Wednesday at the Frugal Workshop

School started full time last Thursday and by Friday, I was already working as, unfortunately, a couple of the teachers were already sick. My biggest downfall when school is in session is eating out and getting drinks from Sonic because it is still so hot here and it is very convenient. 

Plus I still have a lot of tomatoes coming in from the garden this week that I am dealing with along with our busy schedule. Needless to say I've been busy getting back into our old routines and doing my best to stay within our budget.

I'm happy to report that I've been doing a good job NOT eating out or getting drinks. On Monday I took a package of 8 chicken breasts and a couple of containers of my homemade chicken stock out of the freezer to thaw. On Tuesday I put them into the crock-pot and cooked them while we were at school.  I also made a gallon of sweet tea and had that in the refrigerator, so that it would be ice cold when we got home. 

The chicken breasts were really big and we ended up eating only two of them, so today I took a couple of them and made some Lemon Pepper Chicken. I still have two chicken breasts left and I will either make something out of them for tomorrow night's dinner, or make chicken salad out of them. 

I love having chicken breasts in the refrigerator already cooked and ready to go. It's like having my own convenience food on hand and that saves me money because I know if I have something I can cook quickly for dinner I won't need to go out to eat. 

I've also NOT neglected the fact that I have 3 huge bowls of tomatoes that need canning. I do my best not to let food spoil, and I know that the more work I do in the kitchen, the lower I can get my food bill, so last night I got busy canning even though I was tired. As a result, I ended up with 7 quarts of salsa, and 7 pints of pickled grape tomatoes. The salsa will be mostly be used in my Mexican Rice dish.

Here is a picture:

Here are my new totals too, which I am very proud of, for this summer of canning:

Canned in 2011

26 pints canned tomatoes

7 pints salsa

7 quarts salsa

12 pints pickled cherry tomatoes

6 pints pizza sauce

58 pints of food total

 

Also, I've been getting some really good freebies in the mail lately. This isn't a very good picture, but hopefully you can see a compact florescent bulb and a Fresh Express clip, both are freebies that I found by liking companies on Facebook and reading my newsfeed and signing up to receive these offers. 

The Fresh Express clip even came with coupons and one of those was for a free bag of salad. Make sure you are utilizing Facebook so that you can get in on these good deals as well. One of my favorite ones is Hunt4Freebies.

That's what I've been up to lately. What have you been busy doing in your frugal home? What are you having for dinner tonight? As always, I would love to hear from you. :)

Belinda