BecomingFrugal.com

Today I decided to give this recipe I saw on moneysavingmom.com a try. I love my bread machine and am always looking for new recipes to try so this one looked promising. I used the recipe Crystal posted here:

http://moneysavingmom.com/2010/01/bread-machine-cinnamon-roll.html/comment-page-1#comment-300985

Since it’s just me and my husband, and that would be way too many cinnamon rolls for just the two of us, I decided to divide the finished dough in half, and make half cinnamon rolls, and half dinner rolls. Happily, both turned out delicious!  My cinnamon rolls didn’t look as pretty as hers because my icing didn’t melt well (I skimped on the butter) but they tasted great. The dinner rolls were also excellent with butter.  Since we had plans for the rest of the weekend for dinner, I cooled and then  froze most of the rolls for later use.

I was delighted these turned out so great because to be honest I let the dough rise a little too long in the bread maker. I had company and didn’t take it out for about 20 minutes after the machine beeped, but they still came out great!  Too bad I was so busy scarfing that I forgot to take a picture!

Probably a year or so ago I found myself in a grocery store at night after watching a movie in a theatre. We were hungry but really didn’t want fast food, so even though it was around 7pm we ran into the market for something we could make really fast. As I scouted out the deli and “premade” food section, a store employee came over and started marking down all the precooked chickens from 5.99 to 1.99. I asked her why they were being marked down and she told me they do it every evening around that time! Now, granted, I am not going to always be eating dinner that late, but I can certainly use this meat in lunch sandwiches, salads, and other recipes the next day. Once I spoke with her I remembered why they mark them down. My mother once worked in a deli at a major market chain and every night whatever “prepared food” they didn’t sell had to be THROWN away!!! I remember her frustration at the fact that they couldn’t give it away (it had to do with liability and not wanting to take any risks) so they’d always mark the items down later in the day.

Thanksgiving weekend I was dying to try a pumpkin dinner roll recipe, and since it’s just me and the hubby, I didn’t make too many. When I had leftover pumpkin I decided to bake up a batch of pumpkin nut muffins and freeze them so i could grab them in the mornings. This is something I had never thought of before, but after reading about other frugals doing this with much success I decided to give it a shot. Fresh out of the oven they were delicious, and I was not expecting them to be so good after freezing, but had to give it a try.

Well, I ate a few, wrapped them (after fully cooled) individually in foil, and put a bunch in a ziplock and into the freezer. A few days later I decided to pull a few out and put them to the test. (Yeah, only a few days, I know, but darn they were so good fresh, and I was already craving another!) Fully expecting them to take forever to defrost, and then be mushy and bland, I was very pleasantly surprised at how good they were! Not exactly out of the oven fresh, but much better than any I’ve ever bought in a store. They really were delicious. My fat cells can attest to the fact that I must have indeed found them delicious.

I can’t wait to try the next recipe and do it all over!

If you’re interested, here’s the recipe I followed:
http://www.recipetips.com/recipe-cards/t–2816/pumpkin-nut-muffins.asp

I made a batch, let them all cool on a cooling rack for an hour or so, and then wrapped them up and froze. I ended up taking a few out of the freezer and stuck them in the fridge before bed one night, and they were perfectly defrosted by morning. If you commute you could probably just take them out of the freezer in the morning and eat at work.