Frugal things from yesterday

Yesterday I:

-made a batch of homemade yogurt.

This stuff costs less than $1 per quart, which makes it a total bargain.

-used my honey-glazed roll recipe to make some big sandwich buns.

Making loaves of plain bread from scratch saves money, but the savings are much more impressive when you start making things like buns, English muffins, and cinnamon rolls at home.

Also?

Buns made from that recipe are really soft and delicious and you get to eat them fresh from the oven, which is most marvelous.

(I leave off the glaze when I make buns instead of rolls and I usually double the honey to make up for the lack of sweetness from the glaze.)

-packed reusable dishes and containers for a picnic lunch.

Not only are they green and frugal, they’re also much more lovely than their disposable counterparts (which is something I find to be true on a regular basis.)

-made a menu plan for the next two weeks.

I don’t like menu-planning, but it saves me so much money and time, I carry on pretty faithfully with it. When I go without a plan, we don’t eat nearly as healthfully, I spend way too much time stressing about what to make for dinner, and my grocery shopping is really haphazard.

-helped Joshua look on eBay for a replacement camera battery charger.

We own a total of four Canon cameras, but sadly, none of my battery chargers work for his battery. And since his charger hasn’t turned up for weeks (we’ll probably find it when we declutter his room this summer!), he’s going to buy a new one.

He was looking on Amazon, but I helped him find one that looks really promising on eBay, and we’re hoping the bid stays nice and low.

-mixed up a batch of my very favorite super-clumpy granola.

I have discovered that it still tastes really good if you halve the brown sugar, but it definitely doesn’t stick together quite as well that way. It’s still very crispy, though, which is how I like my granola.

That photo is from last summer, and it’s making me very hungry for fresh, local peaches.

-made an easy dinner that used up lots of odds and ends from my fridge.

I pulled out the last of the Easter ham from my freezer, sliced it up thinly, and we made sandwiches, using the buns I made. I also sliced up carrots and cucumbers to eat raw (I had so many of those in my fridge.) and I made a fruit salad that used up almost every last bit of fruit I had.

Fruit salad is great to make when you’ve got small amounts of all sorts of fruit. When you mix it all together and add some lime, lemon, or orange juice to brighten up the flavors, it doesn’t look at all like you’re cleaning out the fridge.

Oh, and keeping some frozen or canned fruit around is really helpful for those times when you need a bit of something to round out the salad (canned or slightly thawed frozen peaches are great for this.)

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Did you do anything frugal yesterday? Share!

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Joshua’s 365 post: I’m back!