It was close to suppertime, and no supper was in sight. We had three or four ounces of leftover pork tenderloin, bought deeply discounted and frozen until needed. I thought to slice it thinly, cook some rice and steam some peas from last year’s garden.
That would have been okay, but dull. Instead, I started pulling things out of the freezer:
A bag of chopped celery, also from last year’s garden
A bag of chopped red and yellow peppers, bought from the produce manager’s “ugly but still good” shelf
A bag of chopped onions – DF recently noticed an onion was starting to rot, so he cut and froze the still-good parts
A bit of turkey fat, from a bird we cooked a couple months ago; we save the fat from all pan juices, for cooking vegetables and making white sauce
Next, I put on a pot of rice (bought by the 50-pound bag at Costco) and melted the turkey fat, announcing that I planned to caramelize the vegetables and then add the diced tenderloin and some kind of sauce. DF diced the meat, then thinly sliced some carrots while I considered potential sauce ingredients.
What immediately jumped to mind was a bottle of General Tso’s sauce that I’d gotten free from our neighborhood’s Buy Nothing Facebook group. I poured maybe four tablespoons into a glass measuring cup, along with some rice vinegar (from an ancient bottle lurking in the lazy Susan) and a shake of powdered garlic (another Costco buy).
The slowly cooking onions, peppers, celery and carrot were making the kitchen smell divine. Maybe this olfactory distraction was what caused me to overdo the vinegar somewhat. It didn’t quite drown out the General Tso’s, but it didn’t do the sauce any favors, either. A few splashes from a jug of Langer’s pineapple-orange-guava juice (bought on sale, with a coupon) brought the vinegar into line and added a sweet hint of citrus.
Just typing this is making my mouth water. How about yours?
When the vegetables were done, I added the pork and raised the temperature, aiming for a bit of super-browning. A few minutes later the sauce made a satisfying hisssss! when I poured it in, but the mixture didn’t reduce enough for my liking. A bit of cornstarch and cold water turned the sauce into a glistening brown syrup. Now I wish I’d taken a picture of the glossy and colorful dish.
Was it authentic Asian cooking? Of course not. But it was delicious.
Frugal food tactics
It was also frugal, for the reasons stated above. And it’s a reminder that with inflation eating away (so to speak) at the bottom line, certain food tactics can save our finances. Our meal illustrates five such habits.
1. Meat doesn’t have to be the centerpiece
Not at every meal, anyway. Or at any meal, if you’re vegetarian or vegan. But if you do consume animal protein, cut back on the amount by making a little bit of meat work really hard. Dishes like stir-fries, soups, stews, frittatas, omelets, rice bowls and burritos don’t need to be chock-full of flesh to be tasty.
2. Focus on sales
Be a frugalvore, i.e., watch for loss leaders. Keep an eye out for unadvertised specials, too. The sight of an orange or red shelf tag always causes me to detour over for a look.
Often it isn’t something I want. But sometimes it is, and the savings can be considerable. Recently we scored packages of fully cooked Chinese-style pork for 99 cents a pound; normally this meat costs a whopping $8.49 a pound. We’re not sure why it was discounted so deeply, since it was nowhere near the sell-by date. But we didn’t question our good fortune.
3. Look for other specials, too
The meat was the last of a “manager’s special” pork tenderloin; DF can’t remember how much he paid, but thinks it was around $1.49 a pound (an astounding deal here in the land of the Alaska Gouge). Those red and yellow peppers were three for a dollar; normally they charge anywhere from $2.99 to $5.99 per pound for those things.
This particular meal didn’t include anything from the dented-can bin, but we haunt that, too. I make it a point to check clearance tables/racks everywhere I shop, even convenience stores and office supply stores. You never know what you’ll find.
4. Stock up and save
Any time we find a good deal, we buy as many as we can and store it for later. Shelf-stable items are easy to stash in bulk because we have a basement as well as some upstairs storage.
Meat, produce, stupid-cheap multigrain bread or tortillas from the bakery outlet – it all goes on the ice. Our freezer is an essential part of our frugality. It holds not just supermarket finds, but also:
- Things we grow: raspberries, rhubarb, apples, celery, peas
- Things we make: batch cooking, boiling bag broth, yogurt whey
- Things people give us: Moose meat, salmon, duck
Although freezers have gotten pricey of late, I urge you to start looking for a good deal. Even a smallish model (ours is just 5.5 cubic feet) can hold an awful lot of bargains.
