You all KNOW I love guest posters, right? I love finding people who have similar tastes and interests, and love to share with others, and giving them a chance to connect with our readers!
Dagne Goodwin, of The Yankee Frugalist approached me after I posted over on our Welcoming House Facebook page about looking for guest posters, and a few hours later, I was THRILLED to welcome her as our first guest poster of the year! In fact, after seeing her writing, and chatting a bit, I have actually asked her to be a regular guest poster over here for as long as she is willing and able!
Wahooooo for friends you can find with similar interests!
Anyhow, she has a fabulous post for you all today, so make sure to support her and jump on over to check out all her other amazing and frugal posts on her blog!!!
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Saving Money with Baggies!
First let me introduce myself, my name is Dagne Goodwin. My husband and I have been married just about thirty years and we have raised our two girls who are now raising children of their own. We have been up and down quite a bit in our marriage and have had to learn the hard way how to make ends meet on a limited budget. When we purchased this house in 1997 (I cannot believe it has been 20 years) we didn’t have a penny left in our checking account. We held our breath and prayed nothing would happen until the paychecks came! It all worked out, we are still here despite many set-backs. I love sharing my knowledge of frugal living, I love to cook and I hope that through teaching, I can help you get by.
One of the old tenants of being frugal is “use it up†and we try very hard to do this. Food is expensive and we work hard to be able to buy that so I we work to use everything in order to help make ends meet. One of the best ways I have found to do that is to save everything!
In my freezer, you will find baggies with all sorts of things. I have one for vegetables. You know that last bit of celery that you have left, just chop it up and put it in there. If there are a few peas left in the bottom of the dish I pop them right into that freezer bag. I generally put all the vegetables in whatever kind of soup that I might be making. I’ll freeze my bones for soup too.
I will freeze bananas if they are starting to go and I haven’t got time to use them up right at that moment. Did you know that you can use a mashed banana in place of an egg in a recipe? Truthfully, I generally make banana bread with them, one of my all-time favorites!
I always keep left over meats in a baggie! So, that little bit of pork chop, the piece of steak, or the bit of chicken left on a bone, I put those in a baggies too. I chop them up small and keep them for when I make spaghetti sauce. As you can imagine my sauce never tastes quite the same twice!
If I have a few ends of bread I pop that in a baggie I keep in the freezer and I keep adding to it as I go. There is just so much you can do with frozen bread, stuffing, French toast, and my favorite of all bread pudding!
Bread Pudding:
4 slices of bread
2 tablespoons of butter, softened
1/3 cups of packed brown
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/3 cup raisins
3 eggs slightly beaten
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 ½ cups milk, scalded
We had Ham for Christmas dinner and we have had breakfast, sandwiches and made a quiche with that. We have bagged the bone with a bit of meat on it and put it in the freezer. I am sure that will be split pea soup! I know not everyone loves that but we really enjoy it.
At the end of the day if you work to use up what you have you will save money. The freezer is a great tool to use in order to save those bits, save them up and then make a meal!
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Isn’t that great? How many of you do this to save money? Our family hardly wastes anything, simply by following a similar method, and often we have fabulous soups or meals because of it!
Go check out more of Dagne’s awesome stuff by clicking any of these links!!! And make sure you tell her The Welcoming House sent ya!!!
Yankeefrugalist.com
Yankee Frugalist Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeNOqhNys86K6NlMJqEHNMg
Yankee Frugalist Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/TheYankeeFrugalist/
Yankee Frugalist Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/dagnegoodwin/
It really is a whole mindset, isn’t it? To use what you have shows respect for the effort you made to acquire it too. Thanks for the reminder.
I love it whenever people get together and share
thoughts. Great site, keep it up!