Frugal Things That We Have Done Recently

It is getting more and more difficult to save money because everything is so expensive, especially groceries. But I am doing my best by shopping only the sales. I also plan menus using what I have in the refrigerator, freezers, and pantries.

My son who we visited recently gave us a tow behind dethatcher to use with our riding lawn mower. He had already purchased one for his. Then he found this old one in his shed. We had to borrow one from our other son the last time we needed one. Hubby was delighted and I was really happy with the price of free. This saved us over $150.

I made chocolate chip cookie bars to take to my son’s for Alexa. She loves chocolate. They called for chocolate chips and butterscotch chips. I did not have the butterscotch chips so I used what I had which was white chocolate chips. They were delicious! I substitute all of the time in recipes with what I already have in my kitchen. I will not run out to the store to get just one or two items especially with the cost of gasoline which is $ 4.90 a gallon.

We have been cooking all of our meals in the microwave, air fryer, toaster oven(rarely), and on our gas grill. I am hoping we have a lower gas and electric bill. I have been really watching what we use but the bills just keep going higher and higher. The meter reader was in here reading yesterday so we should have our bill by the end of the week. We still use natural gas for our on demand water heater. We have only used our A/C for 2 days this year. Our home has high ceilings and if I keep shades down on sunny windows our home stays cool.

The only water our garden got while we were away was rain water. It only rained a little and the plants cooked in the 90 degree temps. We came home to some yellow leaves on our tomato plants. So we have watered them well and I fed them some Miracle Grow for nutrients. Today once it gets light out, I will snip off the yellow parts.

Fortunately, we have only had those couple of hot days. Otherwise it has been cooler than normal which is really enjoyable. We have not had to turn our sprinkler system on for the lawn yet this year.

I had planned on making some strawberry jam this week so I was bitterly disappointed when Niagara Produce had the local ones for $5.50 a quart. They are very small and did not look great. Aldi’s had none and Top’s had no local ones. I purchased one quart so that we could have a few strawberry shortcakes. I will not be buying more unless I can find them cheaper and good looking. At least I have some jam left from last year.

My plan this week is to continue to can the meat up in our freezer. That mainly consists of ground meat, sausage and chicken. I will leave the steaks, shrimp, pork chops, and fish in there and we will eat them up in our normal rotation. I feel better with a lot of the meat on the shelves so I don’t have to worry so much about outages. Right now as I write this, we are in the middle of a thunder and lightning storm. I know how quickly we can lose power.

This week I am trying to use up produce in the fridge. So last night we had taco salads. We will do that again tonight. Wednesday and Thursday, we will have a shrimp dish, probably Giada’s dish that we love. Friday is homemade pizza night. Saturday will be Chef’s salad. Sunday will be chicken kabobs on the grill. With the price of produce, I am trying very hard not to waste any.

I looked for more canning jars at N.P. when I was there yesterday. They were $19.99 a case. Yikes! Needless to say I did not buy them. Instead when I came home, I looked online. I ordered them from Walmart for $ 11.97 a case. What a difference in price! I want to make sure that I have enough pint jars to make tomato and spaghetti sauce when the tomatoes are ripe. I also need them for meat.

I picked up two prescriptions at the drug store that were free. For some reason, this year we are finding that more and more drugs are free with our drug plan. They are mainly generics.

Well that is all for now. What have you done recently so save money?