Cheaper Teachers are Cheaper Eaters!t

Hello, lovely readers.  Here in NY today is the last day of vacation before we return to school.  Even though I was there last week for 3 days setting up my classroom, this is the last true day of summer before life begins again.

So what am I doing this lovely Labor Day?  Hanging at the beach with my fabulous friends?  Going out for a nice, relaxing dinner and a handful of drinks?  I wish.  I'm cooking for the week.

While I am not always the most disciplined in planning menus, I have determined to save money on meals eaten at work this year.  One easy way to do that is to cook in bulk on the weekend so that I have inexpensive, healthy food to bring with me for lunch.

So, in the spirit of the Cheaper Teacher, I thought I'd share what I'm making, what it costs me and how long I can expect to eat off of it.  This is just a sampling of what I've made so far, and I'll update other lunch ideas as I go.

Easy Quinoa Salad:  I loooooove quinoa.  If you don't know what it is, you're seriously missing out.  It's a simple, versatile grain that can be used in place of rice, couscous or other grains.  It's extremely high in protein and contains no gluten, so it's great for both vegans (like me!) and celiacs.  I get quinoa in the bulk bin for about $3.00/lb, but if you're lucky enough to find the Goya bags of quinoa, they're about $2.00 for a 1 lb. bag.  The bulk quinoa is organic, the Goya is not.

I used 2 cups of dry quinoa, which is a little more than half the bag of bulk quinoa, so it cost about $1.50.  Quinoa multiplies like CRAZY when you cook it - it made about 8 cups cooked.  I cook it in water (free) at a 2:1 ratio and throw in a veggie bullion cube for good measure ($0.10?  I don't even know what the breakdown on bullion is, but it's almost free).

Then I throw in whatever veggies I have in the fridge.  I love this recipe because everything goes in this salad and you can use up what you have left over from other recipes.  I threw in a few carrots, a zucchini, an eggplant that was in danger of the trash chute, three plum tomatoes, a handful of stringbeans, a few olives, some red onion, a wilting stalk of broccoli and some  shredded red cabbage. I also squeezed the juice from one lemon A lot of these veggies came from the CSA, so I didn't pay for them out-of-pocket but through my joining fee.  I would estimate that this is about $5.00 worth of veggies if I'm being extremely generous with price - since I use such small quantities of each, I can't imagine it was more than that.  But let's just estimate high.

For no more than $6.50, this recipe yeilds 26 1/2 cup servings - if you eat two servings per lunch, you get 13 meals (lunch, dinner, snack, whatever) for the price - or about $0.50 per meal!

Big Old Pot of Beans:  A 1 lb. bag of Goya beans runs me about $0.89.  Make the whole bag at once and you get about 8 cups of cooked beans.  You can eat these as a filling side to something else, straight as they are, refried in tortillas, on tostada shells, whatever.  Final Cost - about $0.11 per serving!

Gotta get back to cooking - more to come!

Random Free Stuff is Still Free! (Random Free Stuff Wednesdays!)

Every Wednesday, I'm going to try to offer a random freebie for your classroom.  It might not be as practical as free software and donation sites, but hey... we're cheaper teachers!  Free is free.

A note about free stuff:  if you won't use it, please don't ask for it.  A lot of these programs have limits or wait lists, and you might be preventing another Cheaper Teacher from getting a great deal.  If you don't think you'll use it but know someone who will, that's fine... but please don't order something just because it's free.

Aaaannnddd.... on with the Freebies!

FREE from the Smarty-Pantses at Harvard Medical Center's Department For Change comes an enviro-friendly DVD for students in Elementary and possibly Middle School grades, depending on level of maturity.  The synopsis offered by the website is as follows:

A storyteller, played by Academy Award winner Linda Hunt, speaks to us of a spell that has been cast that has caused everyone to forget about the importance of the ocean. One little girl, however, is determined to find a way to break the spell. She embarks on a journey to the sea with a magical shell that shows her how our health and well-being depend on the marine environment, and explains how the ocean is under threat. Arriving at her destination, the girl helps us realize how we can all break the spell and save the ocean, and ourselves.

This video has the potential to be a little corny, but it's only a bit over 9 minutes long and it could open up some good discussions with the kids about protecting the oceans and other environmental topics.  Amazon also has a book by the same title, but I don't know if it's related.  If you think you can use this DVD in your class, you can order one from Harvard here.  

  Everyone loves space.  NASA is capitalizing on that by offering teachers some FREE space posters for their classrooms to get kids excited about becoming future astronauts and physicists and rocket scientists and other crazy cool jobs.  Let's just hope the kids don't turn out like Lisa Nowack!

Anyway, I digress.  This poster has a nifty back side (not pictured) that gives lots of cool information about space and has some literacy tie-in stuff.  I'm not sure I'll use it in my classroom, to be honest, as my school frowns on any decorative posters that are not charts made with the kids.  But I do think this could be awesome for the Prize Box, or could potentially be used for a few lessons and then put away.  Depending on size, if you hang it, you might want to have it laminated so it will last from year-to-year.  You can pick yours up at the NASA Discovery & New Frontiers website.

That's all for now on Free Stuff Wednesday!  Hope some of you can use some of this!  

Why be a Cheaper Teacher?

I love teaching.  And I love saving money.  And I really love getting things for free.

Then ask me, why have I spent the past 2 years of my teaching career spending between $800 - $1,000 a year on my classroom?

Oh sure, I get discounts... when I find them.  But I also pay out of pocket for a lot of things that are either full price or on sale, but not at that great of a price.  Sometimes I'll forget I need a supply (or supplies) and rush out to buy them the day before a project, which prevents me from getting things on sale.

Recently, I began frequenting Savings and Freebies blogs and sending away for all sorts of stuff.  A few of those things were even things that I felt I could use in my classroom!  Which got me wondering... are there any teacher-specific savings sites?  I did a google search and, while I found a few sites, nothing that was nearly as comprehensive as the savings and freebies sites I had been looking at.

Now, I don't love blogging, but I also know that I will probably lose any paper I jot down my freebies and savings sites onto, which will keep me from remembering them year-to-year.  So why not put everything all out there on the internet, share it with other teachers and get some karmic points in the deal?  :-)

And so.... on with the postings!