Thrifty Thursday Roundup

This week I…

• Ate home-cooked food. This isn’t unusual, but it’s the thriftiest way to eat so it gets to be here every week. I cooked beer-braised cabbage with cannellini beans for my entree, and also cooked roasted cauliflower, roasted broccoli and instant pot collard greens to have plenty of vegetables around. For breakfasts I made a big pot of steel cut oats. I made some tofu, rice and veggie burrito bowls to freeze for my kid to eat when we need something. And finally, I made this cheesy cauliflower pie sans crust (just didn’t want to deal with it tbh) for St. Patrick’s Day and it was really good. Last night my husband made a big pot of lentil soup that we’ll eat for the next couple days.

• I got a $20 haircut. I explained my recent haircut woes in this week’s Monday Gratitude post, but basically I’ve had a long string of bad haircuts and this one finally turned out how I wanted it to. And bonus, it was only $20! Anywhere else in the neighborhood costs at least $70.

• I bought this backpack for $4.21 (regularly $80) using a combination of my REI rewards, an REI coupon and a $20 REI gift card I got for giving blood.

• I took my son to the gymnastics open gym using a punch card I bought two years ago. We went a lot when he was still napping twice (it’s free for under 12 months and a fun place for a crawling baby to explore), but when he dropped to one nap we realized all their open gyms were during his new nap time. Seriously, they’re ALL between the hours of noon and 2pm. This has felt like a huge oversight on their part, since the open gyms are specifically for babies and toddlers. This year they opened a new time slot for kids under three from 9-10am and we’ve been going almost every week. We now have just one punch left, and just one more week before he turns three.

• I took him to the Museum of Flight (we’re members) Sunday morning so my husband could do a little cooking in peace. I didn’t take any pictures, so this is a photo from a playground, which is also a frugal destination.

• We bought big bags of lentils, oats and rice at the chef store. I don’t remember how much this cost, but it’s much cheaper per pound than the regular grocery store. For us, the chef store is what people seem to think Costco is – the most cost-effective place to buy bulk food. We do shop for some things at Costco, but I find they primarily sell large packages of convenience/pre-cooked foods and that’s just not how we eat.