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4 WEEKS of GIVEAWAYS
week #3 [CLOSED]

In the continuing celebration of Budget Bytes reaching 10,000 RSS subscribers, I bring you Week #3 of the 4 Weeks of Giveaways!

So, you know I'm obsessed with pizza, right? Well, I am. Pizza is like a blank canvas to which you can apply any flavor, color, or texture. It's pure magic.

But to get a really great pizza, you need a stone pizza oven... or a PIZZA STONE!

So, I'm giving one away. Actually, not just a pizza stone, but also a pizza cutter and pizza peel (the wooden paddle that is used to transfer your raw pizza onto the hot stone). I hope there are many, many delicious pizzas in your future!

Giveaway #3 - Bialetti 4-Piece Pizza Stone Set

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vegetable egg rolls
$5.90 recipe / $0.58 serving

Okay, I might just have to make egg rolls all the time. They were so much easier than expected! And, because I decided to bake mine, they're pretty freakin' healthy. And, wow, super inexepensive! Just over 50 cents for two rolls? Yes please. Win, win, win!

Baking egg rolls definitely creates a different texture than frying, but I still liked them A LOT. It's more of a "crunch" than a "crisp" when you bite in... But, if you wanted to fry these, they would be every bit as easy and probably even more delicious. If you don't have a deep fryer, a couple inches of vegetable oil in a heavy bottomed skillet would probably do the trick. ...I just have an irrational fear of frying things. I guess I've been badly burned one too many times and I know that one day it's going to splatter on my face and that'll be the end of me.

I also experimented with freezing the egg rolls uncooked. After freezing I put them straight into a hot oven without thawing. The texture was a little less than great but they were still delicious all the same. I will be freezing some the next time I make them. More about that in the photos at the bottom of the post.

There are a lot of step by step photos with this post, but don't be mislead. It's an easy process... I just wanted to catch every little step because most of this is hard to describe in words!

Vegetable Egg Rolls

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easy egg drop soup
$3.77 recipe / $0.63 serving

I always want something light after the gluttony of holiday meals, so this week I cooked up some easy Asian food. This egg drop soup comes together in just a few minutes and has endless possibilities. I added mushrooms and spinach to try to sneak in some veggies, but if you just want a plain, brothy soup, you can leave them out. If you want something heartier, you could even add some noodles.

It's been a cold, rainy day and this soup is just what I needed to warm me up inside and out! Plus, it's so easy that I was able to whip it up without exhausting myself, despite being under the weather!

Easy Egg Drop Soup

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4 WEEKS of GIVEAWAYS
week #2 [CLOSED]

In the continuing celebration of Budget Bytes reaching 10,000 RSS subscribers, I bring you Week #2 of the 4 Weeks of Giveaways!

What do I have for you this week? It's a piece of kitchen equipment that I have absolutely fallen in love with over the past two years - A SLOW COOKER!

Now, I'm not one of those people who likes to cook everything in a slow cooker. In fact, I think most things shouldn't be cooked in one, but there are a few things that it does very, very well. Anytime something requires a long, slow cooking process, the slow cooker is your pal. You can literally "set it and forget it." I love making slow cooked meats, like pulled pork or the infamous taco chicken bowls, but it's also great for beans or slow cooked sauces. Just being able to stock your freezer with freshly cooked beans instead of having to buy canned beans makes this appliance well worth it's weight in gold.

If you haven't started experimenting with a slow cooker yet, I hope this inspires you to!

Giveaway #2 - 6 Quart Crock-Pot Slow Cooker

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no-knead cinnamon rolls
$1.47 recipe / $0.15 serving

This no-knead bread is the gift that keeps on giving... I just keep finding new things to do with it!

I love cinnamon rolls but have never even wanted to think about making them from scratch because they just take too long and who wants to wake up at 4 am just to have cinnamon rolls for breakfast? Not me. Hand me a can of pre-made cinnamon rolls, please. ...Until I tried this method.

Sure, you still have an hour rise time and a half hour bake, but it's still feasible for a lazy weekend morning when you want something special. The fact that you can mix up the dough the night before and there is no heavy kneading involved cuts the prep time in half, at least.

These would be perfect to keep the hungry masses away on Thanksgiving day or as an extra special treat Christmas morning. There's just something about fresh cinnamon rolls that says "Here's some love for ya."

no-knead cinnamon rolls

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maple roasted sweet potatoes
with pecans
$5.28 recipe / $0.88 serving

If you've followed this blog for a while then you probably know that I'm a firm believer in roasting vegetables. They become tender, sweet, and their flavor increases in depth and complexity as the natural sugars caramelize. It's a beautiful thing.

