You all know that I have an old meat slicer that I would cut up cold cuts from meats that I would roast. I didn’t always have big boneless roasts that I could cut them from. So while we were waiting for those roasts to go on sale, we would buy cold cuts just like everyone else especially if we were having company for any length of time. Or when we would be having a large party.
This article disgusted and sickened me. Mold and mildew and bugs everywhere. So I told Hubby that we were never going to buy another cold cut anywhere whether it is Boar’s Head or any other brand. I was going to make all of our own cold cuts and never buy them at a store again. He agreed but he had one request. He said our meat slicer that we have used for years had served it’s purpose but he wanted to buy a commercial meat slicer that would not only do meats but slice our homemade bread. I agreed.
We picked out the one pictured above at Amazon. It was $348. plus 8% tax. Knowing how outrageously expensive cold cuts are, it will pay for itself pretty quickly. Plus I will have the peace of mind that I am not buying something that could potentially kill us.
I was pleasantly surprised when I opened our Top’s ad that starts this Sunday and saw beef Roasts on sale for $ 4.99 a lb. I have my choice of sirloin tip, top round, eye round or bottom round. I will be getting a top round since it is the most tender. We will roast it, chill it, and cut it up on the new slicer. Then I will put some in the refrigerator for next week and food saver the rest into small portions to pull out for sandwiches when we want one. Roast beef cold cuts cost between $11.99 to $18.99 at the grocery stores in my area.
It has been another busy day of errands, post office, drugstore, library, etc.
After I got home, Hubby went outside to weed some more gardens. He quickly came back inside after he took a header onto the ground. His head and, arm, and knee were bleeding.. I patched him up but he has been complaining about his left shoulder since it happened. I tried to take him to Well Now to get it looked at and possibly Xrayed but he refused. If it is not better in the morning, he is going whether he likes it or not. I am keeping an eye on him.
I hope to be back with my married life series tomorrow.
In the late 1970’s, our house seemed to have shrunk. Two boys meant we needed more square footage than we had. We went out for a drive one Saturday afternoon and found a road we had never seen before. We drove down there and found that a builder was putting up homes. They had a model home so we stopped in to see it. We loved it. It had 2350 sq. feet, 4 bedrooms, 2 and 1/2 baths, a large living room and dining room, a family room, enormous kitchen and a full basement. It backed up to woods. It was perfect for us.
We went home and went over the budget numbers and decided we could have one built. So later that week we signed the paperwork. When we applied for the mortgage( 8 and 1/2%) we told the bank that we did not want escrow for the school and property taxes. We had paid our own taxes twice a year on our prior house and have done the same with every house we have owned right up to today’s. When we first started doing that in the 1960’s, they were not paying interest on escrow. We liked controlling our own money. We liked earning the interest on that money rather than the bank using our money all year long. The interest rate was high on this house because of the many years of inflation we had with Jimmy Carter as President. Friends of ours had a home built near ours a few years later and they paid 16%. That is when we came up with plan to pay it off early. It was an expensive time to live but not as bad as now. They have kept the interest rates down now but that is a mistake. You can’t get rid of inflation by doing that. You must have an approach that cools government spending.
We had the builder put in the bare basics which meant linoleum floors in the kitchen, and to only finish 1 and 1/2 bathrooms, and put in mid range carpeting. We told them to only plum in the master bathroom. We had the other full bath just down the hallway that we could use. Hubby put the entire master bath in himself a year or so after we moved in. He got very good at tiling the walls and the floor. He put in a walk in shower and a toilet. One upgrade that we did have the builder do was put a fireplace in the family room. We had had one in our first home and we had such a crappy utility company that we were out of power many times over the winter. So we knew how much comfort it gave to have a secondary power source.
In the 1980’s, we did a lot of upgrading including a paver patio and and an in ground swimming pool and fenced the yard. Hubby built a shed to house the pool motor and chemicals we needed for it. That pool turned out to be the best investment ever. Our boys learned to swim quickly at the ages of 7 and 5. Their friends just about lived in it with them and Hubby and I used it all of the time. It gave us many years of paid for entertainment. We lived in this home 20+ years until one boy had graduated college and the other had one semester left to finish. We paid that mortgage off when we were in our forties by always paying extra on the principal. All of those years our first priority was to pay ourselves first.
