Frugal Friday With Marsha -- Food Again

As far as being frugal, this past week has still been about our meals.
I did pull 13 lbs of chicken out of the deep freeze that's been there for a long time.  What I found was that most of it was freezer burnt.

Lesson #1--  Use the food that you have!

I cooked what I could of it in the crockpot, which was still quite a lot.  We had chicken that night then we pulled the rest of the chicken off the bones and it's not in the freezer ready for 2 meals-- a casserole, and chicken fajitas.




I've thought a lot this last week about my mom and how she always has done things at meals.  In my adult life we have ended up living with her for short periods and she is still the same.
She pulls out all leftovers every meal---until they are gone.

Lesson #2-- Use leftovers instead of letting them turn into science experiments in the refrigerator.

Rather than pull out leftovers each meal like my mom, I used to freeze leftovers.  Veggies were put into a larger container in the freezer and used with roast or stew in the crock pot.  Other foods were frozen like they were.    I would then pull them all out twice a month for a banquet meal.   The kids actually loved when I did this and getting to choose what they wanted to eat from many things.

Lesson #3--  No matter what, just try to not let food go to waste, PERIOD!





Whichever way I choose to do it, making sure leftovers get eaten or freezing the leftovers, we must adhere to lesson #3.
Even when (or if) we get our financial life back in order, we still need to not waste anything.


Our local food bank allows people to come for food every 2 months.  It's been quite a bit longer than that since I had went, and I made an appointment.  You would never guess that for meat, we got mostly chicken.   I can be ok with that though because I do love chicken, and there are so many different ways to fix it.

I also got in a bit of money and was able to spend $16 at the grocery store.  I bought tortillas, milk, and cheese along with some non-food items.  I was looking at Sargento cheese slices for a 25 cent rebate on ibotta.  I had a 50 cent coupon, but that only took Sargento down to $3 a package.  I seen that the store brand of the sliced cheese was on sale for $1.88 and had 6 more slices.  I opted to be the wiser shopper and get the store brand.

Well, that's it for this week.  Will next week be more adventures in food, or will I come up with something else to talk about?

Frugal Friday's With Marsha 6/24/11

Good Friday morning to all!
It's Friday, and time to share your frugal type posts from the past week. I do hope you will join in.

This past week Steve and I found ourselves broke. There just wasn't money to buy much as far as groceries. We ate leftovers, and made due with what food we had most of the week. Saturday evenings is Mom's night at our house. Steve did spend a mere little fortune buying a huge pork loin and macaroni salad, potato salad and baked beans for our meal. Only a portion of the pork loin was used and we have 2 more sections cut into roasts in the deep freeze. We ate on those sides for 4 days. I sure admit to getting tired of them! Thursday evening we spent $5.25 at my church eating at the grill night fundraiser, and tonight we pick my teen up from Bible camp and get to eat supper with her.

I'm reading a book called Financial Recovery for review. It's a great book and I'm going to start today with her suggestions so that we can get this money thing in check.

I only made one small run to the store. I didn't buy much, and no big savings. I did use the 2 Suave .75 coupons that I printed from their facebook page to get them for .06 each plus sales tax. Half gallons of milk are on sale 3 for $5, so I picked up a couple of those. That doesn't make it much cheaper than buying a gallon, but every few cents adds up.
My Walgreens and Wal Mart shopping as well as my Mailbox Monday posts are in the linky.

Steve's sister brought over a bunch of chives from her garden. I chopped and dried those in the oven. I love to use them in soups and potatoes.

I've had 2 bags of powdered milk in my cabinet that I rec'd through commodities. I've started mixing it up and using it when I bake and cook. No one's known the difference and it's sure saved on buying milk!

Nothing else really to report--I didn't even do laundry this week, I've still been reeling putting away all the laundry that I did last week. With no kids here this week I've only had to run the dishwasher twice. The air conditioner is still set at 81 and we are most comfortable with that.