Monday Q&A | Smoothies, Shopping With Kids, and UK Conversions
Every Monday, I answer a few of the questions that my readers send me. If you have a question you'd like me to answer in a future Q&A post, just leave me a comment here or email me (thefrugalgirl [at] gmail [dot] com) and put Q&A in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you!
I notice you list smoothies in your menu plans just about every week - even in the winter. What types of fruit do you use in the winter when typical smoothie fruits (berries) become more difficult to find? We love smoothies and drink them quite often in the summer. I would love to figure out ways to have economical smoothies all year long.
-Jess
(I'm planning to do a more in-depth post on smoothies shortly, so stay tuned. More is coming!)
I rarely use fresh fruit in my smoothies...when I buy fresh fruit, especially summer fruit, we usually just like to eat it plain. I find that frozen fruit is the most cost-effective option for smoothies, and since frozen fruit is processed shortly after picking, it's quite possible that it is more nutritious than things like the winter strawberries that were picked a week before they arrived at your store.
Most any frozen fruit works fine, but I usually keep strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries around. Frozen pineapple also makes a tasty addition.
I do use fresh bananas in almost all of our smoothies (they add sweetness and creaminess), but those are generally inexpensive all year round, and I don't know that I've ever even seen packaged frozen bananas anyways. And of course, I use my homemade yogurt in almost all of the smoothies that I make.
Quick question- I know your kids are still really little, so do you feel like having them with you on your weekly shopping trips is a distraction, or is it okay? At what age do you think you'll feel comfortable leaving them home along for a little bit while you do errands? (I can't remember how old your eldest is, nor can I remember how old I was when my parents would let my older sister babysit me for short periods of time).
-Becky
Well, so far I haven't left any of them home alone. My oldest is 10.5, so I think it would be legal to leave him home alone. However, he's the least of my concerns when we go shopping (he's actually sort of helpful!), so I've never felt the urge to leave him behind.
I probably won't leave my kids home alone for quite a few more years...not until I feel confident that Joshua and Lisey can watch the younger two (that will depend upon their maturity level more than their age, so even when it's legal to leave them all at home, I may decide it's not time yet). And when I do start leaving them home alone, it will be for shorter outings than grocery shopping at first, as hitting Goodwill, Aldi, and Weis takes a while!
Currently, I take all four of them with me pretty much every time we go shopping. I'm so used to operating this way, it doesn't really faze me. And my kids are so used to shopping with me, they're accustomed to behaving themselves. Of course, even well-behaved children make shopping a little more difficult and distracting, but they don't make it impossible.
They really don't seem to mind coming along, and in fact, all four of them LOVE shopping at Goodwill. I think they'd be sort of sad if they missed out on that every week.
Based on how many "Are they ALL yours??" and "Wow, you have your hands full!" comments we get while we shop, I think it is sort of unusual to see a mom shopping with 4 kids, but to us, it's just normal. 🙂
(as a funny side note, which is even funnier given the discussion on the post about family size and environmentalism, I usually think of our family as being kind of small. This, I think, is due to the fact that some of my parents' siblings have 5-9 children, and also due to the fact that I grew up around homeschooling families, which tend to be on the large-ish side. So, it always seems odd to me that people think my family is unusually big.)
I'm in the UK a lot of the measurements that you use are alien to me as it is all in cups. I have looked up conversion rates and it seems to differ between a cup of liquid and a cup of sugar, a cup of flour etc... Do you have any advice for someone who really does not understand the cup measurement? Is one cup of liquid different to one cup of flour, and that is different to one cup of sugar or one cup of oats?
-Stephen
Someone who is more knowledgeable than me on this subject may pipe in, but I'll take a stab at answering this.
A US cup measures volume, not weight. So, a cup of flour weighs much more than a cup of corn flakes, and a cup of marshmallows is much lighter than a cup of butter.
Here are a few conversions that may come in handy.
1 cup butter = 8 ounces
1 cup flour = 5 ounces, or 150 grams
1 cup granulated sugar = 8 ounces, or 225 grams
1 cup oil = 7.9 ounces
1 cup milk = 8 ounces
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Readers, as always, feel free to add your answers to mine (especially if any of you live in the UK and are more familiar with conversions than I am!)
Google has an AWESOME calculator for conversions. If you type in 6 cups to ___ it will figure it out for you! 🙂 Just an FYI for Stephen.
Mom used to take all five of us shopping, and we're all within eight years of each other. She'd push one cart of grocieries and pull one with the younger two kids. She says people's heads bob when they count.
Many people stop me with my two kidberts and say *I* have my hands full! They ain't seen nothing yet! We're just getting started! I think public perception is that having kids is sooooo exhausting and overwhelming that if you are upright, dressed and out of the house with offspring, you have accomplished a major feat. And some days that is true!
Just a small correction - 1 cup of butter is 8 ounces.
Oh yes, thank you! That error could result in some disastrous baking! lol I fixed it.
1 cup of shredded cheese = 8 oz., at least if you buy shredded cheese. If you shred your own cheese, it tends to be stickier and might compact more easily, taking up less space in a measuring cup.
