Psst, I make money on some of the links in this post at no cost to you. It keeps the lights on around here. Amazon links are affiliate. 

Happy almost-Monday, everyone! We tried to take it easy over the weekend, but we managed to get a few frugal things done around here. Check out how we spent our two days of freedom to live well on less.

How did your weekend go? Let me know in the comments!

Zap’s Birthday

That’s right, folks! Our little Zap turned two years old on Thursday (August 9). We adopted him in November of 2016 when he was just three months old. How time flies.

We celebrated Zap’s big day by giving him a fancy can of cat food, freeze dried sardines, and plenty of kitty treats. He spent the day chasing butterflies and lizards. He kindly brought a cicada shell inside as a thank you. (Ick)

Delicious meals from the week

As promised, here are a few tasty meals from this past week! I also post these in the Friday Food Thread in the Picky Pinchers group.

Stroganoff

I used this recipe to make a quick ‘n’ easy Beef stroganoff for dinner. We’re trying to cut our grocery costs, so I used half the amount of ground beef that I would normally use. If you want to cut down on ground beef costs, you can blend half a carton of mushrooms in a food processor and it mimics the texture of ground beef. Y’all know I’m not a big mushroom fan, but when blended up, I can’t even tell they’re there.

The mushrooms added a great depth of flavor to the beef sauce that was unreal. While the sauce was boiling down, I added a half cup of our homemade blueberry wine for a bit more oomph. The result was a tasty, hearty dinner!

Chili

Last week I noticed I had orphaned cans of pinto, black, and navy Beans in the cupboard. I used this amazing Buzzfeed chili recipe to whip up the best homemade chili I’ve ever had. This recipe helped me use up other weird odds and ends from the pantry, like tomato paste and about-to-go-bad tomatoes.

The seasoning in this chili is phenomenal, although I recommend adding just one tablespoon of salt instead of two, especially if you want to eat the chili with chips or cheese.

The big upside to chili is that it makes way more servings than we need for dinner and lunch leftovers. We got four extra servings of chili that we were able to store. I loooove cooking huge batches of food for dinner that we can save for later meals.

Cheap or frugal?

Voting time! Do you guys think this little hack is cheap or frugal?

I’ve been ramping up my freelancing work and wanted to log a few things on a whiteboard. We don’t have a whiteboard at home, and I certainly didn’t want to drop $20 – $40 on a large whiteboard for my office.

After an afternoon of scratching my head, I thought I was resigned to use hundreds of Post-Its instead of a whiteboard. However! I got a great idea as I watched Zap playing in the windowsill. I grabbed a whiteboard marker and made notes on the window. It worked just like a charm, and I didn’t have to buy a thing.

I might upgrade later on, but we’re trying to be a little more lean so we can pay off our student loans more quickly. Do you think delaying this purchase is being cheap, or being frugal?

Free firewood

Mr. Picky Pincher’s coworker had a stack of firewood that he wanted to get rid of. Hubby’s ears perked up, and he happily volunteered to take the wood off his coworker’s hands. This wood is fantastic for smoking and barbecuing–and we didn’t have to pay a dime for it.

DIY Lunchables

I’m a 90s kid, and I have a soft spot for Lunchables. These preservative-laden wonders kept me fed until the age of 13. Every now and then I’ll pick up the $1 Lunchable cheese and cracker meals as a guilty pleasure. I soon realized I could make my own adult version of these Lunchables for way less than $1.

I bought a huge party tray full of assorted cheese at Costco. I snagged a summer sausage from HEB and cut it into thin slices. I layered the cheese and sausage together and stored them in a Tupperware. I bought a pack of knockoff Ritz crackers, which I keep stored in the pantry. I thought about storing the crackers with the cheese and sausage, but I decided against it. Nobody wants gummy, cold crackers, y’know?

We had leftover cheese, which Mr. Picky Pincher kindly packaged with our vacuum sealer (Amazon link here).

Black beans

We have an absurd, apocalyptic stockpile of black beans in our pantry. We accidentally bought a mega pack from Costco a few weeks ago, not realizing we already had a huge, unopened bag of black beans already. Argh!

Oh well. The great thing about beans is that they stay good for a long time. We eat our weight in beans, but I’m sure it’ll take at least a year to eat them all. Any way, hubs used his bean recipe to cook a new batch of black beans. He stored the beans in single-serving Tupperware in the freezer for quick eating. These are way tastier, healthier, and (slightly) cheaper than canned beans.

As a quick aside: We did the math on homemade versus canned beans from the store. The savings is pretty small in favor of homemade, so if you don’t feel like cooking beans, storebought won’t put you in the poorhouse. Unless you’re particular about ingredients and flavor, canned beans are a viable and frugal option to get your bean fix.

Packaged beef

We’re living out a #YearOfGrit right now. We’re streamlining costs in all budget categories to make it possible for us to pay off our student loans ahead of schedule, by the end of October. Because of that, we’re purchasing conventional beef and chicken for the next few months. The downside is that the conventional Costco beef doesn’t come in pre-portioned packs.

Mr. Picky Pincher took the time to package the beef in one-pound vacuum-sealed packs. He dated them and stored them in the freezer for easy keeping.

Bacon

Who doesn’t love bacon? I think bacon is delicious, but it’s a messy hassle to cook every time you want a few strips. For that reason, we bake our bacon in large batches. Hubs had the great idea to cook the bacon in between two cooling racks, which lets the fat drip into the lined pan below.

Once the bacon cools, we wrap it in paper towels and freeze it. Easy peasy.

Beer brewing

Mr. Picky Pincher got to brewin’ this weekend. He used a kit for a Cascadian Dark Ale. In a month or so, it’ll be done fermenting and we can add it to his homemade keezer. Hubs has the ambitious goal of only drinking homemade beer this month, and he’s killing it!

Chocolate experiment

I mentioned this last week to a few people, but I’ve always wanted to get into the delicate art of Chocolate work. I was feeling bored and listless on Saturday and decided to give it a go!

I have a chocolate mold I bought years ago when I was young and obviously ambitious about my baking abilities. I used the mold and filled it with tempered milk chocolate, which I bought from a clearance rack at HEB months ago. I used this guide to learn how to temper chocolate.

Honestly, I thought I was going to ruin this, so I didn’t have a lot of hope in the outcome. I followed the directions and filled my chocolates with an ice cream caramel sauce (I didn’t want to devote time to a homemade filling if I was going to mess it up!).

I didn’t take a photo of the finished product because I over-filled my chocolates with caramel, and uh … it made a mess. But! The chocolate was shiny and tempered, just like the instructions said they would. I have chocolatier fever now and I can’t wait to experiment again! Next time I’d love to try a dark chocolate filled with a ganache.

Stay tuned.

Zap’s Adventures

Ahh, there’s nothing like a cat nap.

Zap couldn’t help but explore the brush pile. The weather was nice and temperate this week, so he was feeling much more adventurous.

Sunday was rainy all day and Zap wasn’t having it. We opened the window so he could forlornly watch the dreary drizzle.

We want to know: How did you save or spend money this weekend?

The post What a frugal week! August 12 appeared first on Picky Pinchers.