Five Frugal Things -- My Freezers Are Out of Control!
1) We still had miscellaneous leftover toppings from last week's Family Dinner night, so I mixed up another batch of pizza dough for last night's dinner.
I wasn't patient enough to let the oven fully heat up to 450 degrees, (nor did I want to waste that much natural gas) so our crusts weren't as pretty as they could've been. No worries though, as they were still tasty and we have enough leftovers for tonight's dinner.
The toppings were especially enjoyable as I was able to use up shredded mozzarella, cherry tomatoes, the last scrapings of carmelized onions and spinach from the freezer. Did you know that bagged spinach can be chucked right into the freezer? Perfect for pizza toppings or mixed into other hot dishes like egg dishes or lasagna. It's a great anti-food waste hack.
Why is it so satisfying to use that very last bit of something? Such a dopamine hit!
Pizza really is the perfect meal to enjoy while watching TV. My husband and I are on the third season of Silo and we are 110% hooked!
2) I doubled the dough recipe and par baked two backup crusts for our next pizza night. (Also chucked into the freezer.) A favor to future Katy.
3) I took a page of New Seasons Market coupons and passed them along to a neighbor. They'd been hanging on the side of our fridge, but I had an "ah ha" moment that even with coupons, this store is still expensive. Also, the store is anti-union and I prefer to spend my dollars at employee owned Winco Foods.
My neighbors do most of their shopping at New Seasons, so at least someone will get some use out of these coupons.
4) Kristen from The Frugal Girl sent me a text nudging me to join in on her Freezer Challenge, which prompted me to send her photos of both my upstairs freezer:
And my basement freezer:
Rude! How (how?!) did she know that my freezers are crammed full of mystery and freezer burn? Rude.
Seriously though, my freezers are officially out of control and some external motivation might be exactly what what the nurse ordered.
In my defense the basement freezer does have some water filled jugs at the bottom, leftover from when the freezer was pretty empty and I wanted to minimize the electric bill.
Now your turn, what frugal things have you been up to?
Katy Wolk-Stanley
"Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without."
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1. I also get a dopamine hit when I use something up. I made a large pot of minestrone soup which I'll share with family. It used up the rest of a bag of carrots and the remainders of a frozen bag of green beans.
2. I stopped over to my mom's house to help her trim a bush. She'll come help me with a couple projects that require two hands.
3. I sold one daughter's Tamagotchi and another's American girl doll and clothing. I get rid of clutter and the kids get some much appreciated cash.
1. DH wanted to check out the Aldi that is in bikeable distance, so we did that. It is conveniently next to a Goodwill, and DS#2, who has lost a lot of weight, found some new sweatpants and two good sweatshirts he liked. He got an Old Navy sweater and a Nautica sweatshirt, both in very good condition.
2. I also found a delightful Lands End fleece full-zip sweatshirt--these go for about $45 dollars, and all the fleece and sweatshirts were under $6! DH found a pair of sweatpants as well, and all told we got five items for $30. Not bad at all.
3. The Aldi, it turns out, has lactose free ultrafiltered milk, which I prefer, and much cheaper than Fairlife at Kroger or Meijer. I didn't need milk today, but DH can stop there another time when I do need it.
4. When we got home I noticed that the sweatpants DS#2 had gotten had a rip along a seam at the knee--even for me that's an easy fix and it took me five minutes.
5. Our youngest came with us and was pleased to find a type of snack he enjoys, cheaper at Aldi, and for him that was a nice reward for being willing to bike 7 miles with us!
Meant to add that my fleece was from the men's section--I perused the women's section but all the clothes there were dreadful, either out of style or the wrong sizes and nothing that I'd want to wear. The men's section had better brands and everything looked great. DH made the rather morbid observation that women tend to live longer, so the clothes that families will donate after a death will be older styles, whereas men tend to not live as long, so the donated men's clothing are from younger people....I tend to think, too, that women shop at thrift stores more often for their clothing--at least I saw only women browsing in the clothing section--so their area gets picked over pretty quickly.
So my hot tip is if you can't find anything worth wearing in the women's section, hop over to the men's section and you might find something fairly unisex and nice!
Jugs of frozen water in a chest freezer also help save your food if you have a prolonged power outage. After a tornado sideswiped our neighborhood 25 years ago and we had no power for five days, I put several big cat litter jugs full of water in the bottom of the freezer just for that reason. (Clean, washed out jugs, of course.)