This New York Times article from fall 2011 shed some light on a huge issue…feeding your family healthy food on a small budget.  I am queen of coupons, but realized long ago that while there are coupons for produce, they are few and far between.  When the Chocolate Girl turned two, I planted my first garden.  I wanted her to have the experience of eating food fresh from the garden and I also wanted to learn to feed my family without relying solely on the grocery store.  We have grown a small garden each year since, and this year, I have decided to learn to can, so I have a goal of growing enough food to “put up” by canning or freezing so that we can eat what we have grown throughout the year.

I am in the beginning stages of planning our 2012 garden, but plan on planting some seeds this weekend so that I can transplant them after the last frost.

I’M not interested in being hip or a hippie. Nor does my happiness particularly hinge on artisanal cheese. (Odd, perhaps, given that I grew up a stone fruit’s throw away from Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif.)

As a 42-year-old Brooklyn mother of three, what I care about is lunch, and feeding my family on a tenuous and unpredictable income. And so I have 20 fresh-egg-producing hens and a little garden that yields everything from blackberries to butternut squash to burdock root.

My turn with spade and hoe started a few years ago when I found myself divorced and flat broke. My livelihood as a freelance writer went out the window when the economy tanked. I literally could afford beans, the dried kind, which I’d thought were for school art projects or teaching elementary math. And I didn’t know how to cook.

Luckily, my late father had hammered into me that grit was more important than talent. So, when I couldn’t afford fancy food — never mind paraben-free shampoo — for my babies, I figured, if peasants in 11th-century Sicily did all this, how hard could it be?

I researched how to raise hens from chicks so we could get our omega-3-filled eggs. I learned to stretch a single piece of cheap meat into nearly a week’s worth of dinners. I made my own cleaning products. Not because I liked it. Because it was cheap.

My goal was to have healthy, unprocessed food for $10 or less a day. Cereal was the first thing to go. It dawned on me that making granola was a matter of tossing oatmeal and nuts into a bowl with a little oil, honey and spices — and then baking until brown. No more $14 boxes of fancy grains with pomegranate antioxidants.

Bread wasn’t hard either; it was just a drawn-out procedure. Yeast, water, a little honey, salt, whole wheat flour, and assorted seeds. Mix; wait for rising; knead; wait; knead; wait; bake. I made batches and froze them. So long, Eli Zabar’s 10-buck Health Loaf. Hi there, homemade loaf for less than $1. I soon realized that it’s not necessary to follow every recipe to a T, particularly if it calls for expensive items. For example, if a recipe called for red wine, I used diluted balsamic vinegar, or even apple cider vinegar and a wee bit of honey mixed with water. If the recipe called for saffron I used turmeric, which is cheap in bulk at Patel Brothers in Jackson Heights, Queens. And I always added twice as much garlic to everything.

Read the rest here

Furniture has a ridiculously high mark up with a super low resale.  Over the years, I have found some amazing deals at yard sales, Craigslist and from Mema (The Grandmother) and Umi’s (The Mommy) house.  If you are just starting out, looking to remodel or just spruce things up a bit, this article has some awesome ideas on acquiring furniture on a super low, free and even FREE.99 (and those who know me know that FREE.99 is my favorite price).

Check out how someone furnished their whole home for $716.97….Get into it under the jump.

Go Here

Welcome to the Mocha Cheap Chick…

I am so pleased that you are here and happy to make your acquaintance.  For those of you who followed this blog before, I am glad that you have returned and look forward to providing you with newsworthy and fun content that will help you “Live Lavishly For Less”!!!

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!