: Day 1 :

This recipe for tahini is a must for tomorrows recipe. This ends up being dramatically cheaper than hunting down tahini in a health food store. You’ll be surprised at how easy this is and how much it makes!

First, pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees. Next, measure out 4 cups of sesame seeds.

Pour the seeds onto a large baking pan.

Place the pan in the oven. Stir every couple minutes. Depending on your oven it could take between 5 and 10 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven right before the seeds begin to brown. Let cool.

Pour the cooled seeds into a food processor. A blender will work if that’s all you have. Add about 1 1/4 cups of olive oil while pureeing the seeds.

And there you have it! You’ve made at least a year supply of tahini! Great to use in hummus or baba ganoush!

By the way, you can easily halve this recipe and still have enough for an entire year {depending on how often you make tahini dishes}.

Enjoy!

Blessings!

{Original recipe can be found here.}

Starting tomorrow, September 1, 2012, I will be steering a little ways away from the theme of my site to offer up some budget friendly meal ideas.

At some point in our lives we all come under a financial hardship and recently we’ve been surrounded by loving friends and family who have offered support and advice on my favorite way to save money – groceries. Before we were spending A LOT each week on groceries only for a good portion of them to get lost in the pantry or for produce/meat to go bad and have to be thrown away. What a waste. Now, being a family of seven, almost eight, we are spending no more than $100/week on groceries.

The Lord has blessed us immensely with two families who have allowed us to take the burden of their pantry and freezer foods while they move to new homes. As sad as we have been with their movings we are incredibly thankful to see how the Lord has used this transition to bless us. All this while teaching the children about thriftiness. Rather than just teaching we are able to live out how God wants us to take care of His money that He’s entrusted to us.

I will admit right now that not all those recipes are as healthy as we were eating before. Budget friendly? Yes. We still try to steer clear of high fructose corn syrup and a majority of the recipes are from scratch which means more time in the kitchen {but also means more money in the bank}.

{a huge thank you to a special someone for blessing us with our favorite budget friendly cereal!}

So join us this next month as we learn how to be gazelle intense in the kitchen!

Blessings!