Angel food cake.

I recently discovered the boxed Angel food cake mix. It's great! It's costs less than $2 and you only add water! I was amazed at how easy it was to make (literally, add water, mix and bake) and how good it tastes.

Gone are the times when you have to beat a while dozen of egg whites (and with the price of eggs these days so high...) and fold your flour in gently.....

It tastes heavenly with unsweetened whipped cream and fresh strawberries....mmm.

Dish/Laundry detergent

We noticed that manufacturers are packaging a lot of detergents in prepackaged "doses", ie dishwasher detergent tablets.

This forces you to use a set amount (which you can actually decrease depending on how soiled your dishes are).

Try to buy the powder or liquid form of detergent that you can measure out yourself. You'll be able to squeeze in quite a few more loads than the label suggests, they tend to be a little cheaper and it's better for the environment!

Credit cards with good rebates...

I never ever want to recommend credit cards to anyone who is frugal - it's much too easy to spend spend spend money away. Even if you are frugal, a credit card can start the downward spiral into consumer debt. Not good.

Nonetheless, if you pay off your card balance in full every month, and if you are disciplined, you can make use of a credit card to earn points, dollars, or whatever else.

The best card we have gotten so far, hands down, is the MBNA Smart Cash card. It's a platinum card, so your rental car insurance is covered. As far as the card, for the first 6 months, you get 5% back on groceries and gas. All other purchases are 1% back. After the first 6 months, you get 3% back on groceries and gas, as well as 1% back on everything else. The rebate comes in the form of a cheque every month.

If you're like us, and you just get groceries and gas most of the time, then this is for you. There are no fees as well.

We've ditched our PC Mastercard, as it only gets you 1% back on everything, and it ties you down to having to buy at Superstore.

Happy Canada Day!

Diarrhea food

After having to deal with diarrhea in two kids in the span of two weeks (yeah, I know...lucky us...), we figured out some good tips:

1. Frozen banana popsicles (just halve a banana and stick a popsicle stick into it and freeze). It's one of the only fruits you can eat when you have the runs. It's a delicious snack even when you don't have the runs!

2. Gatorade powder. Rather than rushing out to buy a bottle or two of Gatorade every time someone has diarrhea, you can make it as you need it! It's great for rehydration. It's good on your wallet too! (two 750 mL bottles cost around $3 and a can of gatorade powder that can make 8L costs around $5)

3. Toilet train them!! The mess is much easier to clean up! We reaped the rewards of toilet training our kids super early. Our two year old was able to hold in his diarrhea with minimal leakage (sorry about he visual) until we got the potty for him! Our baby was even able to hold it in several times so that we could avoid big-time disaster (change of clothing, clean floors, launder sheets/blankets/etc). For little ones who have diarrhea, having a pair of training pants over top of diapers definitely helped contain the leakage.

4. Congee. Ancient chinese secret. It's a cheap-to-make, simple rice broth that allows you to digest easily when you have the runs, it also helps rehydrate you and helps you clear the virus in your gut.

Let's just say that we survived this last round of diarrhea (our first time dealing with it actually) with some good tips. Next time, we just need to remember: super good hand-washing when we're travelling with the kids...so we can avoid it altogether! Thank goodness we didn't have to deal with any diarrhea on our 5 hour flight home!!!