Thrifty Thursday: Just Keep Right On

 

Friday:   I'll start with the usual weekly things: I washed a full load of dishes last night.  John did laundry yesterday afternoon when he'd finished mowing and hung a few things on the line to dry.  We did sheets and towels this morning and more things were hung to dry.

We made plans to have a day out.  Well, circumstances were against us.  That's all there was to it.  We had a nice long ride but not to the destination.  We ended up turning around and driving home. 

John's compromise for our failed plans was pricey food options to be eaten at home, but there you are.   We spent $40 and basically had high-priced snacks.    

To balance the pricey lunch, I set all of this week's leftovers from the fridge on the counter and told John to choose what he wanted for supper.

Saturday:  I watered outdoor plants using caught rainwater. 

We used the grill to cook the Filet Mignons.  I was sure they would be tough but they were very nice steaks.  Yes, I know Filet Mignons are meant to be a quality cut of meat but these were unlike the pretty little rounds of beef from the high-end grocery.   We cooked them to a perfect Medium/Medium Well.  If I see those discounted  (as I did last week) I will buy them again.  They are just barely $5 a pound for a real quality piece of beef, something we can enjoy on our grocery budget.

Supper again tonight was a clearing out of the fridge.  We had plenty of leftovers to feed us again tonight.  Now we can start the week leftover-free.

Sunday:  Plant exchange in the parking lot at church this morning after services.  I swapped iris for two zucchini and 1 tomato (undetermined if it is a cherry or full-sized tomato...) and a box of tiny vincas.  We were all pleased with our exchange.

John and I went to the grocery store where I intended to pick up the sale-priced eggs and a bit of produce to carry us through the next week or so.  For produce, I purchased: fresh spinach (3 boxes marked down to $1.57, with an extra 50c coupon coming off each of the three at checkout), radishes, red cabbage, broccoli, green onion, zucchini, English cucumber, red onion, and a clearance-priced package of 4 individual guacamole cups.  I bought the full limit on the eggs, five dozen.  At $1.49 it was worthwhile to buy five dozen.   I will freeze two of the spinach.  And by the way, had there been more than one package of the guacamole I'd have bought them all and frozen those, too.  It works very well to freeze avocado and guacamole alike.

I seldom see markdowns at this particular Kroger except for bakery items and the occasional canned goods nearing expiration date or being cleared out.  Today I also got marked-down meats: Pork Chops (less than $3/pound for center cut),  Laura's Grass Fed Beef Patties (about $4 a pound), and two beef roasts marked down to just over $5/pound.  

I also got a fig tree and a cherry tomato from the garden center.  I wasn't sure I meant to garden this summer but I guess I will! 

At home, I packaged the burgers and chops into 2-packs netting me 9 meals for the two of us from those.  

Meals:  Sausage Cheese Toasts

Burgers

Garlic Brown Sugar Chicken, Stir Fried Vegetables, leftover rice.  The chicken dish was an Instagram recipe and it was so so.  Mine looked nothing like the photos and surely didn't taste as good as the reviews indicated. I used broccoli, zucchini, green onion, and carrots in the stir fry along with some sliced water chestnuts.  That dish was really good.

Monday:  I determined I'd get the guest room closet inventory done. I found two half-pints of jars in the bin.  I brought them to the kitchen to vacuum seal and put them in the pantry cupboard.  I prefer canned beans. I don't know why I insist on stocking dry beans.  I only rarely will cook them from dry to fresh.  In the future, I will can the dry beans I have instead of purchasing more cans.  There are good savings in making canned beans at home.  

 I need to restock sugar, as well as flour.  

I went on a mission in the kitchen today.  I started a loaf of bread in the machine.  Then I restocked my baking cabinet.  I refilled the yeast jar, and the sugar bin (hence my need to restock sugar).  

I gathered all the bits of loaf bread I'd shoved in the freezer and last week's loaf of bread and made those pieces into croutons.  I sliced six pieces of bread to make French Toast one morning this week.  I ended up with enough croutons to fill two quart-sized jars.  I initially cover my jars with a paper towel and bind them down with a jar ring then when I am sure the croutons are completely dried out, I will vacuum seal one of them and use the other as we have salads.    I had enough crumbs from the croutons to use in my meatloaf today.  

At the beginning of April, I made yogurt.  It turned out odd.  The top section of it was grainy, almost cheeselike in texture.  The bottom half of it was the more usual yogurt texture.  It was unpleasant to eat a cup of yogurt with the 'cheese' texture.  It tasted just fine, but it was odd.  Today I decided it was getting time to make fresh yogurt but I had three pints of the odd yogurt in the fridge.  

