Episode three seventy, the first Annual Dinner Awards Best dinner Recipes to meal plan.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and deliver life. Here your hosts, Jen and Jill.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast first Annual Dinner Awards, where we will be sharing feedback from our listeners, from our friend letter subscribers, and our own personal preferences to help you create essentially a two week meal plan of things you're actually gonna want to eat, ingredients you have on hand that you can actually afford and use in its entirety. And we are we are stoked about it. Jill, Jill, how are you feeling today?
Oh, I'm jazzed about this. Jen.
I am in my most formal and formal where we just we love to get out, we love to get dressed up, and couldn't be more excited to bring to our listeners what they've voted for what we believe to be the top rated, easiest, yummiest recipes. This is going to be a night to remember. But first, Jen, I've I do have a question for all of our listeners. You know I've got the mic over here, I'm interviewing different people, and I want to know, who are you wearing?
Oh, oh my gosh, thank you. I'm wearing Old Navy circa twenty twelve. I am I think this is Target circa twenty fifteen. And oh and then this the piece de resistance, a sweater as Amazon circa twenty twenty three.
Actually, beautiful, beautiful, you look lovely. You look out again tonight to our listeners as well. Is it Massimo you wearing fruit of the loom? You got some no boundaries on Kirkland? Whoever it is?
You look great, Kirkland.
It is that. Yeah, it is Kirkland sheet. I do not actually make enough to afford the Kirkland line. But one day I'm hoping we all look readitations, we all look ready.
For tonight's awards show.
And hey, while I've got you here, listeners, I've got another question for you. What's for dinner? Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry.
I'm upset you.
I know you get that question a lot. If this is a real pain for you, try Cooksmarts. They are a meal planning service that does the work for you of planning out your week, giving you a grocery list take giving you just a stack of fantastic easy recipe so you can always have an answer to not just who are you wearing, but also what's for dinner? Forrualfriendspodcast dot com, slash cs we got a lot. We love our sponsors. It's what makes these award shows possible.
Yes, I do. Jill forgot to ask what are you wearing? You are radiant?
Oh oh thanks Jen.
You know people don't normally turn that question back on me as the interviewer. But I'm over here in a linen tea that I picked up at a local yard sale from an elderly woman. She was cleaning out her closet. She had impeccable taste. There's no label on it. It's just it's it's circa the Neighborhood Brandless. Brandless's that is.
So twenty twenty four. It means thank you, thank you. All right, Well, let's get to the real star of the show, meal planning. We love meal planning, and here's why we love saving money on groceries. The big three expenses you're going to have every month, housing, transportation, and food. Food is a decision that you will make every day, probably three or more times a day. And so if you can nail down food first, it's the lowest barrier to entry. If you can nail this down, then you
can get so many other things right. You can free up your space to get so many other things wrong too. So meal planning is that first step to saving money on groceries. When you create a meal plan, then you can create a grocery list. You can then prep food to either reheat throughout the week or to make cooking easier throughout the week. And meal planning really is that first step. So we have a lot of episodes on
meal planning. We've got episode three point fifty four meal Planning for people who hate to cook, a lot of one pot no cook tips there, Episode two meal Prep and Freezer meal Tips we dive into our love for the freezer, and then episode two thirty four meal planning apps compared. We talk about cook Smarts, but we also talk about a lot of the other meal planning apps and meal kit services to see what's right for you, your dietary restrictions, what season is going to be, what's
right in what season? Because we love meal planning apps for a season, we don't think it's a long term for most people. Most some people love meal planning apps and they'll use them long term, but we think they're usually a seasonal solution to your meal planning problems, and they can also help you get acclimated and familiar with meal planning. So love those episodes to queue up after
this one. But let's not waste any more time. We are going to go through this and a essentially, we are going to give you a blueprint for a two week meal plan with some of your favorite types of dinners to meal plan. In the friend letter, we asked you what are your favorite types of meals to meal plan and recipes and we got a lot of great ideas for you. So we are using those ideas that you already love, or that some of you love. One hundred and sixty one of you responded, so, one hundred
and sixty one of you love these things. So we're hoping that the other you know, twenty thousand of you will also create.
Fine the representatives, right, OK?
Good?
Right?
So, and then we are going to have the links to all of these recipes. This essentially this meal plan tomorrow in the friend Letter, So sign up today when this episode airs, hopefully you're listening to an on release day episode three seventy on January ninth, and tomorrow. You'll get all of this in the friend letter. We may also post it on social media at a later date, so if you're listening to this at a later date, head to Frugal Friends podcast on Instagram and see if you can find it there.
