Thrifty Thursday: On the Other Side

 

I sent out last week's post early by accident.  Mark it down to trying to write, hold a conversation and being generally distracted.  So, this week's line-up will look like a bit more than usual.  

Tuesday:  I looked at the weather early this morning and they were predicting a freeze tonight, not just frost.  That got me in motion to do what I needed to do.  I brought in the plants I wanted to overwinter indoors.  I didn't bring in a lot this year.  Two orchids (I won't count the third one that the girl grand dog decided to chew the pot of until I get it repotted), two Christmas cactus.  I left the Sansevieria and one cactus outdoors to winter over in the bin and see how those do out there.  They all look bad after those last too hot days of summer that they faced.  

I walked around and gathered coleus blooms and seed pods from the Touch Me Nots.  Then I cut the coleus back and brought in some of each of the three varieties to try and root. I usually have good success with rooting, but this year I'm going to plant the rooted cuttings in pots so I can transplant them better come spring.

I cut back the basils, sage, all of the oregano and some of the mint.  Those were dehydrated in my oven this morning.  The basil and sage are taking longer than the mint and oregano did.  I got 4 ounces of oregano leaves and perhaps an ounce of the mint once they were fully dry.

I brought bins out of the shed and put one avocado tree, one hibiscus, one other plant in one and in the other I put a fern, holiday cactus, Sansevieria and spider plants. I cover these during the nights and then uncover during the days and if the nights aren't frosty, I will leave the lids off entirely.  I've had fairly good luck keeping plants this way.  If we have days that are below freezing and temps into the teens it's easy enough to bring them indoors and set them in a cooler out of the way place to keep until they can back outdoors safely.  All the mess is contained with them in the bins.

Something Maxine has helped me think to do is to take whatever savings I make from the grocery store and sock it away towards my goal for Christmas savings.  Today I can add $65 to that account.  And that puts me right where I wanted to be for Christmas this year.  Thank you Maxine for asking me to join in with this challenge!  I plan to go on through the year and then set a new goal for the coming year.

Wednesday:  I took last night's leftover pork chop, sliced it super thin and made BBQ sandwiches for today's lunch.  Caleb's appetite it back. He ate two.  

My potatoes are looking rough.  I chose the softer ones that will likely go bad first and used those to make salad for tonight's supper.

Thursday:  I had a ton of leftover chicken from last night's dinner and a fridge full of things besides.  So I emptied the fridge and made up a big pot of chicken soup that I'll put dumplings in this evening.  John likes the big biscuity dumplings.  I never ate those until he came along and told me how he liked them.  I happened to have been a fan in my first marriage of Natalie Dupree who had a recipe for black pepper dumplings that I always thought were good. 

My soup includes leftover vegetables from the roast chicken dinner, pan juices from that also, broth from cooking chicken another day, a jar of soup I'd taken from the freezer at the beginning of this week for Katie, gravy and chicken from last night's meal, leftover green beans, peas, etc.  I always add a lot of vegetables to my chicken and dumplings.

I had some leftover rice and since I planned to make tomato soup, I added some of the rice to that to bulk it up.  This allowed me to add an extra half can of water and milk to the soup.   You can buy Campbell's soup with rice in it but it's a stupid price to pay for soup just because they tossed in a few grains of rice.

I've had two items go into the trash over the past two days: one can of store brand tomato soup that had the slightest hint of a budget to the top and a can of evaporated milk that had spoiled.  Both were past their best buy dates, so no fuss from me.  I should have used both sooner.  I didn't, so it's waste.

Friday:  I'd planned to head to the store today but instead I stayed home and made good use of what I have on hand.  I don't feel good.  A couple of years ago, I stocked up on each individual component of a popular cold remedy: acetaminophen, cough medicine, decongestant, mucus relief medication.  A multi bottle round of all four cost me LESS than what two packages of the cold medicine would run.  Which is great because John is sick, too.  And this is our fourth or fifth time with them because we've treated Katie, Cody, Katie and now John and I.  Sickness be gone!

Saturday: No spending today.  We've been home all day long doing nothing but napping and eating easy meals right here at home.

Sunday: Not well enough to leave home again today.  I asked Katie to pick up half and half and coffee creamer on her way home tonight.  She did just that and then promptly forget it, leaving it at Cody's in the fridge.  Never mind. I've got some whole milk and that's a good enough substitute.

Monday:  I might have shared about my food waste last week, but I'll wager I didn't share all of it. I had two cans of the marked down tomato soup and both had an ever so slight appearance of bulging.  I tossed them both and then checked my supply of tomato soup in the pantry to be sure I had no more of those cans.  I didn't.   

I don't know about your family but ours has two different types of canned tomato soup on hand.  We keep a pricier name brand because John swears it tastes best.  And having compared several store brands with this one, I had to agree!  So, for those times we want to eat tomato soup, I keep the name brand on hand.

