Fettucine Alfredo (the easy way)

I have a deep and heartfelt love for fettuccine alfredo.  It is my comfort food; the rich, creamy parmesan and noodles....mmmm.  I used to buy a jar of alfredo, boil some noodles and call it a day, but then one day I searched for a recipe online and discovered it was easy to make. After a few changes and additions I have now deemed it perfect. Perfect in my eyes or mouth rather, I doubt Food Network is going to be banging down my door to get my recipe but it works for me.  Anyway, it is a pretty simple recipe using only a few ingredients, they key ingredient being heavy whipping cream.  Some people will say that is taking the quick or easy way out, those people have obviously never had to get 2 kids to soccer practice at 2 different fields, finish homework and get dinner on the table.

Here's what you need:
- 1/2 - 3/4 a cup of heavy whipping cream depending on how large your family is
- 1 cup of fresh Parmesan cheese, grated. If you have a store where you can get fancy cheese great, if not the $3 kind from Wal-Mart tastes alright to me.
- noodles, we prefer whole wheat linguine. Fettuccine is a bit too thick for my munchkins
- a pinch of oregano, basil and fresh ground pepper (from the McCormick grinder, no fancy pepper grinder here)
- Chicken, shrimp, broccoli are all optional, we usually go with chicken. I fry it in a little olive oil and a dash of spices.

Boil your pasta preference to al dente. Shortly after you start the noodles pour the cream into a skillet, add the spices and bring to a boil. Turn down the heat to simmer for a bit (a bit = about 10-12 minutes just for future reference).

Add about 3/4 of the parmesan cheese to  large serving bowl, mine resides atop our fridge housing random junk and must be rinsed before use.  Add in the cream mix and give these two a minute to get acquainted.  Don't stir or toss, or force their union in any way, just let them take their time to mix for a minute.  It'll look like this:

Can you smell that yummy goodness? Now, add in your hot, drained pasta.  Use tongs and toss everything together.  If you love cheese more than your children like me add more cheese on top.  Ok, maybe not more than my kids but cheese certainly doesn't backtalk or leave a dirty room for me to clean.

Yummo!
I serve mine with a side of chicken on the side because I have issues with my food touching.  You can get crazy and throw your chicken or shrimp right on in there, just not in my presence...seriously, I may gag.

Dinner is served:

Budget Breakdown:
Heavy Whipping Cream - $1.12
Parmesan Cheese - $1.50 ($3 a block but I only use half)
Linguine Noodles - $0.50 (I recently stocked up when I had a coupon)
Chicken - $1.20 (using 2/3 pounds chicken bought at $1.78 per pound)
= $4.32
or $1.08 per serving which is a little high for us but we only have this about twice a month

Front Load Washers: Worth the hype?

Laundry is a dirty word in my house.  It seems to be never ending, everyday I do it yet everyday there seems to be more to do.  I thought about taking my brood to join a nudist colony but after I thought of hot seats on a summer day on a nudist colony I decided that maybe we'd stick with wearing clothes.

If I have to wear clothes and wash them I may as well do it as cheap and efficiently as possible.  After much research, we bought a  Whirlpool Duet washer and dryer when we moved into our house last year and haven't been disappointed.  My BFF, Anne and her hubby just sold their house and are buying a new one, yah for them!  Along with the their lawnmower, and fountain  in the front yard (seriously?!?) the new owners wanted the laundry units to stay.  That leaves my pals in the laundry market.  Anne has been a long time fan of my front loader, her iron loathing husband a fan of the steam option on the dryer.  But they are stumped, is it the extra cost really worth it?  Being the analytical freak that I am, I scoured the Internet to find some data supporting the front load decision, after all, I didn't want to look like a fool for buying them to begin with.

I came across this website, Mr. Electricity, he gives many energy saving tips and ways to lower your electric bill.  He also had this nifty laundry cost calculator that I did, you simply answer a few questions about electric and water cost, number of loads you do...ect and he tells you how much you spend yearly doing laundry.
Here is a snapshot of mine:

 

As you can see, all the inputs are the same except the number of loads.  Front loaders don't have an agitator so you can get more in them so it is typically less loads. Dry time is also different, our front loader spins the clothes at such a high rate of speed that they are almost dry when we pop them in the dryer  so a cycle is usually 20 minutes or less.  Electric is a major cost savings but water is up there too.  Average top loader s suck up 40 gallons of water per use as compared to it's front loader cousin at 12!  That's over 1000 gallons of water difference per month for a typical family.

Next, I hopped on over to lowes.com so compare prices. A top load washer with capacity size to fit my family is between $599 and $699.  The front load Whirlpool steam washer we have is on sale for $799.  Dryers is where it gets tricky, no dryer is energy efficient but most people still want the pair to match, myself including. Dryers that would work for my family are again between $599 - $699 regular and $799 for my front load washer twin. 

The sticker price is a difference of  about $200 - $400.  According to my handy dandy calculator, I'll save that or almost that in the first year alone.  So, it seems like a no brainier.  But some things too keep in mind, I wouldn't run out to get a new set unless your old ones really need replaced.  Also, none of the models were bottom on the line, regular sets may be cheaper in the economy range and bottom barrel front loaders may have more repair issues.  

