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?

My Frugal Week May 9-15

I pretty well failed this past week in trying to be frugal:

One night 2 who eat were late for supper.  By the time they got here and got done eating, my mind was no longer on supper.  It was almost midnight before I walked in to the kitchen again.....wasted: beef with gravy, mashed potatoes and peas  :(   All that could have been frozen.

I also failed at trying to save the seeds out of the orange, red and yellow peppers we had sliced for Mother's Day.  I put them into separate bags to get them laid out to dry later.  It wasn't until Friday that I wonder what was squishy in my jacket pocket.  Oh boy...in the trash they had to go!

I have still been using the second hand etc, larger bags for trashbags, but the last one of those is in the can now.  That means I do need to stop at the dollar store and buy a box of bags.  I do have $1 and some change left in my wallet after cashing a $5 refund check that came in the mail today.  The rest of it I spent to buy a few stamps.

I did my Walgreen's shopping on Mother's Day.  I'm happy with it!

One frugal thing I did this week was to use the backs of paper I had already printed, but no longer needed, when printing out things for Jasmine's 50 States Lapbook.   We aren't short on paper, but I sure can't see wasting it.

I hope to have better things to report next Monday.