The Intentional Thrifter: It's a coverup

This is only partly a thrifting story. Just warning you upfront.

Over the past year I've acquired and dis-acquired several third-layer pieces: cardigans, jackets, and, most recently, a cozy shrug that matched our carpet. I don't mind walking on beige, but in my mostly-grey-and-navy closet it was a sore thumb. So it's going back to the thrift store, along with a shiny silver jacket (big non-removable shoulder pads made it look too '80's-scary) and a limp, dishwatery cardigan.

What did I replace them all with? Something expensive? Something thrifted? Something handmade? None of those.  On a get-some-fresh-air walk to the discount store, I browsed their clearance rack, and came home with a bunch of bananas and this half-price reversible poncho/cape/ruana. It had tassels on the corners, but I trimmed them off. My only complaint is that it already seems to be an electromagnet for loose hairs. It's a good thing we don't have a cat.

What do you do with a navy and grey poncho/cape/ruana, minus tassels??

First of all, you pull out your discount-store navy turtleneck, a thrifted wine-coloured shirt, and a thrifted grey cowlneck sweater.

You add the best (thrifted) scarves you have that were just waiting for something grey or navy.

Then you watch all the You-tube videos you can find, and start wrapping.

I think that covers it.

What's for supper? Tortilla night

Tonight's dinner menu, with Grandpa Squirrel here:

On the stove: Taco Lentils.
In the slow cooker: Taco Ground Chicken.
In the fridge: Leftover shredded pork.

To go with any of these: tortillas, shredded cheese, peppers, shredded broccoli, olives, and corn chips.

Dessert: Poppyseed pound cake and ginger boys, both from Giant Tiger.

Stuff-mart comes through. Just don't make me go there too often.

We have had W--t stores in Canada for a few years.  They aren't usually my favourite place to shop--too big, too busy.  But there's a newish one near us, and we decided to do our Saturday shopping there for a change.

Luckily, it wasn't very busy.

But wow, that is one overwhelming grocery section, especially when you're used to shopping at a discount supermarket with less choice.  (The Apprentice found it particularly funny that there was one whole side of an aisle devoted to beef jerky, peanuts, and Little Debbies.)  How can there be that much culture shock between stores only a few blocks apart?  It actually felt like we had crossed the border into a U.S. supermarket....or into the Stuff-mart on Veggie Tales. 

"They're in stock! And if you need refrigerators. To keep extra mashed potatoes. Or a giant air compressor. To blow fruit flies off your dresser ..."

And speaking of mashed potatoes, guess what we found there?

We haven't been able to find original, plain, just-potatoes, in-the-box Idahoan mashed potato flakes for quite awhile, ever since Giant Tiger stopped carrying anything except the flavoured pouch varieties.  But there you go--we bought two boxes.

We also found the doll-head-sized beads that Crayons/Dollygirl has been wanting, the exact yarn Mama Squirrel needed for mini monkeys, and a rainbow assortment of tissue paper for crafts and gift wrapping.  Also Sally's Cereals, which were new to us but which seemed like a good deal, $3 for a big bag of plain spoon-sized shredded wheat.  And Habitant soup on sale for a dollar.

Oh--and a package of red candles for our Advent wreath.  (Hoping for pink and purple would have been too much.)

What more could you ask?

What's for supper?

Perogy Lasagna
Two leftover cabbage rolls plus a bit of sausage and sweet potato
Leftover coleslaw
Carrot and celery sticks
Blackberry-apple crisp

(Giant Tiger had packages of frozen blackberries this week--something I hardly ever see.)

Saturday's yard saling and thrift shopping and just not paying too much overall

We are trying hard to stick to useful stuff, not just frivolous...like the giant ceramic walnut with a squirrel on top that I saw at a yard sale yesterday morning and left right where it was. (Kind of like this one.) (Now if I had seen this one instead, I might not have been able to leave it there.)

What did we bring home?

The Bible Book of Lists, by Joy MacKenzie and Shirley Bledsoe--looks very useful

The Story of the Church, by Walter Russell Bowie

The Sacred Journey: a memoir of early days, by Frederick Buechner

Little Women Living Classics kit--not a book, a "treasure chest" with embroidery stuff, a card game, map of Civil War battles and so on--just a couple of the paper dolls and a booklet of game instructions are missing (OK, that IS practical. Not that things are missing, but that there's a brand-new mini-embroidery set in there plus all the historical stuff.)

