Frugal Things Every Day

This was our dinner last night and will be tonight. I put a 3.75 lb. round corned beef in my slow cooker along with 2 cans of Yuengling lager. Then I threw in the spice packet that came with the corned beef. The beer tenderizes the beef while it slow cooks. I cooked this a total of 8 hours on low. You couldn’t taste the beer when it was done. I would have preferred Guinness but I already had a case of the Yuengling lager which I use in recipes and Hubby drinks when he wants a beer. So I used what we had.

When the corned beef had 2 hours to go, I threw in 1/2 of a whole cabbage. I wanted to use fresh potatoes but they were too soft to use. They seem to go bad quickly these days. Not wanting to go to the market, I made mashed potatoes from flakes. It was all delicious.

Our brunch yesterday was homemade turkey soup that I had in the freezer.

This morning we went out to breakfast with our son and grandson at our favorite Greek restaurant. Three of us had eggs or an omelet, home fries, toast, and our choice of steak, bacon, sausage or ham. West had 4 of the largest pancakes with maple syrup that I have ever seen with lots of sausage. My son is Keto and since he does not eat starches, he gave his toast to Hubby and I brought his big plate of home fries home to have as a side for dinner tomorrow or breakfasts this week. Breakfast was so expensive. The cost for the food was $ 74. and a $15.00 tip for a total of $89.00. It had really gone up in price since we ate there a few months ago. But it was all delicious and a nice break for me from cooking. The cost was paid out of our cash envelope for Eating Out.

When Hubby got up this morning, he went to print the crossword from his online newspaper subscription on his desktop computer to find it was dead. When we got back from breakfast, my son confirmed that it was truly dead. So he helped Hubby decide what he will order from Dell tomorrow. We are hoping that we can pay extra to get it overnight when it is built. Hubby needs it to monitor some healthcare issues. In the meantime, he can download the software on mine and use it.

I hope all of you are having a nice St. Patrick’s Day. Are you doing anything special today?

This is the way I meal plan 100% of the time now. Off and on through the years, I have tried to just make a menu of things that we want to eat for the week. I have almost always found that it costs me much more money.

A reason for that is when I have to buy what I don’t have in the house at full price instead of purchasing it on sale it ups my grocery bill. By reverse meal planning, I can buy grocery items when they are on sale at loss leader prices. Then I decide in advance what we will eat from our pantries, refrigerator, and freezer that week. At the same time, I keep an eye on the sale ads to see if there is anything I can use at rock bottom loss leaders in my area. Some weeks there are and some weeks there are none.

We are not fortune enough to live in an area that marks down prices on items that will expire the next day or so. They are far and few in between. For example, when I went into Walmart yesterday to pick up the popcorn that I had a free coupon for, I took the time to look for reduced price food items. The few bakery items they had were two days out of expiration which I would not buy. There was no marked down produce. Most of their on sale produce had seen it’s better days. Then I looked at the meat. They had a few beef steaks and roasts marked down for quick sale. But I don’t consider a markdown of $ .37 to $ .57 enough to make me buy an expensive steak or roast that was going out of date. Lastly, I went to the clearance shelf to see what they had. There were only two items and none of them were food.

At Top’s the last time I was there, they had a couple of meat items marked down. But their markdowns were as lousy as Walmart’s. At Aldi’s yesterday, they had no markdowns.

When I am going to a doctor’s appointment, I try to stop at Niagara Produce when they have sale items I need. I always look for the reduced price meat while I am there. I have found it just 5 times in a year and it is never more than one or two items.

The lack of reduced price items is why I purchase items on rock bottom loss leader. I certainly do miss Fry’s in AZ. It was a Kroger store and the markdowns were plentiful. But I do what you can with the stores that I have.

So starting today, I will be eating from our pantries, refrigerator, and freezer exclusively. I know that most of that food was purchased on sale a while ago when prices were lower. Meanwhile I will keep an eye on the ads but will not buy anything unless it is a price that says to me you need to buy this in bulk. For me to do that. it would have to be a very great price.

Tonight we are eating leftovers that are lingering in the fridge. I hate food waste. I have some fresh asparagus that needs to be cooked. I will do that this afternoon and eat a bit each time with my eggs for breakfast in the coming days.

Tomorrow, I will be cooking a corned beef, cabbage, and potato dinner. That will be leftovers for 3-4 days including the corned beef sandwiches that Hubby loves. I have also thawed a meal of homemade chicken soup for brunch today and tomorrow.

I am hoping to put my menu up every day with pictures when I can.

I also want to correct Hubby’s figures on how much our utility bills have decreased year over year. I finally had time to look at it. From 4/16/22 through 3/16/23, our bills totaled $ 2236.34. From 4/16/23 through 3/16/24, our bills totaled $ 2002.51. So we have saved $ 233.83 over last years bills. I don’t know where Hubby got that figure he told me but I will forgive him and correct my prior post.