As the boys grew up in that home, expenses for the boys grew and we made choices for their schooling that we have never regretted. They both went to an all boy private military academy. One went there for 6 years(jr. high and high school) and the other went for 4 years of high school. The tuition was very expensive along with all the other things like uniforms, etc. that we had to buy. That is when I went back to work to pay for that and for their college. At first, I only worked part time but then I worked a couple of full time jobs. By me going to work, we never had to touch a dime of our savings and our taxable retirement money that had grown and grown over the years as we kept adding to it.
I cut every corner that I could frugally without cutting down on our quality of life. When the boys were around 8 and 10, we raised our grocery budget to $180.- $ 200. per month. I stuck to that grocery budget for years even when we were living in AZ. I did everything I could to stick to that budget including using coupons, markdowns, and eating from our shelves and freezer. When the boys were small when we first moved to that home we found in the seventies, we bought a 27 cubic foot freezer that I kept stocked with meats, veggies, fruits, etc. when they were on sale. Much the same as I do now. Then we just made meals from the things that we already had stocked in our home. I had Hubby build some wooden shelves in the basement where we stored things that we purchased all the time on sale.
We didn’t make frivolous purchases or spend money on useless crap. We didn’t spend money we didn’t have via credit cards. We used credit cards for convenience and to this day we pay them off when we get the bill. The boys never went without anything they needed. But we did not spend to excess.
The boys got paper routes when they were 11- 12. They worked various jobs every summer when they were old enough. When they turned 16 and got their licenses, they bought their own used cars with the money they had saved. We paid their insurance. This helped us out because then they could drive to their private school where they both played sports. They could stay late for practices and Hubby didn’t have to pick them up. The school was just under 25 miles from our home. They had taken a school bus that was provided by our public school, which we paid hefty taxes to, until they had their own cars.
By having them do paper routes and then work jobs in high school, they learned the value of a dollar and the hard work it took to get it. They never thought money grew on trees. It is a lesson that sticks with them today.
I will write the post on the ’80s and ’90’s tomorrow. It has been a crazy day.
Hubby had an appointment to get our car inspected and an oil change this morning at 8am. My plan was to go to Top’s because it was senior 6% discount day when he got home. Meanwhile while he was gone I took a cup of coffee out to our seating area in front to see our neighbors get on the bus since it was the first day of school. They are 2nd grade and younger. One of them was going to kindergarten and was so excited. They were all so cute.
When Hubby got home I asked him about the appointment and he said all went well. I asked him because I was curious how much the NYS inspection is now. He looked at the bill and did not see it on it. He assumed that they had just done it and that they would have told him if there was a problem. I told him to go out to the car and see if the new inspection is on the car. It wasn’t. They never did it. He went right back with the car and they apologized and took it right back in to inspect it. Moral of the story is you can’t trust anyone anymore. Go over any bill with them to make sure you get the services you requested.
After Hubby got home for the second time, I got ready and went to Top’s. I got a bunch of bananas on sale for $ .44 a lb, using a super coupon which cost me a $ 1.10, a bunch of celery for $ 2.00, and a half gallon of half and half for $ 5.99. My total after a 6% discount was $ 8.54. Every penny always counts. By the time I got there, the store was so crowded that I couldn’t wait to get home. I was in line for quite a while because they had no express line open. The self service checkouts are now cash only and I wanted to pay with cash. That will be all the shopping I do this week.
Hubby and I had a peaceful weekend watching college football, grilling outside, and just relaxing for a change. I also visited a friend who has had long Covid for 3 years now. I hadn’t seen her in a while. We had a nice chat and caught up on our lives.
I also went over our budget for August. We got our school tax bill the end of August and I paid it the same day. It was for $ 5961. This is only for our school district. Our property taxes for the county will be billed January 1, 2025 and is almost as much as the school taxes. NYS taxes are horrendous but we choose to live here to be close to our family. But this payment took a big chunk out of what we saved this month. That and a couple of large purchases that we made this month too. I will talk about one of them by the end of the week.
