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The Kitchen Recessionista

So, here we are, in a recession. Let's eat!

Five Frugal Things.

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Chik’n divan, Round 1, from Saturday night.

From a lowered electric bill to a passel of pizza, it’s been a pretty frugal week so far! Here are some of my top frugality wins.

1. Our electric bill is lower than a year ago!
This was definitely the biggest frugal win of the week/month: Our electric bill came in the mail this week and I was delighted to find that our electricity usage for last month was a good hundred-plus kilowatt hours lower than in April 2023. LeeLee and I have been working very hard this month to keep lights off when not in use and, most importantly, our HVAC thermostat at a higher temperature, and our hard work has paid off! We’re thrilled by this and hope it can continue for May.

2. I got a free expedited shipping code on running shoes I needed to buy anyway.
Now, these shoes – Hokas – are decidedly NOT cheap, but they’re what my ol’ bones need at this point in my life, so anything I can do to get them for slightly cheaper is a win in my book. I was hoping to get them before the weekend but certainly wasn’t willing to pay $20 for expedited shipping, so I was thrilled to find a free-expedited-shipping promo code on the site!

3. We got a BOGO coffee deal (of GOOD coffee!) at the grocery store.
I make a habit of trolling the 50%-off bins at both the Safeway and the Harris Teeter whenever I visit them, and while usually I come away empty-handed, sometimes they yield great rewards. This time, I left with $28 of good coffee for $14; a win for our coffee-guzzling household!

4. We’ve been using our “weekend leftover” plan with great success.
Remember how I wrote about our new “Leftover Revolution” the other week? Well, it’s still going strong! This week we enjoyed spaghetti pie (left over from Friday night) and chik’n divan (originally made on Saturday), plus plenty of leftover sandwich fixings for lunches. What a joy! But the best leftovers are yet to come, with …

5. Free pizza from work!
I went into the office today – a rarity for me nowadays, but today several of my remote-working friends were in town – and the office operations team hosted a pizza lunch. An hour or so after the dust had settled and everyone had had their fill, I sauntered back through the kitchen and brought home a few more pieces for LeeLee and me to enjoy tomorrow for lunch. I carried them home by bike in a little to-go container, which I tucked into my backpack for safekeeping. ;)

What have been some of your frugal wins (or sins!) this week? Sound off in the comments!

:)

New Recipe: Vegan Chirashi Bowls.

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To be honest, I can’t believe I haven’t written about my love of chirashi bowls yet on these pages. My adoration for such things runs so very deep, I feel like I want to sing it from the rooftops! So here I am, on the virtual rooftop, bellowing as loudly as my lungs will let me. Do you hear me loud and clear?

I became a fan of chirashi bowls a good long time ago when one of our favorite sushi bars, Zento, opened up here in Alexandria, Va. They had a vegetarian chirashi bowl, and I ordered it sight unseen. My heart sang with what was served to me – all manner of vegetables and tofu atop a bed of sushi rice – and I knew instantly that it was destined to become a classic go-to in our home. We already love sushi so much around here, hosting entire parties around it, and chirashi bowls were a perfect fit into the repertoire.

The beauty of these bowls is that the possibilities are endless. Whatever veggies or proteins you have on hand, whatever sauces or toppings you can find the fridge, will have a home atop this rice. And the sushi rice itself is a cinch to make: Just add your sushi rice to a rice cooker (or pot), then add adequate water, and top off with some sugar-vinegar mixture and you’re at the finish line already. Easy!

We typically enjoy our chirashi bowls with some combination of avocado, shredded carrots, cucumber slices or shreds, wasabi peas, Garden “fish,” and rice seasoning, topped with Sriracha or hoisin or soy sauce (or all three!). But really, whatever you have in your fridge or pantry will fit the bill. Edamame? Put it on! Sliced cherry tomatoes? Go for it. Your ingredients need not be traditional to be good.

What’s your favorite chirashi combination? Let us know in the comments!

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Vegan Chirashi Bowls

The beauty of these bowls is that the possibilities are endless. Whatever veggies or proteins you have on hand, whatever sauces or toppings you can find the fridge, will have a home atop this rice. 

  • Author: KitchenRecessionista
  • Prep Time: 15 minutes
  • Cook Time: 25 minutes
  • Total Time: 40 minutes
  • Yield: 2-4 servings

Ingredients

1 cup of sushi rice

1.5 cups of water

¼ cup rice vinegar

2 tbsp. sugar

Rice seasoning, to taste

1 avocado, sliced

1 cup shredded carrots

½ cucumber, cut into slices (crosswise or lengthwise – either works!)

