Monday, February 13, 2006

Recent Frugal Finds

Our local ecycling group (it had been freecycle but then was changed) has been a great resource for our frugal lives. This weekend someone was giving away some picture frames and a big blue tote. I thought great, I need picture frames for the school pictures that I still haven't hung yet and that 40 pound bag of dog food on the floor in my basement is really unsightly, plus the dog keeps getting his own little snacks from it.

The thing with ecycling or freecycling is you never know exactly what you're going to get until you've gotten it. Well this time I got an absolute treasure chest, a 33 gallon tote filled with picture frames of various sizes, many of them never used! The tote was so big that I'm going to transfer some of our summer clothes out of the smaller totes I already had and into the new one. The dog food will fit in the smaller one tote that I already had now that I have a place to fit the clothes.

A trip to my parents' house on Friday netted a dog crate they no longer needed plus extra screws to replace the ones that have fallen out of the crate I already have. Now I don't have to bring Mel's crate back and forth with us to the Adirondacks and when I take the cats to the vet they won't cause the bottom of the crate to fall off.

I've just gotten the book Making Patterns from Finished Clothes from the library. I'm curious to read it, although my 13 year old is even more curious.

On the food front, I experimented with my cornbread again, this time adding finely chopped apricots. Actually, I ran the apricots through the Vitamix with the wet ingredients until they were finely chopped. It made the cornbread much less crumbly.

Last night before bed I put some lima beans in slow cooker. I'm not sure what recipe I'll use them in yet but they're cooked and ready to go once I decide. Lima beans are really delicious, although I hated them when I was a kid. They were the nasty part of the frozen mixed veggies my mom always bought. Go figure!

2 comments:

Jen and Steve said...

Hi - just wanted to thank you for the advice re cooking beans in the slow cooker. I tried it and they were actually better than canned ones. I made chili in the crockpot too (first time using it) and it was great.

I love Freecycle too. Mostly we've used to get rid of stuff but we've picked up a few useful things too.

Jen

Katie said...

Jen,

That's great! Once you get the hang of using the slow cooker, you wonder how you lived without it.

Audrey,

I think Rusty needs to come and tutor Biscuit. Poor pup thinks all the world is his snack bar. Although, Biscuit's official job is to make Ameleii tired and he does do a good job with it.