Five Frugal Things -- Free Produce & Viral Recipes
1. My next door neighbor texted asking if we wanted some extra produce that she wasn't going to use. She knows I'm #cheapaf and possess zero qualms when it comes to accepting free food. This is how I came into possession of a small purple cabbage, two onions, (one red, one yellow) and a head of garlic.
2. I was already planning on making the viral Costco chicken and scallion rice dish for dinner, so my neighbor's contribution was perfect timing. The "recipe" simply takes a Costco rotisserie chicken and mixes it with rice, scallions, soy sauce, sesame oil, chili oil and a few other things for essentially a not-fried fried rice. We'd already eaten half the chicken, but there was still enough for the recipe.
The virality is because you mix everything in the rotisserie chicken bag, which incorporates the broth from the bottom of the bag.
I added extra frozen mixed veggies, as well as garlic powder, sautéed onion and lightly cooked cabbage for crunch. I went off script and mixed it in the rice cooker as doing so in the bag seemed gimmicky. However, I did pour the soy sauce into the bag and swirled it around to scavenge all the bag drippings. This recipe is infinitely adjustable based on whatever inhabits your fridge and will definitely be added to the rotation.
This meal was delicious, easy and frugal, which is the perfect trifecta!
3. My youngest texted me in a panic as two of the legs on their new Facebook Marketplace couch were suddenly bent inwards. Luckily the kid has handy parents, so my husband and I drove over the next day to inspect the situation.
The solution was to properly install the two-by-four where the legs attach. Sure we had to remove maybe three dozen staples to get to the wooden piece, but it was just a matter of taking the time to do the task. No money was spent as my husband already owned the tools and the four screws necessary to complete the job.
As long as we were there, my husband also installed longer screws for the deadbolt and cut a removable wooden piece to block a sliding window. Gotta keep everyone safe!
4. My husband and I stopped by the Franz Bakery Outlet store, as they're running a deal this month for $1 bread on Saturdays. We came home with the above items for the freezer and five dollars poorer. I love anything "maple" and will not be answering any questions about how many donuts were left in the box by the time we got home.
5. I gave away a pair of three-ring notebooks and a package of sleeve protectors through my Buy Nothing group. These had been stored in our piano bench, which had the ability to hold a shocking amount of clutter.
Katy Wolk-Stanley
"Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without."
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I love maple flavored anything. You probably had as many left when you got home as I would have.
1. I ordered a child's size pizza at lunch yesterday which was about 2/3" the cost of the next smallest size. It was the perfect amount. I also had water with my meal.
2. I'm leaving on vacation soon, so I'm eating all the things I already have. Hopefully no food wasted and no money spent on groceries.
3. I've been enjoying Facebook videos of therichgoodwill. She trash picks in ritzy neighborhoods and it's interesting to see all the things she finds.
4. I'm reading a library book on my Kindle.
5. I re-used a candle that my sister gave me which was leftover from my niece's birthdays. It said OLD AF. I put it on my daughter's cake for her 30th birthday.
I hope there were NO donuts left in the box by the time you got home!
1. Made delicious croutons out of truly terrible bread. Olive oil, salt and pepper to the rescue!
2. Received some lovely treats from our Airbnb host when they came to make a repair.
3. Requested free annual credit report. I do this at intervals throughout the year with the three credit bureaus - Equifax in January, Experian in May and TransUnion in September.
4. Using packets of sipping broth that I had received via Buy Nothing to make vegetable stock for rice and soup. There are three flavors - Spicy Tortilla, Pho, and Thai Lemongrass - and they're all good.
5. Noticed that Sprouts Farmers Market has a bulk spice section. Yay!
Interesting. I am in possession of half a Costco chicken. I just deboned it, put the bones in my crockpot, and swirled some water in the bag to get the drippings out. This will become chicken stock. I’m planning to make a chicken and mushroom casserole, using the meat and some clearance mushrooms. I’ll use the stock to make a velouté sauce to pull the casserole together. I don’t have a recipe. As usual, I’m making it up as I go along — a great frugal skill!
Good job fixing the couch. I see so many rickety couches left on the curb, and I think to myself that a few screws would have fixed them up. Sadly, I usually spot the couches after they’ve gotten wet from rain, or after someone made off with the cushions! I’m happy you saved a couch from the landfill.