5. Improve on deals when you can
That jug of Langer’s juice is one of our regular splurges: not strictly necessary but darned tasty. DF likes to mix it with a little ginger ale for a faux evening cocktail. Luckily, it’s a sale/coupon special fairly often at Fred Meyer.
I like to use rewards programs to make food (and other necessities) cheaper. Sometimes this makes them free. Sometimes I even get paid to buy them. For example, today I got a $3.20 Shopkick rebate on a $3 bag of Malt O’Meal cereal, which will go to the food bank.
To find out how these deals work, see “Rewards programs FTW!”
Stretching the food budget
Our frugal supper ended with a frugal dessert: homemade raspberry-rhubarb-blueberry pie, a flavor combination that my friend Linda B. calls “insanely good.” She is not wrong.
The pie used four cups of fruit. The rhubarb and raspberries came from our yard (free!) and the blueberries were from Costco (cheap!). The flour, shortening and sugar also came from Costco.
Frugal meals nourish us twice: Once in the eating, and again in the knowledge that we’re getting the most for every food dollar.
Okay, readers: Describe your own frugal meals.
Related reading:
- 12 ways to save money on groceries
- A mess of beans
- Extreme frugality: Use all the bits
- How to save money on meat
- Frugal hack: Homemade yogurt
- 7 ways to get free groceries
This is a great breakdown of pulling together a frugal meal.
One thing I jump to mentally is choosing an ethnicity for my pull together meals. Like “Tex Mex”, “Indian”, or “Thai” and that dictates flavors I’ll look for when I’m rummaging.
If Tex Mex I might add: chili powder, cumin, coriander (dried), fresh cilantro, green onions, beans, frozen corn, a tablespoon or two of salsa, some leftover sour cream, etc.
Otherwise I can get a little overwhelmed at all the bits and bobs in my kitchen.
Additionally, I’d love feedback and comments on practicing frugality on a low or no carb diet. Our blood sugar steady rise has us off of almost ALL carbs. Carbs are cheap!
We eat a lot of veggies, no fruit and a lot of protein. Any suggestions folks have figured out are most welcome.
I don’t know anything about low- and no-carb diets, but maybe someone else here does…?
Pre-cook some loss-leader or manager’s special meats? If you used ground meat at all, cook it in advance and freeze it in portions that lend themselves to your favorite recipes, or to a “don’t wanna cook, let’s have burritos or rice bowls” (with low-carb tortillas or cauliflower rice, in your case).
Ditto with loss-leader chicken or other proteins you eat: If they’re cooked and frozen, it’s easy to thaw them and turn them into a quick meal.
Readers: Any help???
Good thoughts, thank you!
Zucchini noodles or spaghetti squash to replace pasta?
DH and I are living frugally and trying to incorporate a low carb diet into it. Six months ago DH had blood work done and we discovered his blood sugar was elevated. We were both overweight. So we knew we had to change. A few tips:
If you have bread, make it whole grain or sourdough. We use store brands or on sale items on these. I also make my own bread using a combination of whole wheat and white flour. It’s the no-knead recipe Donna put on this site (One Good Thing by Jillee). Eat bread sparingly. We do not buy sweet treats at all so they are not in the cabinets causing undo temptation! Ditto for salty/crunchy snacks. Nuts make an excellent snack and are high in protein which leave you feeling sated. Again, store brands or sale items. We’ve incorporated a lot dried beans into our diet. Cheaper than meat and full of fiber. We also eat a lot of veggies and even fruit.
DH’s blood sugar is back in the normal range. He’s lost 21 pounds and I’ve lost 20. Took 6 months but we’re OK with that. It’s easier than doing it alone. Best of luck.
I can’t match your frugality but I try. I just found too much ricotta cheese in the fridge so it’s lasagna tonight. Generally I make one for now and one or two for the freezer. I call these desperation dinners. If I have these on hand I resist takeout meals. I always shop the sales and mark down bins. Sometimes someone in buy nothing will have done interesting fiid items
I like to cook creatively this way as well. My wife would ask what I was making, and often I couldn’t tell her what it was until I was done. My challenge is freezer organization. Everything that goes into the freezer is well identified and dated, but with many small bags or containers, the freezer can become a black hole. Any thoughts?
