Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap and Garden Update

"The best laid plans of mice and men" as the saying goes, pretty much sums up my week.  I was hoping to get my husband's birthday gift done by this point, but my son has been acting...well off this week.  I kept thinking he was getting sick, so I haven't gotten near as much done in the sewing department as I'd hoped.  I'm hoping to get done more over the next couple of days.

Then, I was hoping to get a decent sized onion out of my garden, only to walk outside one day to find a very fat and contented rabbit laying on top of my onions.  I'm thinking it was someone's pet as my lettuce plants remained untouched, the rabbit was just sunning itself laying on top of my onions.  It managed to break the onions up their stalks, so I pulled the rest of them a bit earlier than I'd hoped to.  I saved the green onions from the plants (as they were broken off anyway) and have been using them in cooked dishes.  I then cured the three onions (seen above)...I'm still debating whether or not to dehydrate them, use them fresh or freeze them for later use.  A couple of my garlic plants might or might not make it, but I'm just going to ride it out and see what happens.

The tomato plants are huge.  Nearly as tall as I am now with tons of green tomatoes on them.  I'm hoping they can get up to a decent size before I need to pick them, but we'll see how it goes.  No ripe ones yet, but plenty of green tomatoes.

I harvested lettuce, kale, onions (obviously), oregano, thyme, rosemary, parsley and basil this week as well.  Some more of the lettuce is shortening to bolt, so I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to have lettuce.

I also noticed that my raspberry plants were ripening, so I harvested what there was.  There wasn't much and by the size and number of raspberries left on the plants, I'm really not sure how many raspberries I'm going to get this year.  Oh well.  At least my daughter likes to snack on them.

Some other ways I saved money this week were...

1.  I took my harvested basil, combined with some parsley and made pesto pucks.  Instead of pine nuts, I use Blue Diamond Almonds (peanut free) and freeze portions in muffin tins, pop them out once frozen and put the pucks in a freezer bag. I got enough for six meals for my family out of my one basil plant by padding it out with the parsley.

2.  I got a message from a friend of mine asking if I'd like a ham as her freezer had died.  I accepted her offer and traded some things that I had that she could hopefully use as well.  She ended up giving me two hams, which was a God send as I was going to budget out some money to buy a ham (thanks, Davina!).

3.  I was at the store early in the week to buy milk and found some pork picnic shoulder roasts on clearance for 15.00 a piece.  I got the two that were there, took them home and cut them into smaller roasts.  I cut up the meat around the bones and placed it in bags with the bones so that I could use the smaller pieces of meat and the bones to make stew or some other casserole-like dish.  I was able to get 7 generous meal sizes out of 30.00 worth of meat. 

4.  I shopped sales and used coupons as much as I could to save money.  I also avoided taking multiple trips to the store by shopping one day during the week.

5.  I cooked all of our meals at home, which saved us money.

6.  I mended a pair of underwear, some of my socks, a shirt of mine and my daughter's stuffed unicorn.

7.  I made play clay for my daughter to make sculptures out of and have fun playing with.  My husband and I also got in on the fun a bit and made some things before we gave the clay to my daughter to use.  She had fun and overall it was a inexpensive afternoon of entertainment.

8.  As a special treat for my husband's birthday I made him some eggnog as he really likes home made eggnog.  It was a way to surprise him in case I didn't get his birthday gift done in time.  He's really enjoying it, which makes me happy.

And there you have it folks.  Some of the ways I saved money this week.  How did you do?