Do any of you reverse meal plan?

I am finally peaceful because I got some important financial things done this morning. Between those types of things and my recent doctor and test appointments, I have been very stressed out the past couple of months. I don’t have another appointment until May and then one in August. My time is finally mine, Hubby’s, and my sons and their families. What a relief I feel. I should be around here more often too.

This afternoon I cooked up some bacon to make Turkey BLT’s for dinner. That will make them easy to put together.

The middle of last week, I contacted a few companies whose products I buy and whose products I was getting low on. I didn’t know if they would send me some coupons but it was worth a try since paper coupons are rare these days. These all came in the mail today. I am loving all of them especially the free one. The $.50 ones will double at my Top’s. All of them do not expire until the end of December so I will be saving them to combine with a sale. Score!

Some other things that I have done in the last few days are:

I scanned 2 weeks worth of receipts into Fetch.

Instead of paying $ 25. including tip for 2 fish fry dinners at Chiavetta’s last Friday for dinner, I baked some coconut shrimp I found in the bottom of my freezer.

The only waste I had was a slice of a tomato that got buried in the crisper drawer.

I am using up food in the freezer and pantries for the next few weeks so I am only buying sale items that we need or reduced priced deals. Matter of fact I will be going out to shop for my corned beef and cabbage and going to the drugstore for a prescription after I post this. I will also bring a bag of bottles to Fast Cash. My menu’s with the exception of the corned beef and cabbage will be made from what I already have in the house.

I almost forgot to talk about February’s budget. I spent $ 490. of my $534. food budget last month. The remainder will be saved to stock on good deals when I see them. Also we only spent $ 24.92 on fish fries for take out on one Friday dinner. Our gas and electric bill was $ 235.66. We saved $233.83 this past year compared to last year’s bills. That has to be the warm winter we have had and keeping the heat so low from 10PM to 9AM.

What have you guys been doing to save money?

We made all of our meals from scratch except for using the Naan bread as the crust to make a homemade pizza. Our dinner meals starting last Saturday were turkey soup(3 times), pizza, cheeseburgers, strip steaks and baked potatoes, and coconut shrimp. Our brunch meals were eggs and bacon(2 times), turkey BLT’s, grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, hamburgers and broccoli, and eggs and broccoli. We did not go out to eat or get takeout. Hubby made SF pudding with Zero Sugar whipped topping for desserts.

Since we have about 7 dozen eggs, I hard boiled a dozen of them in the instant pot for upcoming brunches and made some deviled eggs for snacks.

I froze a meal of turkey soup for a future meal.

I entered our receipts into Fetch to get points towards Walmart gift cards to use for groceries.

My showers were navy ones and I filled a large 5 gallon bucket with the warm up water. This is used for cleaning.

I did a load of clothing and a load of sheets with minimal detergent in the washer. I used minimal dryer time using the wool balls.

Hubby needed to go to Home Depot to get some parts to make repairs in the house. While he was getting dressed to go out, I loaded up the back of the SUV with 8 bags of returnable bottles. We have been tripping over bags of them in the garage because a large run of them had not been done since the beginning of autumn and we have had a lot of company since then. Both Home Depot and Fast Cash are in the same plaza. He took back 176 returnable bottles for a total of $ 8.80.

At Home Depot, he purchased a Universal Flapper that needed to be replaced in our master bedroom toilet. It took him less than 15 minutes to make that repair. He also bought a package of wood screws that he needed to fix a dining room chair. When he was vacuuming the other day he found a screw under the table. We quickly found out what chair it had come from. He tried to put it back in the chair but it kept turning and wouldn’t screw into the wood. He also found another one had either not been put in the chair or had been lost in some other point of time. So he picked up a package of screws that were the same length but just a little wider. Then he replaced the two screws which worked perfectly. We will save the other 8 screws for future DIY. He paid $ 9.68 for all. He has saved us a ton of money over the years by being able to fix things.

We continued to pull out things we no longer want to sell at the community garage sale.

I sorted my seeds to see if I had what I want to plant this spring. I do so I don’t have to buy seeds.

We had doctors appointments back to back this morning. Afterward we picked up a prescription that I had ordered yesterday. Doing two things on a trip saves gasoline.

I started a stretching routine about a month ago and I can’t believe the difference that it has made in my body. The stretches have made a huge difference in how I feel and how my back feels. I will be keeping this up long term. I am also on the treadmill every other day for 30 minutes.

Before I close I wanted to tell you that the 1 in 11 oven grill pan works beautifully with the air fryer function to grill steaks. They have beautiful grill marks and they were perfectly cooked to medium rare at 450 for 5 minutes on each side. That was after preheating the grill pan. I just wanted to let you all know because someone asked how I liked it. I am using more and more functions and we are loving it.

How did you save money this week?