I'm I'm so excited about this. This was my number one, especially especially in my debt payoff journey of what do I cook? How do I cook at home? Feeling like I'm in a rut? A lot of us will turn to Facebook and just ask our friends what do you cook? What's your go to meal? But here you go, here's here's some go to meals.
I hope that we can take the last two weeks of January of no spend January and maybe give you some ideas for the rest of the month if the meal plan you've made maybe isn't working for you, or maybe you only meal meal planned the first two weeks of the month. Here we go. We're starting it off strong. Our award winners for Chili Monday Chili.
We're gonna eat chili. Yes.
In the friend letter, you guys said, you love a chili in the crockpot. Actually you love instant pot and crocpoc meals the most to meal plan and I do too. I love an instant pot meal. And one of those meals you love is chili. And we all have our favorite meat based chili recipe, our ground b for ground sausage chili recipe. So we're gonna give you some alternatives to that that are less expensive. And my contribution to Chili Monday for Week one is the butternut squash Chipotle
chili from Cookie and Kate. I when I didn't eat meat, this was my favorite favorite chili because I love I'm a Chipotle lover. And just top this off with some tortillas tois strips and avocado and goodness, and it's vegetarian so you're not spending the money on meat.
Oh that's that's a beautiful one.
I love it when people can use ingredients in some new ways, introduce some different flavors. I think that's what helps us to maintain and have longevity in eating at home, when we get to have new things, enjoy the food that we're eating at home. The other one, so this is going in a template right. Every Monday now for the next two weeks can be a chili Monday. You can do the butternut squash chipotle chili on one Monday,
and the next Monday try this one turkey chili. So one of the reasons we are picking a turkey chili is the cost of it. Usually turkey per pound is going to run you a bit less then beef per pound is. Currently as we're recording, this comparison of about three dollars and ninety six cents versus four twenty two per pound, not a drastic difference, but also for those who might be watching nutritional intake or just might prefer turkey, this is a great one. It comes from ambitious kitchen
and what we also love about chili. What you also love about chili is how little time it takes to make and you can set it and forget it, and then all of these ingredients combine to create such a lovely flavor. So you're only prepping, you're spending ten minutes of hands on time. Total cook times forty five minutes. Of course, it can be longer to let all of those goodie goodness juices and flavors meld together. What We also love about chili is that you can jush it
up however you want. There's some hot takes out there, whether you can put chili over pasta, chili over rice. Some people say chili over nothing, just chili in a bowl. I'm team rice. I think chili makes sense over rice. Chili never made sense to me over pasta. But all my Chicago babes don't come out at me. I'll try it, just haven't evid I.
Do love a chili over pasta, but I am a chili purist and I am chili over nothing.
Yeah, but also chili over nothing, but on top of chili, avocado, chips, cheese, sour cream, hallapenally.
Whatever you have in the fridge that's just languishing there, it can probably go on top of chili almost anything. And the thing I love about so obviously we're not doing chili Monday every Monday of our lives, right, But if you do it for two weeks, it's gonna be hot July every Monday.
Gross you'll have to do another award show.
Yes, we will. So if you do it two weeks, if you do a two week meal plan like this and you do chili Monday two Mondays in a row. Right, you're not thinking about it, and you can reuse a lot of the produce that you bought for chili Monday week one. Use the rest of it for chili Monday
week two. You can prep everything that first week, Chop everything, potatoes, carrots, onion, peppers, chop it all and put it in your chili on the first Monday, freeze the rest, and then it's already prepped and ready to go for chili Monday week two. Oh love that?
Wow?
Okay, next up, we're moving right along to Tuesday. Tuesday comes after Monday every week.
Every week, and Tuesday when you get there, you're like, oh, Monday's over, thankfully, But oh my lord, I have the rest of the week. It's not even that way done. Thursday is pre for Friday. Wednesday's hun Day. Tuesday is Tuesday is the worst day of the week. Convinced me otherwise, Tuesday.
So what are we gonna do on Tuesday?
No cook Tuesday, We're gonna cot No one's cooking.
One of the options that was not an option in the poll was no cook meals, and several of you in our feedback said no cook, No cook that's my favorite cooking and I am with you, I see you, I'm here with you. Tuesday is no cook We don't even have recipes for this one, right, So my contribution to no cook Tuesday is the Caprese chicken salad. I tried to find a recipe for this. I made it up and I'm sure. I was like, surely somebody else is doing this, but no they're not. So what I
do is I always have shredded chicken meal prepped. So if you've seen if you follow my in Frugality or Frugal Friends podcast on Instagram, then you know I have a real where I should walk you through how I
meal prep my shredded chicken. And I'll get five pounds of frozen chicken breast from Walmart great value, shout out, and put that in the pressure cooker for I think thirty minutes, cook it all up, transfer that to the kitchen Aid mixer with a just a handle attachment, just the regular one, and literally in fifteen seconds, five pounds of chicken is shredded, no forks necessary, I hate fork shredding.
