Making frugal choices

Every once in awhile I check out this site. Not that I base my food budget on it but it definitely shows the rise in the cost of food. https://www.cnpp.usda.gov/USDAFoodPlansCostofFood

It looks so empty now. The flowers are blooming quite well, the white thing is the row cover put over the eggplant.

We chose to go get the last of the LED bulbs we needed to replace, we figured we could either spend the money now or the next 3 months when our electric bill is at it's highest.So all of that is done. We have found that we can use the lower wattage and get a brighter light than what we were getting with the CFL so we are not turning on as many lights as we were.

We used the Kroger points to get 60¢ off (200 pts for surveys) for gas (truck)

We used the Wagner IGA points to get 25¢ off for gas (ford top off)

I have dehydrated eggs and cayenne peppers and roasted several eggplants(and put in freezer).

We cleared the gardens except for the herbs, lettuce and one lonely eggplant that had 2 eggplants on it that is not quite ripe. I covered them with a row cover to help protect it. If they don't ripen by this weekend I will have to let them go as we get our first hard freeze. I will finish the harvest before that frost is here. I covered the eggplant because I can buy lettuce out of season but I can't buy eggplants.Since I need all the colors of veggies and fruit , eggplant in the freezer helps keep the costs down for filling in that blue/black/purple.I have the green tomatoes on trays under the bed and about half of them sitting to be cut and dehydrated with seasoned salt. I have bell peppers that should turn red or yellow in paper bags also under the bed. I check these every two days so when they are about 1/2 turned I put them in the mudroom in the morning sun.

We had the furnace off during the middle of the day

curtains open when it starts getting daylight and closed at dusk

power strip turned off to computer.

I use the junk mail and envelopes for scratch paper.

We went out with friends for dinner , went at lunch time and used a coupon.

I changed some of what we will be serving to our Tday dinner to what I already have to keep the costs down.The budget is $800 So far I have less than $10.I am hoping for the price of turkeys to go down because right now we need 108 lbs and that comes to over $150.00 as they are running $1.39/lb. Last year I had four in the freezer but didn't restock those.I really really need space in the deep freezers so I am using some of the older stuff for our Tday.

I used the clothes line.

We no longer have to mow which saves us 5 gal of gas every 7-10 days. Since there is cattle in the barn here the landlord's sons will be clearing our driveway,not before Hubby gets home from work in the mornings as one is still in highschool and the other works second. So instead of buying a snow blower (unless we find a good used one we can afford) we will be buying a generator something we have been going without. Not good as when I lose power I lose the water since we are on a well.

What did you do this week ?
Blessed be