What’s the money going on?

I have a bag in the freezer where I put random leftover fruit, mostly apple slices from the children’s lunches.  It was full so I put the fruit in a pan and cooked it til soft, then pureed it.  Then I made breakfast cookies and used some of the fruit puree there — as well as the leftover egg yolks from the Thanksgiving meringue.

Made turkey soup. Other Adult expressed not wanting to eat any more turkey. I ended up giving all the leftover turkey and the leftover soup to my mother, who was happy. 

Used stale bread from the freezer for #2Child’s french toast. #2Child likes it cut up in small pieces anyway.

Made a palatial lasagna last night thinking it would be two nights’ dinners, but everyone was so hungry that now there is enough leftover for a weekend lunch at best.  I can’t regret being the victim of my own cooking success.

Totalled up October’s food costs.  Even leaving out our dinner out with friends ($40) and the kids’ school lunches, I spent almost $600.  HOW?! 

Must speak with Other Adult about a better way to share paying for household costs.  The business where I pay for everything is not good or necessary any more.

Post-Thanksgiving update

Food waste: half a can of coconut milk, carefully placed in a glass jar in the fridge. Should have frozen it. I made half sandwiches for the children’s lunches at home the other day, they didn’t eat them. Horrible war between eating them myself (saving! but fattening!) and throwing them away (wasting! but slimming!).  I made a meringue for dessert on Tday and saved the egg yolks in the fridge, and keep forgetting to use them in either of the two batches of pancakes or the muffins (made with leftover cranberry relish), so I fear those may turn. I should get off my fat turkey-eating ass and freeze them.

No shopping was committed on Friday.  Small Business Saturday saw us trekking to our local downtown and me spending $32 (including tax) on stocking stuffers. We also ate at a place that turned out not to be participating so Other Adult didn’t get the $25 Amex credit. Whoops.

Hypothetical extra money

I always love this kind of dreaming.  The Non Consumer Advocate asks here (http://thenonconsumeradvocate.com/2010/09/what-would-you-do-with-an-extra-100-1000-10000-2/) what would you do with an extra $100? $1000?  $10,000?

$100: get my hair cut and buy a new pair of shoes.  Oh no, that was before I got a traffic ticket this morning. Pay ticket.

$1000: Put it towards the car repair bill.

$10,000: Put some in the children’s college savings funds, use some for family vacation. I received a legacy in this amount a year ago and that’s what I did with it. Some stayed in the emergency fund.

Now, if I didn’t want to save any of it, just spend spend spend, I’d do this:

$1000: family weekend out of town at a nice hotel OR send the money to my sister so she and her partner could come and visit.

$10,000: arrange a family vacation in some fun spot like Costa Rica, pay for mother, sister and sister’s partner to join us.  Extra money, I would invite a couple of friends to come as well.

More spendy times

The children needed new jeans and pants. #1Child was adamant about NOT getting them at the thrift store. Off to Target. 6 pairs of jeans, 1 pair of leggings, $120. Oh well, now they’re equipped for the winter.

#1Child was ranting the other day about how “you never want to spend your money, you have all this money and you don’t want to spend it.” I stopped, took a deep breath, and said calmly, “Why do you think I have a lot of money?  What makes you think that?”  I was honestly curious. #1Child either could not, or chose not to, answer.

Food waste: some leftover white rice that went bad. Most of two pears that went from ripe to putrid overnight, literally. I chopped off the good bits and threw them into the bag in the freezer where I’m keeping other miscellaneous fruit leftovers.  And I don’t know if this counts, but I was making croutons under the broiler and burnt them, so had to throw out the charcoal blocks formerly known as bread AND the baking sheet that had caught on fire.  Whoops.

Food save: I made yogurt with the half gallon of milk I got for 99 cents because it was going to expire the next day. #1Child refused to drink expired milk, even after I explained the difference between sell-by and use-by dates.

A friend just gave me a bag of long-sleeved Ts.  They all fit and look great. 

I managed NOT to buy shoes, even though they were on sale. I don’t need shoes.  I took my shoes with the broken strap to the shoe repair place and had it fixed for $9. I would have had them fix the broken purse strap, but they wanted to charge $25. Since I got the purse at the thrift store of $3.50, I passed on that, took it back home, and used krazy glue. So far, so good.

Spendy times

The car needed over $4K of work.  On the other hand, I couldn’t buy a new car for $4,000. And now it runs great. I hope to keep it at least another 5 years.

Food waste: Leftover rice noodles. No one eats them! Ever! I suggested to Other Adult that we cook fewer rice noodles next time. OA said, “They’d be good if I fried them. But somehow I didn’t think of that.” I repeated that we should just cook fewer rice noodles in the future. Also, and this really chapped me, I bought OA some pork chops. OA is the only one here who really likes pork. And the pork chops sat in the fridge until they went bad. That’s the last time I go out of my way to get OA meat. Honestly!

I did take a canteloupe that was getting soft, pureed it and turned it into canteloupe bread ala this post:  http://asugarhigh.blogspot.com/2010/06/cantaloupe-bread.html

It was fine, but the recipe says two loaves.  Yes, two dwarfish loaves!  That amount of batter would have made one decent-sized loaf. I froze the second one.

I also started a bag in the freezer for leftover cut-up fruit, mostly from the children’s lunches. When I’m in the mood I’ll defrost it and turn it into fruit muffins.

Most excitingly, I went to my first food swap today. After worrying myself into making two different items, I arrived to find that there were only 3 other attendees, two of whom were the organizers.  Still, it was a start.