Not to mention it's easy. Just coat the vegetables in whatever herb, spice, or other flavoring you want, spread 'em out on a baking sheet, and throw them into the oven. And that's exactly what you need on Thanksgiving Day, right? Something that you can just throw into the oven and forget about as you prepare the rest of the meal.

You can get double duty out of your oven by roasting these sweet potatoes while you cook other dishes. Just be aware that lower temperatures and having multiple items in the oven mean a longer cooking time. I roasted mine at 350 (because that's what it was set at for the turkey) and they took about 45 minutes to roast. If they're in the oven alone, I'd go for 400 degrees. Hotter temperatures will also brown and caramelize the edges better, so keep that in mind. The point is, they're flexible!

maple roasted sweet potatoes with pecans

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jalapeno cran-raspberry sauce
6.47 recipe / 0.81 serving

Fresh cranberry sauce is one of my all-time favorite Thanksgiving foods. I love the tangy-sweetness and how it juxtaposes all of the other savory Thanksgiving dishes! I eat it on my turkey and on my stuffing and then the rest of the week I eat it on toast or as part of my "Thanksgiving wraps" (turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce in a tortilla - YUM!).

I made this basic cranberry sauce for my first Budget Bytes Thanksgiving and have made a different spin on it every year since. The original recipe is so easy and so delicious that it's worth trying at least once. If you want something with a little more flare, kick it up a notch with raspberries and jalapenos!

The heat in this recipe is adjustable and you'll definitely have to use your taste buds to get it right. Every jalapeno is different so some tweaking is required. I removed all of the seeds from my jalapeno, saved them, and added them back in little by little as the sauce cooked to increase the heat to the point that I liked.

jalapeno raspberry cranberry sauce

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4 WEEKS of GIVEAWAYS
week #1 [CLOSED]

Today is a big day for Budget Bytes. No, not big, monumental. Today the number of subscribers to the Budget Bytes RSS feed officially topped 10,000 people.

I never knew the blog would go this far and it probably wouldn't have without all of you. I want to thank each and everyone one of you (RSS subscriber or not) for your feedback and support. If it wasn't for you, Budget Bytes would not still be around and it certainly would not have come this far! YOU are a wonderful community of people who have enriched my life beyond belief. Thank you!

As a thank you, I'm officially kicking off 4 Weeks of Giveaways! That's right, every Tuesday for the next four weeks I'll be introducing a new giveaway! I have chosen four items that I love or have been very helpful to me in my cooking adventures. The giveaways are open to both U.S. and international readers. All prizes have been chosen from Amazon Global for international shipping availability. If for some reason there is a shipping restriction to your location, a comparable prize will be chosen at my discretion.

Giveaway #1 - Black & Decker 8-cup Food Processor

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turkey & stuffing casserole
$18.95 recipe / $3.16

Alright, I'm going to tell you a secret... I hate, HATE, cooking whole birds. I'm not sure what part I hate the most, but I just don't enjoy it... which kinda puts a damper on the Thanksgiving dinner thing!

That is until one of my awesome readers, Meredy, sent me this awesome tip! According to this article by Denise Vivaldo, you can cut up a turkey into pieces (or buy pre-cut pieces) and bake them on top of a dish full of stuffing. The herb infused steam from the stuffing bakes into the meat and the drippings from the turkey flavor and moisten the stuffing... and it all takes a fraction of the time that it takes to cook a whole turkey! Perfect!

I can't say enough about how easy and delicious this was. The stuffing was a cinch and was packed with flavor. The turkey turned out moist with a nice crispy skin. I'll probably never roast a whole bird again.

The most difficult part of this recipe will be either finding turkey pieces or cutting the turkey yourself. I found pre-cut turkey pieces at Whole Foods and, of course, I paid an arm and a leg for them. A whole turkey will usually cost less than $1 per pound and I paid $2.49 per pound for my pieces. To me, it was worth it. If it's not worth it for you, you can follow these step by step photo instructions on how to cut your own turkey into pieces. I just wasn't that ambitious this weekend! Plus, turkeys can take a couple days to thaw and I threw this together last minute.

Oh, also, if you're looking to make this more healthy, you can definitely skip the bacon (saute veggies in a touch of olive oil). Enough fat drips into the dressing from the turkey that the bacon fat wasn't all that necessary in the end... but it sure did taste good!

