Biscuit Ravioli
Tasty Tuesday Recipe
This meal is one of our favorites. I got the recipe from my mom, and I don’t know where she got it. I’ve changed it a bit over time to make it easier, and it’s one that can easily be adapted to fit your particular tastes.
Ingrediants:
• 1 package Grands Biscuits, 8 count (we use the reduced fat ones)
• 1 jar of pasta sauce or equivalent amount of sauce (I think it’s about 26 oz, but I could be wrong)
• ½ cup cottage cheese—small curd works best
• 1/3 cup ricotta cheese
• ½ cup mozzarella cheese
• Spices like garlic powder, oregano, basil, Italian seasoning, etc.
Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 375.
2. Heat the sauce. I like to add extra spices to mine. Doctor yours as desired. Heating the sauce helps the biscuit raviolis to cook better.
3. Roll out the biscuits. I find this works best with a rolling pin. You want them about ¼ inch thick.
Rolling out the dough for biscuit ravioli
4. Mix all of the cheeses together. I add about 1 tablespoon combined of garlic powder, black pepper, oregano, basil, rosemary, and thyme. Use whatever flavors your family likes.
5. Put a heaping spoonful of the cheese mixture in the center of each biscuit. Try to avoid getting it on the edges because it makes it hard to seal. Fold each biscuit over and seal the edges with a fork. Flip it over and seal the edges on the other side with a fork, too.
Fill the biscuit with cheese
6. Pour the hot pasta sauce into a 13×9 inch pan (I line mine with foil to make clean up super easy). Place the biscuits in the pan. If desired, you can then sprinkle the tops of the biscuits with more seasonings. I put garlic powder and some Italian seasoning on mine. Sometimes I use grated parmesan, too.
Place the biscuits in the sauce
7. Bake for 20-25 minutes until the biscuits are golden brown.
The emerge golden brown, tasty, and delicious
Serves 4
We like to add a salad to add some nutritional value to this yummy dish. Enjoy!
Mystery Shopping
Money Monday
A month or so ago, Lindsey and I were thinking of ways to make some money. One the ways she had me look into Mystery Shopping. At first I was skeptical and thought of those ads that said “you can make $75 a day as a mystery shopper,” I had always thought those ads sounded too good to be true and that no one really made money off of actual mystery shopping, but rather off of referrals… like a mystery shopping pyramid scheme.
Although I was skeptical, my concerns were somewhat put to ease when Lindsey sent me a link of someone evaluating mystery shopping services. I took one day out of a weekend and signed up with a few websites. I get a few emails a week from each of these websites, but had not done any assignments until one service actually called me. The worker on the other side of the line seemed really friendly and in need of someone to do a mystery shopping assignment. This mystery shopping assignment was for a dinner at Applebees. Because the only thing I like more than food is free food, I decided to take the assignment.
The way that mystery shopping works is you go to a restaurant – or other business, gas station, K-Mart, Lowes, etc. – observe what the assignment asks you to observe and then report on your observations. At Applebees I was supposed to observe how the bartender/server at the bar dealt with customers and how long certain aspects of the ordering and serving process took. Because this assignment involved a lot of different steps and questions, I found it very helpful to have my iPhone with me with the questions and steps near me to help keep time and fill out the survey when the server wasn’t close. For other assignments, you might be better off printing off the instructions and keeping them with you or turning the instructions into a shopping list to not make it noticeable that you are a mystery shopper.
In terms of payment, the company you are working with will tell you how much they are willing to reimburse you for as well as any additional compensation. The Applebees assignment was a reimbursement of a meal up to $25, I have seen a recruitment for a K-Mart assignment that has a compensation of $10 and then a $1 reimbursement. The compensation usually is based on how much work the assignment will take as well as how desperate the company you are evaluating is to be evaluated. To be reimbursed you usually need to either take a picture of the receipt or upload a copy of the receipt. Either way, it is important you keep a copy of your receipt.
I have had one problem when it comes to mystery shopping. This weekend I signed up to do a mystery shopping assignment for Papa John’s — my favorite pizza company. I was really looking forward to this assignment because 1) I was watching football 2) pizza goes great with football 3) I love pizza. However, when I went to order the pizza, I was informed that the Papa John’s I was assigned to was not the closest restaurant — by a tenth of a mile — and thus I could not deliver from the restaurant 1.5 miles away (I MapQuested the distance). Because of my address and that tenth of a mile, I was not able to complete the assignment or get pizza.
My recommendation is to find a site where someone is recommending a variety of sites. This way you are able to ask questions and possibly go back to this individual and let them know if the mystery shopping service seemed like a scam.
Grocery Savings
Super Savings on Savings Sunday (I really like alliterations!)
Yesterday was perhaps one of my most successful shopping days ever. I bought $109.86 worth of groceries for just $32.22! That’s a savings of 71 percent!
I usually avoid Marsh, a local, overpriced grocery chain, but when roasts are on sale, I venture in because the one advantage they have over Meijer, my usual grocery store, is they have better sales on roasts.
