I’m gonna be struggling to come up with five, because my last four work shifts were pretty close together, which means I have not happened to do a whole lot of frugal things.
1. I cooked some fruit salad
This sounds weird, I know, but hang with me. I had brought a big fruit salad to work for a potluck, and I left one bowl for the night-shift people.
I took home the remainder the next day, and while it wasn’t much, I didn’t want to throw it away.
However, I also was feeling slightly sketchy about eating it as-is, even though it had been refrigerated.
So, I dumped the fruit into a pot, cooked it down into a somewhat jammy consistency, and ate it, cold, on top of some vanilla Greek yogurt. It was actually super tasty!
I figured the boiling would certainly kill any potluck germs that had accumulated. 😉
2. I froze my grapes
I had a slightly neglected bag of grapes in my fridge, so some of them were past their prime.
I sorted out all the worst ones, then froze the others on a baking sheet.
I’ll snack on them (frozen grapes are delicious!) or I will add them to my smoothies.
3. I worked a weekend shift
One of my shifts was on a Sunday, which means I earned a couple extra dollars per hour.
You can earn a lot more than a couple of extra dollars by working weekend nights, but we all know I do not consider that to be worth it.
4. I packed my lunches from single servings that I’d frozen
When I made the baked ziti (with this protein pasta) for my freezer challenge, I set aside one portion and froze it, just to test out how well it freezes and reheats.
And the last time I made my chili and cilantro-lime rice, I froze a portion in the bottom of a container, and then I pressed a cup of the cilantro rice into a one-cup mold and put that on top of the chili.
I used these meals for my last two shifts, and they both thawed and reheated nicely. Yay! Now I know for the future.
This is a prime example of my “try it and see” philosophy.
Freezing a single serving as a test subject is very low stakes, and now I know I have two meals that freeze and reheat well. Knowledge gained, nothing lost. And even if one of these had been a dud, that would have been only a small loss.
5. I used a Panera gift card for a no-cook dinner
On one of my days off between shifts, I did not feel like cooking. So, Zoe picked up a Panera order for us on her way home from work, using a gift card from my credit card rewards.
I got the Green Goddess salad, which has a very respectable 40 grams of protein.
Your turn! What frugal things have you been up to lately?
Source: www.thefrugalgirl.com…