheek Conures

Occupation?
SAHM

Married or single?
very happily married

Interests and hobbies?
music (singing), crafts (beads, sewing, new to scrapbooking), new to gardening

**vigilant20** · 11-10-2008, 10:22 AM

**pip** · 11-10-2008, 10:35 AM

Hi and welcome to the village!

**IntlMom** · 11-10-2008, 03:49 PM

Hi and welcome!
btw - what is your middle daughters allergy? is it "just" dairy and egg?
did you know that you can sub 1 egg for 1T of soy flour and 1T of water?

**pinetree** · 11-10-2008, 04:07 PM

Hi and Welcome!

**UUMomof3** · 11-10-2008, 05:07 PM

Originally Posted by IntlMom

Hi and welcome!
btw - what is your middle daughters allergy? is it "just" dairy and egg?
did you know that you can sub 1 egg for 1T of soy flour and 1T of water?

She's allergic to Dairy, Egg, and Peanut. Which is a better situation than we had when she was first diagnosed; she was off of all that AND soy, wheat, and fish. Boy did we eat a lot of rice!

I typically use 1 tsp baking powder + 1 tbls each veg oil and water for each egg. I've tried ener-G foods egg replacer but with very spotty results (sometimes literally). Either of these will work fairly well, but I've never tried them for more than 2 eggs in a recipe.

We recently discovered black bean brownies, which is wonderful. I really missed brownies!

She's also the most incredibly fussy eater, but we're cracking down on that. She's far an away old enough now to articulate the difference between "I don't like this" and "this is making me sick". I'm afraid we let her get away with a lot of "don't like" when she was very young because we were so afraid she might mean "makes me sick".

Amy (glad to be here)