Friday’s Frugal Five

Gosh, it’s really been a minute since I’ve done a Friday Frugal Five post.

And again, I am not ashamed to admit that I completely stole the Frugal Five from Katy Wolk-Stanley of the amazing website The Non-Consumer Advocate. If you haven’t stopped by her website or facebook group, you really should. Very inspiring, and a group of great people there.

Ok, here it is.

We (for the most part) stuck to our meal plan this week and stayed out of the grocery store, restaurants and drive thru. As a matter of fact I made a return netting me $7 and change. The change went into my change jug.
I increased my 401 contributions and my contingency fund deposits to absorb the raise I got 😉
My bank has a change counter machine that is free to their customers so I cashed out my change jug and deposited that money into the freedom account category that is closest due (taxes!)
I set up my freedom account categories for 2017 and adjusted those deposits accordingly.
I bought nothing this week. I put gas in the car and paid my insurance deductible for my physical therapy appointment, that’s it. (Yes, I’m still in PT for cutting my finger – NOT frugal at all!)

Contingency Fund: A contingency fund is a fund for emergencies or unexpected outflows, mainly economic crises such as a loss of a job or long-term illness or disability. A three to six month fund to cover the cost of living expenses.

Freedom Account: Think of the Freedom Account as a sort of holding bin. You deposit small sums into it each month because you are thinking ahead: You’re anticipating bigger, specific expenses down the road like annual insurance premiums, home repairs, personal property taxes…
(for example if you want to save $1,000 for personal property tax due on January 1st of next year and you get paid twice a month you would make 24 deposits of $41.67 into the contingency fund account to accrue the $1,000 you will need by then)

If you are familiar with Mary Hunt and Debt Proof Living, then you are more than likely familiar with the contingency fund and freedom account terms.

What frugal fun did you have this week?

Till next time,

Lori

Homemade Chicken Stock

You really should be making your own chicken stock. It’s one of the easiest things in the world to do and it is 1,000,000,000,000 times better than anything you can buy at the store.

This is what I did on Saturday and Sunday.

I started with chicken bones I had been saving in my freezer along with some onion, celery and carrot scraps then I let this pot low simmer on the stove for 29 hours. I added extra water to in once.

This is why I love to make my bone broths in the cooler months, because I can cook it on my wood stove and not have my kitchen stove on for 24 hours.

While my stock was cooking away, I got busy using my electric pressure cooker doing 1 whole chicken at a time from the freezer. I cooked the 3 laying hens that the Z Man and I harvested from our flock earlier this summer and I cooked 3 of my Polyface Farm roaster chickens. I pressure cooked them for 20 minutes each then let them cool and picked the meat from them and put the bones in the stock pot.

After all the chickens were cooked and the meat was in the jars, I filled the jars with chicken stock from my stock pot. Then 7 quarts of chicken meat went into my pressure canner at 10 lbs of pressure for 90 minutes. The chicken stock, 25 minutes and 10lbs of pressure for quart jars.

In total I ended up with 7 quarts of canned chicken and 18 quarts of chicken stock.

The canned chicken will be great in chicken and dumplings, chicken pot pie, chicken soups, buffalo chicken dip…. A great easy quick meal no matter what recipe I use.

This is good for you food at it’s best. There are many healing properties in homemade bone broth.

I mean, just look at that beautiful golden rich stock. Mmmmmmm, I can’t wait for some mashed potatoes and gravy!

Canning is not difficult and it’s not dangerous if you follow the basic safety practices. Yes it takes time and it takes work, but it’s something that I find pleasure in doing.

Even if you don’t have a pressure caner, you can very easily make this stock and freeze it in individual containers and it would still be just as lovely.

And why not get extra goodness out of that roasted chicken by using the bones for stock. That’s a great way to stretch a dollar.

Till next time,

Lori

Frugal Five And One Frugal Fail

Well, not every day is a frugal day and yesterday was not a frugal day for me and I’m not happy about it! I succumbed to temptation and ordered delivery! I had been craving a piece of pizza for days and I fell into that craving face first!

This bothers me for multiple reasons.

I spent $16 on delivery!!!
It tasted like crap and in no way was it good for my body.
I spent $16 on delivery!!!

But, one must get over it and learn from her mistake and move on.

~~Friday’s~~ Tuesday’s Frugal Five:

I’ve started sorting through items I have around the house that I no longer want or need. I really want to declutter and get rid of all the unnecessary items we have. I’m going to try my hand at selling on the local Facebook page and craigs list. Junk out, money in 🙂
My parents came to visit Sunday for dinner. We had a lovely grass fed beef pot roast that I had bartered for, roasted potatoes and carrots, deviled eggs and a huge pan of cornbread. The company was lovely, the meal was healthy and delicious and I fed 4 people for well under $10 This is why I really struggle with my frugal fail that I mentioned above. (must… move… on…)
Our lovely daughter-in-law came to visit (from Georgia) this weekend and she helped me cook the lovely Sunday dinner. We enjoyed each other’s company without having to make plans, make reservations or go shopping. She even went with the Z Man to deliver a load of wood that he had sold and we had a great time visiting!
Saturday the Z Man and I had a date night… we rented a movie, had a bottle of wine and ate leftover meatloaf at home. It was the best date night! I’m not going to lie, sometimes I do think I’m a bit odd because I’d rather stay at home with my husband and just do us instead of going out and being around a bunch of people we don’t know eating mediocre food (at best) and paying too much for it. We are homebodies, it’s what we like and it works for us.
I swept all my leftover money from the cash envelopes into savings last week and I’ll continue that process every week, even if it’s only a small amount. Pennies make dollars Y’all! Keep on keeping on with the frugalness and be gratefull that spending $16.00 for stupid delivery does in fact bother the crap out of me. 😉 Ok, I’ll not mention it again.

Tell me what frugal fun or frugal fail have you had.

Till next time,

Lori

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