And then I put that in five bags, freeze them, and I have shredded chicken cooked whenever I want, so I will take a bag of that out. I will get the small mozzarella balls, the tiny little one. Yes they're so cod but you could also use shredded mozzarella if you wanted. I'll use pesto, and that's my basil. And then I'll chop cherry tomatoes in half. Mix that all up. That's it. And sometimes I will cook up some pasta if I need some carbs, like some extra
carbs that day. So it's like a capraes chicken pasta salad. But that's it. There's no mayo, nothing else, maybe a little mos salt and pepper. I love I love that.
That sounds so good.
You've talked about this before and I have yet to try it, but I love it. I love what you're doing over there. Mine for no cook Tuesday is CHARCOOTERI why not. It's basically our adult lunchables. It's basically clean out the breach day. It's whatever you got. You'd be amazed at how much food it looks like when you just pull some crackers out of your pantry. Slice up an apple. Here's my I slice my apples really thin. It seems luxurious that way. More surface area for whatever
else you want to put on it. I don't know, it's fun. Slice some thin, do something different, nuts, olives, if you got any berries going on, bread, whatever leftover bread you got happening, and there you go. That's that's that is charcuterie. Slice up some cheese, roll up some lunch meat or maybe elevated meat, whatever you've got summer sausage.
Cut that out.
Yeah we're not we're not talking. Go out and buy the packs of salamis and pepperonis and like twenty dollars worth of meat. Here, our charcooterie, frugal friend charcouterie is whatever you got on hand and just girl dinner it girl dinner.
Yep.
You can plate it well, you can make it look cute. Yeah, but you've got stuff and you're free and pantry and you can add vegetables to your sharcouterie. But also, if you want, this is going to be bonus for you. If you've still got left over chili. Alternative no cook Tuesday, could be some loaded nachos. Just spread out a bunch of tortilla chips, put that leftover chili on top of it. Maybe sprinkle some cheese. If you feel like throwing it in the toaster oven. I mean, go for it. I'd
recommend it. If you count that as cooking, then then don't eat it cold.
There's no roles, no rules, just right. Oh man, all right, that's okay. So if we give an honorable mention to no cooked Tuesday, I want to give an honorable mention to chili Monday, which is white chicken chili with the green chilies. That canon, uh, you've got a can of green chilies that you don't know what to do with chicken white chicken chili. So that's honorable mention. Maybe that's week three.
Okay, okay, all right, Now what comes after Tuesday?
All right, after Tuesday comes Wednesday? And Wednesday is not much better? Am i am? I right? It's not pump Day, it's it's not much better. Sometimes I'm more tired on Wednesday than Tuesday.
We got no motivation.
So Wednesday is one pot Wednesday. We're talking one dish to eat on your hands and just make one dish.
We're not dirty dishes. We're we're tired, hardly.
We are tired. We are so tired, and so we are cooking everything in one pot. My contribution uh. To the Teley Awards is Buffalo Chicken and Rice from Jen Eats Good, not me.
Uh.
I have been following her on Instagram and she does. She is great. If you're looking to save money on groceries, follow gen Eats Good. But it's three o's in good and we will have the actual link to the it's the recipe in our site. But I've made this twice already. I'm a big buffalo chicken fan and I always have actual like buffalo sauce on hand. And so this is
literally cook the chicken in the pan. You do have to transfer it to your dinner plate while you, you know, get the rice ready, but the rice goes in the same pot. Once that's already, you put the chicken back in and then it cooks and it is so good. Here's the secret though here, and I didn't know this was ever going to be a secret, there is a can of coconut milk in this buffalo chicken and rice.
I was gonna leave it out, Honestly, I was gonna leave it out because I was like, I don't like want to taste coconut in this, but it that's a creaminess that makes the dish it just makes the rice. Oh, it just makes it so one pot buffalo chicken and rice. Wow, chef's kiss.
I love buffalo chicken. Anything buffalo, It'll get me.
And you can honestly do this with any sauce that you have in the fridge. I think it would be just as good, same exact recipe, just sub the buffalo sauce for if you have like a tie sauce or maybe even barbecue anything. I think that it would work. Well, don't quote me on it, but it's just if you're not a buffalo fan, I think it would be fine.
