Monday Q&A | FAQ, Skin Care, and Dud Recipes

Every Monday, I answer a few of the questions that my readers send me. If you have a question you’d like me to answer in a future Q&A post, just leave me a comment here or email me (thefrugalgirl [at] gmail [dot] com) and put Q&A in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you!

First, I wanted to tell you that The Frugal Girl now proudly sports an FAQ page. I’m pretty sure I’ll edit/add stuff (horror of horrors, it has no photos), but you know, things don’t have to perfect to bless people, so I just published it and figured it’d be better than nothing!

A Q&A for a future Monday post, please – what do you do about skin care/toiletries/makeup? I see the basics in the grocery pictures, but what (if anything) do you do for your own skin, as it looks gorgeous?

-Molly

Aww, thanks. But you should know that I get zits, and my skin has this very annoying habit of being oily in spots and dry and peeling in others, and you probably just haven’t seen that because no one takes close-ups of me (heck, hardly anyone takes pictures of me in the first place!).

If you still want to know what I do for my skin, though, I’ll answer the question. 😉

I don’t do a lot (which is why you see only the basics in my grocery photos!).

I put some lotion on spots that are dry (this happens more in the wintertime), I wash my face at night with plain old gentle bar soap (very cheap) and a washcloth (cheap and reusable, esp. because I got these ones on a ridiculous clearance sale), and I try not to wash it in the mornings when I take a shower.

And I do wear some makeup pretty much every day. I’ve been happy with the makeup they sell at Aldi (I’ve tried the foundation, powder, and eyeliner thus far), and I also am a pretty big fan of Cover Girl products because they’re not super expensive, and they work just fine for me.

If you don’t have an Aldi or you don’t like Cover Girl, you might consider taking advantage of some of the deals that drugstores offer. With rebates and coupons and such, I’ve gotten free make-up at Rite-Aid, CVS, and Walgreens before.

I was wondering how you deal with baking or cooking projects that don’t turn out well- i.e. your family doesn’t like them or they’re only OK and no one looks forward to the leftovers. I see you have some tried and true recipes/meals, but you must experiment and try new things too, so what do you do if something doesn’t work out? Like, I made a new carrot cake recipe that wasn’t very good, so we ate some and then the rest just languished in the fridge until I threw it out. It wasn’t worth freezing, since we didn’t really like it when it was fresh! I feel like it’s a waste to throw that type of food out, but really, we’re just going to leave it in the fridge until it goes bad. So what do you do either to avoid this situation in the first place or to use up the leftovers?

-Kate

I think situations like these are unavoidable unless you’re happy making the same old tried and true recipes all the time.

I try to change things up by trying new recipes on a somewhat regular basis, and though I do often find winners, I’ve found my share of dud recipes too.

And sometimes, when I come across a recipe fail, it does result in food waste. I know recently I posted a picture of some leftover chicken that I’d thrown out….it had languished in the fridge because the new recipe I’d tried was just not that great.

Depending on the type of recipe, you might be able to salvage some of the meal. For instance, if you’d cooked chicken the night before, you might be able to add it to your lunch salad. This type of thing only works well if the original meal was relatively plain. I mean, there’s not a lot you can do with a casserole that turned out to be yucky!

In the case you mentioned, I wouldn’t feel too guilty about throwing the cake out. It’s not like carrot cake is a super healthy food, so there’s not a lot of point in eating it unless it’s really good!

I would recommend being careful about where you get your new recipes. Some published recipes aren’t tested very well, and as a result are not very reliable. This is one of the reasons I love Cook’s Illustrated so much. I’ve tried a LOT of their recipes, and only rarely have they not turned out well.

Also, when you’re trying a new recipe, you may want to err on the small batch side. For instance, if a new recipe makes a 9×13 pan, it might be wise to cut the recipe in half and make an 8×8 pan the first time.

(edit: I was just talking this morning with Nancy from Expendible Edibles, and she told me that she and her website partner have a section devoted to ideas for saving what they call Ill-Fated Creations, which is exactly what we’re talking about here. Go check it out!)

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Readers, what say you? How do you save on skin care? And do you have any brilliant ideas about avoiding new recipe food waste?

Today’s 365 post: On Saturday, I had a realization.