Frugalous

The holiday season is in full swing, money’s tight but you want to get together with your friends and family. After all that’s what the holidays are all about – good times with the people you love. I’ve come up with a list of ideas for parties and get togethers that won’t break the bank.

1. Tree trimming party – gather your friends and family around to help you decorate your tree. Serve hot apple cider and cookies and make sure you load up a bunch of great Christmas Carols on your stereo.
2. Sledding or skating party – invite the gang to meet you at your favourite sledding hill or ice skating pond for a couple of hours of fun. Have a snowball fight, make snow angels, remember how much fun snow can be.
3. Tree-cutting party – instead of buying your tree from a tree lot this year head out to the country to a Christmas tree farm and cut your own. Pack thermoses of hot chocolate and sandwiches and have a winter picnic while you’re out. This is especially fun if you have several families rounded up to go.
4. Board game night – invite a group of friends over to play some of those old favourites like Monopoly, Scattergories or Rumoli. A tray of cookies or sandwiches within easy reach and you’re all set.
5. Have a neighbourhood potluck – assign each household a course: appetizer, salad, soup, side dish, main dish, dessert.
6. Craft night – for those of you who love to craft and are trying to make last minute holiday gifts, get together with your like-minded friends to share few hours of crafting while you catch up with your friends.
7. Cookie exchange – gather up a bunch of friends, assign each a type of cookie (you don’t want everyone to make Snickerdoodles do you…. hmmm… or do you?), everyone makes enough of one type of cookie to swap with the others. This is a great frugal practise. Instead of buying ingredients for several types of cookies you only buy ingredients for lots of one.
8. Food exchange party- Why limit yourself to just cookies? Why not gather with friends and batch cook cabbage rolls, lasagana, stew, chili and other freezable make-aheads.

Feel free to add any of your own frugal yet fabulous holiday entertaining ideas in the comments below!

Today is day two of Frugal Upstate’s Thanksgiving Mini Series and today’s topic is desserts.

This simple cake is the most requested recipe I’ve ever made. Family and friends rave about it and it’s not only simple to make but frugal as well. Even people who don’t like carrot cake love this moist, luscious cake.

Chocolate Carrot Cake

2 cups of all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cup of sugar
1 cup of salad oil*
1/2 cup of orange juice
1/4 cup of cocoa
2 teaspoons of baking soda
1 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
zest of 1 orange
4 eggs
2 cups of  shredded carrots
1 cup flaked or shredded coconut
1/2 cup crushed walnuts (optional)

*I usually substitute 1 cup of unsweetened applesauce in place of the oil. It significantly reduces the fat but keeps the cake moist.

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Grease and flour Bundt pan. In large bowl, mix 10 ingredients at low speed until well blended, constantly scraping bowl with rubber spatula. Increase speed to high, beat 2 minutes, occasionally scraping bowl. Add in carrots, coconut, and walnuts. Spoon batter into pan. Bake 50 to 55 minutes until inserted toothpick comes out clean. Cool cake in pan 10 minutes; remove cake from pan. Cool completely.

The cake can be made up to 2 days ahead. Wrap well with cling wrap to keep it moist. It can also be kept in the freezer for up to a month.

Drizzle Icing

1/2 cup sifted icing sugar
1 tsp orange juice
1/4 tsp vanilla

In a small bowl sugar, juice, and vanilla. Stir in enough additional juice to make a drizzling consistency. Drizzle icing from the back of the spoon onto the cake and allow to run down the sides.

You can garnish the cake with a sprinkle of icing sugar on top, or well drained mandarin orange slices.

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One of my favourite lunches is the often overlooked egg salad sandwich. Both of my kids have always loved egg salad and I try to keep things interesting by changing it around. Depending on where you live a dozen large eggs can be bought for anywhere from $1 to $4 which makes the humble egg salad sandwich well within our frugal budget.

Depending on how you like your egg texture (chunky or fine) you can either smash the eggs by hand with a fork, by grating on a box grater, or by pulsing 2-3 times in your food processor. I usually cook up 12 to 18 large eggs and mix up a large bowl of egg salad to keep on hand in the fridge for lunches and snacks.

To keep things interesting you can make your egg salad sandwich on multigrain bread, bagel, bun, english muffin, stuffed inside a pita pocket, wrapped in a whole wheat tortilla, wrapped in a large lettuce leaf, or even stuff the egg salad into a hollowed out tomato or sweet pepper half.
I make my sandwiches with lettuce and often a thin slice of tomato or cucumber or a slice of cheese.

My basic egg salad has eggs, mayo, a dash of dijon mustard, finely diced celery and finely sliced green onion with a dash of pepper.

Variations:
1. Curried egg salad – instead of dijon mustard I use a pinch or two of packaged curry powder – you can omit the celery and green onion or leave in for extra flavour 2. Carrot egg salad – I replace the celery and green onion with grated carrot and a few sunflower seeds. Omit the mustard or replace with a sweet honey mustard.
3. Cucumber egg salad – I replace the celery and green onion with finely diced cucumber and replace the mustard with a dash or two of ranch dressing.
4. Pesto egg salad – replace the mustard with a teaspoon of pesto sauce. Omit the celery and green onion.
5. Dilled egg salad – replace the mustard, celery and green onion with diced dill pickle or dill pickle relish.
6. Relish egg salad – replace the mustard, celery and green onion with your favourite relish – try a sweet corn relish or onion relish.
7. Hummus egg salad – replace the mayo and mustard with hummus
8. Olive egg salad – replace the celery and green onion with finely diced green olives
9.  Bacon and egg salad – replace celery with some crumbled bacon or bacon bits. Omit mustard.
10.  Cheesy egg salad – replace mustard and green onion with the shredded cheese of your choice: swiss, cheddar, asiago, etc.
11. Ham and egg salad – replace celery with finely diced cooked ham
12. Sundried tomato and egg salad – replace mustard, celery and green onion with finely diced sundried tomato
The variations on egg salad are virtually endless. What are some of your favourites?