At the end of the day, I love my front loaders.  I use 1/3 of the recommended amount of detergent and still get great results.  The design of the machine is more gentle on your clothes so they last longer.  When the swine flu hit our house last year I worked the sanitary feature on overtime to make sure it didn't spread.  And, best of all, we got a sweet deal on ours and we plan to keep them for a while.  

Here they are in our laundry room (we have the pedestals too):

Fill 'er up!

According to AAA 9 billion people will be traveling this Labor Day weekend.  Well, not really, it will just seem like that when my family hits I-495 at rush hour tomorrow on our way to my hubster's old stomping grounds, Annapolis, MD.  We will be loading up the SUV with kids, suitcases, snacks and enough entertainment options to make the at least 5 hour trip bearable.

I am a planner.  I like to plan the minute we will leave (2:23 when our kiddos bounce off the bus), when and where we'll eat (for this trip probably somewhere around Cumberland, MD around 5:30 ish), rest stops and where we will get gas for the trip.  Yes, I am a bit type A and like to plan it all out.

Now, you fly by the seat of your pants peeps can quit scoffing, a little planning can be beneficial and cost effective.  For one, I can scope out restaurants in the area we want to eat and find restaurant coupons.  I can also figure out where the cheapest gas is before the first "She's looking at me" fight even starts.

Enter gasbuddy.com! With this site you can search gas prices by area, state or major city.  You can also view a map of the entire US to see where gas is the cheapest. With the trip planner feature I was able to enter my start and end point and some details about my car and find out where the cheapest gas is along the way and about how much the trip will cost us. For example, gas is about 20 cents cheaper per gallon in Cumberland than our town, so we will only buy enough to get us there.  It is also an additional ten cents cheaper in Annapolis so we will be sure to have a full tank before we head home.

If you are traveling this weekend for a last summer hurrah, a beach trip (although Earl may have ended those plans on the East Coast), or maybe you are heading to Touchdown city to cheer on the Mountaineers, make sure you check out Gas Buddy first!

Safe Travels!

Birthday Party Breakdown part 2: Fun and Games!

If you haven't been following along here are a few birthday weeks posts you may want to check out too:

It's Birthday Week
Birthday Garland
and Birthday Party Breakdown Part 1

What would a birthday party be without a little fun and games! We had several fun things that went well with our rockstar themed party. 

I always think it is a good idea to have an activity prepared to do as the kids are arriving, so if a kid from soccer or football doesn't know your child's classmates they won't have to worry about feeling uncomfortable.  This year we made guitars!  I found these cool, decorate your own guitars at Oriental Trading.  At $9.99 a dozen they were reasonably priced and offered a great activity for the kids.

We also had a tattoo parlor, what rockstar doesn't have some ink?  The kids loved running over to get a new tattoo throughout the party. We simply took 2 TV tables, covered them with a sheet and made a sign.  My mom picked up the tattoos and some glitter hair spray at Wal-Mart for a few bucks and my friend Jenny was a trooper sitting there for 2 hours tattooing and glitter spraying  the kids over and over!
Here is our shop:

What's a party without music!  Since we were having a rockstar party we took the music a step further with a karoke machine and stage complete with a red carpet!  I borrowed the karoke machine from my mom, I am still trying to figure out why my mom has a karoke machine by the way.  As for the stage it was a simple DIY: three cinderblocks+ a thick piece of plywood+ a sheet and couple baloons = a rockin' stage:

The red carpet was a $1 red  tablecloth that we cut in half and tacked down. Here are the kids rocking out:

In this picture you can see the bleached shirt we made a few weeks ago for Quinn to wear to the party, remember these.

We weren't sure if the kids would be into it, but the were, BIG TIME! We played Kidz Bop and kid friendly music like Hannah Montana and Jonas.  We had many, many encore performances!  To add to the fun we also bought these inflatable guitars from Oriental Trading and put them in the pink bin near the stage, then each kid took one home!

Speaking of favors, this may be my favorite one ever!  Since Quinn insisted that she was too old to give out favor bags we went a bit different route: CD's.  We downloaded some of Quinn's favorite songs, burned them to CD's ($5.88 for 10 including the case at Walmart), created an album cover and inside song list and handed them out.  It was pretty cheap and the kids loved it,since it wasn't just kiddie songs I think a few adults snagged one too!
Take a look:

So there you have our fun and favors!  The kids enjoyed just running around the yard too, kids will be kids!
Here is the budget breakdown:
Color your own Guitars: $9.99 (but ours were free since a friend had some left over from a event and gave them to us!)
Inflatable Guitars: $9.99
Karoke Machine: Free!
Stage: FREE!
Tattoos : $3
Glitter Spray: $1
CD's $12
I forgot to include the cake supplies from yesterday, since I used a coupon for almost everything I made the huge cake for $8.

Today's total = $43.98
+ $54.69 from yesterday
=98.67! Yah, less than the $100 budget!

Hope you enjoyed birthday week as much as we did!