Frugal Friday

Today is Frugal Friday and I thought I'd share a recipe of an inexpensive meal that is tasty and stretches far. I spent the day studying, writing and working on a Bible study yesterday and by the time dinner rolled around, I was mentally tired and not in the mood to spend a lot of time making dinner.

So I made a pot of hamburger soup. I never like the name of it because it doesn't sound appealing, but it really is quite good. It's also versatile because you can change up some of the ingredients. Someone asked me for the recipe so I thought I'd post it here. However, I make things up as I go so I'm typing as I remember what I did.

Hamburger Soup

1 1/2 - 2 lbs. ground beef (depends on how much meat you like in it)
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 celery stalks, diced
2 carrots, diced
3 potatoes, diced
1 cup of frozen corn, green beans or peas (I used corn this time)
1 28 oz. can diced tomatoes
2 8 oz. cans tomato sauce
1/2 cup red wine (optional)
2 cups of beef broth (optional)
Enough water to cover everything
1 bay leaf
Salt, pepper, dried oregano, dried basil to taste
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley (optional)

Sauté veggies until softened in a large pot or Dutch oven. Remove from pan and add ground beef and brown. Combine all ingredients in the pot and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for 30 minutes or until the potatoes and carrots are soft. 

Enjoy! You can leave out the potatoes and add a cup of cooked elbow macaroni or rice just before serving.

Everyone liked it and Dan and the boys had two bowls each plus there is a bit left for lunch today. You can serve it with homemade bread if you want.

Some other ways I've saved this week:

$ About a month ago I purchased an airline ticket to go to Florida for a conference at the end of May. I used cheaptickets.com and the mistake I made was that I was so busy looking for the right flight times that I didn't pay attention to the airline I was choosing until after I clicked purchase. I mistakenly chose Frontier Airlines which I've not heard good things about. And the biggest problem is you cannot cancel the ticket once you buy it so I was stuck. 

However, they contacted me last week to tell me that they changed my flight to arrive 7 1/2 hours later than previously scheduled. Not acceptable because I chose the time I needed to arrive to be there on time. So I took a chance and called them. Because it was their change and it was so much later, they refunded my ticket plus gave me a $75 voucher for a future flight with them.

$ I cut both Nathan and Dan's hair.

$ When I made the food for our church luncheon last week I really overestimated the amount of cornbread I needed. I made 1/2 a sheet pan and came back home with about a 9x13" pan amount leftover. We will never eat that much cornbread and it gets progressively drier after it sits. The other night, I crumbled it up and turned it into cornbread dressing to go with chicken for dinner. It worked well in that dish and I didn't have to throw it away.

$ I made a batch of laundry soap.

$ I have 6 types of bar soap curing above my cupboards.

$ My consecration mentor helped me discover the joy of Zoom meetings. I used to have to drive an hour one way to meet with her, now we meet via Zoom which is an online meeting so we can still see each other but from the comfort of our own office/home. It's kind of like Skype.

That's it for this week. I like doing Frugal Fridays because they keep me on track!