Another Weekend in the Frugal Life

one of my fun new snack containers for making homemade snack packs

I'm struggling to get through today. So, I thought I'd focus on some positives in my life, in particular, frugal triumphs.

• we ate all meals at home, all scratch-cooked
• we had a homemade pizza dinner on Friday while we watched a free movie on the Roku, Get Shorty (on Pluto TV- a free subscription service, has ads, but hey, I need a break from time to time to use the restroom or get a cup of tea)
• I used YouTube on the Roku while I exercised indoors. Anything I might normally watch on YouTube can be watched on the Roku. I was using music selections (50s doo-wop) to motivate me while I exercised.
• I washed a whole bunch of plastic bags to reuse. I hung these all on the clothes drying rack. I turn them inside out about a day after hanging, then allow to continue drying.
• We also used the clothes drying racks to hang some laundry this weekend.
• I used my cute little snack containers that my daughter gave to me over the weekend, filling them with various goodies and mini cut veggies. I could also eat my snacks off of a plate. But these are more fun.
• I paid bills online and over the phone (the one bill that doesn't have an option to pay online). I saved the cost of several stamps. However, I don't think I recouped the cost of internet access.
• We're in a rainy pattern right now. So I took advantage of the indoor time to organize and inventory the pantry. I mentally set aside a couple of items for our Easter dinner and placed an order to be shipped for basics that I don't want to run out of (raisins, flour, sugar, peanut butter, brown rice, canned tomato paste, non-stock baking spray, and rainbow sprinkles to make funfetti desserts).
• I also inventoried one of the freezers, and I found a whole chicken bought in early 2020. I pulled it out to thaw and oven-roasted it on Monday for our dinner. Everyone loved having a Thanksgiving-like dinner on a regular weekday evening.
• I've been in a funk lately, so I read a couple of online articles (instead of buying books or magazines), which resulted in me using my motivational journal to work out my internal dialog. The "motivational journal" is my 79-cent spiral notebook bought in the school supply section of Target. I knew what I'd be using this notebook for, so I chose a color that I like. It's pink. It's been a bargain. 79 cents to dialog with myself or $$$ for therapy. Easy choice for me.

Where we messed up. 2 family members had ex's to pick-up one day, but they didn't coordinate. So, gas was used to go to the pharmacy and back twice in the same day. Wah wah.

So that was my weekend. What frugal triumphs have you had recently?

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for Late February

Another week of simple meals at our house. You will notice that on several nights, we finished off different garden vegetables for the year. Always makes me a bit sad. As you may have guessed, we like to eat a lot of vegetables. Oddly, I sometimes have to remind myself to cook some meat every now and then, too. After looking at what we ate this past week, I think this next week will be one of those weeks with more meat. Anyway, here's what we had for dinner this past week.

Friday, pizza and movie night (we watched Some Like It Hot)

pepperoni pizza, roasted pumpkin cubes (the last of our garden pumpkins and winter squashes from 2021. :-( sad me), canned green beans, celery sticks, brownies

Mexican-inspired dinner

Saturday
Homemade Mexican -- refried beans and cheese, canned corn, canned tomatoes, homemade flour tortillas, with last of the garden carrots, steamed, brownies

Sunday

lentil-vegetable soup with homemade cheese buns

Monday's hot dogs after a busy afternoon

Monday
toasted hot dogs in bread wraps, Parmesan potatoes (last of the potatoes tonight), steamed carrots, radish green salad with boiled eggs and bacon bits in citrus dressing

I love frittatas!

Tuesday
broccoli and sausage frittata, with brown rice and chicken stock gravy, avocado slices, ginger apple-fig sauce

one daughter made dinner tonight for us

Wednesday
tuna salad on cabbage leaves, carrot sticks and dip, canned green beans, homemade French bread and butter

other daughter made dinner this night

Thursday

vegetable and lentil curry over brown rice with raisins, peanuts, and homemade chutney garnishes

Thursday was a baking day. I made granola (again -- gotta use up some of our oats), blueberry muffins, and some bar cookies, a recipe from one of my mother's first cookbooks. My family liked them, but I thought they were on the dry side and just okay. They were coconut-almond bar cookies, to which I also added dried cranberries. If I were to make these again, I'd use a smaller baking pan so they would be thicker, and maybe use more coconut and almonds. While I was making them, I was thinking that the recipe was a bit skimpy on both almonds (1/4 cup) and coconut (1/2 cup). Perhaps this was a recipe holdover from wartime just a decade earlier. Anyway, I think I may try them again and tweak the recipe a bit. I liked the idea of a coconut bar cookie. The recipe just needs more of the goodie ingredients, in my opinion. So, I baked the sweet things on Thursday and will bake bread for the week on Friday. Lately, I've been quadrupling the pizza dough recipe for Friday's pizza dinner and using 3/4 of the dough to make 2 large loaves of French bread. This seems to be about the right amount of bread for us for one week and we all really like French bread. So, I'll do this again this week, make one large pizza and 2 loaves of bread.

Other meals this week --

Breakfasts: crockpot steel cut oats, bran muffins, granola, homemade yogurt, toast, juice, fruit, coffee, tea, cocoa, milk

Lunches: various pureed vegetable soups, peanut butter sandwiches, eggs, cheese, crackers, fruit, juice, carrot and celery sticks, canned and frozen veggies, brownies, and leftovers from dinners

That's what we ate this past week. What was on your table this week?