¼ cup wasabi peas

1 package Gardein fish (or tofu, or any other veggie protein you have on hand)

Sriracha, hoisin and soy sauce, to taste

Instructions

First, make your sushi rice according to package directions. (My Instant Pot calls for 1 cup of rice to 1.5 cups of water.) As the rice cooks, boil the vinegar and sugar together and let cool. When the rice is ready, drizzle the vinegar mixture through the rice, ensuring an even coat, and spoon the rice into bowls (we typically divide the rice in half into two bowls for a large dinner portion). Top the rice with some rice seasoning if you are so inclined.

 

Next, divide your veggies and protein up evenly and place atop the bowls of rice. Scatter wasabi peas on top along with your sauces, if using, and dig in! Chopsticks not required (but always encouraged).

Five Frugal Things.

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A chandelier at the Tennessee Capitol, which we visited last weekend.

I’ve got to say, even though I didn’t think I’d make this a regular feature, I’m really enjoying keeping a bit of a tally on some of the frugal hacks I’ve been taking! It’s fun to look back at the week and see that I haven’t behaved like a Rockefeller all week. These little ditties don’t have to be big to be important when it comes to my bottom line!

With that preamble, here are five ways I’ve been frugal-minded over the past week or so.

1. We were able to keep our HVAC system turned completely off for the past month.
There are many things I love about springtime in Northern Virginia, but one of the top features is how temperate the weather can be when it wants to. For the past month – maybe a bit more, actually – we’ve been able to regulate the house temperature purely by opening and closing some of our windows! Between that and LeeLee’s trusty desk fan in his office (our home doesn’t have ceiling fans), we’ve been able to keep the house at a very comfortable temperature for a month-plus. Sadly, our streak was broken just this afternoon, when I broke down and turned the air conditioning on after the mercury outside hit 92 degrees. But don’t fret; the thermostat is still set at a moderate 75 degrees, and once things cool down to that level, I don’t expect a lot of fluctuation over the coming days and weeks.

2. We won free tickets to “The Tonight Show”!
LeeLee and I have a little weekend trip to New York planned next month, and when the lottery for “The Tonight Show” opened up I threw my hat into the ring at once. Lo and behold, after years of attempts, we won! And guess what? The tickets are free of charge. Talk about your win-wins! While New York is not known as a frugal vacation spot, we try to shave costs when we can on these trips; I’m expecting some 99-cent pizza dinners in our future, as well as free breakfast at the hotel. I think I’ll write a post about our frugal New York trips sometime soon; you can actually see a lot of the city without breaking the bank!

3. I picked up a buy-one-get-one deal on CoQ10.
I take CoQ10 on the advice of my nutritionist to help regulate my blood pressure, and the bottles of supplements are not cheap. So imagine my pleasant surprise when our local Harris Teeter had a BOGO the other day! I was running very low anyway, so after comparing the BOGO price with what Amazon had it listed for, I deemed it a very good deal indeed and snapped up two bottles. That’ll lower the blood pressure! ;)

4. I passed my unsuitable coffee over to LeeLee.
The other day, I got so excited to find one of my favorite Cuban-style ground coffee canisters at the grocery store and I snapped it up right away. Unfortunately, when I got home I remembered it was a very finely ground espresso, which my beloved French press doesn’t deal with well. No matter! LeeLee prefers the ease of a Keurig (with compostable paper filters, not the plastic cups), so I just passed the full canister over to him and he’ll be set for a good long time.

5. Speaking of LeeLee: He sent a very frugal parcel through the mail from us to … us!
We were in Nashville over the weekend for a half-marathon I was running with a friend – we’d made a couples trip out of the adventure! – and after we arrived we realized LeeLee was very low on contact-lens solution. We stopped by the local Publix (my favorite grocery store) to pick up some snacks and meals for the room, so while we were there we picked up some more solution. Unfortunately, it didn’t come in a travel size, so LeeLee begrudgingly bought the full size … which only came in a two-pack. The hiccup? We carried our luggage on the plane rather than checking, and so did our friends. What to do? I’m not proud of this, but I was all set to just eat the $17 we’d spent and leave the bottles behind. But LeeLee went to the front desk, asked if they could ship it back home for us, and the answer was yes! So he packaged it up and dropped it off, and the parcel will be joining us back here in no time. Even better? This service was gratis! Now that’s Southern hospitality.

