This Week in my Frugal Kitchen

Sunday
Breakfast this morning consisted of Cheese Grits, Sausage, Cantaloupe (not pictured), and Toast. 

Grits are very affordable and therefore make a great frugal food. Kroger regularly has this two pound bag on sale for 10 for $10.00, so $1.00 for two pounds of grits.  One serving of grits is 1/4 of a cup, which at this price costs about 5¢ per serving or what you see in this bowl. 
I made four servings, ate one and put three in the fridge for breakfasts later in the week. 
What I love about grits is they are very filling. It saves us money to eat foods low in cost and then we eat less of the more expensive foods like the sausage, which brings our overall total cost of breakfast lower. 
For dinner I decided to make some meatballs. I had several heels of bread in the freezer, so I started out by making bread crumbs out of them. I used about one cup's worth in the meatballs and put the rest of the bread crumbs in the freezer. 

The meatball recipe was just a basic one with one pound of ground beef, the bread crumbs, one egg, a small grated onion, salt pepper, worcestershire sauce, and garlic powder. I rolled them into balls and baked them at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. 
Dinner on Sunday was Meatballs, Acorn Squash, Green Beans with Onions, and Cantaloupe. 



Monday
On Monday I was called to sub at the last minute, which made me happy as I have car insurance due at the end of the month, so another day on my paycheck is always good. 
For breakfast I took one of the bowls of grits with me to eat when I got hungry. 
For dinner I wanted to make a chicken pot pie since I knew I had a can of chicken in the pantry, but I was going to have to make due with some other items. 
There was no pie crust, so I made one with flour & shortening. I didn't have any mixed vegetables, but I had a can of potatoes in the pantry and took the carrots out of a bag of frozen California blend vegetables.  It tasted different from my ordinary Chicken Pot Pie, but Bailey loved it, so it worked. 
I also had red beans soaking from Sunday that I made in the Instant Pot. We didn't eat these today, but I wanted to make them for this week. I put them in the refrigerator for meals this week. 
Tuesday
Subbed again today, so I took a bowl of the cheese grits for breakfast when I got hungry. I also had cantaloupe that I brought with me. 
For lunch I packed a peanut butter & jelly sandwich, along with some carrots sticks and water to drink. 
Dinner was Little Smokies with BBQ sauce, Green Beans with Onions, Acorn Squash, and Rice and Cheese. I also had to make a fresh gallon of iced tea for dinner. 
Wednesday
I was called to sub at the last minute on Wednesday too. Breakfast was the last bowl of Cheese Grits that I made on Sunday and Cantaloupe. Lunch was pb&j. 
Dinner was the last of the Little Smokies with BBQ sauce and the last of the green beans with onions. 
Thursday & Friday
The red beans I made earlier in the week came into play for dinner tonight. I ended up making chili for dinner tonight and there is plenty left over for dinner on Friday night too. 
This week, like last week, we've been using what we have on hand to make meals, so they may seem boring and/or repetitive to some readers. If you recall I had an added expense last month and needed to be careful with our funds for the time being. 
So you can say we are in "use it up mode", which can get pretty interesting at times. 
On Saturday I woke up at four a.m. wide awake. So, I decided to make the best of it and prepare the food we were taking with us to yard sales. 
I cut up two cantaloupes and put some in a smaller bowl for the road, cut the granola bars I made on Friday night, and made a couple of wraps to take with us. I also made a gallon of tea as the pitcher in the fridge only had about 1/3 left.     For dinner when I get home I'm going to use the last of the chili and make Chili Tacos for dinner. 
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Third Frugal Week of August 2017

As I mentioned last week, I was scheduled to sub five days this week. I brought my lunch to school every day and didn't succumb to any take out. On Friday one of the teachers gave me some chicken salad & bread from a local deli, which fed me and my daughter for breakfast Saturday morning. 
I came home Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and my daughter had dinner already warmed up, which was so great after working all day. On Thursday we went to Chattanooga to pet sit for a friend, making $40 in the process. 
Friday was payday already and since I worked 1.5 days prior to the tenth of the month, I received a paycheck as well. That doesn't happen every year, but it's great when it does. My renter's insurance will come out of the 25th of the month, so now I won't have to pull money from my savings to cover the amount. 
On Friday night we decided to have a pizza delivered since we were in the city, which is something we don't have where we live since it is rural. Having a pizza delivered is a real treat to us. 
And guess what? 
Pizza Hut sent us a text on Saturday that they were sorry our pizza took too long to be delivered and offered us a free one topping pizza as compensation. I didn't even think it took that long to be delivered, but what a sweet offer. 
Monday we will be going to a free event for the eclipse and schools are closed here, so this will be a four day work week and I am already scheduled to work two of those days. 
You may have read in the comments from my last blog post that the principal gave me two free pairs of eclipse glasses for Monday, one for me and one for my daughter. 
We picked up red grapes at Aldi this week since they were on sale for 79¢ a pound. 
Several free magazines arrived in the mail this week. Women's Health, Weight Watchers, Money, Time, Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, Parents and This Old House. I mostly use Recycle Bank credits to earn free magazines. Some of them even have free coupons in them, which is another plus. 