We grilled filet mignons, made chicken stir fry, and had chicken parm over the long weekend.
Hubby and I are about to go sit outside for a while today before we grill hamburgers with sauteed mushrooms for dinner. But I wanted to let you know that we saved $ 4354.49 this month towards our goal.
How did you do with your savings or debt payoff in August?
I will be back tomorrow with the continuation post of our life. I promise.
When I was growing up, I had a very happy life. My mother left my father when I was 3 just before my sister was born. We had no money and my grandparents took us in. My mother got a good job, her college B.A. in accounting, and I lived with my grandparents until I married.
My grandfather didn’t make much money as a shirt cutter. But he owned his home( his father was a builder), a 2 story home with two flats. Relatives always lived downstairs. Most of the money my mom made was handed over to my grandmother for rent, food, and daycare. My mom was allowed to keep enough for transportation(2 buses each way) to get to her job, food for her lunches, money so that we could all go to the lake for the summer, high school tuition( everyone in the family had graduated from this private school because it was tradition), and just a bit of spending money. My sister and I wore hand me downs from my older cousin. I got my first bike when I was 12. It was a hand me down from that same cousin. I never felt poor but I knew money was tight for the things they wanted for themselves and us. My grandmother could make a penny stretch on food like no one else that I have ever known. Every meal was portion controlled. Rarely were there snacks or soda.
This way of life got me very interested in financial things in junior high and high school. I used to take library books out of the library that today would be considered frugality books. I learned about finances in college while I studied for my accounting degree. It was the first time I ever heard about a checking account. I just soaked up everything I could learn. The two biggest things I learned was to never spend more money than you earn and to use credit the proper way. It was okay to get a mortgage for your first home but to furnish it with credit cards was a bad idea.
When I married my Hubby, he came from a different background. He lived in a very nice suburban neighborhood that was considered one of the best places to live. But as I found out over the first years of our marriage, they weren’t rich either. They did pay their home off quickly so they owned it. That was a lessen that Hubby and I loved. We paid ours off early and the last two, we paid cash.
So when we married, it was the 1960’s. Hubby owned a car with a car payment and was paying off a small student loan. I did not work the first 6-8 months of our marriage. We found an attic apartment for $ 80. a month including heat and electric. We had a cheap phone bill because Hubby worked for the telephone company. I brought not $1.00 to our marriage because I worked long hours to go to college and every penny paid my way through those 2 years. Those years before I worked, I read every thing I could find in newspapers and books on finance and frugality.. My mother in law gave me a few cookbooks from the WWII era and I made almost every recipe from them. I had exactly $25. a month grocery money. We had no more in the budget because we had to pay all the bills and we were saving for two things that were very important to us: For Hubby to get his B.A. degree in Engineering and to save for a house. Living in that hot apartment made us want to get out of it quickly. So we squeezed every penny we could and made that grocery budget work. We saved money religiously every month for our two goals. I got a job at the telephone company too but not where Hubby worked. I bussed it. I had no driver’s license. Hubby went to school nights and we saved my income and what was what left in his for a down payment for a new home.
We purchased our newly constructed home in the suburbs 1 year and 10 months after we married. We had saved enough money so that we could purchase with cash a bed, a refrigerator, a sofa, and 6 unfinished chairs to use with the used table that Hubby’s mother gave us. I had used green stamps( does anyone remember them?) to get a card table and 4 chairs so we would have a place to sit in the kitchen and eat. His mother also gave us an old dresser. Hubby purchased a door that had been damaged and made and stained 2 end tables out of it to go on either end of the sofa. They were so sturdy that we used them for 32 years. We sold them when we moved to Arizona. I wish I still had them.
We furnished the house as we saved cash to do so. We never ran out and used credit. I worked and got a ride with the man next door who actually was my boss back and forth to work.