What have been some of your frugal wins in the past week? Sound off in the comments!

:) 

Join the Leftover Revolution!

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Last night’s penne with veggie-meatballs, plus bread, plus a salad: All leftovers, all wonderful.

Friends, with the world so challenging as it is right now, I’m almost loath to proclaim a new revolution, but take heart! This is a positive revolution. And on the heels of Earth Day, it’s a downright planet-friendly one. It’s the Leftover Revolution, and LeeLee and I are new converts. We want you to join the team, too!

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote in my Five Frugal Things that we’d developed a new way of handling our leftovers, earmarking them for dinner instead of lunch and reaping considerable rewards in the process. This plan started earlier in the year when LeeLee was gone for work a lot; I’d make a big pan of something-or-other over the weekend, then immediately scoop half of it up and put it in the fridge for later dinners. If he was gone for four nights, it was nothing at all for me to surf my way through leftovers all week, never needing to fire up the stove for an additional meal. And as an added benefit, that time I’d spent cooking at night? I could spend it reading, or writing, or – let’s be honest – watching the occasional rerun of “Designing Women.” It was, in a word, heaven. 

So when LeeLee arrived back home on a more consistent basis, I knew something needed to change long-term. Gone were the days of me cooking something new every single night of my life. Instead, here were the days of the Leftover Revolution.

Our weeks now look a bit more like this: I make something leftover-friendly on Friday (earmarked for Monday’s dinner), and then another leftover-friendly meal on Saturday or Sunday (earmarked for Tuesday). One of our guilty pleasures is ordering Chinese once a week, so that’s three of four weeknights squared away, and then often I’ll do something very hands-off (an Instant Pot or Crock-Pot creation, for instance) for the fourth night. In the process, I’m saving SO much time – and SO much money!

In these inflationary times, our grocery budget has taken a big hit, like so many others in the nation. But I’m proud to say that since January, we’ve stayed in budget, saving hundreds of dollars in grocery costs just by using our existing meals more wisely. And getting back to Earth Day: This is great for the planet, too! Our amount of wasted food has taken a nosedive, which is a total win.

Lower costs, less waste, and a tasty meal to enjoy? What’s not to love? Join the Leftover Revolution, friends! There’s room for all!

:)

Five Frugal Things.

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I enjoyed last week’s edition of Five Frugal Things so much, I decided to give it another try! This has been a pleasingly frugal few days for me, so I figured I’d strike while the iron was hot.

And so, for a second week in a row, I present … Five Frugal Things.

1. I used a $5-off Ace coupon (on things I actually needed).
Every month, we get these coupons in the mail from our local Ace Hardware, and every month I dutifully pin them to our kitchen tackboard in the hopes that I’ll remember to use them when we visit Ace. To be honest, it’s rare that I remember – and when I do remember, I often don’t make the minimum $30 purchase to be eligible. But on Monday, when the bathtub drain elected to clog (see Item Two for how that turned out!), I marched straight down to our local Ace and purchased some Drano, a new HVAC filter for spring, and a small bag of potting mix for some plants LeeLee and I had brought home over the weekend. I confidently pulled my coupon out from my wallet, handed it to the cashier, and voila! Five dollars off. I love it.

2. I fixed a clog in our bathtub drain (for now, at least).
The reason I had to storm off to the Ace first thing before work on Monday was due to the aforementioned clog in the tub. It started out Sunday night, actually, when I ran the bathroom sink and heard a sad little “glug glug glug” coming from the tub drain behind me. As the sink drain connects to the tub a little further down the line, I knew I was in for PlungeFest ’24 when morning came, and that’s just how I launched the day. Sadly, my wielding of the plunger brought no joy, so I went to Ace for some Drano to see if that would do the trick. (I know, I know, Drano and its ilk aren’t items one ought to use often on pipes, and I promise I don’t, but I was grasping at options here.) Sadly, the Drano also brought no joy. So at lunchtime, I decided I’d had enough, and after flushing the tub and drain a few more times, I donned my rubber gloves and safety glasses and went to town again with the plunger, plunging like I’d never plunged before. Then – success! The clog cleared and the tub drains freely again. Victory – for today, at least!

3. Our “leftovers for dinner” trend has persisted.
I made some tater-tot casserole with a side salad on Sunday night, and it turned out to be a bumper crop. We’ve been munching on it all week (save for Monday, when we did go out on a date), and finally finished it as of Wednesday evening. I’m especially proud that we’ve gotten lots more use out of our salad fixings, as well; often I store leftover black olives and such in the fridge and completely forget about them until well past their expiration date, but this week we’ve made our way through it all, leaving no trace!

