Thursday Thrifty Roundup

This week I…

• Bought a transit pass loaded with $250 for $125 ($140 after administrative fees). I have student status at North Seattle College through my kid’s co-op preschool. I’m enrolled in one pass/fail credit each quarter. That one credit makes me eligible for some student perks, though, like a discounted transit pass. I wish I’d bought one each quarter this year, but it took several months to correct an error in my enrollment. I bought one last year and I still have about $65 left on it, so one pass lasts me a while.

• Used my student status to get 5% off at Safeway for the next year. I tried setting this up earlier in the year, but was held up by that same enrollment issue. When I finally got it set up, I figured it would only be valid for the remainder of the quarter, and this is my last quarter in the program. I was so happy to see the discount is good for a while year! We buy 95% of our groceries at Safeway, and this will save us thousands of dollars.

• Food prepped, of course. Before we went on vacation I froze some sweet potato and pinto bean taco filling, and I’ve been eating that on some corn tortillas, with broccoli on the side. I also made a big batch of oatmeal, some plain popcorn for snacking, and those roasted garbanzo beans went into a big pasta salad I made to get us a few easy dinners. I also made a big batch of Ethiopian red lentils with spinach. We ate some Tuesday night and have leftovers for later, and I also froze some in Souper Cubes to bring to some neighbors who have a new baby. Every time I cook for friends with a new baby I experience immense relief knowing it’s not us. Never again.

• Packed a picnic dinner (some of that pasta salad) to bring to the farmer’s market so we didn’t have to buy food. They have booths with some fun snacks and treats, but their meal options are expensive and underwhelming, and the lines are crazy long. After I explained the concept to him, B was really excited about picnic. He talked all day about picnic. Then when picnic happened, he was uncooperative. So that’s another reason to bring food from home – at least it wasn’t a twenty Buddha bowl he kicked all over the blanket.
• Found B a free bike. He has one of those glider bikes with no pedals and has never figured it out. Somebody put a toddler bike with training wheels out on the sidewalk with a “free” sign, and it looked like it was in good shape. I looked the bike up and it’s for age 3-5, which means it should be the right size for him. He’s used to seeing us pedal our bikes, so I’m hoping we’ll have better luck with this one. It’s also a pretty expensive little bike, so extra nice that I got it for free.