Experiments in Breakfast

The supermarket near us is still renovating and clearing out food items. Last week we found a large frozen chicken potpie, a lemon poppy-seed loaf, a canister of steel cut oats, and a tube of tomato paste, all for half price. The tomato paste is in the pantry, and we've been eating the other things

Part One: I haven't seen any deals lately on cold cereal, and with just two of us I don't always feel like messing up a pan with oatmeal.  I've tried microwaving quick oats by the bowlful, but they're sometimes too mushy. I thought these steel cut oats would be a good fit for Budget101's Instant Oatmeal mix. You run some of the oats to powder in the blender, then mix them with the rest and add your choice of sweeteners, dried fruit, etc. 

I used up a few cups of the oats, plus a bit of cinnamon, brown sugar, and a few stray Craisins. I also added a dash of salt to each bag (the recipe doesn't call for it).

I think it turned out pretty well. You have to experiment a bit with the amount of boiling water you add, as it's easy to get it too thin (you don't want gruel). If you don't feel like the oats are "cooked" enough by just adding hot water, you can try microwaving them instead. (That is, add the mix and water to your cereal bowl and microwave, not nuke it in the bag.)

And it's definitely an easy breakfast option when you're not up to much more than groping for the spoons and the jar of coffee.

The Part Two this week, I'm still debating the success of. I wanted to make something higher-protein, so I tried out a recipe for "pancake bowls." This particular recipe required most of a container of Greek yogurt, several eggs, some frozen fruit, and a few other things like baking powder and flour (no fat, very little sugar); you combine most of the ingredients, top with the fruit, and bake until solid. The results? well, don't expect a Dutch Baby. It's more like...baked yogurt and eggs. (Or Tubby Custard.) Which, I guess, is not a bad thing, and it's quite nutritious; it's just not necessarily a delicious thing. 

Each of these little pans is supposed to be one serving, but I can't manage more than a piece at a time. Now that they've chilled in the fridge, I think I'm going to cut them in smaller portions and freeze them, then microwave when I want one.

Would I make this particular recipe again? Probably not, at least not without a couple of modifications. A little more spice or sugar wouldn't be unwelcome. Or just eating some of the Greek yogurt and fruit without going to all the trouble of baking it.

Now there's a thought.

Ten dollar thrift haul, plus a jacket

Janice at the Vivienne Files website often starts a wardrobe with a small core of neutral clothes. She then lets her fictional heroine go shopping for a few additions, and shows how the new things might be used with the older ones.

But I'm going to start with the additions, then go back. A couple of weeks ago, I picked up a necklace, a bracelet, and a pair of earrings for a total of $7 (Canadian). Actually we had a five-dollar loyalty card to use, so it came to two-plus-tax.

This week, I was browsing the dollar rack at one of our usual stops, and I found three items that I thought would work with clothes I already had. One is a pink top with a draped-neck front. It's on the large side, so the draped part needs a camisole underneath. It could be also worn back to front.

The second thing was a navy skirt with kind of an assymetrical, draped thing going on in the front. I do have another navy skirt, and I hesitated just for a minute on this one because it's polyester, and not the nicest kind of polyester, but the different shape got me curious, and I bought it.

The third dollar find was a grey zippered activewear jacket. I do have a grey hoodie, but for a dollar I was not going to pass this one up. I thought the neckline might work for layering when I don't want a hood sticking out.

So, we're up to ten dollars. Minus the loyalty card.

Finally, we dropped in at a for-profit thrift, where the prices tend to be a bit higher. I found a mostly-wool Eddie Bauer lightweight coat/blazer, and I really liked it, so I'm adding it to this story too. I could have done a bit better on the price if I'd had a coupon; but even so, it was a good find. With the five dollars taken off the jewelry, the total of everything came to about $20.

To do a Vivienne Files-type story, I thought I would put together a casual, mostly navy core wardrobe of things I already had. I'll show you those items, but not how I would put them together--you can figure that out.

Two t-shirts

Another t-shirt and an "un-blazer"

Pull-on pants, mixed navy/grey pants, and jeans

V-neck pullover, and grey cotton pullover (given to me recently by a daughter who didn't want it)

Blue and white striped cotton shirt; navy silk shirt

White blouse (vintage, thrifted recently); off-white mock neck sweater

Not terribly exciting, but you could get along with just these things for awhile, especially if you added some accessories. So, here are a few outfit ideas with the dollar finds and the jacket. I didn't include the three pieces of jewelry, but they would blend well too.

Pink top, navy skirt. Boots, purse, necklaces.

White blouse, navy pullover, navy skirt. I'm not as sure about this combination because the navy of the skirt is different from the sweater; but I might try another sweater that would work better. (Boots, purse, necklaces)

Navy shirt, navy skirt; striped scarf, purse, boots. Again, the colour match isn't perfect, although I think you could get away with it here as it doesn't look as formal as the other outfit.

Pink top, navy pants. Purse, animal-print scarf, boots.

Pink top worn backwards under the grey not-hoodie; a pair of grey pants that I substituted because I didn't want to keep photographing jeans; boots, necklace.

Blue and white shirt worn under the grey jacket; jeans; backpack, boots.

Grey jacket zipped all the way up and worn underneath the grey pullover. Jeans, purse, boots.

White sweater, navy/grey pants, plaid jacket. Purse, necklace, navy sneakers.

Pink top worn backwards under the plaid jacket; navy pants; purse, boots, necklace.

