Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for a Week of Snow Days

the road in front of my house

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were snow days for the schools in my district. And Thursday was a delayed start for the day. That meant that my daughters couldn't teach for 3 full days and only taught an afternoon session for Thursday. When it snows here, modern life comes to a screeching halt. The road in front of our house (a main street through the neighborhood) was un-drivable for our small sedan, so I just stayed in for the week.

In case it's not obvious, I didn't do any grocery shopping for the week. So, my January grocery spending still stands at $81.02, total. I don't need anything, but I will watch for special deals and markdowns.

I failed to take photos this week, again. I'm still working at getting back into the swing of things. But here's what we had for our dinners all week.


Friday (we de-decked the Christmas tree tonight, so it was a "fun" sort of dinner)
homemade mushroom and black olive pizza
cole slaw dressed with homemade dressing -- mayo, vinegar, salt, pinch sugar, onion powder
trail mix of nuts, pretzels, raisins, marshmallows
chocolates from Christmas

Saturday
turkey hash with leftover Thanksgiving turkey, potatoes, onions, and carrots, topped with homemade ketchup
orange wedges
last of the trail mix

Sunday
scrambled eggs and ham
pasta with tomato sauce --canned tomatoes mixed with leftover homemade pizza sauce
cole slaw
orange wedges

Monday
baked beans, flavored with ham fat, onions, tomato liquid from canned tomatoes, brown sugar, mustard powder, and chili powder
baked butternut squash
orange wedges
homemade bread and homemade soft butter
cookies (the 49 cent ones, clearance Christmas cookies)

Tuesday (daughter's night to cook)
scratch pizza that she made and froze a couple of weeks ago
veggies and dip
apple pie -- Dollar Tree canned pie filling that is truly awful but made palatable with 2 more green apples, lots of lemon juice, cloves, cinnamon, salt, sugar, all in a scratch pie crust. (I bought a few cans of the DT pie filling last year and we discovered we didn't care for it. The doctored-up version was pretty good. I now have 1 can remaining.)

Wednesday (other daughter's night to cook -- she was very short on time so she asked me for ideas for a quick dinner. She was pleased that she could make this so quickly.)
scrambled eggs
toast
cole slaw
leftover apple pie

Thursday
Mexican rice bowls with brown rice, refried beans, canned corn, cheese, salsa, and plain yogurt -- very tasty
orange wedges
peanut butter cookies -- I had the dough in the freezer


Another week of home-cooked meals. With the cold weather, I baked something almost every day this week. That kept the kitchen warm, at least. It's supposed to warm up slightly over the weekend. I'm a weather wimp -- I've had my taste of winter; now I want to move on to spring.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend!

Taking Screenshots When Conducting Online Transactions

Do you use the screenshot function on your computer very often? It's super handy when you want to remotely show someone a program that is malfunctioning and how the results appear on your screen. Screenshots are also super helpful when you need to "prove" something that you read online, after the fact.

I make it a habit to screenshot the final page on an order just before hitting "submit." This is the page that usually outlines the item ordered, the cost per item, and the shipping costs and delivery estimates. If I've used a coupon code, this page also indicates the associated discount.

I recently placed an online order for a bunch of small items that were on sale. I did as I always do, I screen-shotted that last page before submitting. After placing the order, I received an email invoice/receipt for the items. On this receipt, I noticed the prices per items on a couple of like-items were more than what I believed I would be charged. I went back to the website and the prices were now higher than I'd seen just 30 minutes earlier.

I reached out to customer support immediately and offered to send files of my screenshots to verify the prices I had seen online. After a few back and forth emails, I was able to get my account credited for this overcharge. Had I not taken the screen shots, I either would not have spoken up about the overcharge, or if I did, I would not have had any proof of what price I had been offered.

This week, everything was finally settled. I ended up saving over $8 by taking 10 seconds to screenshot my transaction with pricing info, then following up with customer support contact. I just wanted to pass this on for your future online transactions. Screenshots are a quick and easy way to document online information and could save you some real cash should you find yourself in a conflict over pricing with an online vendor.