I’ve shared 2 recipes that are perfect for your winter meal plan over on SCJohnson.com recently!

• Beef Roast with Winter Vegetables
• Tortellini Soup

Bon Appetit!

If buffalo wings could be made into soup form, this is it!

Chicken. Spice. Celery. Blue Cheese.

Seriously. Yum!

I decided to double this recipe…some for us to enjoy at home, and some to take a potluck this past week. I only made a slight change to the recipe that I served my family…I added half as much of the red hot pepper sauce. I didn’t want the kids to complain, or have red hot lips and tongues. And I took another pot to a potluck, made as directed.

There was nothing. And I mean nothing left in the pot. I brought a little tub of blue cheese and printed out a simple instruction card so people would know to add a spoonful (or two, or three) of blue cheese to their little bowl.

I will be making this again for the Super Bowl…it’s seriously like wings in a bowl! And would be perfect for game day…or any weeknight for that matter!

(And don’t forget to load ingredient e-coupons to your Kroger (and affiliates) Plus card!)

And there’s more!

I want you to try to give every night a new flavor too…so we’re giving away the following this week!

• $25 Kroger gift card
• Recipe cards
• A variety of ConAgra products needed to create the recipes

Enter to win and you’ve got a few meals ready for your family to try!

Giveaway Details – {Closed! Congrats to Sharon, our winner!}

1. Contest ends Friday at 9 pm EST. Winners will be announced back here on this post, and notified via email with further instructions.

• Entry #1: Visit Give Every Night New Flavor, then share what recipe you think will be your next family favorite.
  
• Entry #2: Like Kroger on Facebook, or follow on Twitter.
• Entry #3: Sign up for free email updates, or RSS posts from $5 Dinners.

5. Winner will be selected by Random.org.

**NOTE: If you receive the email newsletter and wish to enter this giveaway, click on the title of this giveaway to get to the site and leave a comment on the site with your name and email address to be entered!

*Disclosure: This is part of a sponsored campaign on behalf of Kroger and ConAgra foods. Opinions are my own. It really did taste like buffalo wings soup. And the potluck pot really was empty! More recipes and giveaways coming next week!

Last week I shared my idea for Sister Schubert’s Soft Pretzel Rolls (Spicy Turkey Cranberry Pretzel-wiches), and today I’m sharing my idea for the new Mini Baquettes.

Eating the mini-baguettes straight out of the oven, slathered with butter or garlic butter isn’t a bad idea at all. They will melt in your mouth when you eat them that way, and you’ll have a hard time eating just one. They would also make perfect sandwiches or paninis. But I decided to go all comfort food on them.

I have a special place in my heart for French Onion Soup…I make it for myself from scratch several times throughout the winter months. I’ve shared my favorite recipe in my Breakfast and Lunch Cookbook.

For this you could use a canned or boxed French Onion Soup (or make your own!)…then just slice up the Sister Schubert’s Mini Baguettes, dip them into the soup, covering both sides. Then top with a slice of Swiss cheese. Run it under the broiler or microwave on high for 1 minute, allowing the cheese to melt. Let cool slightly, then serve.

This bread does a fantastic job of soaking up the french onion soup, and every. single. bite was perfect!

Enjoy!

Here’s another warm and cozy chili for you to enjoy this winter. A spin on my Chicken Posole.

Enjoy!

::: Download the FREE $5 Dinners Toolbar – never miss a recipe, coupon, deal or meal plan! Learn more. :::

__________________________________________________

Have a Frugal and Healthy Recipe to share?

Post the recipe on your blog and then add the link below. Other guidelines can be found here. To make it easy for other readers to find your recipe, please leave the link that leads directly to your recipe post. Any links that lead to your homepage will be deleted. If you don’t have a blog, feel free to leave your recipe in the comments section!

Photo Credit

We’ve talked an awful lot about sweet edible holiday treats this week…so I thought I’d throw in a savory option too!

• Multigrain Chicken Soup
• Rainbow Bean Soup
• Texas 2 Step Soup

We’d love for you to share your favorite homemade soup mix recipe! Feel free to leave a link in the comments…

I adore butternut squash soups. I recently decided to make some with a few of the squash that I found on sale for $.59…

ended up with this Triple Squash Soup. You must try it…it’s worth every second of preparation!

Oh. My. Wow.

It may seem early to be thinking about how you are going to use your Thanksgiving leftovers since you probably haven’t even bought your turkey yet. But the best way to make sure that your leftovers don’t get pushed to the back of the refrigerator is to have a plan for how you are going to use them up.

On Thanksgiving night, I clean the meat off the turkey and place the turkey bones in the slow cooker to make turkey broth. The next morning I wake up to delicious turkey broth and have the base for several delicious recipes.