My daughter bought an addresser on Facebook marketplace and realized that one of the feet was questionable. She sent me photos of the crack, and I think it will be a relatively easy fix for her and her handy mother to repair.
It isn't urgent right now and it isn't something she's going to be sitting on so we just know before she moves that door at some point it's one of the honey-do items. I think her honeydew list has been getting a bit long so I might be offering a bit more time down there particularly because I have to see my mom more often.
* a dresser
1. Skipped takeout again and ate chicken fingers and fries straight out of the freezer (we cooked them first lol). Saved us $50+ in takeout charges.
2. I finally bit the bullet and bought some groceries. Lots of amazing deals to be had so I stocked up and still spent less than $300. (They had my son’s favorite cookies for $1.88 a box!!). We won’t need any more food for the end of the month and managed to spend only $700 for the whole month! (That is very cheap for Ontario for a family with a teen boy!)
3. I’ve been on a use it up tear, working through all the toiletries, office supplies, etc. It so fun to “finish” a pen, right???
4. My son desperately needed a coat and I found a very high quality one for $100 off the regular price. It will
Hopefully last him a few years since it is top quality!
5. We have been experimenting with a two week laundry cycle, rather than every week. I was surprised that we only had five loads total for all three of us. Saved water, detergent, energy and time and I just kept spinning the cycles while we watched our Netflix movie.
Hope everyone is staying safe and sane out there. It is so hard to see what is going on in the US now that we live in Canada. Xoxo
Thank you for your well wishes. There are still half or more of us down here who have kept their sanity despite what's happened to our beautiful country.
Brenda,
Thats a GREAT grocery total for the month! We have a soon-to-be-16 year old son, so I get it about how much a teen boy can eat!
Thank you for empathizing with us in the US who did not vote for the Orange One. There seems to be no end to how low our mentally ill leader can stoop.
Brenda, I'm with you on #3! I choose the shortest pencil and the pen with the least amount of ink first. And if there's a rogue envelope (or whatever) that's not like the rest, I use that first so that calm can be restored. 😉
1. Right now I'm making pancakes because I had a leftover cup of butter milk, and an over ripe banana. They will go in the freezer if we don't eat them all in the next day or two.
2. I visited my favourite thrift store looking for something to wear in Mexico. I found a nice sundress, and a tank
top. Spent $16
3. Went to a birthday lunch for a friend I have had for over 50 years. She requested I make Martha Stewart's Classic Cheesecake, which I have made for her before. She knows that I thrift, and asked that I keep an eye out for tops for her. She finds it hard to find clothing, and I found a top at the thrift store for $6. It fit perfectly, and she liked it, so that was also part of her gift from me.
4. Another long time friend asked me to be her alternate executor for her estate, and so we went to sign papers, etc, afterwhich she took me for lunch, which was lovely. I had hot water with lemon to drink, as I knew the lunch would be expensive, and actually I really like it, instead of coffee, tea or anything else.
5. We've had a pretty mild winter so far on Canada's west coast, so I turn off the heat completely at night, and sometime during the day as well. We wear sweaters, and have two "zones" that we heat, so I can turn off one part if we are staying in the other. Friends and family find our house "freezing". But we like it that way. And of course if we have people staying I turn up the heat as required.
Oh the maple donuts! I haven't had one in a long time. Soon, maybe. Next to chocolate, maple is my favorite flavor.
1. I gave DH a haircut.
2. I got mine cut at my hairdressers for her usual price, $15. Plus a $5 tip. I heard that Great Cuts is now up to $28 in my area. I hope my hairdresser never retires but she is 61 and it's a real possibility.
3. DH walked up to the tri-state marker a few miles from our house where Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island converge. Great free exercise but I have no inclination to walk in the snow and freezing cold.
4. Keeping the heat at 64 degrees during the day with the aid of wool socks and a sweatshirt. Nighttime is 60 degrees with the help of a second Puff. Just curious...are comforters called Puffs in any other region but Massachusetts?
5. I found chicken thighs or drumsticks on sale for $1.49 lb.
Puff, what a great name! Sadly, I've never heard that term in Minnesota, just comforter or duvet.
I haven't heard of it either, and I've lived in Massachusetts for 37 years.
We say puffs in Colorado!