We keep a log of what we have, on a small bulletin board alongside the freezer. Of course, this works only if you (a) are assiduous about writing everything down and (b) the kind of person who remembers to look at the list when planning meals.
We’re not always good at either one and yes, we do get surprised from time to time. Recently we’ve found some astounding manager’s special deals (e.g., a 20-oz. package of marinated “street taco” chicken for 99 cents), and had to re-arrange the freezer a bit to make room. That’s how we learned that we aren’t out of raspberries from last summer, that we need to cook some chicken thighs separated out from a family-size package and that we have more butter than we thought. We moved things out to the freezer atop the fridge and Tetris-ed all the new stuff into its place.
I did something somewhat similar yesterday. We had some beef cubed steak in the freezer, bought on manager’s mark-down, but it tends to be rather tough cuts of meat, not the tender, suitable for pan-frying cubed steak of yesteryear.
So I treated it like pot roast and put it in the slow cooker with lots of carrots, the most of a red onion left over from another cooking project, and peeled some very tiny white potatoes to lay on top of the meat. Those I rubbed with olive oil so that they’d be more like baked instead of stewed. Mixed up some broth with a broth cube, adding a couple of shakes of Worchestershire sauce, some fresh ground black pepper and a little salt, and set it to cooking. Everything was done and the meat was tender by evening.
The potatoes were from a bag of potatoes rescued from being rejected because they were too small. I like small potatoes for making soups, so I bought them and have been enjoying them.
I’ve cooked cubed steak in the crock pot using various ingredients too. It’s remarkable how tender and delicious it comes out. I haven’t tried the broth cube and Worcestershire sauce version yet though. Next time.
My favorite frugal meal is Boston Baked Beans with on-sale hotdogs, although it’s hard to find them for less than $2.99 a package nowadays, chopped up in with them in the crock pot. My supermarket sells navy beans for $1.49 a pound, sometimes cheaper if I can hit the sale. Turkey hotdogs are generally cheaper and (somewhat) healthier than their beef and pork cousins. I use an old recipe from a Better Homes and Gardens cookbook someone gave me at a shower 41 years ago. This is my go-to meal I make for friends who are ailing too.
Any chance you could share the recipe? Thanks.
Boston Baked Beans
1 pound (2 cups) dry navy beans
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 tsp. dry mustard
1/4 cup molasses
1/4 pound salt pork or bacon, chopped
1/2 cup chopped onion
Rinse beans; add to 2 quarts cold water. Bring to boiling; simmer 2 minutes. Remove from heat; cover. Let stand one hour. (Or add beans to water and soak overnight.)
Add 1/2 tsp. salt to beans and soaking water. Bring to boiling. Reduce heat; simmer until beans are tender, about 1 hour. Drain, reserving liquid. Combine brown sugar, mustard, molasses, 1/4 tsp. salt and 1/8 tsp. pepper. Stir in 2 cups reserved cooking liquid. Add mixture to beans, salt pork and onion in 2-quart bean pot or casserole. Stir to blend. Cover. Bake at 300 degrees for 3 1/2 to 4 hours. Stir occasionally. Add more bean water if needed. Add chopped hotdogs if desired 30 minutes before end of cooking.
Or put ingredients in crock pot and cook for 4 hours on high, 8 hours on low. (I do this…easier.) Add the chopped hotdogs 30 minutes before beans are done.
For darker beans decrease brown sugar to 1/3 cup and increase molasses to 1/2 cup. (I prefer the lighter recipe.)
I also fry the hotdogs prior to adding them to the beans for a nice, crispy skin.
That’s amazing! Sounds delicious! I am not as creative as that though I have gotten better during Covid. We do make a point to eat out leftovers. Maybe every 10 days we have what we call a “Dog Plate” night. We pull out all the little bits of this and that and polish them off. Last time we had a dog plate night I sent my daughter a picture of my plate that had a little spaghetti and sauce, a bit of turnip greens, some leftover scrambled eggs, a corn muffin, some beans and several other random foods. She said,”Mom, that looks like it came from a buffet at a third rate truck stop!” It was actually very good!
I bet it was.
Attagirl, Donna…nice of you to lead the way. Every time you talk about food like this, I Get Ideas.