On Sunday we went to the mall as we both had a coupon for $10 off $10 at Yankee Candle and wanted to use it since it expired that day. We both bought a car air freshener and a candle melt and paid 52¢ each. We also picked up our free pizza at Pizza Hut and had that for dinner. 
I picked up one of my prescriptions at CVS on Sunday and we were given two free bottles of water. 

We watched a couple of episodes of Parenthood on the Internet for free while we were in Chattanooga. It is one of my favorite tv shows and I love so much of the music they chose for it. 
That's it for our frugal week here. How was your week?
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Tuesday

Food City is really good about sending texts every now and then for a free item. On Monday they sent a text for us to come  in and get a free can of Bush Baked Organic Beans. Since my daughter and I both have a card there, we were able to pick up two free cans. 

This week I am on Spring Break. Last week there were several students who had the sniffles and I woke up on Saturday with a sore throat, so I made sure to have some hot tea to see if I could nip whatever this was in the bud. 

My honey was crystallized when I went to use it, but now that I have a microwave, I no longer have to boil the jar in hot water on the stove. I just had to microwave it in increments of one minute and it was as good as new after two minutes. 

On Sunday morning I made a big breakfast for everyone. We had sausage, scrambled eggs, tomato slices, toast, cantaloupe and red grapes. 

 Today I took Mom to the dentist and ran a few errands. 

How was your Tuesday?

Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Saturday Snow Day

Welcome Saturday!
Breakfast today was leftovers of the fried rice I made for dinner one night this week.  Using up what I have on hand to save money. 
The snow did not amount to much here, around two inches at the most, which is what the weathermen were predicting for our area. We won't be going anywhere though as the area we live does not plow or salt the secondary roads, so they can be dicey to travel. We will be staying home safe and sound today. 
So what to do when you are stuck in the house with no where to go? Why make food of course. 
I have an abundance of oatmeal, graham crackers and peanut butter in my kitchen, so I made the following items today...

- Made & wrapped 17 Granola Bars

- Made Peanut Butter Bars

I also made Egg Salad for Lunches.

- Made Spaghetti and Garlic Bread for Dinner. There is enough Spaghetti left for another meal or two, so I may just make Baked Spaghetti with it for dinner tomorrow or dinner another night. 
We also warmed up with Hot Chocolate today.  
Belinda ~ Living within my means in Southern Tennessee ~
Earn with Swagbucks

Monday Brunch

Since we had the day off from work and school for MLK day, I decided to make brunch today. Sausage, scrambled eggs, tater tots, and biscuits were all on the menu. Although we have grape jelly, we are out of strawberry preserves, but I did have two packets of them, which we used for brunch. 

Afterwards I packaged up the leftovers and ended up with three sausage biscuits for breakfasts this week and several plain biscuits, which will be used for either breakfast, lunchboxes or snacks for hungry ones. 

In my Frugal Kitchen today I also made...

Ranch Dressing - I made a couple of bottles of this as this is our favorite salad dressing and it's easier to make a big batch all at once than several smaller batches at different times. I also made a pasta salad, but no photo to show of that. 

I haven't shown you our new refrigerator, so here is a photo. My daughter decorated it for Christmas, but we like it so much that we've decided to keep it for winter time. 

Here is a look at the inside:

We are going to spend part of the day cleaning in my Dad's house. This will be an ongoing project that will take a lot of time over the course of several months as his house is packed full of stuff. I should take before and after photos. 
I'm off for now. I hope you have a fantastic Monday.  :)
See you soon,
Belinda Living within my means

The Weekend Report

Prom 2K15

The school my daughter attends held their prom last night. The theme was "We Had the Time of our Lives". 

 I bought her dress and shoes for under $100 and we did her hair and makeup ourselves, we took our own pictures and she used our car to travel back and forth to the event location. I didn't spend money for an expensive dress, professional photographer, limousine, flowers, nails or hair, which are nice to have when you can afford them, but not necessary and even more so when you live on a smaller budget. 

