Eating Well: Website for the magazine, full of free recipes as well as health and diet information.

Everyday Food: Another magazine subscription, Everyday Food has started including recipes using pantry staples and budget items.

Food and Wine: Free recipes from the magazine, with information on wine (of course).

Ideal Bite: An excellent earth-friendly website that “offers bite-sized ideas for light green living.” Sign up for the daily email tips, like this one, to learn quick and easy strategies for saving the planet.

Love Food Hate Waste: A UK-based campaign to raise awareness and reduce food waste. The website is full of ideas, recipes, and information on reducing food waste.

MyRecipes.com: A recipe collection pulled from magazines such as Cooking Light, Real Simple, Southern Living, and more. This has an excellent enhanced search option and features interesting articles.

Real Age: More of a health site than food, Real Age does offer great nutritional advice and healthy recipes.

Real Simple: Not only a great online recipe collection, but other tidbits about cleaning, storage, organizing, and other nifty household tips.

Start Making Choices: Another health and fitness website, but with good advice on healthy cooking and budget-friendly shopping.

Vital Juice Daily: A website devoted to health of the mind, body and spirit. Offering free daily email tips, VJD has a “thirst for a healthy life” and shares this philosophy with readers.

WebMD: WebMD is more than a symptom checker website! Interesting articles on health and fitness, and tips on healthy cooking and eating.

wikiHow: User-edited how-to manual, find articles on a variety of food topics and cooking techniques.

Wise Bread: One of my favorite sites, Wise Bread has an awesome archive packed full of frugal ideas for house and home. It is a treasure chest of goodies for those looking to save money and possibly help save the planet.

Hopefully, the Econofest Project has helped everyone save a little money just in time for the holiday season. Use these resources to find more tips, tricks, and information on saving money. Be on the lookout for more recipes and special projects coming soon!

What makes a well-stocked pantry? The answer depends on your tastes, lifestyle, and family needs. Your perfect pantry should include items that everyone in the household enjoys eating on a regular basis. For some, that might mean lentils and curry powder and for others it might mean pasta and mariana sauce (for some of us, it could even mean both!).

Here is a basic list of pantry staples, adapted from The Perfect Panty:

Sea salt and pepper
Olive oil, vegetable oil, and/or canola oil
Chicken or vegetable stock
Dried beans
Dried pasta
Canned tomatoes (whole, crushed, diced)
Cinnamon
Cumin
Honey
Lemon
Onion
Garlic
Rice
Balsamic Vinegar
Canned vegetables

If you are a baker,  you will also want to include flour, sugar, oats, baking soda/powder, chocolate chips, and other must-have supplies. You can also think of your freezer as an extension of your pantry, stocking it with frozen fruits and vegetables, meat, and stock. Look for markdowns on meat near the sell-by date and store in a freezer-ready bag or container.

These are merely suggestions, you will need to adjust your list accordingly. Be sure to include ingredients that will allow you to make your sure-fire, never-fail crowd pleasers. For example, I always have a few special ingredients on hand: golden raisins, coconut milk, hoisin sauce, curry powder, spaghetti sauce, jasmine rice, and gingerroot (which stores great in the freezer). I also have a plethora of spices to use, including paprika, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, cayenne pepper, red pepper flakes, dried herbs, and more.

Once you have your perfect pantry list, keep those items on hand to make a last-minute meal. This will prevent those pesky last-minute trips to the grocery store that suck up the food budget. Hopefully, having a personally created pantry will also inspire you to cook more at home and eat out less!

For more assistance, check out these articles from wikiHow on How to Stock a Kitchen Pantry and How to Organize a Pantry. Then, if you want to have a little fun, see How to Make Facials from Pantry Ingredients.

Enjoy these 10 dish ideas to eat up your Thanksgiving favorites without getting bored.

Breakfast: Turkey-Egg Biscuits
Layer leftover turkey, fried eggs, cheese, and even gravy inside warmed biscuits.

Lunch: Turkey Wraps
Roll turkey, mustard or mayo, and chopped spinach in to a whole-wheat wrap.

Afternoon Snack: Pumpkin Pie Treats 
Top leftover pumpkin or apple pie with whipped topping and leftover cranberry sauce.

Dinner: Turkey Shepard’s Pie
Combine stuffing, gravy, chopped turkey, and vegetables in a 2 or 3 quart baking dish. Top with mashed potatoes or pureed sweet potatoes. Bake at 325F until warmed through.

Late-Night Snack: Turkey-Cranberry Sandwich
Using leftover biscuits or bread, stack cheese slices and turkey then top with cranberry sauce. Serve cold.

Breakfast in Bed: Biscuits & Jam
Toast leftover biscuits and top with cranberry sauce or sweet potatoes.

Next-Day Lunch: Hot Turkey Sandwiches
Simmer turkey and gravy in a small saucepan. Spoon over biscuits or a layer of stuffing. Top with mashed potatoes and more gravy.

Super Snack: Sweet Potato Pie
Puree sweet potatoes with maple syrup, cinnamon, and butter. Pour into a prepared pie crust. Bake until warmed through and golden brown. Top with whipped topping or cranberry sauce.

Dinnertime Side Dish: Loaded Mashed Potatoes
Stir leftover corn, peas, and other vegetables into mashed potatoes. Top with butter or gravy.