This week, though, they had an amazing sale on more than just roasts. On select items, they marked them down plus they were offering $5 off at the register for every 10 items of there “mega sale” products you purchased. Amazingly, the items they had on sale were actually items Josh and I use and had coupons for. I carefully went through the ad and my coupon collection and matched coupons for items listed.
Here’s what we got:
• 10 Healthy Choice frozen meals (this was my big saver because I had 2 coupons from the Healthy Choice Website for $5 off 5 meals, so I saved $10 just on these with coupons)
• 4 cans of Progresso soup
• 3 boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios
• 2 boxes of Green Giant frozen veggies
• 1 bag of Yoplait frozen smoothies (which I typically wouldn’t buy, but I had a coupon and was saving so much money, I thought it would be a nice treat for Josh and it boosted us to our 20th item, giving us another $5 off)
• 10 pounds of Russet Potatoes, not a “mega sale” item, but on sale for $1.88
• 4 boneless rump roasts for a total of 10.77 lbs at 1.98/lb. Three will go in the freezer, and one will be Monday’s supper.
I’m quite pleased with our purchases. They should last us quite a while, and it always makes me happy to save money, especially that much money!
Groceries
Money Saving Tips
Last Wednesday was a day of saving opportunities that easily could have been passed by. The day started with me working in my office (read that as laying in bed with the dogs) when the phone rang. It was the repairman from A&E about the dishwasher we had been having problems with.
When he arrived he asked how we were going to be paying for the service visit. When he said this, I worried a little as I was under the impression our landlord had taken care of payment when they made the reservation. I had tried making a reservation with A&E but gave up when I was told the machine was no longer under warranty. When he asked about the payment I told him that the landlord had told us it was under warranty which resulted in him calling his dispatch people. If you think it is bad when you have to call a call center, imagine how bad it would be if you needed to call a call center for your job and they hung up on you! After the dispatcher hung up on the repairman, I called the landlord. The landlord said that yes it was under warranty and gave me the confirmation number she was given as well as contract expiration date.
This was the first saving opportunity for the day and had our landlord not written down the confirmation number, the $150 service fee would have come out of our pocket. Usually when I call and receive a confirmation number I either simply pretend to write it down or write it down and lose the number amongst my messes. Luckily my landlord did not behave the same way.
The second saving opportunity arose when I was out running errands. Seeing how my wife has a full time job and I do not, I have become the errand-boy. One of the errands I needed to run was to get a new printer. While a quality printer-scanner-copier did come with the desktop computer we purchased two years ago, and it does still run, it will not recognize the refilled printer cartridges we would buy on eBay.
While printers are relatively cheap, the company makes their profit off the ink. I learned during my undergrad that companies that make printers (HP, Lexmark, etc.) are willing to actually lose money on making printers, but continue to make printers knowing they will make their money on cartridges. Because of this profit-making business, they sometimes set up their printers to not run if you try to replace the ink yourself rather than purchasing a new cartridge. Because our cartridges were not being read, things that would be automatically sent to print, such as coupons on coupons.com were not printing. We decided to get a new printer in order for these coupons to print so we could save money (paying for the printer with our savings in just a couple of months).
I told my troubles to the customer service rep at Best Buy and he recommended a printer-scanner-copier by HP that ran on their new 560 series of cartridges and told me how many pages per cartridge it was able to print. He also was unsure which printers would read replacement cartridges and which ones would not. I started to think, while yes this printer-scanner-copier does look pretty interesting, I don’t think I need all of those functions. What I really need is a printer that will have give me a high volume of pages printed per cartridge. I then decided that since our primary printing duties are documents and things in gray-scale, it would be a good idea to get a laser printer. The price of the HP printer with the bells and whistles the sales associate was trying to get me to buy was $250, the Brother laser printer was priced at $150. Even better, the toner cartridges for the Brother were the same price as the HP ink jet cartridges with the added benefit of being able to print three times as many pages as the ink jet cartridges.
After I had decided on the laser printer I used my iPhone to see if I could get the laser printer online. I checked eBay and I was able to get the same printer that was in the store for $50 cheaper with free shipping. Besides that $50 savings, the printer online also did not require a sales tax. If you are not as fortunate to have an iPhone or a phone with internet capabilities, you can still compare prices with eBay by texting the product information you are interested in buying to either Cha Cha (242242) or KGB (542542). Depending on your phone carrier, both services are free (check with their websites before your first use).
By simply writing down the confirmation number and passing up the bells and whistles we were able to save money that day as well as have the ability to save even more using a laser printer than if we were to stay with a ink jet printer that goes through cartridges like it were a kid with candy after Halloween! Keep in mind, you never know when you will need a confirmation number and you can always save money if you are willing to sacrifice.
Josh
How I Lost 20 Pounds in 2 Months
I walked.
Last April I was getting to the point where my pants barely fit. I refused to buy new ones (at least in a larger size), and I was tired of packing myself in them like a sausage in its casing. I’d tried exercise programs in the past, but my problem was I’d be really into it for a couple of weeks, but then, like most people, something would come up. I’d get sick, and I couldn’t handle the cardio. I’d get too busy for a week or so, and then I’d just forget to go back to whatever my current plan was. I depended too much on Josh, and it was hard for us to both be motivated at the same time.