When she got home she told me she had the best time and thanked me for helping her make it so special, which made me happy too. In the end, it was all about spending time with her friends and doing something out of the ordinary that made it special. And you don't need to spend money to do that. :)

Peanut Butter Granola Bars

Today I tried a new recipe for Peanut Butter Granola Bars. 

5 cups oats

1 1/2 cups peanut butter

1 cup of honey. 

Simply mix the honey and peanut butter and then add the oats and mix well. 

Pour into a 13 x 9 pan and press flat with the back of a spoon. 

Refrigerate for approximately two hours and then cut into bars. 

I wrapped these individually for lunch boxes this week. I ended up with 16 in all.  :)

Belinda

Second Frugal Week of February

What a week we had here! School was called off for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday due to the winter mix of weather here. We were/are on Winter Break Friday, Monday and Tuesday, so no school here for over a week. I missed out on several days of working as a result. 

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were no spending any money days.

Thursday was bill paying day and all bills were paid online to save on postage. 

Friday was spent in town doing our big monthly stock up at the grocery stores. I spent a total of $202.77, used 82 coupons, which saved me $116.40 and does not even include the $50.00 savings at Food Lion for the sale on Powerades.  

Here is a breakdown of items we bought:

Family Dollar

Suave Shampoo - Same deal as last week. I had a $1.00 of coupon, so I only had to pay the 10¢ sales tax. 

Cooke's

Cheese, frozen dinners, cat treats, and 40 pounds of potatoes ($7.98 or 20¢ a pound). I found 14 bags of cat treats in the Crash & Burn cart for 90¢ each, and I had coupons for them, so I paid 40¢ each for them. 

Save a Lot

Eggs are/were on sale this week for 99¢ a dozen, so we stocked up and bought 8 cartons. We also used a $1.00 off coupon to score a free bag of salad. 

Aldi

5 bags of onions

Food Lion

I went on Friday to score the deal on Powerades. And then on Saturday I found some coupons to use, so after my daughter's volunteer hours were done, we went back to get more. In the end I bought 75 Powerades for my pantry for 20¢ each. This definitely beats her wanting to stop at the gas station on the way to school in the morning for a drink for $1.89. There are only 68 school days left this year, so she is all set. 

I also scored 16 FREE cans of Campbell's chicken noodle soup. As I mentioned in this post the kiosk was printing out coupons for $1.00 off 2 Campbell's soup and they had them on sale for 50¢ each. Customers are only allowed to print one coupon sheet per day, but people tend to abandon these coupon sheets in their cart, so we picked up several that way. We also bought cereal, soup, diced tomatoes, and honey mustard here. 

Bi-Lo

Bi-Lo had their awesome cereal deal again this week. You buy 6 boxes of cereal and get a free gallon of orange juice. We had numerous coupons for the cereal and at least one of them was buy one get one free. We bought two of these deals and combined with the cereal deal at Food Lion, we ended up with 22 boxes of cereal. My family has gone through a lot of cereal this winter for some reason, so I was very glad to be able to purchase all of these.  

I also bought sugar, bagels, shampoo, and yogurt here. 

Publix

Some of my greatest deals came from Publix on this shopping trip. I used to shop at Walmart so much, but in the last two years I've realized that I can find better prices at the grocery stores and when I combine them with sales and the double coupons that Publix offers, I buy very little from Walmart now. 

Items here included cream cheese, oranges, fish, tea bags, Knorr rice packages, Kotex, Stayfree, ham, olives, beans, sour cream, salt, rice, butter, yogurt, tartar sauce, Alleve, peas and carrots, and chocolate milk (had coupons!).

I bought 18 bags of the Knorr rice for 14¢ each after sale and coupons.

Four boxes of Lipton tea bags were $1.12 each after sale and coupons. 

Four boxes of 40 count Alleve were 49¢ each after sale and coupons. 

Walmart sells my brand of Stayfree for $4.97, which I buy regularly. Publix sells the same package for $4.09, but with coupons I was able to get two bags for $4.09, which blows Walmart's price out of the water! 

It was a terrific shopping day and these are the things we got that were completely free: 

In the end I bought $369.17 worth of groceries for $202.77 and now the bulk of my grocery shopping is done for the month. All I will need to buy is milk and bread and some fresh produce. 

Other things we did this week to save money include:

Tuesday I entered My Coke Rewards points into my computer. A chore I dislike a great deal, but I do it for the free diet coke 12 packs for my Mother who is on a limited budget.

On Saturday we both had our hair cut and used a coupon for that as well. 