I quit my job due to a miscarriage just before Hubby was hit by a car while walking from the parking lot near his work. He had serious damage done to his knee and was in the hospital for weeks and home recovering for weeks. He had switched jobs and hadn’t worked long enough to get full pay for long so we lived on 1/2 pay for a long time. We made it through without borrowing a dime from anyone. But it was a big wake up call. We had some money saved besides money for furniture. But we used almost all of it up while Hubby was out of work.
That wake up call was our journey towards financial independence. We set up an annual budget that paid us first every paycheck. That has been a line item in our budget to this day. We never wanted to wonder again how we were going to make ends meet! We had always been frugal but we turned it way up after that. We still had money set aside for entertainment and things to make life enjoyable every month. We have never felt like we were giving anything up.
Fast forward one year and my first son was born. Fast forward 2 more years and my 2nd son was born. Now we had 4 people in our family so we had to up the grocery budget. It went up to $80. per month. But it included all food, OTC meds, cleaning products, all soap products, cat food, and and personal care products. I only purchased Pampers to use when we went out somewhere. I washed diapers and hung them to dry for years. That saved us a fortune. Up until just before my first son was born, I went to the laundromat every week. But we had saved and set aside money for a washer and dryer. It was our first scratch and dent appliances and with babies I was so grateful for them.
As our money grew, we found places to invest it so that we could make more money. We continued to save every month and it just kept growing. The best part was all of the passive income we made every month.
Yes, we had emergencies come up but we always had the money to pay for them and we still do.
This is getting long and I need to prep our chicken parmesan that we are having for dinner, so I will continue to write more tomorrow. This is a blog post that I decided I was going to do way back when I started blogging in 2007. Now is the time!
There are many ways to save in the kitchen. One of them I am sure you know like not wasting food. We never throw out food. It is too expensive to feed our garbage can. Eat your leftovers at another meal or three. It is not going to kill you to eat the same food 2-3 nights in a row.
I go through my fridge, especially the produce drawers, every other day or so. It only takes a few minutes. Any produce that is getting old is used up that night or the next or it is frozen. Peppers I will slice and freeze for fajitas. Carrots I will slice or make carrot spears and freeze. The sliced ones go into soups and stews. The carrot spears get sauteed in butter and used as a side. Onions get sliced or diced and used in casseroles or omelets. I have frozen tomatoes many times and used them in casseroles, soups, gumbo, or in spaghetti sauce. I just freeze them whole in a food saver bag. Celery does not freeze well. That I will use to make a side and stuff it with cream cheese and diced olive. My Hubby loves this. My mom used to make it every holiday.
I put my leftovers together on a certain shelf so that we always know where they are. Right now, I have French toast and sausage that Hubby will reheat for a brunch. There is also a small container of corned beef hash that will get used within a day or two.
We have 1/2 of a bag of the tiny potatoes that should get used soon. So I will cut them in half and put them in a skillet, cover them with a little water and bring them to a boil. Then I cook them on medium for 10 minutes and drain them. Next I add a bit of oil to the same skillet, heat it and then put the potatoes back in cut side down and saute them until they are roasted and brown. We love these. We will have them with chicken tonight and if there are leftovers we will eat them with our eggs the next brunch.
But there are other ways to save in the kitchen one of which I have told you. I use lemon Koolaid to clean my dishwasher. I never buy the expensive special cleaners. I am still using the bag of them that I purchased years ago when they were $.10 each.
I clean my garbage disposal with baking soda and vinegar. First I put about 3/4 cup of the soda in and then put vinegar in. It will foam way up into your sink. Then just let it sit for a few minutes and then run the disposal. It cleans it and gets rid of any funky smells. I have a black plug that keeps things from falling into the disposal like utensils. I put that in the top rack of the dishwasher whenever I run it.
I never use the self cleaning cycle on my oven anymore. If I cook a pizza or something at 400 degrees or more, I will wipe it out when it has cooled down a bit. If there is something I can’t get off, I put a small bowl of ammonia on one of the racks and let it sit overnight with the door closed. In the morning, everything wipes out. The self cleaning cycle takes a lot of energy that I prefer to save.
Also I use Scrub Mommies in my sink to do pots and pans and dishes that I do not put in the dishwasher. That sponge goes into the top rack of my dishwasher when it needs to.