See Through History: Ancient Rome, by Simon James (an illustrated book with transparencies)

A big boxful of ribbon for $2

Some knit fabric that Ponytails bought--how cool is that? (It's something she wanted.)

About $50 worth of groceries from Giant Tiger--enough to hold us for awhile

A pair of lace-up runners for Crayons, also from Giant Tiger

Graph paper and page protectors for The Apprentice's fall term, also from Giant Tiger

And The Apprentice brought me home three free Family Circle magazines that the hair salon was cleaning out. I appreciated that very much.

Mmm...chicken. Mmm...garlic. (What's for dinner?)

I was really happy that Gayle fixed her menu-plan links to include Chicken, Mushroom and Broccoli Alfredo. I was even happier that the sauce turned out to be based on heavy cream and not on mushroom soup. And that's because the last time we were at Giant Tiger, a man--we think he worked there, but even the cashier didn't seem to be sure when we asked her--came up to us, kind of mumbled something, and handed us two coupons for free milk or cream. Not even a free pint of cream, but a free litre of cream (that's four cups for the Americans). He gave one to me and one to Mr. Fixit.

Whipping cream is $6.19 a litre.

Whoo hoo.

So we got one litre of the slightly lighter cream that Mr. Fixit likes to make ice cream with, and one of whipping cream. And that's why I was happy to have a way to use it up (besides the obvious, making whipped cream).

I left the mushrooms, salt and rosemary out of the recipe, but otherwise made it the way it says, and served it over fusilli. The Apprentice--our Alfredo addict--approved. Crayons couldn't figure out why there was "whipped cream" in the chicken, and we had a brief discussion that somewhat resembled the DHM's playdough story. (For those of you who enjoy the tales of her young friends Blynken and Nod, she has a particularly good one up today, about maps and all the socialization that homeschooled kids don't get.)

We also had a raw veggie plate (I put the mushrooms there instead of in the chicken), canned pineapple, and very small helpings of chocolate cake-in-a-mug. We didn't need dessert, but something about the spring-is-coming sunlight made things feel a bit celebratory.

A ketchup kind of meal (What's for dinner?)

Dinner's from the freezer--we're low on fresh things.

Frozen cabbage rolls (a small package--they were on sale at Giant Tiger)
Frozen mini-sausages
Baked potatoes (last of the bag--they were getting soft)
Carrot sticks, sour cream, applesauce etc.
Fruity Oatmeal Muffins and Mango Freeze (recipes below)

Fruity Oatmeal Muffins, because the oven was already on at the right temperature:

2 scant cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup rolled oats
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
1 cup milk, swished with the bottom bits of two jars of peach and strawberry jam

Mix dry ingredients. Mix wet ingredients. Correct flour if needed (I added a bit more.) Combine gently, scoop into muffin pan and bake 20 minutes at 375 degrees.

Mango Freeze:

Part of a bag of frozen mango cubes (frozen fruit was on sale a couple of weeks ago)
3 small fruit yogurts

Run through the food processor until smooth and fluffed up. If you do this ahead of time, scoop into small dishes or one larger bowl and put back into the freezer until you want them.

WFMW: The advantage of limitations

"So, with my tongue somewhat in my cheek, here's the money-saving tip: shop, at least occasionally, somewhere where you can't eat at least half of what's on the shelf (too caloric or high-sodium or whatever)."

We've inadvertently discovered a way to save money on groceries.

We (in mid-size-urban southern Ontario) usually do a big weekly grocery shop at either a discount supermarket or one particular independent grocery store. Some weeks, though, we only manage to make it to Giant Tiger, a discount store that (if you haven't been up to this Treehouse before) specializes more in flip-flops and talking-singing-light-up Santas than it does in groceries. Saturdays are short, or we need flip-flops anyway, or we just don't seem to need a lot of food that week.

Which is where the WFMW comes in. You see, we also have some dietary limitations, in this case sodium and related things like MSG: the limits are no longer that severe, but I still check labels for any nasty surprises, and avoid certain kinds of convenience foods.

Which is, to a large extent, what you're going to find at Giant Tiger. It's the kind of place where the fruit section consists of apples, oranges and bananas (and things like canned pineapple and expensive frozen strawberries), and the vegetables are limited to iceberg lettuce, carrots, onions, potatoes and canned (not no-salt) and frozen veggies. Not quite as limited as the corner store, but not exactly loaded with choices either.