(and I love Ann’s “Dog Plate” mention! We just call that “Buffet Night.”)
one of my better ones —
1 pound Northern white beans (prob. 3-4 years old, 50 cents/pound)
hambone (from a $1.49/lb sliced honey ham)
1/2 chopped onion (69 cents a pound – ouch)
some shakes of hot sauce (from an ancient bottle)
Seven hours on low in a crockpot, and it was wonderful. Diced the meat off the bone, added it to the stew…then liberally doused with ketchup from the salvage Fri/Sat store in Denver. (How I grew up eating it. With ketchup, that is.)
Next meal, I added a can of tomatoes with chili seasonings…then we ate that for three more meals. (Plus a scoop or two on the dog’s food, so she’d eat her dry kibble.)
So… $2.00? $2.50? For four meals, plus dog snacks. Not bad.
When I was raising my kids and teaching school, every Friday was a left over night, but we treated it like our favorite restaurant. Everything was heated, of course, put on the table in bowls, and then we would help ourselves and eat it in the living room (the only time I ever allowed food in there). We used paper plates, everyone helped load the dishwasher. and then I always had some kind of dessert everybody loved. Usually homemade, but not always. Scraps were eaten up, everyone enjoyed talking and eating in the good room, and it was very relaxing. Even when the kids were teens, they would try to be home for that. My secret? I rarely cooked what kids do not like (lima beans, spinach) and also we kept dinner time fun–no quarrels, no teasing and above all, No EYE-ROLLING. We ate balanced meals, grew a garden, and taught the kids how to cook veggies. When they were charged with helping grow, preserve, and prepare said veggies, they found more enjoyment eating them.
As for frugal tips, I get most of them here! Your readers are great.
They are indeed.
Alexandra:
You have to think about other bases for food. Rather than plate stir fry meat and veg on rice or noodles, try “riced” cauliflower or sautéed zucchini strips. Instead of stuffed irish potato go for stuffed pepper.
I like making bowls with cooked kale as a base. I will add meat, black olives, aromatic veg like onion or celery. Sometimes I make breakfast bowls out of sweet potatoes (higher in fiber than white.) I will have a sprinkling of raisins, nuts and ginger. Both kale and sweet potatoes are cheap year around.
In the summer I will roast cherry tomatoes add Kamara olives, mushroom and feta. A dash of vinegar helps.
Hi Donna,
I learn something new every time I stroll past your page, thank you! And now I’m hungry 🙂
Adding whiteboard for deep freeze to my “ask” list on buy nothing. My buy nothing group actually had a deep freeze listed this week, that’s the second time in several years that I’ve seen one pop up. I’m in amazement at how generous people can be and how helpful it is to be a member even for small things. Our oven is broken so I’ve been giving away our brown bananas since I can’t make banana bread…they get picked up so quickly and this way they aren’t wasted.
I’m in Anchorage and we currently shop primarily at Costco and Carrs, with two kiddos and two full time jobs it’s just more convenient. Our situation is changing this summer and we will be going down to one income to give us more flexibility and time as a family. I’ll be doing a price book for Freddys, Carrs and Costco but are there other stores I should add (no access to base)? Is the bakery on Spenard cheaper than Costco for bread? Are there better days to shop for sales…a coworker mentioned that Freddys sometimes puts veggies on clearance Friday mornings, have you seen this?
Hey, fellow Anchorage frugalist! Personally, I’ve found Fred Meyer’s prices to be much lower than Carrs (although we occasionally score some deals there, too). Once you hit age 55, you can get 10% off Kroger items at Fred’s and 20% off regular-priced items at Walgreens on the first Tuesday of the month. (Our most amusing scores have been dented-can-bin Kroger items that still get the extra 10% off).
Last time I checked, the bakery outlet on Lake Otis near Dowling was more cheaper than the one in Spenard, and has a wider variety of items. DF has gotten entire cases of tortillas for $3 in the past, although with flour prices going up that’s probably not going to happen again. He did recently get 30 corn tortillas for $1, and gets multigrain bread for $1 to $1.50 (as opposed to as much as $6 at the supermarket). The bakery outlet on Dowling is also where he’s gotten pretzels for $1 a bag, then turned them into a delicious, inexpensive treat:
https://donnafreedman.com/honey-mustard-pretzels-easy-frugal-snack/
Fred Meyer on Dimond regularly has “damaged” (sometimes it means “just not pretty”) produce on a couple of racks at the edge of the produce section. I expect the others do as well; ask the produce manager. All the bags are priced at $1. That’s where we got those beautiful peppers, and recently I got a bag of oranges that worked out to 20 cents each. I pick up overripe bananas there and cut and freeze them for breakfast (or lunch) smoothies.