Navy sweater (backwards), plaid jacket, skirt. Turquoise necklace, boots. I don't think this is going to be my most useful skirt, due more to the colour than the shape. But playing around like this is good for getting inspiration, even if I end up using a different skirt. Or pants.

So: now I have some ideas for how I'm going to wear my little haul.

Good things happen on the dollar rack!

Frugal is as frugal does

Last week Mr. Fixit and I had a whole afternoon of errands, and at the end of it we found ourselves near a  mundane-looking Chinese restaurant, the kind that does mostly takeout. However, it was handy, and we were hungry, so we got their dinner for two, which turned out to be egg rolls, lemon chicken, chow mein, a whole pile of wontons, and some better-than-average fried rice. I am not a fan of fried rice when its other major ingredient is frozen mixed corn and peas, and even lima beans (heaven help us), but this was not one of those places, thankfully. There was enough left over for lunch the next day, plus a bit of extra fried rice to boost that night's supper. Sometimes getting a meal out is just the right thing at the right time.

As an update on the bag of frozen squash, I cooked it up for dinner one night; we ate part of it, and I pureed the rest to make twenty-four mini muffins. And one supersized one because there was too much batter. We still haven't tried the grains-and-lentil mixture, but probably the next time we have a tortilla meal.

I cleaned out my closet for the fall/winter. It wasn't in terrible shape, as I've tried to keep things minimal, or at least reasonable; but lately I had thrifted a few new things, and even been given some free stuff, so (to my mind) it kind of felt like the clothes were taking over, and anyway it was time to put my shorts and sandals away, so I did a pull-out and put-back, and weeded out a few things that were not going back in at all. 

I wasn't able to use all of the free clothes, but I did keep a couple of useful pullovers and a navy top. I also found a couple of things I liked from last fall that had gotten pushed to the back, including a green fleece-lined jacket I'd forgotten I'd thrifted, so that made me feel like I had something new to wear! Just neatening things up can be all you need.

I  put some of the most-likely-to-match-things scarves front and centre.

And, finally, we dropped in at a thrift store where we had a filled-in loyalty card, so I got some already-cheap but now almost-free jewelry to jazz things up. I've already worn the turquoise necklace several times.

Tonight's frugal meal is Greek Spaghetti, made with a half-price package of ground beef, canned tomatoes, and a few seasonings. I might make some garlic bread to go with it, and we have some of those muffins.

That's all!

Generally Frugal, A Few Updates

I'm trying to get back into posting more of our "generally frugal" lifestyle stuff, rather than just the thrifted clothes stories I've mostly done for the past while. So what is there to share? I could say something about our stop this morning at the closest supermarket, which gave us some discounted banana bread and mini muffins (handy to freeze for company), but also a small tray of cut-price beef cubes, which Mr. Fixit turned into an astonishingly good Slow Cooker Goulash. We included some of those red peppers we froze last week, and served it with a just-enough-left container of sour cream.

I could also write something about a couple of odd put-together leftover meals we've had lately, but I'll spare you the details. To misquote Milo in Bloom County, it's food and we're gonna eat it.

But if I'm allowed to talk about thrifting and clothes, there is a Providential side to finding used stuff that I've seen so many times, and I think I'm finally getting smart enough to realize, first, that it's no accident, and second, that I shouldn't try to outjump God on these things by buying something new, or even something used but more expensive than I really want to pay. Because, so often, there it is right in the thrift store, or at the yard sale, that thing I was looking for, or at least a reasonable version of it. Thrifting patience, unlike Slow Cooker Goulash, is a dish best served cold.

On a weekend trip to the outdoor antiques market, I had been looking at a 1980's white short-sleeved blouse with a lot of pearl embellishments. It kind of reminded me of the crazy big shirts we wore during university (think the Brat Pack fashion era). It also reminded me a bit of my wedding veil, which was pearl-bead-embellished. Anyway, the nostalgia vibes were strong, but I know for one thing that a shirt covered with pearls would be a bear to wash and take care of, not to mention looking a bit out-there. It was also more expensive than I really wanted to pay for a crazy big shirt, so I left it in the booth. But the idea of a fancy-ish white blouse was still playing in my head. Today we were at Mission Thrift, and I found a white short-sleeved blouse, German-labelled, probably somewhat vintage. Instead of pearls, it's decorated with a lot of little stretchy pleats, kind of like grownup smocking. Also, it was quite a bit cheaper. So: sometimes you have to say no, and then let the better choice come along.

Also, I was looking at a clothing store online that is asking a breath-sucking amount of money for solid-coloured jersey midi skirts. I kind of liked the dark blue one, and I could imagine it working with some of my fall sweaters; but there was no way I was going to pay that much for one skirt.

So, on the same trip to Mission Thrift, there it was, a longer, dark blue, jersey skirt. This one, I think, was homemade; it has no labels at all, and the seams appear to have been done with a serger. But you know what? I have the feeling that if I bought a jersey skirt online, it probably wouldn't end up being any better quality, or fitting any better. So how weird is that, especially when the skirt rack is not usually my main stop at the thrift store, but for some reason I just thought I would take a few extra minutes on the crazy off-chance that there could be something close to what I was looking for. Actually, if there hadn't been anything with the skirts, I had also thought of scavenging the dress rack there--I've made skirts from dresses before, and it's often not as hard as you'd think. But in this case, I didn't even need to do that, because somebody went ahead and made the skirt I was looking for, and then donated it to the thrift store.

Which makes me both shake my head, and nod it with an "uh huh, I thought that's how it might turn out."

1930's Carltonware Buttercup dish, which I did buy at the antiques market.