Turkey & Stuffing casserole

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sweet potato biscuits
$2.44 recipe / $0.31 serving

I don't make biscuits often because they're just a bunch of flour and butter, but when I saw this recipe, I knew I had to make them. Sweet potatoes are packed full of nutrients so in addition to making these biscuits taste fantastic, they also successfully reduced my guilt while I indulged. And, if you're already starting to plan your Thanksgiving menu, sweet potato biscuits would make a very unique addition!

Chow.com suggests using these incredible biscuits to make ham sandwiches and I must say, I'm really bummed that I didn't try this. Oh well, I guess I'll have to make more. Poor me.

Using the microwave to quickly cook the sweet potato makes these biscuits come together very quickly. Also, I have a hunch (it's just a hunch, mind you) that you could replace the one cup of mashed sweet potato with a cup of canned pumpkin puree. If anyone is brave enough to try it out, let me know how it works!

sweet potato biscuits

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spinach, mushroom & feta
crustless quiche
$6.19 recipe / $1.03 serving

I'm a big fan of savory breakfasts and this one might be my new favorite. It has endless possibilities and is a cinch to make. ...plus, it reheats well in the microwave for a quick dinner!

A quiche is basically an egg and milk custard filled with all sorts of other things (usually cheese and vegetables). Traditionally, quiches are baked into a pie crust but I felt that I had enough cheese in here to cover my fat ration for the day so I just skipped the crust. If you want your quiche in a crust, make this super simple 60 second pie crust.

To make this recipe extra economical, use vegetables that are in season and on sale for a low price. You can do bell peppers, squash, broccoli, anything. I had some mushrooms that I had planned to use for my slow cooker marinara, but forgot about, so I used them in this. I also had leftover feta, parmesan, and mozzarella, so in they went! Lastly, I bought a super inexpensive box of frozen spinach. I probably went overboard on the cheese but I had it on hand, so I had to use it up!

spinach mushroom feta crustless quiche

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artichoke pasta bake
$13.99 recipe / $1.55 serving

After a long hard week of work at the hospital, I was seriously craving some comfort food. I wanted PASTA! Cheesy, tomato-y, flavor packed pasta!

This dish contains a lot of ingredients that can be on the pricey side, but, in true Budget Bytes fashion, if you bulk it up with inexpensive ingredients like pasta and homemade pasta sauce, the price per serving stays fairly low. Another trick is to use the expensive ingredients in small amounts because they tend to be pretty potent flavor contributors anyway. I'll admit, I went a little crazy with the feta, but you could probably add half of what I did, cut the cost considerably, and still get a major flavor punch!

I made this dish vegetarian, but if you want something meatier, try sauteing up some Italian sausage and stirring it into the mix. Or, you could go the puttanesca route and saute up some anchovy, onion, and garlic and stir that in. Mushrooms would also be fantastic here. Lots of possibilities!

Oh! And if you're short on time, you can skip the baking step all together and just have a fantastic bowl of pasta. Super easy and super quick!

artichoke pasta bake

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slow cooker marinara
$5.15 recipe / $0.40 serving

I've made a few variations of red sauce for Budget Bytes, but this one is definitely the best of the best. I don't like using my slow cooker for everything, but for a few things it works complete magic (beans and meat, for instance). The magical long, slow cooking process caramelizes the sugars in the tomatoes and creates a depth of flavor that can't be matched!

Plus, what more could you ask for than to just throw some ingredients in a pot, forget about it for 8 hours, and then come back to a rich, delicious red sauce?

The price of this recipe will depend greatly on what you're able to get your canned tomatoes for. When I made the original (non-slow cooker) version of this recipe a couple of years ago, I paid almost half what I paid for canned tomatoes today. So, the price this time around was about the same as the store bought jarred equivalent, but hey, I made it myself and it's so much tastier!

Since this recipe makes quite a bit, I pour the extra into freezer bags and freeze it for up to about 4 months. Make sure you cool it down in the refrigerator before pouring into freezer bags, though ;)

Slow Cooker Marinara Sauce

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apple cranberry hand pies
$3.11 recipe / $0.52 serving

If you don't follow Budget Bytes on Facebook, then you're missing out. I like to share all of the cool food related things that I find around the web, like this amazing 60 second pie crust.

This crust really was as easy as it looks! But you'll want to keep one thing in mind: over working pie crust dough will give you a gummy end product. So, process as little as possible and roll out the dough as few times as possible when cutting your circles. If you don't have a food processor, you can still make this recipe by using a pastry cutter or knives to cut the butter into the flour... it will just take longer than 60 seconds ;)

I had some extra apples and dried cranberries laying around so I used those for the filling. Now that I see how easy these are to make, I can't stop thinking about other possibilities! Mmm, maybe even sweet potato and pecan! The sky is the limit.

apple hand pies