Several years ago I had a series on Six Figures Under where I would share our weekly frugal adventures. My daughter was reading through some of those posts recently and told me I should share more fun stories, not just boring budget updates and grocery hauls!
While the 13-year-old crowd isn’t my target audience, I think she has a good point. So here we go!
I’m not committing to do it weekly, but I’ll periodically share more light-hearted, personal frugal life posts. I would love to hear your frugal adventures in the comments!
If you’re a newer reader and you want to see the posts I’m talking about, you can find them here.
Frugal Feats
We found a few new ways to eat kale.
That might not sound like a frugal feat to you, so let me explain why that’s wonderful and frugal. We have lots of beautiful kale growing in our winter garden right now, which pretty much means free food (free super food even)! But, if I don’t figure out a way to get my people (let’s be honest, and myself) to eat it, it will just go to waste. And wasting food isn’t frugal.
I found a great recipe for buttery garlic rice and kale.
I also made a sweet potato, sausage and kale bake (I looked up a few recipes, then made my own version). That gets double credit because it also uses sweet potatoes from our fall garden that are currently hanging out in the garage.
We even found that kale was good mixed into our potato soup. It takes just a little bit of steam to make kale wilt and soften into a much milder flavor, and the steam from hot potato soup was just enough to do the trick.
Do you have a favorite way to eat kale? Bonus points if the kids like it too!
Frugal Flops
This one was a literal flop. While making lunch, I was dancing around the kitchen with my energetic one-year-old. We can hardly handle his cuteness when he feels the rhythm of the music and starts dancing. I was getting a little wild and started jumping around.
Well, my phone was in my robe pocket (yep, I was still wearing my robe at lunchtime), when I jumped up high to make my little dance partner laugh. My phone jumped too… right out of my robe and onto the kitchen floor. I’ve dropped my six-month-old phone lots of times with no negative consequences.
Not this time though. The screen’s glass is majorly cracked this time. I must have some serious ups to make it fall hard enough for that.
Packing tape has worked so far to hold it together and keep glass shards out of my fingers. Maybe this flop also qualifies as a feat, then? At least for the time being.
Lesson learned: wait until you’re dressed to jump around in the kitchen.
Frugal Funnies
My kids often have entrepreneurial ideas. I love that they like to think big. After cleaning the seeds out of some pumpkins (which are also hanging out in our garage after the fall harvest), they had the idea to sell pumpkins or pumpkin seedlings.
Our ambitious 5-year-old calculated “if we sell a million, we will earn a million dollars!”
“But,” I interjected, “That will take up a lot of space at our house!”
“That’s okay,” she assured me. “I have LOTS of room in my piggy bank!”
It’s Your Turn!
Do you have any Frugal Feats, Flops, or Funnies to share from your home?
We really big fans of otter box phone cases around here. Our phones would not survive without them.
I also saute kale then add eggs. I love kale . I will eat raw as salad base, too. It’s good in soups, too, just add right at the end.
Boerenkoolstamppot! Real Dutch winterdish, also populair with kids.
To use lots of kale, cook it with potatoes for half an hour (500 gr kale, 1 kg potato) Drain and mash, like you would for mashed potatoes. Use some milk or butter to make it lighter ( more fluffy) and serve with gravy with bacon, a sausage or a meatball. Some serve it with appelsauce, which makes it a bit sweeter.
Eet smakelijk!
I like to sauté kale and scramble it with some eggs for breakfast. My 4 year old likes it too. I mix a little bit of kale with lettuce for our salads too.
As an elementary school librarian, there are a few times that I’m needed to help around the campus on occasion. Once I was needed to cover a 1st grade class at lunch, and from across the way I saw a student just eating bite after bite of something but I couldn’t tell exactly what it was. I wandered his way in making my rounds, and as I got closer I still wasn’t certain what he was eating so I asked what he was enjoying so much for lunch. He told me it was kale chips that his mom made. I also noticed that he had a container of Greek yogurt in his lunch box as well. I couldn’t help but think that he and Little Debbie were never going to be friends! 🙂 Since then, my college son as been lauding the benefits of kale every chance he gets.
I cracked my phone screen like that and it kept working for a good 18 months, so . . .
I have the best kale recipe. Take 1/4 cup of coconut oil and heat it in a pan. Add the kale and salt to taste. Cook until the kale is soft. The coconut oil helps it slide easily from the pan straight into the garbage bin because let’s face it, that’s where it’s going to end up anyway!
We use kale in smoothies. I find that if we freeze it first, after de-steming it, it doesn’t have the bitter taste. It blends up great and I can keep it in the freezer to just pull out when needed! I don’t try to hide it from my kids and they all love it when the smoothie is green!
Stephanie this is just a suggestion for the kale. Dehydrate it and grind it into powder. Be sure to remove the center stem before drying and it will grind to a fine powder that can be used for anything. Takes up very little room and will last a long time.
I dry spinach and kale (i mix them toghether) and use a small scoop in my smoothies, certain soups, and meatloaf,