Happy Anniversary, Tasty Cheapskate: A Giveaway

Cheap Eat Challenge, Part 2: Watch as our family of 6 eats on less than $10/day.

(Psst. Don't care about parsnips? Scroll down for info on the giveaway.)

There's been so much excitement around here today. For starters I dug up what are possibly the ugliest parsnips ever.

And then I dug up my three peanut plants. Which was kind of in the extra exciting realm because they were planted from the very peanuts that I saved from last year's peanut plant. Truly, the excitement runs quite thick around here and, yes, it is difficult to be so amazingly cool.

And then there was the baby mouse my husband found in the garage (a detached garage, thank goodness). There aren't many people who hate mice more than me (we'll blame a few traumatic childhood experiences I still toss around in my grown up brain.) I didn't even want to look at this little guy, but Kip insisted it was really cute and Savannah was going berserk with excitement. And it's true; even I couldn't deny the cuteness. Kip put it back in the garage where he'd found it. We assumed its mother had been moving the babies when Kip opened the garage door, and I spent the better part of 5 minutes worrying that she wouldn't come back and that the mouse would die right there before our eyes. But, sure enough, almost as soon as we were out of sight the baby mouse was gone and we saw an adult scurry into a hole. I was so happy. That a mouse--or rather a family of them--survived. What can I say? I've gone soft.

But of course, the real news today is that The Tasty Cheapskate is one whole year old!!!

To celebrate, I've decided to do my first ever giveaway. I tossed this idea around for a while. I thought it'd be fun, but I doubted that I'd really recoup my investment with money made to the blog (via all that crazy traffic I'll now be generating), which bugged the cheapskate part of me. And then, of course, there was the matter of ego. What if no one liked me or my giveaway? What if I'm completely delusional in believing people actually read this blog? What if it's been my mother all along, checking it dutifully a couple hundred times a day.

Despite these concerns, my amazing sense of funness and spontaneity won out. (What? Digging weird parsnips and examining baby mice is totally a good time; Scarlett Johansson should give it a try.) So, we're doing a giveaway. I decided to give away one of my favorite things ever: an instant read thermometer.




(Note: This Amazon link is close, but not quite what you're getting. The exact thing you'll be getting is a Polder Easy-Read Instant Read Thermometer.)

Just think, you'll have it in time for turkey season and you won't have to cry (as much) in front of your sweet in-laws over your "perfect" Thanksgiving dinner. And your cheesecakes will come out perfectly (really, wow--it's so much better with a thermometer). Your candy and syrups will be humanly possible. You won't have to cut your bread open to know if it's done. And of course there's the matter of meat safety. Or anything raw safety. I'm telling you, you'll become addicted.


Even if you have one of your very own, you should totally enter so you can have a free gift to give someone else you love. Free gift = good. Instant read thermometer for yourself = good.

What you must do to enter: 

1. Leave a comment.

What you can do to enter more than once (you'll get an extra entry for each extra thing you do, but you must tell me what you did in the comment section, preferably in a separate comment--and, yes, that was a run-on sentence):

1. Follow me (the icon in the bottom-ish right).
2. Like me on Facebook (the little icon is in the top right).
3. Link to this blog on your blog.
4. Tell me something you'd like to see cooked or done differently/better on The Tasty Cheapskate in the coming year.

The winner will be drawn randomly next Monday (November the 7th). I will announce the winner and contact you via email. Happy commenting, linking, and liking! And Happy Anniversary to us!