And then I keep a store brand which suffices for whatever recipe I might have that calls for canned tomato soup.  I see no point in wasting a premium product in a recipe that will not be highlighting that tomato soup.  

My other waste this past week was two cans of evaporated milk.  I think I've shared before that I have a hard time finding a carrageenan free canned evaporated milk.  I found these cans on a markdown shelf last year and failed to use them in time.  So, I opened one this past week planning to use one and nope, it had gone bad.  Lesson learned.

And what was that lesson you might ask?  This: I'd rather spend good money on a quality product with a longer use by date than buy something marked down then fail to use it.  I knew those two cans had short dates for use on them and I knew from experience that if something is going to be quick to spoil it is usually canned milk products.  Yet I bought them anyway and then promptly forgot them.  No more!  I'll just buy evaporated milk when I know I plan to make something that requires it.

Made bread and pizza dough today.

Tuesday:  I planned to go to the grocery today because of those excellent sales at Kroger.  I did not buy produce except grapes which were on sale.   I picked up the items on my list in quantity and took along my pantry restock list so I could add a few things to my pantry if the prices were reasonable.  Shocking to me was the cost of canned mushrooms which I typically don't keep a great deal of but do like to have a few cans on the shelf.  However, I think this is one item I will be looking at other options for.  Perhaps a dehydrated product, perhaps even some I dehydrate myself?  Something to consider.

I bought: 6 Spam, 6 canned chicken, 12 cranberry sauce, 4 apple juice, 4 stuffing mix, 4-1# blocks of cheese, 2-1# bags of shredded cheese, 4-18ct eggs.   Those were the 'mega event' items I most wanted to stock up on.  I added a mixed lot of a few items to the buggy to make up the 'buy 6' discount on items required.  I missed out on the Green Giant vegetables for 49c a can and was told no rainchecks.  They had nothing from Green Giant on the shelves this morning.

I lucked into a LOAD of sales on chicken though.  Springer Mountain and Perdue boneless skinless breasts were on sale this week and because it was end of week, I found markdowns on a lot of chicken.  There were tons of it!  I got 6 packages of breasts and one of chicken thighs, all marked down to less than half the original sales price per pound.  Then in the sausage/bacon aisle, I was pricing pound rolls of sausage when I noted a clearance sticker on a package of patties.  It turned out to be 1.5-pound packages of sausage (Brain fog made me think it was 2 pounds, but it wasn't).  At any rate, the package for the sausage patties was a really great price costing less than $2.48 which is less than what a pound costs.  I got five packages of those.  We should be set through the end of the year with chicken and sausage at least.  Now to find a great sale on some ground beef...Or even better on chuck roasts!

I've looked over the sales sheets for the coming week.  Honestly beyond the turkeys on sale if you buy $25 worth of groceries to get the sales price, there's not much I would pick up from this week's sale.  However, I am interested in some of the Publix buy one get one sale.

Today's meals consisted of items I pulled from the freezer as I was putting in the stuff bought today.  Gotta make some room somewhere!  I brought out some frozen corn dogs and mini burgers for lunch, and the Philly Cheesesteak Sloppy Joe mixture and rolls for tonight's supper.

Thursday:  Frugal doings for yesterday?  Using Halloween candy to reward Caleb for being dry between rounds at the potty.  We are in full on hardcore, underwear and no pull up stages of potty training.  It's time consuming and patience consuming.  I was so doggone done in last night that it was all I could do to not go crawl right in bed after supper and pull the covers over my head.

 This morning, I escaped.  Doctor's appointment for me, for the annual round of lab orders and prescription renewals.  John was home with Caleb doing the duty.  

After the doctor's appointment I went to put my prescriptions in at the pharmacy.  I used Publix pharmacy because it's so much better priced than any other in our area.  I wanted to pick up a few items today at that store.  I actually picked up fewer of the buy one get one sale because I found other items at a better price or decided that really those were items that I could easily make myself.   Best buy today was Organic juice packets/box of 10 that were on clearance at $3.  Perfect for the children for the party this weekend.  Also, hot dogs and buns for same.

John asked me to pick up something for lunch.  I wanted to buy produce which looked far better and much more promising at Publix than it did at Kroger on Tuesday.  I chose a deli item for our lunch and then since I have saved such a lot on chicken for the month at Kroger's clearance sale on that item, I got a family pack of really nice ground sirloin which will serve us multiples of meals, including the taco supper I wanted for tonight's meal.

I have a small portion of my grocery funds for the month left.  I purposely cut it back this month even though I may well end up buying Thanksgiving items.

While doing bills on Wednesday, I started thinking about next year's annual budget, how I want to divide out grocery costs in the future (no longer lumping cleaning and paper and pet foods into our food budget but setting up separate categories), which bills shall need to be paid at a higher monthly rate and how much less income we will have for next year.  Time to plan how the see saw shall balance once more.

And that is my week.  How did your savings week go?