Group Insurance Policies

I do a lot of reading and one thing I love to read about is saving money. Many times I  jump from different webpages, scanning the comments in posts to find out pros and cons on new ideas, such as making your own detergent for front-load washing machines.

Last week, I read about someone's spouse working for a large company and that they saved money by using the company's group car insurance policy. What?!? I never knew there was such a thing!

Our car insurance policy seems to keep creeping higher and higher, and we've been talking about how to reduce the costs. So I started pondering more on that comment I read and if it might work for where I work. I don't remember what sight I read it on, but the more I thought about it, the more I wondered, "Why not?"

There's group health insurance, so why not group car insurance? And, the more I thought about it, why not group homeowner's insurance? Think of the money you could save!

Since we don't have a suggestion box at work, I decided to approach our HR person and find out if our company would consider such a thing. After broaching the subject with him, he informed me that he would be meeting with the insurance person the very next day and would ask if they had a plan for it.

The more I think about this, the more it gets me excited for it! I mean, what an ingenius idea! Not only could you save money on your health, car and homeowner's insurance policies, but the overall costs would be divided into the total amount of paychecks for the year and deducted from them. This way, you would never have to worry about coming up with a large sum of money when each becomes due.

I'm sure there would be problems along with the ease of this. For instance, with a group policy, you'd have to have agreed amounts of deductibles and also on amounts of coverage. Hopefully, there would be at least a couple choices in each area for the individual employees to choose from. Also, with a large group policy, you'd only be able to sign up once a year or you'd have constant changes in the policy. But for a long-time employee, it may work to their advantage.

Even if we saved just $10.00 per month on each of the car insurance and homeowner's insurance policies, $10.00 x 12 months x 2 policies = $240.00. I don't know about you, but I could sure go for an extra $240.00 a year. But optimistically, I'm hoping that if my idea works, we'll save even more! Over all, I felt it was definitely worth looking into and I am hoping for the best.


Disclosure: The Excalibur Dehydrator link under "Other Sites" is an affiliated link. If you make a purchase using this link ~ you will receive free shipping, along with other specials. I also earn a small percentage to help support my blog. Thank you, your support is appreciated!!

Easy Fresh Salsa

Here's an extremely easy fresh salsa recipe. This is how I used up my leftover peppers that didn't fit in the dehydrator. I had my husband run out to the garden and grab all the ripe tomatoes and four onions. Yeah, that's right, this is ALL the ripe tomatoes we had left at that moment.

First clean the veggies. De-stem them and remove any blemishes. Quarter the tomatoes and place them in a food chopper. Chop them up.

The tomatoes will more than likely be very much like sauce when you're done. Transfer to a serving bowl.

Next, slice the onions into big chunks and continue the process of putting them into the food chopper and chopping them up.

Chop the onions until they almost look like a puree with a few chunks. Add to tomato sauce.

Last of all, take your peppers and repeat the same process.

The finished peppers will have a few chunks but most will look like large granules. Add to tomato and onion mixture.

Once you've finished chopping all the veggies, go ahead and add any other ingredients you like in your salsa. I added a tablespoon of vinegar and a teaspoon of minced garlic. I would have loved to have had some cilantro to add but there was none in the house. My husband really doesn't care for the cilantro taste so was thankful there was none on hand!

Mix it up thoroughly and you're done. You can't get much easier than this! Now just find some taco chips to dip into the deliciousness! Bon appetit!

Disclosure: The Excalibur Dehydrator link under "Other Sites" is an affiliated link. If you make a purchase using this link ~ you will receive free shipping, along with other specials. I also earn a small percentage to help support my blog. Thank you, your support is appreciated!!

Drying Bell Peppers

My mother gave me a parsley plant and suggested I plant it in the garden as it is supposed to come back year after year. So I headed out to the garden and quickly dug a hole and planted it near the edge of the garden. Simple enough.

On my way back to the house to get some water for the parsley, I spotted several large peppers hanging from the pepper plants. So I returned with not only the water for the parsley, but a pail for the peppers. We only had three plants but they produced a good crop of peppers. Several of the peppers were already turning soft. There weren't very many tomatoes to can salsa with, so I decided to dry them like I did a few years ago. Pretty easy to do and great to have for adding to recipes.

First wash the peppers in water with a little bit of dish soap.

After getting the dirt off, rinse and drain them.

Then you can slice them up and layer them on a dehydrator. I'm on my second dehydrator since my first one quit working a few years ago. Even though they are shaped differently, I saved the shelf layers and use them when I have more than I can fit onto four layers.

Those white layers are from my old dehydrator. I have to strategically place them between the new ones in order to get them to work with the new dehydrator. I had so many peppers that I didn't have enough room even with these eight layers. So I decided to set aside a few for some fresh salsa which I'll blog on another time.

Because it was quite humid when I did these, and because there were so many layers, it actually took a couple days to finish drying. I should add that my husband shut it off before heading to bed and I turned it back on in the morning. No harm done. But before turning the dryer on in the morning, I was able to remove the old layers and put the half dried peppers onto the newer layers to continue drying.

 Finally, the peppers are dry enough to chop.

Get out your food chopper and grind them up. If you don't own a food chopper, you could probably use a blender.

Grind them into small pieces.

Place them in an air tight container. Done! Now you have peppers to use. These will keep for a long time.

Disclosure: The Excalibur Dehydrator link under "Other Sites" is an affiliated link. If you make a purchase using this link ~ you will receive free shipping, along with other specials. I also earn a small percentage to help support my blog. Thank you, your support is appreciated!!