4. I made a Fancy Salad for lunch out of odds and ends in the fridge and freezer.
Speaking of leftovers: Part of the way I used those salad fixings from Item Three was with what I like to call a Fancy Salad (pictured above). LeeLee was away for lunch earlier this week, and I took the opportunity to whip up a special lunch salad, which felt positively decadent in the middle of a workday! The best thing about it was how I already had everything on hand, from the Gardein “beef” I warmed up in a pan to the spinach and carrots from my smoothie stash, to some leftover mozzarella and salad toppers I dug out of the fridge and cabinet, respectively. A win!

5. I filed an amendment to our income taxes.
This isn’t necessarily frugal on its face, but it was definitely necessary and would’ve just gotten more expensive the longer I waited. Literally one day after I filed this year’s taxes, one last form I’d been waiting on came floating into my inbox with mere hours to spare till the clock struck April 16. I fired my trusty TurboTax back up and filed an amendment right away to avoid any late fees or other surprises from our friends at the IRS. This is one of those things that would have been easy to postpone and procrastinate on, but I’m so relieved I’ve gotten it done already! I hope the IRS feels the same way. ;)

What are your frugal wins (or losses – I won’t judge!) for the week? Sound off in the comments!

:)

Five Frugal Things.

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I’m taking a page from the playbook of Kristen at The Frugal Girl and jotting down some of my frugal wins over the past week or so! Unlike Kristen, I doubt I’ll write this up weekly, but a little evaluation now and again never hurt anybody, right? So here we go.

1. We’ve enjoyed many leftovers.

Earlier this year, I came to a realization: If I make heartier, leftover-friendly meals once or twice over the weekend, I can stretch those meals out over our weeknight dinners to take the pressure off me in the evenings after work. I don’t know why it took *checks calendar* 20 years to figure this out – before now, we’d always used our leftovers for lunches instead, and made a lot more two-serving meals on the weekends – but better late than never, I say. So far this week we’ve enjoyed leftover pizza (with a fresh salad) on Monday from lunch out on Saturday, as well as jambalaya last night, leftovers from Sunday. Given that we order Chinese takeout once a week from our favorite spot, that leaves me only one weeknight meal a week to be responsible for, which comes at a great relief in these busy times!

2. I scanned some receipts into Fetch.

Sometimes, I wonder whether Fetch is worth it; it takes an age to garner enough points to convert to gift cards! But seeing how each receipt scan takes about five seconds, I feel the work is worth the eventual reward.

3. I mailed our eclipse glasses out for donation.

This isn’t so much frugal for me as it will be for the next user, but I loved this idea so I’m sharing it here. Several groups are organizing eclipse glasses donations for children in Latin America to enjoy the August solar eclipse, and I chose Eclipse Glasses USA as my donation program of choice. (Astronomers Without Borders also offers a donation program.) It makes me happy that these glasses will get another use right away!

4. As usual, I’m knee-deep in library books.

It’s a good thing our nearest branch is right in my neighborhood, because I’m forever blazing a trail to and from the library to pick up or return books! I’ve waxed poetic about the beauty of local libraries in these pages before, but it always bears repeating (and during National Library Week, at that!). I’m very lucky in that our local library system has an abundance of materials, from the latest hits to old favorites and plenty of as-yet-unknown treats among the stacks. Between their hard-copy books and their electronic materials (I make considerable use of the audiobooks!), I’m never without something to read. In fact, this week I’m reading Caster Semenya’s “The Race to Be Myself,” and am listening to “The Lager Queen of Minnesota,” both from our local library.

5. I put some items into Rotation and received some back in return.

Now, I don’t think I’ve said much about Rotation in these pages, and as I write this it occurs to me I should probably write a longer post about the joys of Rotation. But essentially, it comes down to this: My friends and I have a pipeline of items forever shuttling between our homes, from borrowed items or co-owned items (my friend Denise and I went in halvsies on a steam cleaner early in the pandemic, for instance) to giveaways. This week, I’ve received a brand-new bag of coffee that Denise couldn’t use, and in the meantime I’ve sent two books and a jigsaw puzzle her way. In short: Rotation is the best. I’ll write more about it soon!

What have you been doing to keep things on the frugal side lately? Tell us in the comments!

:)