Frugal Feats of the Week
Cheesy Chicken Bread
I had a kitchen experiment that went really well this week. We were having leftovers for dinner to make use of what was in the fridge, but I decided to make some soft French bread to go along with it because, well, it’s really yummy.
I made it with half wheat flour and half white flour, like I do fairly often (I’ve done it with all wheat before too). This time I decided to make one of the loaves a little more interesting my adding shredded chicken, cheese, and garlic salt.
Part of the process for making this soft and fluffy French bread involves rolling out the dough into a rectangle (like you were making cinnamon rolls). Normally I don’t put anything inside and when the dough rises and cooks you have no idea that it was ever rolled.
This time I put a row of shredded chicken (which I had in the freezer from some bone-in thighs), then sprinkled the chicken with cheddar and mozzarella cheese and come garlic salt.
I rolled the dough up by first turning over the part with the chicken so that the edge of the dough touches the dough just past the chicken, then continuing to roll the rest of the dough into a loaf shape.
I usually cut slits on my French bread, but to distinguish this as a cheesy garlic chicken bread, I put Xs on it. I let it rise and baked it according to the normal directions.
My husband and I agreed that it was wonderful!
Frugal Flop of the Week
Wasting Blackberries
This one is not only a flop, but it’s kind of shameful. I don’t like to be wasteful, so I feel bad admitting this.
My in-laws have a row of several varieties of thornless blackberries and boysenberries in the garden. For the past few years, my mother-in-law has given us one side to pick and she picks the other side. We make enough blackberry jam and syrup to last the entire year.
The berries have “on” for nearly two months now. When the weather was warmer and they were first coming on, I tried to pick every other day, or at least every third day. I would get 1/2 to a full gallon ice cream bucket of berries each time. Our freezer is loaded with berries!
Well, for the past week I have not gone out to pick a single time. And the week before that I only went once. There are loads of ripe berries that are just falling to the ground because we’re not picking them. They’re protected from birds, so there’s no competition.
It’s sad and wasteful. Free organic, homegrown, easy-to-pick berries and I’m too lazy/busy to pick them. In my defense, it has been a bit of a rough week.
We have friends coming over on Saturday that might be interested in free berries and will put them to good use.
Frugal Funny of the Week
Well, the only funnies from this week involve throw up and I’m sure you don’t want to hear about that (I didn’t either). Instead, I’ll share a funny from the summer that I shared on Instagram . I’m going to try to embed the video and caption below, but if that doesn’t work, you can click here to see it.
It’s your turn!
- What were your frugal successes and failures?
- Any funny frugal moments?
That bread looks, in a word, amazing. thanks for sharing. I think this is a great way to step back and take a look at frugality.
Since I’ve started getting up at 6am to go running, it has made my evenings a little rocky. By the time I’m home from my day job, I’m cranky and don’t want to cook. To try and make things a little easier, I chopped all of the veggies and prepared all of the lunches ahead of time for the week. I even prepped one meal! I planned to prep all of our meals, but silly me forgot to take the meat out of the freezer. Oh well I guess I tried lol.
I do the stuffed bread frequently. I make sandwich sizes ones instead of a big loaf. I bake big batches of them, with a variety of inexpensive fillings, and toss them in the freezer for ‘fast food’.
That bread looks ah-mazing!
We used to have a several vines of delicious grapes in our backyard. Last year we did not pick a single one!! All of the sudden, at the end of the season, I realized that we hadn’t picked any. I ran outside to check and sure enough, thousands of grapes were just wilting away on our fence. I felt terrible! So, you aren’t as naughty as me. 🙂
So sorry to hear about the throw-up. Something’s going around here, too. On Thursday when I picked my kids up from school, one mum told me that her daughter was home sick after throwing up all night, and she thought her son (who is in my son’s class) might be next. Sure enough, on Friday, when I picked my kids up from school, my son said, “Something sad happened at school today. Max* threw up.” Poor kid. That was the last day of term; we have two weeks of school holidays; and so far my kids haven’t showed any signs, so touch wood they avoid it this time around. (Last year there was this vicious bug going around school, and about 80 kids and 4 teachers – out of a school of 100 kids and 6 teachers – were off sick, all at the same time.)
(*Not his real name.)
Sorry to hear about the blackberries. Hopefully your friends will take lots! We were given plums and went and picked pears from a neighbors tree. I only wish we had brought a bigger bucket! I need to learn to can and get some canning equipment, but for now we’re eating them for snacks and meals. And being 30 weeks pregnant, I feel like I’m eating all the time so having extra fresh fruit has been a blessing!
The filled bread sounds delicious, for us we’d have to do it minus the chicken. Saturday last week we went to my Grandma’s house to pick up her deep freezer. She passed away almost 4 years ago and my Dad is a single man who eats mostly from the microwave so he hasn’t used it. The food that was in there was 8 years old. We thawed the food to toss it and saved the canning jars. We got 80 jars from the freezer! After cleaning them I split them with my sister who lives locally. It’s not a super huge freezer, maybe 7 cu ft but it’s a great size for us since we eat mostly fresh produce. We put a few quick meals in there, like pizza and samosas, for those days we’re tempted to go out because no one wants to cook. We’ve got our smoothie ingredients in there too.