Do you garden at all? Even just a patch of raspberries (starts have been given away on Buy Nothing) along a fence plus a few pots of greens can make a difference, both financially and physically. Nothing like eating berries warm from the sun, or having a salad that’s so fresh you don’t care if there’s much else to the meal. Last year our relatively small patch yielded more than 30 quarts for the freezer, jars of jam and still enough to give away.
The farmers market prices tend to be very high, but in mid- to late summer, when broccoli and cauliflower are coming in, I have found them cheaper there than at Fred Meyer. And as they say, they’re “miles fresher.”
If you shop at Walmart (not everyone is comfortable with that), know that in Anchorage they consistently have the most Shopkick deals. You can use the points to get free gift cards for more food purchases, or for items you need elsewhere (because the money you save using GCs at Home Depot or Kohl’s or wherever can be put back into your grocery budget).
https://donnafreedman.com/rewards-programs-ftw/
Lately I’ve been on a roll with a current Shopkick deal for Malt O Meal cereals; smallest bag is $3, and I get back $3.20 in Shopkick points. The cereal is going to the food bank. DF took four bags in a couple weeks ago (his church has a contribution bin) and we now have six bags ready to go this Sunday. We’ve also cashed in a bunch of Shopkick points for Lowe’s gift cards, to buy gardening items; although we save seed, there are other things that make gardening easier and more productive for us.
What part of Anchorage do you live in? Maybe we should meet for a frugal coffee. Drop me a line at SurvivingAndThriving (at) live (dot) com, or hit me up on Facebook.
And: Thanks for your kind words.
Oh my goodness Donna thank you so much for response! This has given me so many ideas to run with. I’m in south anchorage and I when things calm down I would love to do coffee.
Let me know. You could message me on Facebook or leave a comment here.
Hey crew. Just in from the big greenhouse, might as well water as we lost power last night and the crew out the end of my driveway said that the power line across the road was going to take a few hours. my Solar array doesn’t give me much, however it DOES give me water from the well and running refrigerators when the power is out (and a huge decrease in my hydro bill – will know how much in a year when I have had a full 2 years of solar adding to the grid when I don’t need it).
After watering I transplanted a LOT of peppers. Where the tomatoes are supposed to go there are currently a lot of greens – lettuce, arugula that is bolting, tatsoi that is bolting, radishes, volunteer dill, cilantro, chard, etc. after the planting, I sat beside the bolting plants and cut off their stems, then stripped the leaves into my containers. Saved the unopened flower tops, too! Got 8 bins partially or completely full, stopping on the way back to the house to pick some lovage and mint and volunteer parsley. filled all the buckets with water and now a rest.
supper tonight will be a huge green salad with the hollyhock dressing (many options out there, but if you go to the source…. https://hollyhock.ca/yeast-dressing/ )
And a stirfry with the many onions that I got when they were $1.89 a pound – so I bought a 50 pound bag for $12 or so. I have given a lot away, there are more that need to be cooked up. And flower tops from the greenhouse, and a broccoli that was on sale. I have feta in a bucket that needs to be used up, too, that likely will go on the salad. and probably some olives. And some almonds in the stirfry (I have some soft noodles in the fridge that need to be used up, too!). but the greens take time to deal with.
Also, got a bunch of discounted mushrooms yesterday, I want to fry them up and make a mushroom barley dish. with the power out yesterday that didn’t get done.
looks like I have some time in the kitchen! LOL
Sounds very tasty.
This week I hit the loss leaders at city market with the digital coupons. I got fancy Italian pasta for 1.27 a pound, a half gallon of milk for 0.97, and life cereal for 1.27. My dad loves life cereal. Then I swung by the clearance section and got heinz ketchup for 0.99, two bottles, that was 3.29 at the regular price. Does still sealed ketchup go bad very quickly? I think not.
It’ll keep for quite a while, especially if you store it in a cool(ish) place and out of the light. Nice deals!