Breakfast this morning was very simple. My youngest daughter loves the Teletubbies (which I find extremely irritating, by the way) so I delighted her by making cinnamon “tubby toast†in the shape of a circle, with a smiley face made out of raisins.

My six-year-old still secretly likes the Teletubbies too, so she insisted that I make her toast the same way. Served with bananas and orange juice, it was a big hit. My two-year-old, who we affectionately refer to as “Cakes,†actually ate 4 pieces! I have no idea where she puts it all!

The school lunch offering today was barbequed pork sandwiches. When Bee heard this, she held her nose and made retching sounds, so I took that as a sign that she wanted to bring her lunch. Today, I packed her a turkey sandwich, sliced, juice-packed peaches, chocolate pudding, and a thermos of skim milk. Our lunch today was leftover chili with crackers. We’re always very careful to use up leftovers, because we hate wastefulness! I personally really like it when we have leftovers, because it’s much easier to just reheat them than it is to prepare another meal.

After lunch, I started our supper of smothered pork chops in the slow cooker. My favorite grocery store has an outstanding meat counter, with really good sales. Last week, they had thick-cut, Iowa pork chops on sale for $1.99/lb, so I bought 4 to make this recipe. We don’t often eat pork, but we really enjoy this dish because the meat is extremely tender, and smothered in a rich, flavorful gravy. Creamy mashed potatoes are a perfect compliment to this dish, which can only be described as home-style comfort food!

Just a note about meat purchases:

To save money, I have a rule that I never purchase meat for more than $2/lb. When I see a good sale that meets this criteria, I buy in bulk and freeze the meat in my garage freezer. To effectively buy in bulk, it pays to have a chest freezer. Ours costs less than $8 a month to operate, and saves us much more than that. We use it to store garden surplus, bulk-purchased sale meats, large sacks of flour and grains, even chocolate chips and other baking supplies. You can purchase freezer organization bins to keep the cavernous space orderly, but they’re very expensive. I priced them for a freezer the size of ours, and the total cost was $56. Instead, I purchased six white, stackable, plastic storage crates, which we stacked in two columns of three.

The bottom two contain meats, the middle two contain fruits and vegetables, and the top two contain baking supplies, and other miscellaneous items. Our frozen bread and grains fit snugly around them. My husband cut the top two down, because they were slightly too big for the freezer door to close. This system cost $24, for a savings of $32.

Tonight, after supper clean-up, I got a package of bone-in chicken breasts out of the freezer to defrost for tomorrow. I always buy bone-in chicken breasts with skin, because I can regularly buy them for 99 cents/lb, which is much cheaper than boneless, skinless chicken breasts. I simply remove the skin with my kitchen shears, and cook them for 4-6 hours in the slow cooker. The meat is so tender that it just falls off the bone.

Someone once told me that bone-in chicken breasts aren’t actually cheaper, because you have to pay for the weight of the bones and skin. To put that theory to rest, I actually saved all of the bones and skin from a 5-pound package of chicken and weighed it. It weighed approximately one pound, so I recalculated the unit price, and determined that the only way boneless, skinless chicken breasts would be a good bargain is if I could buy them for $1.31/lb or less. Around here, the cheapest sale I can find is $1.69/lb. So, HA!

Yes, knowing stuff like that makes me happy. I’m just geeky that way.

(All recipes mentioned in this post can be found on my recipe blog, Economical Eats)

Thank you for opening your kitchen to us all this week, Heather.

If you are interested in participating as a guest blogger for this 3 Moms feature, please leave us a comment or send us an email at 3moms@happytobeathome.net. We are looking for a variety of women willing to open their kitchens for one week to all of our readers. You do not even have to have your own blog in order to participate.

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