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July 2016

Canadian Recipes/ Featured

Easy French Toast

Easy French Toast

It’s the long weekend! My favourite things about weekends, and especially long weekends, are sleeping in and enjoying leisurely breakfasts. On weekday mornings, I’m always in a rush to get up and get ready for work that I don’t have time to enjoy my breakfast before rushing off. I’m usually scarfing down a bowl of cereal or some yogourt and my homemade granola as I’m throwing things into my bag for lunch. So when the weekend hits, I really enjoy the relaxing opportunity to put together a nice breakfast.

One of my favourite easy breakfasts to make on the weekend is French toast. Now, growing up in a Vietnamese household we never had French toast for breakfast, so it wasn’t until my adult years when I had moved out that I started experimenting with different French toast recipes.  I found that a lot of French toast recipes out there made enough of the milk/egg mixture to feed an army! After making my breakfast, I always felt horribly guilty about the excess liquid that I was dumping down the sink. After much experimenting, I’ve finally settled on the perfect recipe that makes enough for a breakfast for two (about six pieces of bread).

Helpful tip: When dipping your bread into the milk/egg mixture, you only need to dip it briefly! I made the mistake once of thinking I had to completely soak the bread in the liquid…needless to say, no matter how long I cooked it, the inside of the bread was soggy. And no one likes bread with a soggy, raw egg and milk centre! So remember all you need to do is:  dip, flip, dip, drip!

Serve your French toast with some fresh fruit, and a little powdered sugar on top and enjoy the weekend!

Easy French Toast

Print Recipe
Serves: 2 Cooking Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • A pinch of salt
  • 1/2 tbsp sugar
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 6 slices of bread
  • Butter

Instructions

1

Whisk together the egg, milk, salt, sugar, vanilla and cinnamon in a baking dish.

2

Dip the bread slices into the mixture, quickly coating both sides, and letting the excess liquid drip off. (Dip, flip, dip, drip!)

3

Melt butter in a large skillet or on a griddle, just enough butter to lightly coat the surface. Place bread slices in the skillet or on the griddle and cook until golden brown on each side, about 2-3 minutes on each side.

4

Sprinkle some powdered sugar on top and serve with fresh fruit or bacon.

July 29, 2016 By
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Frugal Tips

My Favourite Couponing App Ever – Checkout51!

If you’ve known me for any length of time, then chances are good that you’ve heard me rave about the app Checkout51.

Checkout51 is an online couponing app that allows you to claim cashback on certain purchases. Every Thursday, Checkout51 is updated with a new list of offers. If you purchase any of the items that are on the list of offers that week, you just need to upload your receipt by taking a picture of it, and the specified cashback amount is added to your account. You need to upload your receipt for that week before midnight on Wednesday, because once the next week’s list of offers is out, you can’t claim an old receipt from last week anymore. Once you hit $20 in your account, you can cash out and they mail you a cheque!

I have the app on my iPhone but I think it’s available for Androids as well.

Now I can already anticipate some of your questions and doubts:

The offers are probably for things that I wouldn’t normally buy in the first place. 

Not true! Checkout51’s list of offers include a lot of commonly used household items as well as food products. You can go online at www.checkout51.com and see what the current offers are right now.  But as an example, I’ll show you the offers that I took advantage of this week.

Checkout51 offers

 

It’s just a scam. As if they would send you a cheque that easily. 

They absolutely send you a cheque that easily. Here is my cheque for $28 that I received the other day.

Checkout51 cheque

I received this cheque in the mail within two weeks of me cashing out. Sadly, I did not do anything exciting with the money. I went for a walk at lunch, cashed the cheque at the bank, and then bought myself a bottle of prenatal vitamins as I had just run out the night before.

It’s not worth my time. 

Taking a picture of your receipt and uploading it to Checkout51 takes less than a minute, I promise. I often snap a picture of my receipt while sitting in the parking lot of the store before driving away.

Since joining Checkout51 about two years ago, I’ve earned $223! That’s nothing to sneeze at!

Checkout51 Total Earned

Unless otherwise specified, you can combine your use of Checkout51 with paper coupons as well. Just a couple of weeks ago, I bought a bag of dishwashing tabs at Walmart for $4.94. I had a $3 off coupon and a $1 cashback on Checkout51, so the bag of 20 dishwashing tabs cost me $0.94! I was very excited about this, as evidenced by the text to my husband.

Checkout 51 text

 

He’s usually not that excited about my couponing, I think he was being sarcastic.

At the risk of sounding dorky, I will admit that I am excited every Thursday morning to open my Checkout51 app to see what the new offers are. Sometimes I even check the app first thing in the morning before I roll out of bed.

Does anyone else love this app as much as I do? If you’re not using it, what are you waiting for? Download the app from the App Store and give it a try. I’d love to hear about the deals that you get too!

(And no, this is not a sponsored post. I just love Checkout51 that much!)

July 28, 2016 By
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Canadian Recipes/ Featured/ Frugal Tips

Healthy and Frugal Granola Mix

Homemade granola mix

I spent July long weekend visiting with my sister and her spouse in Calgary. My brother in law is a very healthy eater, so one day at breakfast I asked if he had any granola that I could have with my yogourt. “I am glad you asked!” he exclaimed, and then proceeded to pull various bags of seeds and other ingredients out of a cupboard to make me his special granola mix. (We actually call this “John’s Granola Mix” in our household!) I was super impressed with his delicious mix, as it contained many ingredients that this pregnant lady needed – chia seeds, hemp hearts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds – great sources of fibre, omega-3’s, folic acid and magnesium.

Upon coming home to Regina, I wanted to recreate this granola mix but I didn’t want to break the bank by buying individual bags of chia seeds, hemp hearts, etc. So I decided to take a trip to Bulk Barn to see if I could compile all of the ingredients at a lower price. And it was a success! For about $17 I was able to make two jars full of the granola mix. I bought one level scoop of every ingredient and that made two jars.

Homemade granola mix

Frugal tip: Bulk Barn often has coupons in their paper flyers for $3 off any purchase over $10. Keep your eyes open for this coupon in your flyers and you can make this granola mix for even cheaper!

Bulk Barn coupon

This granola mix is such a timesaver for busy weekday mornings when I’m in a rush to get to work. Just throw a couple spoonfuls into a bowl with some yogourt and fruit, and you have a quick, healthy, and filling breakfast. My husband at first mocked this granola mix and asked if I was making bird seed, but now he is taking a little container of it to work every day to eat with his yogourt!

Cheap and Easy Homemade Granola Mix (aka John's Granola Mix)

Print Recipe
Serves: Makes 2 large jars Cooking Time: N/A

Ingredients

  • 1 scoop pumpkin seeds, preferably roasted and unsalted
  • 1 scoop sunflower seeds, preferably roasted and unsalted
  • 1 scoop chia seeds
  • 1 scoop hemp hearts
  • 1 scoop shredded coconut, sweetened
  • 1 scoop granola (I bought the honey almond kind)

Instructions

1

Mix all the ingredients together and store in pretty hermetic or mason jars.

2

Enjoy a couple spoonfuls with yogourt and fresh fruit for a quick and healthy breakfast or snack!

July 24, 2016 By
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