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

Hey Picky peeps! I have something a little bit different for you this week. I’m lucky enough to have the next two weeks off of work, so I’ve been able to devote more time to frugal living. Of course, I’ve tried to structure in plenty of vegging around and rest, too. Without further ado, here’s how the week went, as well as what we had for dinner!

P.S. Be sure to check out The Picky Pinchers Cookbook! 

Monday

I did have to work today, but after 5 pm I was home-free for the next two weeks! It was absolutely chaotic at work and I was thankful for a tall glass of free prickly pear liquor mixed with pineapple juice.

Breakfast: Oatmeal. We were exhausted after last weekend’s jaunt to San Francisco. I made the fastest and most nutritious breakfast I could think of: oatmeal. I put homemade dried strawberries in mine and topped it with roasted coconut. So good!

Lunch: Nothing! Yes folks, I missed lunch. My company scheduled literally back-to-back meetings all day and I didn’t even have time to eat. Ugh.

Dinner: Hot dogs / Cane’s. We, uh, planned to cook hot dogs tonight. Everything was going well until Mr. Picky Pincher took one look at our hot dog buns and saw they were moldy. Ugh!

We didn’t have a good backup meal, so we opted to pick up fried chicken. You can’t win ’em all.

Tuesday

Oh happy day! I still woke up at 5 am today, but I was thrilled to have several days of freedom.

My focus for the next two weeks is going to be on cranking out content for Picky Pinchers and freelancing. Today I was so happy not to be working that I didn’t manage to get any filming done.

However, I was very proud that I made homemade mayonnaise right on the FIRST TRY, y’all! If you’ve been following my mayo saga, you’ll remember that it typically takes me three tries to make Homemade Mayo. Woohoo!

This time around I roasted a bulb of garlic and stirred it into the mayo for a nice garlicky flavor.

I also gave myself a nice DIY pedicure, which I’ll write a post about sometime. I now have the feet of an angel. An angel, I say! I got one of those electronic foot-filer things and it gets the job done surprisingly well for $17.

Other than that, I cleaned up the house a bit and played video games. I‘m trying to be better about using our leisure time for actual leisure instead of constant, panicked productivity.

Here’s what we ate today.

Breakfast: Green chile quesadillas. I tossed these suckahs together and they were most tasty. It’s just scrambled eggs put in between two tortillas topped with green chiles and Mexican cheese.

Lunch: Munchin’ around. I dug through the fridge and had a “deli box” style lunch. I added cheese, turkey, hummus, spicy pickles, strawberries, and raw bell pepper. It was surprisingly fun and tasty! It was also a great way to use up odds and ends in the fridge.

Dinner: Crab wraps with corn chowder. This was supposed to be a nice treat dinner, but it turned out to be anything but. I used this recipe and added our homemade mayo.

The issue was that I bought pre-shredded crab at the deli. These folks left MOUNDS of shell in our crab, rendering the entire dish inedible. I wasn’t a fan of the flavor to begin with, but the shells made it completely inedible.

Fortunately I had the foresight to cook a warm side dish for our crab salad wraps, figuring they wouldn’t be super filling. I used leftover frozen corn to make a tasty, warm corn chowder (corn chowder recipe here).

So, when the crab wraps didn’t work out, we just had an extra large helping of chowder instead. I hated wasting money on the crab like that, so we won’t be doing this again.

Wednesday

Today I decided to make a DIY gel air freshener. Here’s the tutorial I used if you’re interested.

We came home on Sunday to realize that our house was smelly. We took out the trash, washed dishes, and cleaned the litter box before we left, so I’m not sure why it was so funky.

Mr. Picky Pincher wanted to buy air fresheners at the store to make our house smell good again. I really don’t like store bought air fresheners because they’re not super great for you (and they’re expensive). I instead opted to make my own from gelatin, food coloring, and lots of essential oil.

I did the tutorial and the whole thing came together in five minutes. Our house now smells awesome!

These work just like gel air fresheners from the store. Once they get low, I’ll simply make a new batch.

Aside from making air fresheners, I also did a lot of filming today. I’m trying to be better about growing my YouTube presence, and that means I need to make more videos for y’all to enjoy!

I filmed tutorials for yogurt, wine-making, and ciabatta. It sounds really simple and easy typing it, but this took most of my day and was exhausting. I put my DSLR camera to good use (Amazon link here) and loved this lighting set that I bought for a pro touch (Amazon link here).

Here’s what we ate today

Breakfast: Lox bagels / Cereal. We had another bread fiasco today, y’all! We were set to have tasty lox bagels for breakfast. Once I checked on the bagels, they were frickin’ moldy too! It’s occasions like these that make me grateful for the off-brand mega-bag of Captain Crunch in our pantry.

This has made us realize that we need to start freezing bread to keep it from spoiling so soon.

Lunch: Leftover chowder. Mmmmm.

Dinner: Chicken paella. Today we tried a new recipe for chicken paella. It wasn’t a true Spanish paella, but since I’m not a fan of seafood, it seemed like a good option. 

In fact, I live streamed cooking this meal in our Picky Pinchers Facebook group! Watch here for the full hour of revelry. If you aren’t in the Facebook Group, you’ll need to request to join to view the video.

Here’s the recipe I used. This dish was surprisingly easy to put together and SOOO tasty. It’ll definitely become a regular part of our menu.

Thursday

Today I did quite a lot more filming. I’m happy to say that I got all the raw footage together for a yogurt video and the ciabatta video. In between filming I took it a little easy.

Today was also a mighty exciting day! Mr. Picky Pincher received a sizable bonus for his great work this year. We’ve decided to apply two-thirds of it towards debt, and use the remaining third for fun things. 

Mr. Picky Pincher used the funds to get a nice knife and to supercharge his beer-brewing process. I used some funds to (finally) order a Roomba! 

Oh, y’all. It’s been so nice having a Roomba. It doesn’t get the house completely clean, but it’s fantastic for daily maintenance. I’m hoping I won’t have to sweep every day, thanks to this little guy. I’ll write a review about the Roomba experience after we’ve had it for a while.

The best part? It picks up litter! I’m so freakin’ thrilled. Zap, of course, has been less-than-thrilled about the Roomba.

“Y u do dis?”

Here’s what we ate today.

Breakfast: Green smoothies. Yummo! I found this green smoothie that we love. It’s extremely filling and doesn’t taste super grassy.

Lunch: Leftover paella.

Dinner: Tater tot casserole. This meal was definitely not healthy, but I needed an easy win. I used this recipe to make the tater tot casserole. Everything came together quickly and it was very flavorful! As an added bonus, we had plenty of extra servings to freeze for later. My only note is that I think it could stand to have some broccoli in it.

Friday

What a day! Mr. Picky Pincher had today off of work, so he did plenty of frugal shenanigans around the house. He cared for our sprouted potato plants, which are growing fabulously. In a few weeks they’ll be ready for planting. He also bottled a new batch of beer. As part of his beer-making overhaul, he ordered a small freezer, which he’ll modify into being a keezer for beer.

Today I completed a few freelance projects (oh hey, blog money!) and did a few things around the house. I swung by Great Clips to get a $17 haircut (after tip). I try to get haircuts when I have a coupon, but my split ends desperately needed some love. Oh well! I’d like to learn how to layer my own hair someday. I’ve started trimming my own bangs, which is a good start.

I also swung by the grocery store to pick up a few ingredients. I made more peanut butter balls to take to my dad for Christmas. Kudos for readers letting me know these are actually called Buckeyes! I still have “peanut butter balls” ingrained in my head, though. Drat!

Here’s what we ate today.

Breakfast: Poached eggs with ham and homemade mayo. So tasty! I threw together this keto-friendly breakfast on a whim. I poached two eggs to perfection and served them on top of some thick-sliced ham. I also put a little bit of homemade mayo on top. I know that sounds weird, but homemade mayo tastes nothing like Miracle Whip. It actually tastes very similar to a hollandaise sauce, except it can be stored for a few weeks in the freezer.

I was very happy with how filling this dish was. I didn’t once get hunger pangs while running my errands this morning. Protein-rich meals certainly keep me full!

Lunch: Leftover casserole

Dinner: Peanut chicken zoodles. This was a surprisingly good, healthy dish, y’all! I used this recipe. We steamed butternut squash noodles and topped them with carrot, cabbage, onion, bell pepper, and seared chicken. On top of that was a surprisingly good peanut sauce.

I’m all about substituting bread with veggies, y’all! This was a tasty win and it’ll totally make an appearance on our menu again.

Zap’s Adventures

Little Zaparito has been so snugly lately! He’s thrilled that we’re back home from San Francisco. We missed the little dude!

Mr. Picky Pincher caught a moment where Zap and I were holding hands/paws.

So funny! Zap makes this face any time he finds something smelly. Until now we haven’t been able to catch him doing it on film, but Mr. Picky Pincher finally got one!

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

The post What a Frugal Week! December 22 appeared first on Picky Pinchers.