So, with my tongue somewhat in my cheek, here's the money-saving tip: shop, once a month or at least occasionally, somewhere where you can't eat at least half of what's on the shelf (too caloric or high-sodium or whatever). Even just a store that's way too expensive will work. Get your cart and cruise the aisles. Stick out your tongue and sigh in frustration at all the preservative-laden or overpriced, off-limits stuff. Grab whatever does work for you (in our case, that included turkey kielbasa, baby carrots, potato flakes, frozen juice, puffed wheat, bagels, milk, and ginger snaps). Then come home and combine that with whatever you have in the cupboards. You'll feel economical and virtuous. ;-)

You use what you have (meditations on what's in the fridge)

One essential element of being frugal is that you use what you have, the best that you can. Other people have said this over and over too--Amy Dacyczyn said that she didn't want to print her recipe for pumpkin-blueberry muffins because those things were cheap/free for her but not necessarily for other people. (And yet people are still after her to write a cookbook.)

And that's one reason it's difficult for me to plan menus ahead of time, because the leftovers from pre-planned dinners have to get accounted for too. Coffeemamma just posted a very sensible week's plan and notes that it's based on what's available to her this time of year. We are in that same kind of waiting-for-the-fresh-stuff place right now.

I find the type of groceries we have really varies, depending on where we've been shopping. Last weekend the weather was bad, Mr. Fixit wasn't feeling well, so we were limited to a Giant Tiger trip plus a stop at Bulk Barn. I wasn't about to pay $2.89 for celery at Giant Tiger (although I've noticed that it's expensive at other stores right now too), and for the rest of our vegetables I had to settle for frozen peas, a can of mushrooms, and a head of iceberg lettuce. (I already had carrots and onions.) I knew we'd stock up better later on, but that was what we had to work with for at least a couple of days. Anyway, all that is to say that we had a few a-la-can dinners this week, which isn't necessarily a problem--it's just that sometimes what you have is fresh, sometimes it's frozen, sometimes it's packages, and you have to plan your meals on your feet, so to speak. (Remember my food-box menu plan? In a similar vein, I like what the new Hillbilly Housewife is doing with the Angel Food Menus, based on what's being distributed through another food box plan.) One night we had Giant Tiger's frozen cabbage rolls, plus a package of wieners that I put, frozen, into the oven with a bit of barbecue sauce over top; later I added a can of baked beans. Last night we had chicken spaghetti, with a salad made out of the iceberg lettuce, grated carrot, and sunflower seeds.

And sometimes you just do what makes sense. I've had a bunch of things to do today plus I have a meeting tonight and I don't want to leave a lot of pots and pans. (The Treehouse doesn't have a dishwasher.) We have ground turkey and I was going to make turkey loaf and maybe have mashed potatoes and vegetables with it...then I thought of the loaf of bread that just came out of the breadmaker, and the homemade cream-soup-mix in the cupboard, and the bag of frozen Japanese-style vegetables we bought last night (we did go on another grocery trip--worth a post in itself), and I thought--Hot Turkey-Vegetable Sandwiches. Or Turkey a la King on fresh bread, or whatever you want to call it. It's not a meal I'd make all the time, it's just what works today. (I also had a gi-nor-mous sweet potato from last night's trip, and I cut that up (so it wouldn't take forever to bake) and put it in a pan in the toaster oven.

That's not exactly a leftover story, but leftover-using-up works the same way. Last night's dessert was a what-do-we-have story: plain yogurt (frozen in cubes but mostly thawed by dessert time), one small blueberry yogurt cup, some frozen blueberries and mixed berries (leftovers of each), and graham crackers. Recipe: break up the graham crackers and layer them in a glass bowl with the yogurt and fruit. Let sit until defrosted but not entirely mushy. Call it trifle.

I could have skipped dessert for tonight, but I had some crushed pineapple getting forgotten in the fridge, and part of an orange that nobody finished at lunch. I cut up two bananas, spread the fruit all out in a small pan, and stuck it in the freezer. At dessert time we'll run it through the food processor--instant sherbet.

(Well, I guess that does leave a few dishes. But you get the point.)

Whatever, it's all orange stuff

A real what's in your hand this morning: our grocery trip last Saturday was very hurried, and we missed several things: laundry soap, extra milk, extra flour, Parmesan cheese.

