Thrifty Thursday: Not Quite Done

 

Saturday:  We went to our favorite restaurant today.  As usual we skipped the appetizers, we ordered water to drink and then we brought home half our meal each, which we had for dinner.

Sunday:  John went into the grocery to pick up the chicken for today's dinner.  He also bought me an iced tea and himself a bottle of water and then he got a small fruit cup and a lemon.  Why the lemon?  Because he's on a gig of drinking lemon in his water which will do him no harm at all.

I entered the receipts into both Ibotta (earned 20c) and Fetch rewards.  It all adds up.

This evening we decided to order a tree stand for the tree, since we've no idea what has happened to ours.  It will take two weeks to arrive, (SIGH) but I had earned rewards and that gift card that I'd just purchased, saving us $10.

Monday:  Caleb asked for waffles for breakfast, so I had John dig out the waffle iron for me.  I'm lucky it was in the first box I suggested he go look in, lol.  Waffles were delicious and we enjoyed them.  I had one leftover.  It would have been two, but John insisted I sit down to eat with them. I forgot the one cooking in the waffle iron, so it baked up super toasty hard.

For lunch, I mixed up a batch of pimento cheese spread.  Caleb ate that off his bread.  He kept telling me it was 'Chip Dip'.  Okay...He ate it so I'll not complain if it was spread on his chips.  Personally, I prefer that pimento cheese on a celery stalk.

I made American Goulash for supper tonight.  I used up all sorts of things in it.  A quarter cup of pizza sauce, half a can of diced tomatoes, some canned V8 juice that's been sitting on the pantry shelf that we got from the bounty of school lunches, a cup of leftover sloppy joe meat mixture and another cup of leftover Shepherd's Pie filling that used ground meat as the base.  I read about fourteen recipes and quickly got the idea that it's pretty flexible as to what you can use in it.  I've already cooked the meat/tomato base and allowed it to simmer a few minutes.  I'll add pasta later on.  And I may take some of that meat/tomato base out of the pot to freeze for another day.

Tuesday:  Breakfast this morning was just so so.  The leftover biscuits tasted just fine warmed over.  I used leftover fried chicken I'd cut from the bone to fill the biscuits.  Meh.  I had an idea it might taste better than what it did.  I won't do that again in the future, but the only one who failed to eat much of anything was Caleb. To be fair, that was Second breakfast for him this morning a meal that he is seldom prone to indulge in very deeply as he did in the past.

I pulled more leftovers from the fridge for lunch which we shared among us.  

And tonight's supper is of course, another leftover makeover.   I hadn't planned to make turkey broth, but I knew I wanted a meal that would use up the last of the turkey and all I could come up with that I really wanted was Turkey Pot Pie.  So, I cut the meat off the bone and put the bone on to simmer.  I have turkey broth in the freezer, but I decided I'd make some fresh to make my gravy for the turkey meat.  And I'm here to tell you right now that broth is smelling pretty darn good!  Perfect on a cold blustery sort of day to have broth on to cook.

Frugal Fails:  I opened a jar of chicken gravy on Sunday to expedite dinner.  It was not good, far too much sage and I really like sage!  So that will be going to the dog.  It was the Kroger brand gravy that was on sale the week before Thanksgiving, and it came up on Ibotta as a Heinz product.  I was so tempted by a Better than Bouillion jar of gravy, but it was pricey, and I was all about sales that day.

Another frugal fail was the Betty Crocker Julienne au gratin potatoes I bought and made for supper on Friday night.  No good.  Out it went.  I'll give away the other box or toss it.  I hate food waste, and I'm trying hard when I try new products not to 'stock up'.  I bought two of the potatoes and having never had it, should have gotten only one.  I do like boxed au gratin potatoes, especially the Aldi brand of them.  Betty Crocker was a huge disappointment.

Frugal surprise:  Remember those Rave apples I was less than happy about?  Web information said they were best when chilled.  After the holiday I was able to free up room enough to put all the fruit in the fridge, as I'd typically do and I put those apples in as well.  Caleb pulled one out the other day and I cut it up for us to share.  It was delicious!  I was so surprised that I asked Caleb, "Where did you get this apple?!" "From the 'freegerator."  "Was it in a bag?"  "Yes."  The only apples in the bag are the Rave ones.  I put the others loose into the basket.  So just following the web advice improved my idea of the value of those apples.

Wednesday:  Not much to report for this day, but I did get two more Christmas gifts ordered.  In this instance, I opted to purchase pre-owned.  The boys love their video games, but those things can be very pricey.  I've had experience with purchasing a pre-owned game and the savings makes it well worthwhile.  The discs are not damaged in anyway, they are just something someone traded in because they'd been bored with it or in order to get credit towards something else.  While new wasn't in my budget, pre-owned was.  I know that at least one will be thrilled, and I hope that the other will be also.

I think I have one more to go and then I'm done.  

I had more than enough food to avoid going to the grocery for dog food today.  In fact, I had more leftover, and we've been adding to that today.  So, I'll have enough to feed them tomorrow as well.  Mind you I've plenty of cat food and could easily feed Rufus that for a meal or so but with all the food scraps we've had it's been more of a savings to feed them those.

I used up the last of a bag of spinach, the last of a head of Romaine and the last handful of my own homegrown lettuce to make a salad to go with our supper tonight.

Thursday:  Not been the best day of my life.  Briefly: I made pizza from scratch.  I saw a great deal on an item I thought would be an ideal gift for the last recipient (?maybe?) on my gift list.  I ordered it right away and applied a coupon and a promo code to the item to bring the price down to my budget level.  I will also earn cashback from Microsoft Shopping and Rakuten.

Now I shall call this week at an end.  I've had quite enough of it, no matter how many days are left in the week!

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