I poured off the whey that had gathered on top.  Then I lined a colander with a flour sack cloth.  I scooped out the cheesy portions and set them aside then I drained the remaining yogurt through a strainer to capture any further grains I'd missed and let the yogurt slip through to the lined colander below.  When I'd done that, I had a thicker yogurt product in the liner.  There was enough thicker 'clean' yogurt to use as the starter for today's batch and had as a snack later.

Once I'd gotten the clean yogurt up, I poured the 'cheese' into the strainer and let any further yogurt and whey drain through.  This left me with about a pint of a cheese-like product.  I salted it to taste (about 1/4 tsp.) and packed it into a jar.  I plan to use that in a lasagna-type dish next week.

I had about a cup of whey in the bottom pot that had drained from the old yogurt.  I poured that into a jar to use in bread later this week.

I made two fresh pints of yogurt which are incubating at present.

The oven was in steady use today.  I baked the croutons at 250F for two or three hours.  When they were done, I heated the oven to 350F for baking the bread.  While the bread baked, I mixed up my meatloaf and had it ready to go into the same temperature oven to bake when the bread came out.  

I made a very silly mistake on Saturday.  I'd cooked a potato dish to go with our steaks.  I put the remaining potatoes in an old salsa jar to save and reheat for breakfast one morning.  A couple of weeks ago, I'd saved some sauerkraut, potatoes, apples, and onions that were leftover and never got around to using them.  So Saturday evening, as I brought leftovers out of the fridge, I grabbed the sauerkraut and potato jar and tossed the contents into the trash (my pets refuse to eat cooked potatoes).  This morning, I went to get the saved potatoes to reheat for breakfast and discovered I'd tossed the good potato dish and was left with the sauerkraut and potatoes that had gotten too old to eat.  Sigh.  Number one reason why I should label every jar I put in the fridge just as I do everything I put in the freezer.  

The bit of leftover sauerkraut in the jar from the previous sauerkraut dish was not going bad anytime soon, but it was only a small portion and I really wanted to get the jar out of the fridge.  I heated the drained sauerkraut with hotdogs for our lunch.

Meals:  Eggs, Bacon, Toast

Hot Dogs with Sauerkraut

Meatloaf, Green Beans, Potatoes, Coleslaw.

Tuesday:  Yesterday was such a good savings day that I thought, "Oh best get in there and do it again!"  It is worthwhile, but that's not all there is to running a home properly.  Work must be attended to in other areas.  Today I focused on other areas.

I moved all the houseplants outdoors except the Australian fern which likes to keep mostly shaded from the sun and very wet feet.  I took some clippings from the ivy which has decided to grow and grow.  This is my second time taking cuttings in three months and you would never have known by how long those vines had gotten that they were ever cut in the first place.  I'll try to root these and then plant them, too.  I'd already snipped off the tops of the coleus I rooted overwinter and started those rooting, but today I found some decent-sized side stems on the same plants and snipped those off to root.  This is how I get so many coleus plants each year.  I just keep rooting new ones and then save a few stems to winter over indoors in a pot.

John brought home a red wagon from church destined for the trash heap.  He told them I'd just love it and I have.  Caleb took it as a plaything for a couple of years and then the long handle broke off and it's just been sitting.  I put some of my houseplants in that wagon.  Yes, it's rusty and yes, it will continue to rust.  At some point, I'll have John put a couple of drainage holes in it and I'll hit it with some more rustproof paint.  But it will be just fine for a plant stand.

I watered the plants on the back porch: fig, coleus, vinca, zucchini, and tomato.

I polished Big Mama's old sewing machine.  Mama really did ruin the top of the thing.  She used to set plants on it with no barrier between the top of the machine and the bottom of the pots and if she spilled or overflowed, she let it stay spilled.  But the sides of the piece are lovely still as are the drawers.  I dusted it really well, then used an oil-based polish on it.  Since I moved the plants outdoors, I retrieved Grandmother's wooden stool from the dining room.  She'd always used it at her sewing machine and it pleases me to use it as a stool at this machine.  I want to buy a mirror to hang on the wall above the sewing machine, so it can serve the purpose of a dressing table or desk for any guests who use the room.

