Hot off the press!
Last week was fantastic. I feel like I accomplished a lot with the time that I had. One highlight of the week was recieving my proof copy of The Housewife's Guide to Menu Planning. This is a book I've been working on revising for the last several months (it was previously called Pizza Night) as a companion guide to The Housewife's Guide to Frugal Food.
To those of you who are interested, I will be giving away copies of the ebook version FOR FREE in order to get as many Amazon reviews as possible. When the book is published and available, I will send out my July newsletter with a link to the free ebook. If you want to download the book to your Kindle/device for free, be sure you are signed up for my monthly newsletter. You can do that here.
1. Shopping: I didn't buy any groceries last week. BUT, the week prior I did make a trip to our not-so-local Amish discount store. I spent $29.47; you can watch my haul below:
To those of you who are interested, I will be giving away copies of the ebook version FOR FREE in order to get as many Amazon reviews as possible. When the book is published and available, I will send out my July newsletter with a link to the free ebook. If you want to download the book to your Kindle/device for free, be sure you are signed up for my monthly newsletter. You can do that here.
1. Shopping: I didn't buy any groceries last week. BUT, the week prior I did make a trip to our not-so-local Amish discount store. I spent $29.47; you can watch my haul below:
Some meals we had this week were: rice/cheeseburger helper, taco salad, hash, baked potatoes, leftovers and fajitas on the grill. Yum! We did a lot better this week not going to restaurants. I packed a lunch for one day trip, which saved $5.00-$10.00. On Friday I spent the afternoon babysitting, and by the time I got home Hubs had already left to pick up pizza. Lol!!! We enjoyed the pizza anyway, and had leftovers the next day for lunch.
2. Garden: harvested red raspberries, lettuce, lavender, and calendula.
3. Froze 16 quarts of green beans. My mother-in-law will be out of state for a few weeks, and said we could pick what was ripe from her garden. She specifically mentioned green beans and squash, which is awesome because I didn't plant any green beans OR squash this year. We ate some summer squash fresh, and I was able to put about four month's worth of green beans in the freezer.
4. Cooking: Made yogurt and French dressing from scratch. I used the recipe in my book, The Housewife's Guide to Frugal Food, (affiliate link) except I cut the amount of sugar in half. It was remarkably similar to the Aldi French dressing I bought several weeks ago. The recipe is also available in The Tightwad Gazette (I don't remember which volume- affiliate link is for the all-in-one edition) for those of you who have that book at your library or at home.
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French Dressing from Scratch: Worth the Effort?
Was the homemade dressing cheaper than my Aldi dressing? Even with free onions, garlic and vinegar, my homemade dressing cost $1.14 to make four cups. The Aldi dressing was $1.29 for two cups. Therefore, I saved $1.44 by making my own dressing instead of buying it. It took just 15-20 minutes to make (including washing the blender), which put the hourly wage around $5.00. I think this is probably worth my time to do again.
I didn't have enough red wine vinegar for the dressing recipe, so I used some strawberry wine vinegar that I made several years back. It worked like a charm! I refilled the store-bought vinegar bottle with my homemade vinegar for next time.
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5. A friend gave me several boxes of used clothing to pick through. I found a whole box full to keep, along with some DVDs and a few other miscellaneous items that will come in handy over the next year.
6. Borrowed three books and one audio book from the library. I ordered one paperback and the audio book through our state's interloan system. The interloan system (it's called MELCat in Michigan) gives library card holders access to books at every public library in the state. I've saved hundreds of dollars by borrowing niche books not available at my local library instead of buying them on Amazon.
Audio books are an even better deal, because instead of saving $4.00-$5.00, you save $15.00 or more for each book you listen to.
7. Line dried ALMOST one load of laundry. It rained on laundry day, so I dried most of the load (socks and underwear) in our kitchen beneath the ceiling fan. The pants and jeans, however, didn't dry completely because our house is SO humid in the summer. So I had to finish off those in the dryer.
8. Made soap.
9. Sold a used book on Amazon. After fees, I earned $7.01. Amazon charged $5.00 in seller fees for an $11.00 book. If you don't purchase their special seller membership, the fees are very high. After the book sold, I removed all of my other listings because they were just not worth selling. Instead, I will try to sell them on Ebay or just donate them to Goodwill.
10. Collected recyclable cans on various walks.
****************
Youtube Videos:
I uploaded two videos (besides my grocery haul) this week:
1. How I Do Menu Planning (ANNOUNCEMENT!)
2. Selling at a Farmers Market: Calculating Net Profit
I hope you are having a fantastic and frugal week!
-Bethany
2. Garden: harvested red raspberries, lettuce, lavender, and calendula.
3. Froze 16 quarts of green beans. My mother-in-law will be out of state for a few weeks, and said we could pick what was ripe from her garden. She specifically mentioned green beans and squash, which is awesome because I didn't plant any green beans OR squash this year. We ate some summer squash fresh, and I was able to put about four month's worth of green beans in the freezer.
4. Cooking: Made yogurt and French dressing from scratch. I used the recipe in my book, The Housewife's Guide to Frugal Food, (affiliate link) except I cut the amount of sugar in half. It was remarkably similar to the Aldi French dressing I bought several weeks ago. The recipe is also available in The Tightwad Gazette (I don't remember which volume- affiliate link is for the all-in-one edition) for those of you who have that book at your library or at home.
___________________________________________
French Dressing from Scratch: Worth the Effort?
Was the homemade dressing cheaper than my Aldi dressing? Even with free onions, garlic and vinegar, my homemade dressing cost $1.14 to make four cups. The Aldi dressing was $1.29 for two cups. Therefore, I saved $1.44 by making my own dressing instead of buying it. It took just 15-20 minutes to make (including washing the blender), which put the hourly wage around $5.00. I think this is probably worth my time to do again.
I didn't have enough red wine vinegar for the dressing recipe, so I used some strawberry wine vinegar that I made several years back. It worked like a charm! I refilled the store-bought vinegar bottle with my homemade vinegar for next time.
_________________________________________
5. A friend gave me several boxes of used clothing to pick through. I found a whole box full to keep, along with some DVDs and a few other miscellaneous items that will come in handy over the next year.
6. Borrowed three books and one audio book from the library. I ordered one paperback and the audio book through our state's interloan system. The interloan system (it's called MELCat in Michigan) gives library card holders access to books at every public library in the state. I've saved hundreds of dollars by borrowing niche books not available at my local library instead of buying them on Amazon.
Audio books are an even better deal, because instead of saving $4.00-$5.00, you save $15.00 or more for each book you listen to.
7. Line dried ALMOST one load of laundry. It rained on laundry day, so I dried most of the load (socks and underwear) in our kitchen beneath the ceiling fan. The pants and jeans, however, didn't dry completely because our house is SO humid in the summer. So I had to finish off those in the dryer.
8. Made soap.
9. Sold a used book on Amazon. After fees, I earned $7.01. Amazon charged $5.00 in seller fees for an $11.00 book. If you don't purchase their special seller membership, the fees are very high. After the book sold, I removed all of my other listings because they were just not worth selling. Instead, I will try to sell them on Ebay or just donate them to Goodwill.
10. Collected recyclable cans on various walks.
****************
Youtube Videos:
I uploaded two videos (besides my grocery haul) this week:
1. How I Do Menu Planning (ANNOUNCEMENT!)
2. Selling at a Farmers Market: Calculating Net Profit
I hope you are having a fantastic and frugal week!
-Bethany
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