Frugality...No one ever said it would be easy!!

I've made more work for myself , but I think in the long run it will be soooooo worth it!!!

So last week I posted that I had started bread dough to make my own Cinnamon Swirl bread to use in french toast I had planned for dinner. Well the verdict? WIN!!  Everyone loved it and agreed that no only would it be great in french toast but as regular toast as well!! Infact I plan on making some very soon again toasting it and smearing it with hm apple butter, oh man I can hardly wait!!

My other frugal accomplishment is hm lunchables!! I admit to buying them for my boys, when they are on sale, if I have a coupon or just out of time saving nessessity, but I haven't been able to afford them as of late. No sales and no coupons, make them out of my price range, and ya know even with sales and coupons they are still way too expensive and really not alot of food for my growing boys.  I've been packing their lunches and they were only getting the store bought lunchables maybe 2x a month anyway so I didn't think they missed having them as a treat but I was wrong. My oldest came home from school last week and said that one of his school mates had this pizza roll thing that kinda looked homemade but he wasn't sure if it really was but boy would it be great to have something like that in his lunch and could maybe I come up with something like that .... So..Yep you guessed it I did some internet searching and found a recipe and made up a batch. And they were so well recieved that I made up another batch yesterday. They haven't made it into lunch boxes yet, that test will come tomorrow but so far the ratings are good!!!

Regular lunchable that my boys like cost me something like 3.49-3.99 each, they come with a deep dish pizza, and do it your self toppings (approx. 2 tablespoons of shredded cheese, I think like 5 pepperonis, and approx. tablespoons of sauce) they also have 2 oreo cookies, a indv. pack of cheese nips type crackers and a small drink.

I was able to make 16  pizza rolls and it cost me 1 tablespoon of yeast, some granulated garlic, not quite a whole package of pepperonis and 8 cheese sticks, flour, salt, etc. I got 16 for less than I can buy 1 lunchable. For dipping sauce I use 1 can of tomato paste .44 and some seasonings, lets say a generous .75 total  but it has to be less than that. I also can purchase regular size boxes of  cheez it crackers at the discount store for 1.49 and then break them down into indv. size bags, I can make my own cookies, and the drink boxes I can get those at the discount store too and they are much healthier as they are the veggie/fruit fusion juices and they also cost me 1.49 for 8.

So lets do the math: if I assume the 16 pizza rolls cost me around 4.50 ( I paid 2.49 for a package of pepperoni but didnt' use it all, lets figure 1.00 for 8 cheese sticks and another 1.00 for yeast and flour I think I am being generous on numbers) The sauce cost me .75

Pizza rolls 4.50+.75= 5.25  assuming 2 rolls per serving 5.25/8= 0.66 per serving
Cheez its 1.49/8 = 0.19 per serving I can probably get way more than 8 baggies of cheezits out of a box so this would be cheaper too but just using 8 as a basis
I am going to say ..25 for cookies, I think this is very generous, but I have no idea as I've never priced them out but my recipe makes TONS so they gotta be a little bit of nothing once we've got a ton baked up.
Drink boxes 1.49/8= 0.19 per serving

Grand total .66+.19+.25+.19= 1.29 compared to 4.00 yeah I'll take it and its cheaper than even the icky school lunch which costs 2.20 and they come home starving because they won't eat most of it because they say its not any good. So score one for mom!!! Score big for the grocery budget!!! Not to mention my family LOVES homemade so TRIPLE Score!!!

So now that I've opened this "homemade" can of worms I've created more work for myself but both recipes were so stinking easy its not really all that much work and the benefits are MORE than worth a little of my time!!!