We rented a movie, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, with a free rental code from Redbox. CouponDad.net regularly has free rental codes on his blog. 

Breakfasts this week consisted of oatmeal, leftovers, scrambled eggs and toast, toast with butter and jelly, cream cheese with bagels, and peanut butter & jelly sandwiches.

Dinners were:

Monday: Baked Potatoes stuffed with Vegetable Chili
Tuesday: Hot Dogs & Tator Tots
Wednesday: Salisbury Steak, Beefy Mushroom Barley, Corn
Thursday: Macaroni & Cheese, Broccoli
Friday: Homemade Pizza
Saturday: Grilled Chicken, Mexican Rice, Steamed Carrots
Sunday: Pinto Beans, Collard Greens, Cornbread

That's our our week went, how was your week?

How did you save money in your home this week?

Belinda
CFO ~ Chief Frugal Officer
© Belinda & Frugal Workshop, 2011-2014.
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without”

Tightwad Tuesday

Since it was so cold this morning, I started off the day by making some hot chocolate using the recipe on the side of the Hershey's cocoa canister. 

Afterwards, I started some eggs on to boil for egg salad. 

Egg salad is what we had on the menu for lunch today. 

I use pickle relish in my egg salad and used up the last of a small bottle and then had to open up the new gallon jar that I bought recently. To make things easier here, I always decant some into a smaller jar, which is easier and lighter to pull out of the refrigerator and use as needed. 

Did you know that a Parmesan cheese lid will fit a regular mouth canning jar perfectly? I first learned about the idea on Pinterest. 

Isn't that neat? I'm going to put baking soda in the pint size jar and keep it next to the sink to clean the sink.

Dinner tonight is Red Beans & Rice, Broccoli, and Cornbread. I also made a gallon of sweet iced tea. 

I tried a new to me recipe for the Red Beans, which came from my Crock Pot cookbook. I really liked this recipe and will be adding it to our regular menu. 

Here is the recipe:

Vegetarian Red Beans & Rice

Ingredients:

1 pound dried red beans
1 onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped (I left this out because I did not have one)
2 ribs celery, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 (14.5 ounce) cans vegetable broth
2 cups water
1 teaspoon salt (I always use 1 Tablespoon salt for 1 lb. dried beans)
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon hot pepper sauce (I left this out)
2 cups hot cooked rice

Directions:

In a large pot, cover the beans with three times their volume of water and bring to a boil. Boil for 10 minutes and then remove from heat. (I just soaked mine overnight) Cover and let stand for one hour and then drain. Combine all of the ingredients in a slow cooker except for the rice. Cover, cook on low for 10 hours or on high for 6 hours. Serve over hot cooked rice. 

We just got the call, Wednesday we will have another snow day, so no school or work for us three days in a row. I had a job to work on Wednesday too, so now I am missing work over this cold weather. I have another job lined up for Thursday, so I am hoping this cold weather moves out of here. 

What have you been up to on this cold Tuesday? 

Have you decided what you are going to prepare for dinner? 

I hope you have a warm and peaceful evening. :)

Belinda
CFO ~ Chief Frugal Officer
© Belinda & Frugal Workshop, 2011-2014.
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without”

Homemade Egg Mcmuffins for 53¢

My daughter received a Hamilton Beach Breakfast Sandwich Maker for Christmas this year. The gift giver said she could take it to college with her in a few years. 

The idea behind this machine is that you can make a fresh sandwich for breakfast quickly. You pick your bread, cheese, egg, and precooked meat to make a sandwich or any other ingredients you want to use. This appliance cooks the sandwich for you, including cooking the egg, and you have a hot, fresh sandwich in less than 5 minutes. 

I bought her ingredients to make sandwiches for when she goes back to school next week and is in a hurry getting ready for school in the morning. She has been trying it out this week though making eggs for breakfast. I have to admit this does cook eggs quickly!

Ingredients I bought include:

Package of 12 English Muffins: $2.28 - 19¢ each
18 eggs $2.78 - 15¢ each
24 slices Cheese $2.48 - 10¢ each
16 slices Ham (will have to cut in half, so 32 slices) $2.99 - 9¢ each
Total: 53¢ per sandwich

Of course, your cost of the sandwiches may be more or less than mine depending on the cost of your ingredients at the time of purchase, and you definitely don't need an appliance to make one. But either way, this homemade version of an Egg McMuffin is definitely cheaper than the original version at McDonald's, which currently cost $2.89 at my local McD's. 

Belinda
CFO ~ Chief Frugal Officer
© Belinda & Frugal Workshop, 2011-2014.
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without”