Despite all of that, my plan still wasn’t for me to lose weight. I was content to be discontent and just deal with it because nothing else had worked for me. What really triggered me to start walking was a 5k for my aunt, who has MS. My aunt, uncle, cousins, and I, along with many of my aunt’s friends, were going to be walking in a 5k to benefit MS research in late April, and while I intellectually knew how far 5k was, I physically didn’t. I wanted to practice a few times because I was afraid that it would leave me exhausted and embarrassed.
I went to the store and bought a pedometer. Then I just started walking. With the pedometer, it was easy to see how much (or little) I walked. While before the pedometer, I found that I only walked 1-2 miles a day, I found that the 3.1 miles (5k) I was aiming for was no big deal. I found easy ways to add more steps to my day–I walked around my classroom more; between classes I’d do a lap around the building; take the long way to get somewhere; instead of carrying a whole load of something, I would do one thing at a time. All of those little steps added up, and without even intending to, I lost seven pounds in 2 1/2 weeks! I didn’t do any other exercising, and I didn’t change what I ate; in fact, I probably ate way too many calories–we were going out to eat far too often.
In May I decided to walk 125 miles. I tracked my miles every day on an excel document. It was tough, but I made it (barely). By the end of May, I had lost a total of 20 pounds.
Unfortunately, my motivation dropped over the summer. Josh and I got married out of state, and we spent a few weeks staying with his family, so Josh and I were in an environment where exercising and eating healthy were mocked. As a result, we kind of just let it fall to the side. Plus without the structure of school and having a set schedule, I found that I was not very productive. I’d go on occasional walks, but nothing like May or even April. So in that time I only maintained my weight, but that itself for me is a victory, because in the past, every time I lost weight, as soon as I stopped working hard at it, it immediately came back with some friends.
Now school’s back in session, and I’ve already lost 3 pounds. My goal is to have lost another 10-20 pounds by Christmas. I don’t want to set an exact number because now that most of my flab is off, it’s harder to lose weight, and while walking is easy enough, I’m not going to commit to a hardcore workout routine–I’m just too exhausted by the end of the day. Walking is great because I can incorporate it throughout my day. Plus more and more studies are coming out saying that walking is the best exercise you can do to lose weight–it keeps you moving, but it doesn’t cause you to work out so much that you’re exhausted and super hungry, which causes you to compensate by moving less and eating more.
I’d like to know what has worked (or what hasn’t work) for other people. Any motivation tips to share? Exercise ideas?
Lindsey
So here we are. . .
So here we are. It’s September 7, and it’s the first day of the rest of our lives. Cliche, I know, but we’ve decided it’s time for a change. We’ve been together five years in November, and in that time a lot of good things have happened, but we’ve also developed some bad habits (and continued ones we had before “us”), and now it’s time to change all of that!
We are now in control. We are taking control of our bodies, our money, our food, and our house.
We’ve both put on some pounds over the years, we’ve tried off and on since we’ve been dating to lose the weight, but then we’d get busy or get lazy, and that would stop. Last April I finally decide enough was enough, and I got moving. I’ve lost 25 pounds since then, and I’m still 22 pounds from my goal. Josh has started working hard the past couple of weeks. Hopefully he sticks with it. He wants to drop about 100 pounds in the next year.
Our money habits are something we’re trying to change, too. I’m a teacher, so I think it goes without saying that my income is not huge. Josh was a graduate teaching assistant last year, but he graduated in May, so obviously that income from teaching classes and the scholarships he had is gone. He’s struggled to find a job here; the economy sucks, and not many places are hiring. He’s working as an adjunct instructor at a community college, so he is getting some income, but we’ve experienced about a $10,000 pay cut this year. We’ve also got one car loan, increased insurance fees (his parents kindly gave us their old car when they got a new one, so we now have 2 cars to insure), and some credit card debt–nothing exorbitant, but had we been smarter with our money, it wouldn’t be there at all. We’re trying to manage our money and pay our bills without having to make dramatic changes to our lives. This will likely be the hardest part of all.
Food is a weakness for us, as you probably guessed when I mentioned we have weight problems. We both love food. Even worse, we both love to eat out, which has contributed to money problems. We’re trying to change so that we’re in control of food, rather than food controlling us, our money, and our weights. We’re cutting down how much we spend on food; we are going to avoid eating out as much as possible (I’d like to say we’ve cut it out altogether, but I know we wouldn’t be able to stick to that!). Josh is going to try to cook more (he’s still a beginner), and even though I’m tired when I get home, I’m going to suck it up and cook anyway. This will help us save money and eat healthy.
Our final challenge is getting control over our house, specifically all of our stuff that clutters the house. It’s not trashed or anything, but we do have stuff that doesn’t make it back to its appropriate home like it should, and in some cases, we have stuff that doesn’t have a home at all. We need to get rid of stuff, get more organized, and make a committment to put stuff away right away.
