Hi! I hope you're having a good week! Ours has been fairly typical - books and media from the library, laundry on the clothes line or on drying racks, a fair bit of scratch cooking - all those little things that add up over the long haul. It's summer - Daughter is out of school for break, so I will share some of our summer plans and activities soon!
 |
| Taffy...aka, Houdini. She has been quite the little escape artist of late. |
My friend and I went to the Asian market together this week. They had beautiful produce and great prices. For $4.50, I was able to get Shanghai bok choy, bean sprouts, snow peas, a sprig of Thai basil (yum!), Persian cucumbers an opo (also called long melon) squash and some really nice broccoli. At Walmart, I did some price matching and got limes for 12 cents each, strawberries for .98/lb, tomatoes for .98/lb., carrots for .50/lb, celery for .98/bunch, and more (but I can't remember right now!)
Oh yeah! I picked up a 4lb. boneless ham (shaped) for 4.96. I have a meat slicer and I'll use it to slice the ham for sanwiches, then I'll freeze it in half-pound packages so we can use it for sandwich meat throughout the summer. I'll cube the end pieces and use those for stir-fry or omelets.
We recently borrowed the movie Paddington from the library, and Daughter thought she would like to have a Paddington stuffed bear. We were in Goodwill on Thursday. She used her own money (which was gotten a few months back by selling some things she no longer played with) to buy this Gund bear...
...and this OshKosh hat...
So sweet! I admit, I'm really proud of her eye for putting together her own Paddington!
While we were at Goodwill, I also got her a pair of slippers, a couple of shirts for myself, a retractable leash for Taffy and a couple of other small things.
Mostly, it has been an at-home week of mowing, gardening and housekeeping. We have done some of our summer activities too. I re-planted seeds where some had failed to sprout, and put more flower seeds in the empty spots in our flower garden...and the weeding has begun!
I made a quiche this week. Husband and I warmed up pieces for breakfast (daughter doesn't like eggs). I used eggs from our hens, a mixture of spinach, kale and chard for the greens and green onion tops for the onion called for in the recipe...all those came from the garden. The butter in the recipe was some I bought for $1 a pound, I used a little ham (from our freezer) I got back at Christmas for .99/pound and the cheese was purchased in bulk for about $2.25/pound. It uses just small amounts of each of those items....with a few other ingredients (a little milk, salt and pepper, 2T. flour) I would estimate the total cost at about $1.20, or 12 cents per serving. I adapted the quiche recipe from The Prudent Homemaker site.
 |
| Homemade cheese pizza with basil and Sriracha! |
I have several bunny programs this summer in our local library district. I have two English Angora rabbits, but I need more for the programs, so I am 'renting' bunnies for the summer. They are really cute - I'll share photos soon! I'm also pet (baby chicks!) sitting for a friend while she's out of town - they are so fun. It's nice having more animals around, even if it's just for a little while.
I was given some past-prime produce to feed to our chickens. They really enjoyed the extra treats.
We gathered flowers - some wild daisies, and the blossoms from the chive plants (which smell surprisingly nice!) and brought them indoors to enjoy.
I hope you're having a great week. What did you do this week to spend less, save more and make do?
Boo, Taffy! Good job on the bear, daughter!
ReplyDeleteThis will be short as my laptop has died and I am using an old laptop the belonged to my late FIL and it has some issues. Hubby is working n trying to get it going again.
We are working on estimates for the new heat pump for upstairs. WE WILL GET A DISCOUNT FOR PAYING CASH. an ISSUE HERE IS RANDOM ALL CAPS and some missing keys.
Hubby had a repair on his car an it was only $20. My van goes in for it's transmission repairs this week. Than my laptop died. Such is life!
Our oldest daughter is saving for a down payment on a house and so wants to earn extra money. She will be doing some fiddly type chores for us for $10 an hour. She is painting our deck railings right now and then we will move on to other like chores including some window re-glazing. This helps us both and is much cheaper than other help we could hire.
We are considering how best to downsize house. WE DO NEED TO DO MORE UPDATNG AND REpAIRS FIRST.
I sold two lounge chairs we had on our deck for $85 and replaced them with tow gliders from Aldi for $100.
This will seat more people when the family is home and everuyone fought over the gliders so the change cost very little.
THAT IS ALL I can do on this awful keyborad! Have a good week!
Oh Lana, your comment makes me laugh with the random all caps! Sorry for all the 'stuff and things', but you're right - life is indeed like that. Our truck is in the shop right now...I'm waiting to hear the 'news' as to what it's going to cost to bring it home.
DeleteI have gotten used to my Chromebook, and like it a lot. They are quite affordable, too. :)
Your homemade pizza looks scrumptious! Would you be willing to share you recipe, especially the pizza crust?
ReplyDeleteWell...truth be told, that is a pizza crust mix - 59 cents at the grocery store. However, I do have a great recipe I like....you can find it here:
Deletehttp://www.food.com/recipe/5-minute-artisan-pizza-dough-487701
If you're using granulated salt instead of Kosher, use half as much. If you want to try less the first time to see if you like it, it's easy to reduce into thirds.
The pizza we had this past week was spur-of-the-moment, and there wasn't time to do the fridge one. :)
Oops - the rest of the story! Because this was spur-of-the-moment, the sauce is jar pasta sauce, and the cheese was 'all the kinds in the fridge that need using' (because the fridge is full of lots of little bits and space is at a premium right now!) I put the basil (fresh) on before baking - I'm not sure if that's right and I'll probably add it after baking next time. I drizzled the Sriracha on after baking. :)
Delete