When I am washing the dishes or pans in the sink, I fill the 2 sinks about a 1/4 of the way. One has soap added for cleaning and the other has water only for rinsing. Don’t let your water run down the drain while you do that. You can waste gallons of water. I try to do that all of the time. I am not perfect so I get distracted sometimes just like everyone.
When I am done with the sinks, I spray them with an all purpose cleaner and rinse and then wipe them dry with the dish towel that I used that day. I change my 2 dish towels every day. I have one color of towels for dishes and a different color one to dry our hands. That way we don’t get them mixed up.
We use our 11 in 1 countertop stove for almost everything. We also use our instant pot, crock pot, and microwave for meals that we don’t put in that oven. We do grill outside now a lot and plan on using that right through the winter unless we are buried in snow.
Catch your water in the kitchen in a big pot or bowl while you are waiting for it to warm up. You can use that water to clean with, water plants, or to boil pasta, etc. Don’t just let it run down the drain. When you do use your stove top, cover your pots and pans. Things will cook faster.
We use a small hand vacuum that is always charging in my kitchen to clean up any crumbs on the counter or that fall on the floor every night to keep things clean. It saves us from lugging the larger vacuum so often. Once a week it gets a full vacuum to clean the floor. This keeps it clean enough that Hubby only has to clean and polish it once a month.
We have 2 ceiling lights in the kitchen. We also have a hanging 3 bulb light over the sink area and recessed lighting in the ceilings over all the counters. We only turn on the lights where we need them for the task we are doing. When it is daylight, we rarely turn them on unless it is dark and stormy outside. All of the bulbs are LED’S.
I know where everything is in my refrigerator so that I can quickly get whatever I need and close the door. We don’t want to let all that cold air into the room.
I keep my two pantries in my kitchen stocked with what I usually use so that I don’t have to run to other areas of the house to retrieve things. I put my meat that I will use for the next two weeks in my refrigerator freezer so that it is handy. It also prevents me from having to open the chest freezer as often. We also have small lights in our pantries so that I can see what we have. They are also LED’S.
Lastly, we use our garbage disposal for food scraps off our plates with the exception of potato skins, any kind of bone, fruit rinds, and egg shells. These things will ruin your disposal. All other waste goes in our kitchen 30 gallon container. I push those items down so they compact. This way we do not have to use as many plastic garbage bags which are very expensive. I used to use the brand names but I switched a while ago to the Great Value 30 gallon ones. They look and are as thick as the brand name ones.
I think that is about it for saving in the kitchen. If you have other ways that you save in the kitchen, please share them with all of us via the comments.
We had corned beef reuben sandwiches again last night. So tonight we will be having turkey BLT’s so that we can use up the turkey and tomatoes. Bacon was cooked on Saturday for breakfast yesterday and the BLT’s tonight.
This morning I was up and out at 7:15 a.m. for an eye doctor checkup. My eyes were the same as last year. No cataracts and no sign of any damage at all. I can continue to use my cheap reading glasses. They only put one dilation drop in each eye so I was able to stop at Top’s on the way home and get these two packages of chicken breasts for $ 2.49 a lb. Chicken seems to be scarce in our area so I am grabbing what I can when it is on sale.
These will be preserved with the food saver and put in the upstairs freezer. I have other chicken breasts frozen. Those will come out of the freezer and be thawed and canned because they are older.
I cashed out points for a $10.00 Amazon GC at Pinecone. I am signing up at some more sites to earn points.
I did one load of wash using cold water and hung it to dry. I also did one full load of dishes in the dishwasher using 1 tbsp. of dish soap. They are air drying now.
Hubby is outside watering all of the flowers that are in baskets and pots. I am continuing to go through all of our stuff and either toss it, donate it, or sell it.
Hubby decided late last night that he did not want potatoes, carrots, and cabbage in with the corned beef when I cooked it. He just wants reuben sandwiches. So I checked my pantry and refrigerator and I had swiss cheese slices and sauerkraut but I did not have the marble rye bread nor the ingredients to make it. So I was at the market at 7am buying this $ 5.69 loaf of bread. They had no marble rye so this was the closest I could get to it. We do have the ingredients to make Russian dressing. Hubby can’t wait to make one after the Bills preseason football game. I started the corned beef very early so it should be done by 5pm. It is cooking in beer and a little bit of water along with the spice packet that came with it.
Today will be a lazy day of watching the game and doing some reading.
During the game, I cooked up 1 pound of bacon for our family Sunday breakfast tomorrow. We haven’t seen my grandson and son in a few weeks so we are looking forward to it. When they get here in the morning, I will cook up a package of breakfast sausage, make scrambled eggs and some French toast for those who want these things. I will reheat the bacon.
For brunch today, we had roast beef sandwiches. I had pulled some roast beef slices out of the freezer the other day and they need to be used up.
We turned off the A/C last night so that we could enjoy a cool night of sleeping with the windows open. But we had to turn it back on today because the heat and muggy weather is coming back and will last all of this coming week. Just as I am posting this, the A/C has turned on for the first time today. It is 6:35pm.
We will be getting our school tax bill in a week or so. I found the 2024-2025 tax rate per thousand and have estimated the bill at $ 5981. Yikes! We will see how close I come to it.
Hubby made the reubens for our dinner when the corned beef was done and had cooled a bit. He put corned beef, sauerkraut, and swiss cheese slices on the buttered bread and then grilled them on our indoor grill. I forgot how good they are. We are looking forward to eating these as long as the corned beef lasts.
Dinner last night was made using the above items. We have leftovers from this dinner and the shrimp fra diavolo which we will use up for dinner tonight. Waste not, want not!
I was given a $ 12.99 haircut coupon by Great Clips so I had my hair cut today and used it and gave her a generous tip. The price is usually $18. I washed my hair at home so I didn’t have to pay for a shampoo.
The Running’s Labor Day sale flyer came so I went and got 10 boxes of regular canning lids for $ 2.99 and 10 boxes of wide mouth canning lids for $ 3.99. Best price I have seen in a long time. They were $9.99 at my N.P. the other day. I also got a Mrs. Wage’s pickling and canning vinegar on sale for $ 3.49. I have more than enough tomatoes, vegetables, and fruit done for the winter. So it is time to can some sale meat to get it out of the freezer. So if you have a Running’s and can, go get yours.
I forgot to buy tomatoes at Niagara Produce the other day so I stopped at Top’s to get some so that we can make some turkey BLT’s. I picked up 2 beautiful beefsteak tomatoes at Top’s for a total of $ 4.60.
We got our electric and natural gas bill today and it was outrageous. The bill was $ 154.00 for using 619 kwh of electricity and 4 ccf’s of natural gas. We used less kwh’s per day than last year same period and the same amount of ccf’s. Last year’s bill was $ 113.05 for less usage. That is a huge increase for supply and demand.
This is what I am thawing to cook in the crock pot out on the patio tomorrow. Hubby is thrilled that I am going to cook this corned beef that I got at a great price last March. I see a couple of dinners and some sandwiches for brunches.
We had Shrimp Fra Diavolo for dinner last night. These are the ingredients. They were all in my freezers and pantries. If you don’t have any white wine, you can substitute chicken broth for it. I have done that many times.
It turned out delicious as usual. This shrimp was getting close to being freezer burned so I needed to use it up. I think it was old when I bought it. Top’s marks over the expiration dates on all of their seafood. They have been doing that since the pandemic started. You have to ask why they are hiding the date. From now on, I will buy my shrimp elsewhere.
We had roast beef sandwiches with au jus gravy on buns for brunch today.
All meals were made with what we have at home.
I have another CD expiring soon so I am doing my research to see what the interest rates are at two different credit unions. I will put it with the one that has the highest interest rate.
Hubby mowed the lawn on Tuesday and today he is weeding some of the gardens. Turf Tec fertilized the lawn yesterday so we let the sprinkler come on today to water it in.
I am going through every item in this house and selling what we no longer use or donating it. The less we have the less we have to take care of.
That is it for today. I will be back tomorrow with more.
