Four Cheese Macaroni

I hate the taste of cheese, but I enjoy eating cottage cheese and cheesecake! But my hubby loves mac and cheese, so I decided to give a try by using a recipe I found on www.allrecipes.com . When my husband sat down to eat dinner, I couldn’t wait to hear the verdict. My unbelievably picky husband loved my homemade macaroni and cheese. Yay…even though I never tried my creation, I was still a happy camper!

Ingredients:

1 tbs vegetable oil
16 ounce package of elbow macaroni
1 stick of butter
2/3 c. shredded mozzarella cheese
2/3 c. shredded cheddar cheese
2/3 c. shredded sharp cheddar cheese
2/3 c. shredded Monterey jack cheese
2 c. of half-and-half
8 ounces cubed Velveeta cheese
salt to taste

Cook pasta for 8 minutes until al dente. Once pasta is cooked, drain it and return back to the pot.

Melt butter and mix it in pasta

In a separate bowl mix cheese

Add half-and-half and 1 c. cheese mixture to macaroni and mix well.

Transfer pasta mixed with cheese mixture to a well greased casserole dish. Sprinkle remaining cheese on the top of pasta and get ready to bake at 350F for 30 minutes.

Every 10 minutes take the dish out and stir very well until Velveeta cheese is mixed well with pasta.

It's magic

We were blessed with a rent free house. We didn’t have to furnish the house, but we chose to put our own couch and a chair along with other minor decorations. With Pier 1 gift cards we purchased our own kitchen table, but decided to keep it in the box and use the table that the house already had.

One year my husband gave me flowers for my birthday and I displayed them on the kitchen table. Next to the vase I had several papers with my signed name. So you can imagine my surprised face, when I came home and saw a big mess on the table. Apparently the vase couldn’t hold the flowers and it fell over spilling the water all over the signed papers. When I picked up the papers, I noticed that my name was now imprinted on the table.

My heart was beating fast and I was wondering how in the world I am going to get rid of the mess. I remembered that not too long ago I used Magic Eraser to clean up some marks on the door, so I decided to try the Magic Eraser to get rid of the ink on the table. Believe it on now, but in a matter of a minute my name was no longer on the table. I felt relieved!!!

Since that incident I have used Magic Eraser for cleaning white cabinet, doors, sink, you name it. Have you used Magic Eraser?

It is time to declutter

I absolutely hate taking pills! Unless I have excruciating headache, which does not happen too often, I will not take Tylenol for minor headaches. The day that I decided to clean out our cabinet, I was surprised at how many bottles of medicine we had. Well, perhaps we had so many bottles was because I went overboard with free items when I first started to coupon.

If I do decide to take Tylenol, I am on a mission to search through what feels like hundreds of bottle of medicine. When I finally do find the right bottle, my headache by that time usually 10 times worst, because of all the searching that I had to do. So it was time to de-clutter.

I began to look at the expiration date on the bottles and was shocked when I found out that many bottles expired in 2009. Ooops! One by one the bottles began to fill up the trash can. Once I cleaned the shelf with medicine, I decided it was time to move on to spices.

Since I do not use too many spices in my cooking, I needed to clear up the shelf. I had about 10 bottles of spices that have never been opened and were acquired just because they were free. So I figured I can take all 10 bottles to work and share with my co-workers.

In less than 30 minutes both medicine and spice shelves were de-cluttered and I was able to actually see items that I use the most. So my friend, what are you waiting for? The best way to de-clutter is to actually get rid of items that you no longer use.

I am on vacation!

It has been wonderful to not worry about school work this week, however it has been most wonderful to finally go on a vacation and have time off from work and home responsibilities.

This week we are spending time at Hilton Head with my American family. I came up with a brilliant idea to take this week off from blogging and posting money saving tips. It is my hope that you understand my break this week and my desire to spend time with my family.

I love looking for house decorations while enjoying my vacation

We are on vacation right now and it feels wonderful! Beautiful weather, good food and family time have been so relaxing that I really would like to extend our vacation for a month or so. I am sure my boss at work would be keen about my idea.

One of the simplest things that I have been enjoying is TV. OK…I know sounds silly, but because we don’t have TV at our home, it has been fun watching home decorating shows with my American mom. Perhaps my favorite room that I can’t wait to decorate when we have our own house would be kitchen. Maybe I feel this way because I spend a lot of time in there trying to master bread baking techniques along with creating other yummy recipes.

So the decorating shows led me at night to search for different items online…I also must admit that I have really enjoyed having access to internet! I began my search with tables. My husband thinks that when we have our own home we will have two kitchen tables. I am still trying to figure out the theory behind him wanting two tables. But I decided to start searching anyways and came across some beautiful drop leaf tables. Perhaps if I had a million dollars we could then buy all the tables on the website.

Until I have a million dollars, I think we will stick with having only two tables per my husband’s request.

Lead Me to the Cross

On Sunday I was traveling to Franklin, NC to speak share my testimony about the OCC. I was looking forward to meeting new people, but was dreading to drive up the curvy mountain. By curvy I mean that you have to drive no faster than 30 mph. My trip started out just fine until I noticed a car was following me way too close for my comfort zone. At that moment I had to make a choice of either continue to drive normally or to pull aside and let the car pass me. I chose the latter one.

Because I chose to pull to the side to let the car pass me, I was blessed by a beautiful view of colorful trees and a reminder how majestic is the God that I serve. Each tree was different; some trees were covered with red leaves, others with yellow, brown and green. Needless to say the view was breath taking. As I attempted to take pictures of God’s beautiful creation, I was reminded that I serve artistic God who crafted you and me to be different. Some people are blessed with gift of teaching, others with gift of compassion and the list goes on and not one person is alike, just like not one tree that I was admiring was alike. But just as each tree radiated true beauty of nature, each human being radiates beauty of God’s perfect creation.

It never seizes to amaze me that I was so special to God that He knew me before I was born. Jeremiah 1:5 says, "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart for my holy purpose.” God knew and numbered all my days before I was even born, isn’t it amazing? Psalm 139:16 says, “your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

My friend, I hope today you can take comfort in knowing that God carefully crafted you, because He loved you first. He has been plans for you, if you will only yield to His Sovereign will.

Tightwad's Savings

I had a pretty good shopping week. We didn’t have to have anything in particular so I shopped at Bi-Lo and Ingles for sales items. I snagged a few boxes of muffins and a few boxes of dessert for $0.25 each. Because I was planning to make my very first dish of mac & cheese, I bought cheese and butter that wasn’t really on sale, but I didn’t care too much that I did not have a coupon for it. I was a little shocked at how much real butter cost nowadays.

Prunes were on sale B1G1 this week and after sales and coupons I paid around $0.25 a bag. We were out of rice so I bought Rice Select brand, which I love sushi rice (makes the best sticky rice). The rice was pricy, but it lasts us for a while. Oh I did also stop by Aldi and bought 2 packs of frozen raspberries. I think next time I will buy vanilla ice cream and mix it up with raspberries. Yum!



Total spent: $26.75



Total saved: $34.31