Dessert For Two: Pie Crust Mix-Up 
Scoop pieces, crust and all, into champagne flutes or dessert dishes, mixing flavors. Create layers with whipped topping and cranberry sauce or sweet potatoes.

Real Simple: Not only a great online recipe collection, but other tidbits about cleaning, storage, organizing, and other nifty household tips.

Everyday Food: All of the recipes from the magazine, plus other Martha Stewart publications such as Martha Stewart Living, Body & Soul, and even the now debunked Blueprint.

Food & Wine: Quite a pricey magazine subscription, I’ve found most recipes available online along with all the wine advice you will ever need.

Eating Well: Great healthy recipes without the publication price. Like many food and cooking websites, this one offers free email newsletters as well.

Cooking Light, Southern Living, Sunset and more are all part of the awesome recipe collection on MyRecipes.com (Real Simple is also part of the recipe network).

Newspapers also publish great local recipes, the best way to find these hidden gems is to use a news search engine like Google News and type in the search criteria “recipes” or a specific recipe you are looking for like “soup” or “casseroles.”

In case you have not seen or heard, the Food Network now has a magazine publication, but most recipes are still available online for free.

Gift-Worthy Holiday Jams, Spreads, & Sauces: Pick a traditional flavor like apple butter or cranberry-orange marmalade, or give them something unique like sun-dried tomato jam or peachy barbecue sauce.   

Gifts from the Oven: Gingerbread people, pound cake, biscotti and more!

Give the Gift of Candy: Sugared cranberries, candied orange rind, fudge, and other easy-to-make goodies to give as gifts.

Heartwarming Breads: Find the perfect baked goods to bring to family dinners or potlucks, such as flaky dinner rolls, cranberry-sweet potato quick bread, and orange-pecan muffins.

Money-Saving Appetizers

Budget-Friendly Holiday Side Dishes

Looking to break tradition and try something new this Thanksgiving? Read up on Fresh Takes on Thanksgiving Menus, including a turkey-less menu and a Thanksgiving menu for two.

Finally, complete your turkey day by finding the Perfect Wine for Thanksgiving, then saving some money with the Top 20 Wines Under $20.

Olive oil has been touted for it’s heart-healthy benefits, but new research also suggests that polyphenols in olive oil may inhibit the bacterium that causes most stomach ulcers (ReagAge.com). Looking to add a little olive oil to your diet? Try this simple recipe from Eating Well magazine:

Herbed Extra-Virgin Olive Oil

3 tbsp fresh chopped herbs (such as thyme, rosemary, marjoram or chives)
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Combine all ingredients in a small bowl. Serve with bread for dipping, or saute with veggies for a quick and easy side dish.

When olive oil isn’t providing a healthy boost to your insides, it can offer a beauty boost to your outsides. Here are some low-cost, all-natural personal care ideas from Vital Juice Daily:  

Hands and feet: Rub a generous amount of olive oil on your hands and feet-cover with gloves and socks. Wake up with silky soft digits!

Nails: Soak dry, brittle nails in a cup of olive oil for 10 minutes. Rub the excess into your cuticles to help seal and repair.

Skin: Apply after a bath or shower, while skin is still moist. Wrap yourself in a terry cloth robe, if possible, before jumping into bed to avoid greasing your sheets.

Lips: Dab some on rough, chapped lips to smooth dead skin.

Hair: To repair split ends and give your mane new shine massage a few tablespoons into scalp and hair before shampooing. Cover with a shower cap and leave for 20 – 30 minutes.

Face: Dab a little on a Q-tip and wipe debris and makeup away.

Want your olive oil to work just a little bit harder? Check out this article on 25 Alternative Uses for Olive Oil, including fixing a stuck zipper, conditioning leather and stopping a throat tickle.  

Photo Credit: Curbly.com

Also, watch the informational video on peeling and dicing butternut squash and red onions, which features easy to follow, step-by-step instructions. Perfect for Thanksgiving!

To piggyback on Organic vs. Economic, also check out How to Be a Budget Organic, a guide to shopping for organic produce, dairy products, meat and poultry.

Many of the current trends in food and lifestyle are a natural convergence of these topics, as I discovered there are many ways to adjust a recipe to be good for the wallet, the planet, and the body.

While preparing recipes and postings for Econofest, again I find a merger of ideas that include cost effectiveness with healthy eating and environmental benefits. Many of the resources overlap, providing a balance of lifestyle choices with greater impact. Rather than just saving money, these tips and tricks have a personal benefit as well as benefit to the world around us.

Most of the time, this overlap works in our favor. When it comes to produce, however, consumers often must choose between organic or economical. With tight grocery budgets, many cannot afford to purchase organic produce and rely instead on cheaper options, which are usually grown with a plethora of pesticides.

If you are going to splurge on organic produce, opt to purchase produce widely recognized as having the highest pesticide loads. Here is a list of the “Dirty Dozen” from Food News:

Peaches
Apples
Sweet Bell Peppers
Celery
Nectarines
Strawberries
Cherries
Lettuce
Grapes (imported)
Pears
Spinach
Potatoes

If you are looking to save, here is also the list of the “cleanest” 12 produce items available (requiring lowest pesticide loads):

Onions
Avocado
Sweet Corn (frozen)
Pineapples
Mango
Sweet Peas (frozen)
Asparagus
Kiwi
Bananas
Cabbage
Broccoli
Eggplant

For a complete list, please visit Food News and download the printable guide: