Last Week's Thrifty Moves

I used some of our free eggs, free bacon, free orange juice and free English muffins I got last month to make Sunday breakfast.  Free food always manages somehow to taste better, I think.  Ha, ha.

I spent the majority of my Sunday writing and writing and writing.  It was heavenly.

This was a good pizza with a whole wheat crust

It was definitely a used it up kind of a week for us.  I had lots of this and that leftover in the refrigerator.  I veered off our meal plan this week so I could prepare meals that would use up these things before they went bad.  Monday I used leftover Canadian bacon, pepperoni, grated cheese and leftover pineapple slices that I chopped up to make a couple pizzas for supper.

Used up the last of the sweet relish too

Tuesday I served up leftover smoked sausages.  I had mine with leftover salad and my oldest finished up the leftover baked beans while my youngest had leftover Sunday dinner.  I took the leftover Sunday dinner in my lunch on Monday and again on Wednesday.

I had two leftover hard boiled eggs so I chopped them up.  I used a rubber spatula to scrape out the last of the mayonnaise and had just enough to mix up the egg salad.  I took one of our free English muffins and toasted a half to top with the egg salad for breakfast - twice.

I also added a couple tablespoons of milk to the mayonnaise jar and shook it real good to get the rest I couldn't get with a spatula.  I added the milk and mayo mixture to our latest batch of homemade salad dressing.  Made it so much easier to rinse out the jar for the recycle bin too.

Oh my gosh, these were good!

Wednesday evening I cut up four slices of our free bacon leftover from Sunday breakfast, cooked it crispy and scrambled it together with half a dozen eggs, also free.  Then I warmed up half a dozen leftover flour tortillas and added a bit of leftover grated cheddar.  I pulled a jar of our homemade salsa out of the pantry and voilá.  Breakfast burritos for supper and they were delicious.

We had cream leftover from the prior week's shrimp and pasta alfredo.  Thursday evening I pulled a new box of pasta (49¢) out of the pantry and made a batch of fettucine alfredo.  I served it with leftover salad mix that I added some leftover black olives too and an assortment of leftover salad dressings.

By Friday morning I was scraping the bottom of the barrel when it came to what to fix for lunch.  I ended up taking leftover salad with a couple tablespoons of leftover grated cheddar sprinkled on top and half a hamburger bun to toast.  It worked.

Last summer I had made up a small container of homemade pancake mix to take camping.  I used that up with a couple of our free eggs and some milk for another breakfast for supper meal Friday evening.  We had homemade syrup and apple butter to go on top of the pancakes.  I fried up some more eggs and sliced a couple of apples that were rolling around in the crisper drawer.

Saturday it was back to the smoked sausages and hotdog buns left in the refrigerator.  I put some tater tots in the oven.  I found them in the bottom of the freezer in the kitchen, I had pretty much forgotten about them being in there.  I also cleared out the crisper drawer and used up the last of our salad fixings.

I used up the last of my face cream from the tube I had cut open a couple weeks ago and finished digging out the rest of my pumpkin pie chapstick from the tube with a toothpick.  Now it is all gone (sniff).

Right now we have a bottle of ketchup and a bottle of mustard sitting upside down in our refrigerator and a bottle of shower gel set upside down in the bathroom.

On the way home from a meeting Saturday afternoon (Robotics is about to start up again) we dropped off library books and checked out new ones.  To save on fuel the youngest and I hung out there until the oldest was ready to be picked up.

I used up another empty toilet paper tube and stuffed it full of dryer lint to make a fire starter with.  I used a sheet of my daughter's homework (she was done with it and it was just laying there) to wrap up another tube I had filled up the week before.

We shared spinach leaves and bread heels with the chickens.  I had lots of extra spinach and I could have used the bread heels to toast for our breakfast but they love my bread and I love them so that is how that worked.  I also shared some of our blueberry bagels with them.

I worked several hours of overtime, all from home.  I plan to use that extra bit on my paycheck to pay off the girl's coats that I put on my JC Penney card.  I'll have a few hours again this week as well to add to the pot.

I washed and reused several Ziploc bags.

I did not do any grocery shopping this week.

So after all of that gleaning of the leftovers my week wasn't just thrifty, but downright frugal.  And my kitchen cabinet I keep the food storage dishes in is really, really full right now.  Food waste = zero.  Mission accomplished.

How was your thrifty week?