Cheap & Cheerful Menus for a Mid-January Week

Thursday's quick and easy supper of eggs, bacon, bagels and stewed prunes

Friday
Leftover-palooza
We needed to eat through a bunch of leftovers, so I changed up the menu for tonight's dinner.

• leftover rice and lentils from last Saturday, mixed with leftover black beans from a week ago, and canned tomatoes, from the can I opened last Sunday, some salsa, and some black olives, heated in a skillet with beef fat from the freezer, and some oil (to mute the beef fat flavor)
• leftover stewed prunes from Thursday, mixed with 1 banana, sliced, for fruit cups, for 3 of the family, and 1 dish of leftover blackberry-rhubarb sauce for the other person
• steamed broccoli, the last crown of broccoli, bought a week ago and needed cooking

Saturday

It was my husband's turn to cook, again. I was gone for the afternoon and came home a few minutes before dinner was ready. He's doing okay with the cooking, by the way. He asked for suggestions, on Friday. I gave him a couple of suggestions. He decided to choose his own path.

• brown rice
• refried beans
• fried corn tortillas and salsa
• carrot and celery sticks, plus bleu cheese dressing

Sunday

• chili made with a chicken breast, that I had thawed the day before and wasn't used, in place of turkey as I'd planned, simmered with canned tomatoes, green peppers, onions, pinto beans and seasonings
• scratch cornbread
• tangerines
• cookies (these ones, but I didn't get around to dipping them in white chocolate

Monday

Mostly a repeat from Sunday's dinner

• leftover chili, stretched with lentils today
• leftover cornbread
• smoothies of orange juice, cranberry sauce and pumpkin

Tuesday

• baked potatoes, topped with a diced hot dog and mushrooms, sauteed, then cheese on that (this was surprisingly good)
• baked butternut squash, simply seasoned with butter and salt
• winter veggie slaw, of red cabbage, green cabbage and julienned carrots

Wednesday

• ham slices from the freezer
• leftover baked potatoes
• leftover butternut squash mixed with leftover pumpkin puree
• marinated lentil salad, in mustard vinaigrette
• watermelon pickles
• blackberry-rhubarb sauce from the freezer

Thursday

• eggs, scrambled in ham fat, with mushrooms, onions and green pepper, topped with cheese
• turkey bacon
• stewed prunes
• bagels with cream cheese

Another quick and easy week of dinners. I attempted to put some order back into the pantry this week. We still have such abundance of everything that it's impossible to find anything in the pantry or the freezer. But I'm working at it. My plan is to have made a significant dent in the freezers by the end of February. I think we need to eat more ham and blackberries to make that happen.

What was on your menu this past week? Anything particularly yummy, or easy? I hope that everyone who was under the weather last week, is feeling much better, this week. Enjoy your weekend, everyone!

Tipping the Jug

You know that you're in a frugal household when the sight of upside down, empty containers, propped over bowl and pots is a normal thing.

Of course, the amount of liquid that can be drained out of an "empty" jug is in direct proportion to the size of the container to be emptied and the viscosity of the liquid. A larger container holding a thick liquid will yield a greater volume of resulting liquid than a smaller container of a thin liquid. The photos, above, are from a 7.5 gallon container of vegetable oil that was presumably empty. I left the jug propped, upside-down, over a bowl for 6 hours and it yielded about 2 tablespoons of oil, enough for salad dressing for a marinated lentil salad.

Above the mixing bowl, I propped a gallon-size jug of molasses, again, presumably empty. After draining for about 4 hours, it yielded about 3/4 tablespoon of molasses, enough to make 1/4 cup of light-brown sugar, out of white sugar, for a batch of bread.

Of course, you do have to be creative in how you prop your jugs. Sometimes, I can just leave them resting against something else on the counter, like the crockpot. Other times, I have to wedge the jug partially inside a cupboard, as with the molasses jug, if I don't want the jug, itself, sitting in the ingredients, like this bread dough.

Will 2 tablespoons of oil make or break us financially? No, probably not. But it's the principle of it all. I paid for all of the molasses in the jug, not 1 gallon less 1 tablespoon of molasses. I want to use every last bit that I've paid for. And sometimes, tipping the jug gets that last bit out, that I need for a recipe, meaning I can still make what I had planned, without a last minute dash out to the store.

What do you think? Do you prop jugs upside down to get every last drop? Do you think it's worth the effort?