1. I made nachos for the game (go Pats!), which used up a languishing bag of tortilla chips (read: stale, but if you toast them in the oven they are totally fine). Ground beef and cheese free from mystery shop, salsa and cabbage free in farmshare box, the last of pickled jalepeños that have been in the fridge a really long time, and cilantro left over from Friday's pozole.
2. Went to BJ's to fill up on gas, $2.35/gallon, and eggs, $1.89/dozen. I bought nothing else. Snagged an extra receipt, but it only got me 25 points on Fetch.
3. I found a pair of jeans that I don't think I've worn since pre-COVID. Somehow, they still fit, so I can cross that off the list of possible things to acquire.
4. Sharing a honeynut pumpkin, butternut squash, and giant kohlrabi with friends as we won't be able to eat them before the next farmshare box. Free goodwill!
5. Did not threaten a bloc of friendly countries with tariffs, which will do nothing but drive prices up, make us hated imperialists (more than we already are), and weaken democracy globally.
1) I was getting gas and was the only customer at the station. I noticed an employee hovering around. As soon as I finished, he came over and raised all the prices by 20 cents on the pumps (and another employee was working on the sign). Lucky timing for me! I was surprised they change the price in the middle of the day though, seems it would be easier to do it overnight when the station closes.
2) I stretched half a leftover veggie burrito and enhanced it with additional veggies. I cut it into pieces and warmed it up and then put it over spinach and arugula to make more of a salad, added a diced avocado and some homemade cranberry salsa on top.
They probably just got a load of gasoline that morning.
I'm a huge maple fan, too!
I spent another one of those inside-only days because it is really, really cold outside. I believe it did get up to 17° in the late afternoon. I curled up on the couch and finished watching ACGAS on PBS, and then watched some of Stranger Things. A strange mix.
I ate the last serving of spaghetti soup, thank goodness. I was getting really tired of it. For dinner I had cheese and crackers and celery sticks.
Yesterday I did go out. I went to the community center intending to walk the indoor track, but it was closed because there was an ice-skating event. It was too cold and icy to walk outside, so I went to Sam's. I can proudly say I didn't buy anything. I just walked around. I found two receipts, and one of them was worth 2,000 points!
I also took the opportunity to swing by the library to return a book.
Not much else going on ....
My favorite donuts are maple iced donuts. I’m surprised you had any donuts left to take a picture. I would’ve eaten them all on the way home.
It snowed all day here today (if you watch the Patriots game, you saw the snow in MA) so I haven’t gone anywhere.
Yesterday, a friend and I went to breakfast (she paid) and then hit up one of our favorite consignment shops. I found a 1950s, unused, tablecloth. You can tell this thing has never been washed or used. It’s in amazing condition and it was only $12. My table is over 100 years old and is only 36 x 48, so 1950s tablecloths are the perfect size. I never pass them up when they are less than $12.
I pulled some chicken thighs out of the freezer last night and roasted those up for my lunch today. Already made a small amount of stock for soup. I also used up a Delicata squash that was going bad, cut up two giant carrots from my CSA and roasted those. Sautéed up some Swiss chard and made some rice. Plenty of leftovers and plenty of things I can put in soup.
Christine: I grew up in NH and referred to them as a puff. I don’t really hear that saying much anymore, I feel like people just referred to them as comforters. I’ll have to ask some of my friends tomorrow what they referred to them as. (Fellow Mass resident ).
I have a 30+ year old table that is 36 X 48 - hard to find table cloth in that size. Nor is it easy to find a 36 X 36 table cloth for my other table. I've cut one down and wish I had bought a a spare for the other table.
Look for old tablecloths at the thrift store. The ones from the 50s and 60s are typically the perfect size for our size table! And their colors are so much brighter than newer tablecloths.
I feel like the older I've gotten the more I love maple. Maybe I just didn't get much as a kid and never grew a taste for it. My husband is a huge maple lover so he must've rubbed off on me.
1. I feel like the plague is finally lifting and I actually didn't feel like death today! I'm still going to take some medicine before bed, just in case. We've stretched the medicine my wonderful mom delivered to us the other day and just have nighttime medicine left.
2. With our energy slightly restored we powered through some much needed meal prep! I baked muffins and granola bars, and prepped some "dumplings" for the freezer and for tonight's chicken and dumplings dinner, and marinara sauce. My husband made soft pretzels and I made some vegan cheese dip.