We did manage to replenish the allspice! (been short of that for weeks, and I refused to pay the price of the little cans; so I was happy that Saturday's store, while charging Yukon-worthy produce prices, did have a bulk section.)

With me so far?

I read Meredith's post about making Pumpkin Pie Playdough (the recipe is also in her post), and for some reason--although my Squirrelings are getting a bit beyond the playdough stage--I thought this dreary wet morning would be a good one for a potful of warm playdough, especially if it didn't smell like cooked salt. I didn't have enough flour for the whole recipe, so I halved it, and it turned out fine. I also didn't have pumpkin pie spice, so I used this recipe (quadrupled it for a half recipe of playdough). (Yay, allspice.)

So it was fun playing with the dough (yes, I squished along a bit too while we listened to an old radio show). But you can't EAT it...so I decided to use up the bit of flour that was left on some pumpkin bread. We didn't have any pumpkin, but there was some cooked butternut squash from last night--so I pureed that along with the other liquid ingredients. (And the allspice.) Squash, sweet potato, pumpkin--they all mash up about the same, and they're all good in baking.

And now it's baked, the flour is gone, and the rain will probably turn into snow in the next day or so. I think we're going to make a fast run to Giant Tiger tonight so we can at least have clean clothes and pancakes...blizzard or not.

Not spending at all...um...

Sometimes, it’s easy to get caught up in thinking of frugality only in terms of getting good bargains. What is important to remember is that often we can save the most money by not spending at all.--Crystal, Saturday Savings Smorgasbord at Frugal Hacks

Sometimes, frugal as we Squirrels are, it's hard to wrap my brain around that. I have a hard time understanding how those pioneer families managed on their infrequent trips to a store for sugar, salt and shot...or how people concerned with simplicity (who haven't engineered the whole thing ahead of time, stocking up on every possible thing they might run out of) manage to go on one of those no-buying-anything-at-all shopping unbinges.

I mean, some things are obvious to me: if you need to wrap a present and haven't saved up all the bags everybody else has given you presents in, you find some creative wrapping, even the thoroughly-clichéd colour comics. If you're short on baking powder, you can combine baking soda and cream of tartar, assuming that you do have cream of tartar. It makes more sense to use up the getting-dusty bag of split peas to make soup than it does to complain that the canned stuff hasn't gone on sale lately. If you don't have a crib, you can use a playpen (we did). And the list of ways to amuse children and improvise free toys and games can and does go on for pages. That, I get.

But it isn't a toy famine that we're usually experiencing here, nor a lack of furniture. We have more than enough kitchen equipment, lots of books to read, and a flip of the switch provides us with free radio entertainment and edification. What we run out of are the small things. Socks that fit growing feet. Tape. Printer paper. Working ballpoint pens; and I don't think the backyard crows would lend me any quills. Flour (and therefore all the things we make with flour). Toilet paper; and I have no burning desire to start substituting catalogue pages in that regard. Baking powder when there isn't any cream of tartar around. Foil. A VCR that quit working and that Mr. Fixit can't resuscitate. How do you manage without spending at all when life today seems like one big pile of little receipts?

"'What do we need to get in town, Caroline?'

"Ma said they did not need anything. They had eaten so many fish and potatoes that the flour was still holding out, and the sugar, and even the tea. Only the salt was low, and it would last several days."--On the Banks of Plum Creek

I'm looking at this from the perspective of one who went out and BOUGHT a cake this weekend for Ponytails' belated birthday party; not because I'm that lazy generally, but because I haven't felt up to it this week (still under the weather with a cold) and because I didn't particularly want to handle food that five non-Squirreling little girls were going to be eating. Meredith, we could have done the Pepperidge Farm thing too (your baby's cake was beautiful), but at least this took care of the cake, the decorations, and the name--except that the supermarket's cake decorator, despite our having said Ponytails' name clearly several times, wrote "Happy Birthday Aunt Ponytails" on the cake. She then scraped off the "Aunt," leaving the icing somewhat less pristine than it started out and not offering to compensate us for the mistake.

Maybe we would have been better off with Pepperidge Farm. But I digress.

Could I actually go any length of time without buying anything? I know there are so many things you can improvise, and many more that you can just do without. We lived through our hot chocolate mix famine last winter. I really do like using things up and finding ways to use what's in my hand. It's the Year of Abundance, after all.