The best way to ensure your family doesn’t get tired of leftovers is to create new and surprising flavor combinations with your leftovers. If you just reheat turkey and mashed potatoes they will probably get bored, but if you use the mashed potatoes in a Pierogi Casserole and the turkey in Curried Turkey Salad or Lasagna Soup they will probably forget that they are eating leftovers.

::: Download the FREE $5 Dinners Toolbar – never miss a recipe, coupon, deal or meal plan! Learn more. :::

Butternut squash is such a lovely squash. It’s simple to prepare, needs little adornment, and totally delicious. The gorgeous orange color is a celebration of sorts of the glory of autumn. I like it in soup.

This soup features butternut squash in a top 8 free, vegan way. It’s a savory soup with just a touch heat and natural sweetness from the squash itself.

We’ll start by chopping a butternut squash in half. Make sure to use a sturdy knife!

Roast the squash until soft.  Scoop all of the flesh out into a small bowl.

Now we’re ready to get this soup going!

Our feeding the larger family ways will help you feed a crowd and take a break during the holidays!

October is potato month for me for several reasons. Not only are potatoes frugal and can be served in a variety of ways, but October is right up next to November and December. October is the month I pile the potatoes in the freezer­ – freeing me up at holiday time. Potatoes feed a crowd and fill tummies for the holidays and every day.

I pick one Saturday for what I call a Big Cook. I cook potatoes and oversee the children packing Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes and making homemade wrapping paper (using designs cut into potatoes, of course!). Everyone is busy.

White potatoes:

It’s a batch cooking session of great poundage. With 20 pounds of white potatoes I make freezer mashed potatoes with these in mind:

• Thanksgiving
• Sunday family dinners
• Christmas gatherings (in my experience the freezer potatoes are perfectly delicious having been saved in the deep freeze. Not grainy at all. Might also be the sour cream!)
• Busy weeknights – take a pan to the holiday party

If I plan ahead I prewash all those potatoes on the rinse cycle like Happy Housewife does so I can avoid standing at the sink for so long. I use this recipe for freezer mashed potatoes, boiling the white potatoes on the stove because I’m using the slow cooker for supper. I quadruple the recipe for my 20 pounds, making (8) 8×8 pans or (4) 8×10 or combination thereof.

It’s such a blessing to be able to just pull delicious, homemade mashed potatoes out of the freezer. Because that time of year I’d much rather be baking and enjoying than peeling potatoes and boiling.

Red potatoes:

On the same Saturday I’m mashing, I’m also serving. Over in the slow cooker I put together our supper. Homemade potato soup for that night. Because after peeling 20 pounds of potatoes I’m not much going to relish fixing supper. So I leave the peels on these red potatoes. And I’ll sure appreciate comfort food in savory potato soup for supper. Plus, I double this recipe so it makes enough for all of us and leftovers for another meal.

::: Download the FREE $5 Dinners Toolbar – never miss a recipe, coupon, deal or meal plan! Learn more. :::

Frugal and celebratory. Cheap and filling.

Join me for an October Potatofest?

This was always my favourite soup as a child and continues to be one of my favourites! It is fast, easy and inexpensive to make.

Serving Size: 8

Ingredients

1 tablespoon oil
2 stalks celery, finely diced
2 medium carrots, finely diced
1 medium onion, finely diced
3 cloves garlic, finely diced
4 large or 6 small potatoes
1/2 cup dried mushrooms, broken up
1/2 teaspoon marjoram
3 cups chicken stock
7 cups water
salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons flour

Directions

In a pot on the stove, heat the oil and add the finely chopped vegetables (except the potatoes). I usually do this in large batches and freeze cubes of the cooled vegetable mixture for use in soups, stews, etc. That is what I did here (the squares wrapped in plastic).

Once the vegetables are soft, add the water to the pot.

Cut potatoes into cubes, add to the water in the pot. Add veggies (if they are frozen into cubes), the marjoram, the salt and the pepper. Bring to a boil.

Meanwhile, soak broken up mushrooms in 1 cup of hot stock. Add to soup.

Boil until tender.

Make a slurry: add the flour to cold water and stir until smooth. Slowly add hot liquid (from the soup) to the slurry to bring the slurry to a similar temperature as the soup. Add this mixture to the soup. If you add the flour (or cornstarch) to hot water, you will get lumps, if you add the cold slurry to the hot soup, you will also get lumps.

Boil for five minutes.

Serve now or tomorrow. This, like many soups and stews, is even better when reheated the next day.

Frugal Tip

Create a gift box, a place to store gifts for birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries, etc. Throughout the year, pick up items for the gift box as you come across appropriate items, especially if they are on sale and you know they will be liked and will fit (you will probably not be able to return them months from now). This allows you to really shop around for the best deals and to spread your gift purchases over the whole year, making it less exhausting, easier to budget and easier to find bargains as you come across them.