3. We did a ton of laundry but still need to fold and put everything away. Can't win em all at once.
4. Finally cooking a variety of foods has opened our eyes to what we need from the grocery store, thankfully not too much but definitely need a trip soon. We'll get creative tomorrow and make it work.
5. I'm still floating on our auto insurance savings.
Those donuts sound great and I wish we had a bakery outlet near me. Very sad news in my town, our local bakery that’s been in business for 55 years burned down from an electrical fire.
1. This morning I met my in-laws for breakfast which was their treat. We all took advantage of their $5 special which is 2 pieces of toast, 2 eggs, and home fries with peppers and onion.
2. After breakfast I went to a 10am matinee for $6 to see Dead man’s wire. It’s based on a true story from 1977 which was really interesting to me. I did not buy and concessions.
3. I have officially lost 15lbs and I am finally able to wear ALL the shirts in my closet again!
4. I made a dozen banana spinach oat muffins today that stay good in the fridge for 5 days. (They are green but you do not taste the spinach at all)
5. I am planning my itinerary for my solo trip to Miami in February. I’ve been scoping out all the free and cheap things I can do. For example i am going over Presidents’ Day weekend so I will take advantage of the free entry into Everglades national park which is normally $35. I also saw that there is a Beauty and Spa school 5 minutes from my Airbnb where I can get an hour massage for $30.
Not frugal news: My tie rod snapped on my car and my tire came half way off. Thankfully I was only going 15mph in my neighborhood when it happened. My in-laws have a membership that offers free towing so they came and called a tow truck.
I will find out tomorrow the full extent of the damage and how much it will cost.
I didn't leave my house today. We have been in a blizzard warning all day. Right now the temp is five below with a wind chill of minus 30. Not a great day for anything!
The casserole sounds fantastic and I just happen to have a plain chicken and rice casserole in my fridge. I have coleslaw and teriyaki sauce so I will add it to the casserole!!! Thanks!!! So that casserole will be my #1 frugal for the day.
2. That is kind of unfrugal but I tried to make it as frugal as possible.
I have balding thinning hair on top of my head and at almost 66 it is becoming much more noticeable. I am going to cut my hair to above chin length ( I cut my own hair) and I have ordered a wig for the steep price of $16.99. Since I give zero f’s to how I usually look, it will only be worn at work and special occasions. The camera for zoom hearings is positioned so that it shows my bald spots so I feel I need to finally care enough to order a wig for work. I had previously dyed my hair blond and my scalp kind of blended in but I quit using dye during the pandemic. The balding is probably genetic bc my grandma and mom had the same problem.
3. It is cold here but I will walk in the neighborhood on this holiday weekend in the middle of the day.
4. I hope to get a nap today.
5. I will be watching MLK celebrations via my phone. I only go to work and avoid other crowds including in person church during flu and cold season after Christmas if I can help it. Actually, I refused to attend any church or Christmas parties except the one mandated at work bc an office wide work meeting was attached. I also mask and vaccinate but I do not take chances at my age. Also, to be real, I am peopled out after work and do not need any more socializing. I will always be a loner at heart.
Mmm, donuts.
1. Found 3-pound bags of apples on clearance for $.50. I have never seen them this cheap. I bought 3 bags, made a big apple crisp with one of them and put the other 2 in the fridge for snacking.
2. I also bought a $5 rotisserie chicken, from Sam’s since we don’t have a Costco. Made chicken tiki masala, chicken gnocchi soup, and a small chicken Caesar salad with it.
3. Did not renew an annual subscription to Paramont+.
4. My husband and I both packed our lunch all 5 days last week. We should be doing this every week but usually 1-2 days a week one of us drops the ball and has to buy food out so I’m counting this as a win.
5. Had a $20/off a $50 order from Chewy. I don’t usually order from them because their prices are the same as I can get locally, but I used the coupon to stock up on cat food and litter.
My mom loves those donuts! Nice haul from the bread store.
This morning I made waffles for the freezer from the sourdough discards. I retrieved from the freezer slices of ham and will fry up some apples and eggs for a hearty breakfast.
One of my daughters and her friend came to stay a couple of nights, her friend was so excited to hike and collect eggs, clean the barns and go to the neighbors to exercise the rescue horses. frugal vaca for them.
Oregon is still having beautiful weather, so I will wash up the pet bedding and line dry.
I freeze leftover chicken and turkey gravy to use to fortify soup and various dishes that could use a flavor punch.