I think it’s pretty safe to say that in these difficult economic times, we’re all looking for ways to save a bit of money.  Thankfully, this doesn’t mean completely changing your lifestyle.  Some of our favorite ‘green’ blogs offer up some very do-able, unique solutions for conserving cash.  Check out some of our favorite creative solutions:

Frugal Green Living: Save $1000 Using These 6 Tips

Image credit: thievingjoker @ flickr

Convince your boss to let you work four (slightly longer) days a week
Working four ten-hour days instead of five eight-hour days is not only a great way to have a longer weekend, but it’ll save you some cash, too. You’ll save 20% on whatever you spend for commuting, coffee, lunch, and any other daily expenses you incur by dragging yourself to the office. Let’s say you do it on the cheap, and don’t drive yourself, pay for parking, or spend more than a few bucks on lunch. Even if you spend $2 on the bus or public transit, $2 for a coffee and $6 for lunch, you can easily save several hundred bucks by working four days a week. Get the nitty-gritty in our guide for How to Go Green: Commuting.

Alternately, you can telecommute on the fifth day of the week; it’ll cost a bit more in energy and food expenses, but it’ll still save money in the long haul.

Annual savings: $500+ for a four-day workweek (that’s $10 per day, one day a week, for 50 weeks a year — you get two for vacation, right?); slightly less for telecommuters.

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We recently challenged some of the best food bloggers out there to a recipe contest. Make a weeknight meal for 4 for less than $4 per serving. Entries came in from chefs of all kinds - cookbook authors, vegans, college students, stay-at-home moms, engineers and we had to narrow a large pool down to our favorite six. But even our runner up recipes were pretty awesome and we thought we’d share with you some of our favorites that didn’t make the cut…

Apron Adventures: Asian Ginger Steak

Married… with dinner: San Francisco Sloppy Joes

Living the Justopian Life: A Seasonal Three Course Meal

Stay tuned next week to find out who our lucky six finalists are!

About three months ago, I purchased my first home - a modest one bedroom, less than a fifteen minute bike ride to work, in a safe but diverse neighborhood and with a gorgeous, gorgeous brand new kitchen.  I remember when I first moved in how my enthusiasm (and lack of funds - man, closing costs add up!) drove me to cook meals for myself from scratch almost every night.  I’ve since fallen out of this habit - choosing to go out with friends or just ‘grabbing something quick’ instead of enjoying my own home cooking.

So this week I started to wonder - how do other single folks to it?  Whether you’re a college student, a young professional, a single parent or otherwise on your own - how do you adequately feed yourself without spending all your time and/or money on the effort? Here are some ideas from what we’re reading…

Meals for One: Weekly Meal Planning

I raced home from work and had a total of 1/2 hour to feed both dogs, make dinner, and change for an Austin City Limits taping with My Morning Jacket. I impressed myself by successfully slicing some red onion, chopping a roasted red pepper and fresh parsley, slicing 1/2 a zucchini, and throwing everything together with eggs and fresh goat cheese for the perfect fresh summer dinner.

Sometimes we forget how easy it is to pull together a simple and elegant meal quickly on a weeknight.  Thanks, Jodi for reminding us!

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I’ve been traveling this week - nothing too spectacular- just a flight to upstate NY for a family reunion, followed by a road trip back down to NJ to spend a week with the family and on Sunday - the NYC Century.  During a particularly long layover on my way to NY, as I circled the terminal for the tenth time, I realized just how few options exist in airport dining for anyone seeking healthy, natural or organic - let alone anyone with a dietary restriction.  Same goes for a road trip and its commonly frequented fast food joints and gas stations.  So how do you stay healthy on the move?  Here are some blogs that answered that question.

What Foods Can You Carry on a Plane?

Tomorrow we’re leaving to go to Switzerland for a conference, and it’s going to be a long trip from San Francisco to Geneva - 14 hours! Airplane food is not known for being particularly tasty, and we’d like to pack our own meal. But with security regulations, we wondered: what can we carry on the plane?

Rules of the Road Trip

If you’re planning your own end-of-summer getaway, I’ve gleaned some ideas from my own experience on how you can vacation without gaining 20 pounds, not to mention throwing your eco-conscious intentions to the wind.

What are your Favorite Airplane Snacks? (for kids)

It’s no secret that airline food isn’t particularly kid friendly, and lately most flights don’t include any food at all, leaving parents to bring along their own snacks and meals for their hungry kids. [...] There is an art-form to packing snacks to bring along on an plane ride. They need need to last un-refrigerated for hours, cannot contain liquid, and preferably they take no space at all, are filling, and not sugar laden.

So, what are your favorite travel snacks and how do you stay healthy while on the road or in the air?

I wish my childhood lunches had been filled with more delightful and evocative images, so I could recount to you complete sensory detail, my memories of elementary school at noon. But alas, I had a lot of bologna on white bread, American cheese on white bread and peanut butter and jelly… on white bread. Not that my mom wasn’t awesome, but she lacked the time and the… culinary creativity to spin brown bagged meals into flavorful memories.

But, what I lack in personal experience in my youth, I’ve more than made up for in living vicariously through other people’s lunches.

Betcha Can’t Eat EVEN One!

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Is it just me or are you feeling a bit like this lately? It’s mid-August and all of the maps of daytime temperatures across the US show firey shades of red, orange and yellow. It’s undeniably hot outside and it seems like everyone’s talking about it.

The blogosphere and the news are abuzz with chatter about the heat and ways to combat it and we thought we’d share with you some of the best ways to beat (or enjoy) the heat that we’ve found this week…

Tomato and Zucchini Gratin

This week’s challenge was tomatoes, and if you’re a reader of Mattbites you’ll know that I tend to go overboard during summer when it comes to these things. I was going for a bit of restraint this year. Yea yea I know, restraint and me don’t really get along. I’m trying.

One of our favorite bloggers, Matt Armendariz offers up this tantalizing summer treat made with some of the season’s best vegetables. It’s a bit more of a road map than a recipe, but I think that makes it all the more summer-appropriate!

The Igneous Petrology of Ice Cream

Ice cream is an igneous rock. You begin with a liquid slurry containing a hodgepodge of chemicals, and by bringing it below its freezing point, you create something solid - or at least solid-ish. Good ice cream or sorbet needs a little give, a bit of liquid remaining between ice crystals so that you can comfortably dig into it with a spoon.

This is what happens when a person with a master’s degree in Earth Sciences starts thinking about one of our favorite ways to cool down in the summertime - ice cream! And speaking of ice cream, has anyone out there tried avocado ice cream?

Nice Ice Cream and opening the young coconut

Young (Thai) coconuts (you can find in Whole foods) are different from the easier to find brown coconuts we may have grown up with, inside they are gelatinous and full of fresh coconut milk. You need a butcher knife-like implement to open it (cutting a square in the top ideally with 4 whacks) and they come in an all white shell.

Have you ever had a young coconut? Oh, you don’t know what you’re missing! They’re exceptionally more flavorful (and full of delicious coconut water) than the dry brown versions many of us are accustomed to seeing. There’s a great little video showing how to properly open one along with a long list of raw ice creams for those who may be avoiding some of the ingredients that make up more traditional ice cream. Enjoy!