But then there's the really good candy corn for Thanksgiving from the Bulk Barn...and some classical CDs from Dollarama that will make great stocking stuffers and Secret Sister gifts...and the purple Northern Reflections sweater I found at a rummage sale Friday night (I do need sweaters). And the Turkish Cookbook I got there for a quarter, and a spool knitting set as well. (Crayons thought those were both awesome.) And dancing-class shoes for the younger Squirrelings, because their last-years' pairs are worn out (call them the 2 Dancing Princesses); those cost more than a couple of dollars, but we didn't want them to have to dance in their bare feet.

And that aseptically-packaged apple juice from Giant Tiger for 77 cents a box (amazing deal)...and, if you don't think we should be eating candy and drinking juice (too much sugar), how about the pumpkins and apples and squash and broccoli and the most excellent popcorn that will be gone all too soon when the farm stand closes up for the season? And we just bought a hot-air popper at a yard sale for $2...and a couple of VCRs for about the same price, no kidding. I said VCRs, not videos. See, you have to admit, sometimes spending is just fun. And smart; check the big box stores, VCRs are quickly disappearing from the shelves, and then how are you going to watch all your Star Trek videos?

So while my preferred way of dealing with don't-have-that problems is trying to see another way around it, I'm not going to stress out with guilt over the things we do need to buy. Want to buy.

"And in the lean-to they found a boughten broom! There seemed no end to the wonders in this house."--On the Banks of Plum Creek

Life would certainly go on without a purple sweater and a popcorn popper; I'd wear my old frog-playing-with-a-yo-yo sweatshirt awhile longer, and keep making popcorn in a pot on the stove. If we found ourselves without any means of watching videos, we'd probably read more books or listen to more records. (We found a few of those yard-saling yesterday too. Lena Horne at The Sands, 1961--that would cheer anybody up.) Life goes on no matter what little you have, right? But a few well-spent dollars here and there can be all right too.

[P.S. Update and Little House nitpick: Crayons and I are reading, obviously, On the Banks of Plum Creek. While they're stuck in winter blizzards and living off beans and cornmeal, Pa plays his fiddle and Ma knits. What I want to know is, where did she get the yarn? That's another thing I have a hard time keeping in stock here unless we find a yardsale cache.]

A good morning for books. And strudel. And discount-store groceries.

We had a fun Saturday morning shopping around.

First stop was an estate sale with a lot of vintage books; the late owner of the house had been a French teacher and her collection went way back, maybe to her own school days. I picked up a few books just for interest, mostly vintage school editions:

Corneille: Le Cid (Hachette's French Classics)

Beaumarchais: Le Barbier de Seville

Daudet: Lettres de mon Moulin (Siepmann's French Texts)

Les 100 Plus Belles Chansons (a school songbook from the 1940's)

Notre Histoire, by Brown, Harman, and Jeanneret, translated by Charles Bilodeau. This is a real treasure: a French translation of George Brown's Story of Canada, which is an out-of-print textbook that some Canadian CM homeschoolers like to use. (Ponytails will be using our copy this year.) I didn't know a French version existed (I can find no mention of it online), and I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do with it. I know a couple of bilingual CM mammas who might like to have it.

There were some books in English, too:

The Heart of Midlothian, by Sir Walter Scott

An Everyman's Library book of Modern Plays

The Little Minister, by J.M. Barrie

A Year in Provence, by Peter Mayle

Mr. Fixit took away a few records, too.

Second stop was a rent-a-table sale at the community centre. I found a small dolly for Crayons and a few somewhat tattered Scholastic paperbacks for a quarter apiece to add to our collection: Just Plain Maggie, Ghost Town Treasure, Snowbound in Hidden Valley, and Vicki and the Black Horse.

And a couple of the Squirrelings found earrings.

The community centre sale had a snacks table, but we weren't up for pop and hot dogs at 10:30 in the morning. So we all got back in the 2000 Rav4 (yeah, that's what we're driving right now) and drove to a cafe we had been wanting to try out that opens and closes at weird hours and keeps being closed every time we go there. This morning it was open. Grandpa Squirrel (that's Mr. Fixit's Dad Squirrel, not my map-collecting Dad Squirrel) was in the neighbourhood so he joined us for some coffee, juice and homemade strudel.

Last stop of the morning was Giant Tiger, which sounds like a funny place to pick up groceries, but we only needed bread, milk and a few boxes and cans, and we were planning a trip to the farm stand later to pick up the fresh stuff.

So...phew. That was our Saturday morning. How about yours?