I cleaned up the back entry and the laundry area.  I decanted partially used jugs of bleach into one.  I didn't know I had that second partially used jug.  A few years ago, we had a 'leak' and we finally discovered that the leak wasn't the washing machine but that the jug of bleach had sprung a pinhole and was dripping.  I prefer to keep bleach in sight and routinely check the jug.  I won't stock bleach either, just because of that drip.  

John had wanted to purchase a new grill cleaning brush and I said, "No we've got one..."  We don't.  So he put that back on his list.  

Speaking of lists, we began an Amazon list of things we need and put them all in the cart where they continue to sit.  Why are we waiting?  Because I've found over time that often we can eliminate a purchase or find a better buy.   I'd mentioned to John that I have a wagon but it needed new tires at least three times this year.  I've been asking for new tires for quite a while but he decided that a new wagon was in order.  Today he checked the tires and found four online at Amazon.  The price difference between the wagon and the tires was about $60.  That meant we could remove the wagon and add the four tires to the cart,  and a pair of items we needed to replace on my car.  And we're still saving money!

I mentioned that John had bought me a bag of cold brew coffee sachets as a treat.  My first two attempts were not good.  The best combination for a good cup of cold brew for myself is about 4 ounces of coffee to as much water, 1/2 cup of milk, plus a packet of Splenda, and ice.  That makes a good cold coffee and is a treat I look forward to.  It means I can stretch the sachets further.  I am limiting myself to three cold brews a week though.  No need to rush through the whole package of sachets.

Meals:  Banana Muffins, Beef Sausage

Pimento Cheese Sandwiches.  John ate crackers, and I drank a V-8.

Chicken Shawarma (recipe up on the recipe blog), Rice Pilaf, Cucumber, Tomato, and Feta Salad, Pickled Red Onions, Warm Tortillas 

Wednesday:  I made French toast from the remains of last week's bread and a couple of pieces of bought bread.  I used some older milk that had not been opened until this week.

I used the last of that half-gallon of milk to make Vanilla Pudding.  I'd meant to make a fancier dessert than pudding but alas I was missing ingredients and too tired to stretch my brain to think of what I might use instead.  You know what?  Plain old vanilla is terrific.

I put a coat of paint on the two chairs on the back porch.  Of course, I was wearing paint, too.  It was nice and warm outdoors and perfect weather to paint.  I got smart this time and used a small sponge roller to roll the paint on the mesh of the chairs.  It worked so well and cut down the time it took to paint the front porch chairs last spring.  It covered better, too.  If I hadn't been so weary after painting, I'd have gone to the front porch and touched up those chairs and the table using that roller.     

I am using an oil enamel this time.  It takes soooo much less paint than using spray paint.  Nevertheless, to paint the two side tables, I plan to use cans of spray paint that are already on hand.

To remove the paint from my skin, I found that liquid dishwasher detergent and a green scrubby took it right off without too much effort.

Aside from housework and household accounts and meals. No more was done.  

Meals:  French Toast, Sausage

Meatloaf Sandwiches, leftover Cole Slaw, Chips

Beefy Pasta Bake, Roasted Broccoli, Green Salad, Vanilla Pudding.  I slipped spinach into the pasta bake.  The recipe doesn't call for it but I never let that stop me.

Thursday:  So far today has been a puttery day.  We've been doing Friday chores today because we are keeping Caleb tomorrow.  I've continued gently pursuing turning my house over to warmer weather decor.  I am always pleased to see what I've tucked away in the Fall.  That's one reason I like to switch things up.  It keeps decor 'fresh' for a longer time.

I've watered outdoor plants, put the freshly painted chairs back in place, wandered out to empty the compost and discovered I now have four potato plants in the main bucket and a lovely black rich compost in the old bin.

I mended two pairs of jeans for Isaac this time.  I'm so glad I ordered all those extra patches last year because I have averaged mending one pair of pants every month since November.

Days like this are lovely.  They are varied and I enjoy that at times, rather than a hard focus on one thing or another. I'm 'playing house' on days such as this.

John asked again last night about saving a certain portion of our money.  I'd explained in February why I couldn't and had to explain it all over again.  I recalled that this past month, when I made up my second quarter budget I'd created 'extra' savings by reducing certain categories. I'll change things up a little bit and let those funds build up in a separate account.  I'll have to make sure he understands that this money also has a purpose, but it's mostly annual fees and not monthly.  I'll have to look at it this afternoon and see if that's a possibility.

How did your week go?  Did you generate savings, harvest food in your kitchen, or makeover something?  Come tell us all about it!

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