Monday, August 25, 2014

Frugal Accomplishments This Week


This week was a super busy, great and frugal week. Unfortunately, since it was so busy, I didn't keep track day by day what was done to save money, but here's what we did.


Foraging
We foraged passion fruit, purslane, figs, lambsquarters, crown daisy, capers, wild mustard, wild carrots, sage, and black nightshades.
Picked plums from a neighbor's tree.

Frugal Shopping
Stocked up on low cost gluten free cereal and chocolate on sale. Since we'll be buying both anyhow, and neither are cheap, if we stock up at lower prices, at least we won't be spending as much.
I'd been using disposables for Rose since she has diarrhea, and had been using Anneliese's diapers for her. But I bought a smaller size package of diapers, because more come in a package and I'm changing diapers so often anyhow.
I needed produce, but there weren't good prices in the store, so bought a bunch of reduced rack cucumbers- the only produce that was very low priced, bought some reduced rack beets- second cheapest, and bought a little bit of apples and pomegranates from the reduced rack.
Went to the second hand store and bought myself a bunch of scarves, bought the kids a few pieces of clothing including two dresses for Rose, a few tee-shirts for the boys, 2 dresses for Anneliese, 2 sun hats for the girls, and a stuffed animal, for $6 total.

Frugal Cooking
Made refried beans.
Made homemade gluten free vegan tortillas.
Made homemade onion powder.
Made homemade chili powder.
Made homemade enchilada sauce.
Made homemade vegan cheese sauce.
Made gluten free vegan enchiladas.
Made a whole bunch of batches of gluten free bread, experimenting to use less xanthan gum to keep down the cost.
Made chicken scrap soup.
Made a salad made with leftover corn on the cob (which I cut off), leftover cucumber salad (I added the cukes and the dressing) and chickpeas I'd cooked up and frozen in can sized batches, plus a pomegranate that looked rotten on the outside but on the inside was perfect.
Made kombucha and coffeebucha.
Made homemade jaggery syrup.
Made my own all purpose gluten free flour mix- xanthan gum free.
Made gluten free, vegan muffins using beets that I had in the house.
Soaked and cooked up and froze 2.2 lbs of chickpeas.
Made a salad with purslane.
Made a beet and wild mustard salad.

Frugal Transportation
Timed my trip to the grocery store so that I could use a transfer to come home, and not need to pay for a second fare.
Brought my kids' bikes over to the neighbor who replaces bike tires cheaply, and got one tire replaced at a very low price.

Frugal Fun
Went to visit the cousins and played at an amazing park with really fun activities, which was free.
Kids played in the sprinklers at the park, that were on as we were walking home.

Dumpster Diving/Free Stuff
Dumpster dove 2 suitcases and a puzzle for the kids.
Got a bunch of hand me down clothes for my kids and myself, plus household goods from a friend.
Got a whole bunch of hand me downs for Rose from another friend.
Dumpster dove a book on astronomy for the kids.

Other
Ground a bunch of gluten free flours.
Mike had an at-home workout.
Stayed overnight in another city, at a friend's house.
Used homemade mosquito repellent.
At the advice of my doc, made and used a homemade, natural, anti diarrhea cure for my babe.
Had a fun homeschooling science lesson with the kids, using only cheap kitchen ingredients.

What did you do to save money this past week?

1 comment:

  1. I like the way you formatted that post, nice to see the categories. This week I stitched up some pantyliners from fabric scraps, bought a restored vintage bike off Craigslist to run errands in, hung every single load of laundry that I washed outside (even though it's rainy season), smoked inexpensive chicken leg quarters then saved every bone for stock.

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