I love making smoothies with the yogurt I learned to make here. So far we've made a few combinations that have turned out yummy. Since it was Valentine's Day I was able to get strawberries on sale 2/$5 plus a $1.00 coupon. That resulted in strawberry, banana and chocolate smoothies. On a healthier side I have added vitamin powder and the smoothie hid it well. Also adding peanut butter, canned peaches (light syrup or water), and/or canned pears work really well when fresh fruit isn't available.
Good luck and get creative.
I just saw where you said you've never seen frozen bananas and I wanted to let you know that I saw them for the first time ever about 2 months ago in the freezer section of one of the larger grocery stores about an hour away from our rural town. I **thnk** that they are made by Dole. I've seen them at Walmart once or twice, too! Again I'm relying on my memory, which may be a bad thing but I'm pretty sure they were between $2.50-$3 per bag, but I have no idea how much was in each bag. That seems a tiny bit extravagant to me. Bananas are a pretty good bargain anywhere anyway, and yesterday my store finished a 3-day sale where the bananas were only $1 for 3 lbs. Find that kind of bargain andyou can just freeze them yourself 🙂
I just wrote a mini novel on bananas, I'm sorry :)) I have some All You cookbooks Im giving away, you should stop by and enter the contest. Of course, I doubt you need any cookbooks! You could probably write one yourself.
I'm in the UK, and originally used an online converter when following US recipes. This is a bit of a faff, so I just bought some cup measurements :o) They are widely available now in the UK.
If someone didn't want to buy any (although I use mine a lot now- a lot of the blogs I follow are American) it's quicker to stick with volume measurements and know that one cup = 250ml, 1/2 cup = 125ml, etc and use a measuring jug and spoons, rather than keep converting to weight measurements.
It's also worth noting that a US pint is less than an Imperial (British) pint, and that the US quart (2 US pints) is not the same as a British quart (a measurement that we rarely use in the UK- very few people under 50 would know it's 2 British pints, I think). (Just in case anyone is catering on a large scale, it makes the US and UK gallons different too!)
Thanks for a great blog. I discovered it a week or so ago, and have been lurking since!
When I have a bit of fruit that's about to go bad I add it to the stash in the freezer. When the mood strikes I make a smoothie from it. I grew up making all-fruit smoothies from whatever we had on hand - berries of course, but also peaches, apples, oranges, melon, pineapple, and we never minded a little skin in the mix - so it'll be interesting to see what goes into a long post on the subject.
I think it is wonderful that you take your kids grocery shopping and plan to continue that in the future. It is a parent's job to raise responsible adults and part of being a responsible adult is knowing how to go grocery shopping. I remember shopping one day and seeing a mom teaching her daughter about how to look for the best deals on food and I thought that was great.
I agree. I also believe it is a great place to teach my children "NO" or how to turn off impulse buys. Of course stores are set up to tempt you in to purchases so they can stay in business, but I use it as a time to teach smart shopping and controlling impulses. I have them use their own money or show them how much money I have in my envelope and educate them on budgeting.
I freeze a lot of fruit in the summer and use them for smoothies, pies, in oatmeal, and other things all winter long. I do blueberries, strawberries, and peaches.
Thanks for the tips on cups! Knowing it is volume and not weight it all suddenly makes a lot more sense! I did start using google to convert, but when I noticed 1 cup of sugar was different to 1 cup of butter.... off to look at Lakeland's (UK kitchen shop) website for some US cups, it's the only way, lol!
Take your children shopping? We have two twin boys, aged six, they love shopping and helping! Non stop talking though...
LOL! My youngest DD is 6 and I get a running commentary if I take her shopping....
If you're going to use US recipes regularly it's worth getting some measuring cups- much less hassle.
You can also add spinach and turn them into green smoothies, yum!
I really enjoyed the website-i'll be back!
Love your website, saw you this morning on TV. A couple of my own tips. . if you use low fat/fat free milk in yogurt, you can add powdered milk to the milk before you heat it and it makes it thicker. Also, I don't know if anyone has a "Dollar Tree" close to them, but I found frozen mixed berries(16oz), strawberries (16oz), and blueberries (10oz) there for $1. Also, if you ever have bananas that are overripe you can peel them and put them in a plastic bag to freeze and use later in baked goods or smoothies.
I find that frozen pineapple doesn't begin to resemble the taste of fresh. Usually you can buy a whole pineapple for around $3 and cut it up yourself. It lasts much longer in the fridge than I ever need it to! Also, I like to slice up overripe ( about two days after the black spots develop) bananas and freeze individually. Then I put them in a zip lock. These make great snacks or additives to the smoothies. Delicious! Bananas are never wasted at my house!
I put my bananas in the freezer still in the peel. When I want to use them for banana bread or smoothies I put them in the fridge a few hours beforehand (in a grocery bag with a paper towel to absorb any defrosting moisture.) Then I just rip the bottom of the banana peel and it slides out. The banana's so soft it's super easy to mash and there's no cutting or wasting ziploc bags and my banana bread has never been better!