A thrifty dinner and turning the heat down

Yesterday I posted about making black beans in my slow cooker, well soon after that I found a recipe that called for the black beans and I also had all the of the ingredients for. Black bean soup! The recipe was great and can be found on this blog. But basically it involved a can of diced tomatoes, 3 cans of black beans (I used the dry ones I made), and a little bit of salsa and that's all. If I break that down cost wise, the mixed veggies cost me .55 cents, the tomatoes .50 cents, the beans one dollar, and then maybe .20 cents of salsa. For a grand total of $2.25, and that will be enough for 2 meals for me and C.H.

                                                  *Photo taken from above blog mentioned


On a completely unrelated note.... Last month our energy bill was $98.32, and it was on my list of things to lower. If it were up to me I would probably have the heat on 68 degrees at all time because I tend  to like it a little cooler in the house. But the my C.H. in a perfect world would have it on 80 degrees, so that tends to cause some issues (Most of the time he turned it up to 72 or 74 when I wasnt looking!) . I solved this with a 5 dollar clearance heated blanket from Kohls. Now the heater rests nicely on 68 degrees while we are home and 62 degrees when we are both gone. When I get the next gas bill I will be sure to post what the saving are.