We went to Disneyland in the beginning of December for a holiday preview. We met up with Deb and her family and the little ones ran around like kids on a sugar high. They decorated cookies, got their faces painted and danced to a DJ. It was so cute. 

We also got to eat some really good food. We had a buffet dinner featuring some of the chefs from restaurants around the park. My favorite was the corn chowder. I haven't tried the recipe yet but it looks pretty simple so I thought I'd share it with you.

If I didn't have time to roast the corn (or if it wasn't in season) I'd use either the frozen fire roasted kernels or sweet kernels from Trader Joe's. This is definitely not a healthy recipe which is probably why I liked it so much! Enjoy!

Charred Nebraska Corn Chowder from Storytellers Cafe at Disney's Grand Californian (serves 4-6)

4 ears of fresh shucked corn

4 slices of bacon, divided

1 TBS diced onion

1 tsp chopped garlic

1 Yukon Gold potato, peeled and diced

4 C chicken stock

6 TBS butter

6 TBS all-purpose flour

2 C heavy cream

1 C pulled chicken meat

2 tsp cilantro (optional garnish)

Salt, pepper and hot sauce to taste

*Preheat oven to 350

*To roast the corn, put whole ears in their husk into preheated oven for 25 minutes. Cool then shuck and remove the kernels. Set aside.

*Dice 2 slices of bacon and saute. Drain all but 1 TBS of of the fat. Add onion and garlic and sautee until transparent. Add corn, potato and stock. Bring to a simmer.

*Meanwhile, in another pan, melt butter over medium heat. Add flour, whisking until smooth. Cook 3-4 minutes until mix loosens slightly. Cool.

*Add cooled butter/flour mixture to the simmering broth, mixing well with a whisk. Stir often to keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Simmer 30-40 minutes. 

*Add cream and chicken and simmer another 10 minutes. 

*Meanwhile, cook the other 2 bacon slices until crisp. Drain, dice and set aside. 

*Add to chowder salt, pepper and hot sauce to taste. Serve and garnish with bacon and cilantro.

I copied this recipe into Google Docs for you to print: http://bit.ly/StorytellersCafe_CornChowder

Disclosure: Disney provided tickets to the park, dinner and the entertainment for the kids. This is not a sponsored post. You all know how I love my corn chowder! I get so many people visiting my blog looking for the recipe to the Chili's corn soup. I hope this one will be a good substitute. It's fantastic!

Extreme Couponing Requires Extreme Organization: The Search for a Coupon Binder

I heard a lot of buzz about the TLC show Extreme Couponing before it aired last night. I started following the Twitter chatter when the east coast feed was on. It seemed people had mixed reactions about how the show portrayed people who take 'extreme' measures to save money. Watch the teaser clip aired on ABC to see how TLC defined extreme. So much of TLC's programming is designed to be attention getting so I took the show with a grain of a salt but here's my quick two cents on the show:

*Some of the people featured have hoarding issues. Period.

*Junk is still junk no matter how good the deal was (who needs 150 Butterfingers?!).

*Saving money is important but it shouldn't be your life. Blowing off the people in your life to clip coupons and shop is unhealthy.

*Having such a large stockpile you feel the need to insure it is also unhealthy (seriously, watch the clip) 

*If you have 30 year's worth of toiletries in your garage, please donate some to a shelter, food bank or to foster families. Look at it this way: you probably got it for free so with the tax write off it will be a money maker!
*Not being able to enjoy the rooms in your home because they are full of groceries is unhealthy.

*Spending 70 hours a week on something you are not earning a salary to do is silly.

*The 40 jars of spaghetti sauce you just had to have might have been someone other family's affordable dinner.

Despite TLC's ratings ploys I was still inspired. I thought I was doing a good job with our grocery budget but those people made me feel like a total amateur! I've had Tyler grab coupon inserts from  recycling bins, but only on our street. One woman on the show, Joyce, puts on her toning shoes and walks her neighborhood every week gathering unused inserts. I wonder if my other neighbors would label me crazy if I started doing the same.

This is just a small part of my stash

While I was watching, I Tweeted that I'm in search of a coupon binder. I use two accordion files now and it's not convenient anymore. A few of my followers chimed in that they were looking for a coupon system too so I went through the frugal blogs in my reader and pulled links for post where the authors have given detailed info on how they organize their coupons. Here's what I found:

Erin of 5 Dollar Dinners
Frugal Coupon Living
A Thrifty Mom
Couponing 101 (vlog)
Keeping the Kingdom First (vlog)
Life as Mom 
Money Saving Mom
Save at Home Mommy (Charlene sells a complete binder system on her site)
Savings Lifestyle
Stretching a Buck 

The binder method seems to be the most popular and I think it's the one I'll go with. I looked at some supplies during back to school and I should have pulled the trigger.

I'm spending too much time flipping through my coupons and I don't have a good system in place for my extra inserts. The last time I went shopping I saw laundry detergent on sale and remembered seeing a coupon in my inserts. I had pages spread out all over the store shelves while I was looking. It was messy (but I found two!).

One of my goals for 2011 is to do even better with cutting our grocery budget. Getting organized with my coupons is definitely a good first step.

Do you have a good system I can follow? Did you watch Extreme Couponing? What did you think?