Monday, August 5, 2013

Austerity August: Day 5

  Day 5 went well. As reported I grocery shopped and stayed well within my budget.

Other than that I spent no additional money. I spent a delightful half hour watching grandson J have his swim lesson and highly enjoyed his company and his chatter while doing some necessary shopping. I also had a very pleasant lunch out, treated by my  daughter ( J's mommy) and an old high school friend of hers I haven't seen in ages.

I got the reward of watching my youngest son H being so responsible with his money at the bank, making sure he put 25% of his paycheck in his savings account (without any reminder from Mom), even though it was an odd amount of money, lol. And he made me smile when he complimented the homemade bread too!!

I brought home the chicken carcass from yesterday's dinner and have it in my slow cooker making a rich and delicious stock for the freezer. Update: Here is what I got from my chicken, enough chicken for two dinners and several containers of stock:


Breakfast was just coffee, I needed to get on the road early to pick up grandson.

Lunch was my free Chipotle.

Dinner is about to be tilapia picata (slightly different than the recipe I had in mind on the menu plan), parmesan noodles, and steamed broccoli. It looks like I will be dining alone. H is eating at the mall with his girlfriend, college daughter L is eating at boyfriend's house, and adult son J is working late.

I plan to spend my evening watching some tv and/or finishing up yet another library book! And before bed I am trying out an idea for baking bread. I am mixing up the bread and then putting the covered bowl in the refrigerator for the dough to rise overnight. In the morning I hope to bring it to room temperature, punch it down and finish it off. If this works I will follow this plan when I go back to work.

6 comments:

  1. Nancy,
    Didn't Amy Dacyczyn of TWG fame do just that (refrigerator dough)? Chicken stock looks good. I had my crock pot running overnight with a ck carcass and leftover broth from a CP rotiserie chicken I made yesterday. It's now cooling off, I will also be freezing the broth for future meals. We also have bagged up, cooked chicken in our fridge. I showed DD your photo, "See? I'm not the only one!"

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  2. Carol I has been so long since I read her Tightwad Gazette I honestly do not remember, I will have to dig out my copy and check it out. I never did get the bread dough made up last night, youngest son accidentally downloaded a virus into the PC and it took the rest of the evening to fix the problem and make sure we were up and running a protected (someone had turned off the anti-virus program, grrrrrr).
    Funny about showing my picture to your daughter, lol. I will have to start sharing some of yours with college daughter and then maybe she won't be such a complainer, lol.

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  3. Nancy,
    We aren't the only ones doing these tricks . . we're in this together! : )
    I checked my TWG books, and there is an article about refrigerator dough in the third edition, p. 19. Original recipe isn't posted, but referenced as coming from pre 1986 editions of Betty Crocker cookbooks, sometimes titled, "Potato refrigerator dough." It uses potato flakes or leftover mashed spuds. Worth looking into!

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  4. I found it on line:

    http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/make-ahead-potato-bread-dough/62a1773f-638e-4903-8742-c6746f0a90d0

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  5. Here's a link with "variations" on the original recipe:

    http://www.recipelink.com/msgbrd/board_2/2003/FEB/12757.html

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