Fridays Frugal Five

Can I just tell you how good I’m feeling! I’ve been exercising, eating better, sleeping better. It’s so important to take care of ourselves, take care of our mind, body and spirit.

I have to admit though that I couldn’t tell if I was having a heart attack or chest pains from doing planks this week. Those darn things are hard to do.

This is what a plank looks like… And that is not me 😉

I am only able to hold position for 30 seconds each time, but that will improve with time. I just gotta keep on keeping on.

I hope you are taking care of yourself too. Feeling good feels good so take some time today for yourself, do something good for you.

Friday’s Frugal Five:

Did my planned grocery shopping, stuck to the list and kept my total spent at $53.34 for the week.
Got my exercise back on which is 30 minutes on the treadmill and light weights daily in the mornings and yoga and stretching 2 or 3 evenings a week.
Made 2 returns which refunded me $9.22
Cleaned, inventoried and organized all of the freezers. To make room in the kitchen freezer for meal preps, and to make room in the chest freezers for the venison and pork harvest.
Nature’s Outlet, my local health care store is having their customer appreciation event today through Sunday so I stocked up on all my herbs and supplements, saving 25%.

What frugal fun have you had this week?

Hope you have a lovely weekend!

Till next time,

Lori

What’s Cooking and Meal Prep

I did a little mid week meal prepping last night.

Salad in a jar with cucumber, tomato, mushroom, dried cranberries, romaine lettuce, sunflower seeds and a tiny bit of sharp cheddar. The dressing is homemade vinaigrette.

Salad in a jar is all about layering the ingredients to help them stay fresh and keep them from getting soggy.

Salad dressing on the bottom, then layer ingredients that are more tolerant to the dressing like cucumber and cherry tomatoes, then layer the more tender ingredients as you go up the jar like the lettuce and cheese.

Salad in a jar will stay fresh in the fridge for a good five days which makes it a great choice for weekly meal prepping.

This was last nights dinner.

Our farm raised roasted pork loin with roasted carrots and salad with apples, walnuts and the homemade vinaigrette.

It was delicious.

What’s cooking for you? Are you doing any weekly meal planning and prepping?

Till next time,

Lori

Peeling A Fresh Egg

Have you ever tried to peel a fresh boiled egg?

I mean a egg that came straight from the chicken into your house, bypassing the grocery store where they may be a month or more old.

Well let me tell you that peeling a fresh egg can be quite challenging because the shell and membrane does not want to separate from the egg.

Quite often they tear apart or big chunks peel off with the shell and it is very frustrating.

Usually this is how they look.

Not a pretty sight, especially for your deviled eggs that you want to look beautiful and delicious.

Well let me save you from the frustration and tell you how to peel a farm fresh egg perfectly.

Instead of boiling your eggs in water, you need to steam them in a steamer for 20 minutes.

That’s it! That’s the secret to peeling a fresh egg.

I imagine that any type of steamer would work, but I use a stove top steamer.

Steam your eggs then rinse them in cold water and peel away just as you normally would and the shell will come right off the egg.

You’re welcome 🙂

Till next time,

Lori

Smoother Times Ahead

In a continued effort to heal my digestive system and my leaky gut from years of taking proton pump inhibitors (prilosec), I’ve decided to add smoothies into my diet.

This is the thing, I’ve tried smoothies in the past and did not like them. It was a texture issue for me. My blender was not strong enough to blend the smoothie well and drinking a drink that has small chunks of kale and spinach is not pleasing at all.

So, I bit the bullet and bought myself this…. I bought it at Walmart for $89.00

I am so pleased with this blender. In a matter of seconds it completely blends all the ingredients perfectly. Now I can actually enjoy smoothies instead of trying to choke them down because they are good for me.

I went ahead and did some smoothie prep for the week… right now I’m putting a baby kale and spinach mix, a frozen mix of cherries, strawberries, blueberries and grapes, banana, ground flax seed, turmeric, L Glutamine, protein bone broth and I’m using raw milk for my liquid. The banana adds a nice sweetness to the smoothie, but a squeeze of honey helps too.

I did cook some pumpkin from the garden in the pressure cooker that I will freeze in ice cube trays so I can add those to my smoothies too. I’m thinking something like a pumpkin pie flavor using pumpkin, pumpkin pie spice, my homemade yogurt and some honey or pure maple syrup, and of course the greens, ground flax, ground turmeric and L Glutamine.

I had some coupons that were set to expire this week so off to the grocery store I went. I kept my side blinders on and stuck to my list. I spent $33.43 and here is what I bought.

I also stopped to pick up some avocados that are on sale right now and some cucumber and tomatoes for my jar salads. I spent $19.91

I’ve got to accept the fact that my digestive system requires somewhat of a special diet of fresh and organic as much as possible, good fats, very limited amounts of wheat and smaller meal portions with 5 – 6 small meals a day instead of 3 larger meals. Because of this it’s very important for me to plan and prep healthy meals and snacks.

It’s also important for me to track my spending to keep it in check. My total for this week is $53.34 and I’m well stocked up so I’m not planning any additional spending this week.

And by the way, have you notice the cost of nuts, especially almonds. Crazy expensive! Which is why you don’t see any in my grocery pictures. 😉

Do you have any smoothie suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Till next time,

Lori