Yeah, okay, that's helpful.
My pick here is Creamy Pesto Chicken Pasta CPCP. This one comes from Budget Bites, which I love this site. It gives you the cost breakdown for all of their ingredients and about how much it is preserving. It's just it's a great site. They've got great recipes for me. I don't use my insta pot or crackpot very often. I'm scared. Here you go, I'm tired, but I'm also scared. So my one pots are generally going to be in like a sauce pan or a stir fry pan on
the stove, but it's still one pot. So if you're like me, here we go. Come along with some creamy pasta chicken pasta. What I like about this one is it's super comfort food. To me, I am realizing as I go through recipes, I'm really drawn to the pastas they're great. So if you're also like me and that, then here you go the creamy pasta chicken. There are some veggies in here, but I mean, I'm not going
new atrition. I'm going comfort primarily on this one. But I also like that it's not a ton of ingredients. Most of the ingredients are going to have on hand. There's some pantry staples in here, and then you've got yeah, maybe you're gonna have to get some cream, cheese and parmesan, but chances are you've got everything else on hand, which is fun. So that's a good one. Again, all this is going to be linked in the friend letter, so.
Staff, and if you do the Caprice chicken salad on week one week too, you can use the rest of that pesto in this pasta. We didn't even plan that.
Okay, after Wednesday, having on.
Moving on after Wednesday, we have our pre Friday we have Friday Friday. It's Thirsty Thursday Soup Edition. We heard time and time again you love soups, you love to meal plant soups, love to throw them in the crock pot, throw in the inSpot. And there were actually two soups that we saw time and time again in your responses. And so those are the winners of our Soup Awards for this year's first annual Dinner Awards. Our first winner
is Tortellini Soup and Delicious Love. You could actually make a big batch of tortellini and use half of that in that chicken caprese pasta or salad, make it a pasta salad, and then the other half in this tortellini soup if you love pasta like we do. But I just found a recipe from Love and Lemons. There are so many tortellini soups. I love this one because some of them will have a lot of in. Some of them will also add sausage. I think that's just an
extra expense that you don't really need. The tortellini really does provide a lot of structure in this, but you can use a cheese tordlini, or you can use one with meat, or you can add some shredded chicken that you already have meal prep. Just defrost it and throw it in to make this a little higher protein. But I love this is also another way that you can
use up that produce from Chili Monday. If you only want to use Chili Monday one week, you can use the other part of your produce on Thirsty Thursday Soup Edition.
I love a chunky soup. Get some of that portolini in there. Here's the thing. I know that most people love soups. Got so many unpopular opinions. Soup is not my favorite. But when I you have a soup, I want to chew it. That's the thing. I want to choose something. It's not like Jill in the Morning. Jill in the Morning likes the smoothie. I want to throw everything in to my vitam X. Love my VitaminX, blend it down and drink it. That's great. That's how I'm
getting my nutrients in the morning. In the afternoon evening, I want to choose something. I want to really feel like I'm getting. I'm getting my days and my money's worth.
Out of mind.
You don't have enough energy to chew in the morning, but by the afternoon you your mouth needs to.
I'm thirsty, but I'm also hungry and I want to drink and chew. So so these are some winners, and you ask for this category. So my winner in this Thirsty Thursday Soup edition is a tortilla soup. This one comes from Natasha's Kitchen. Others agree. There's five hundred and forty eight comments and reviews. It's a five star. It looks fantastic. I also like about this is a lot of reusable ingredients, so I'm sure you're also catching on to that theme throughout this episode.
And our dinner reward show.
Is whatever you might have left over from Chili Monday can probably get thrown into Thirsty Thursday. If you've done Gen's hack of shredding just a crap ton of chicken and you've got that in the freezer and the fridge, that can get thrown into this again. You can throw all sorts of stuff on top of this, just to get that chew on. It's not just about drinking. It's also about yeah, not gnawing, chomp, chomping, doing some of that, just getting a nice, hearty meal. And also I love
soups that you pair with other things like. That's what also makes soup approachable for me is throw some bread with it. Corn Bread got it, bread gets chips free does whatever kind of soup you can put things on the side with perfect.
You know what we're adding to chili Monday is those little Jiffy boxes, the sixty nine cent box of corn bread. We get in two of those. We put in some cheddar. We're putting some dice tilepanos in and we make it some holopano chetta corn bread to go with the arch chilly soup.
Oh man, and.
Off right, if there's any corn bread left, we're finishing it off with our soup. And soups are so easily frozen, right, so you can make it. If there's too much, then you can, like oftentimes with soups, you've got enough for dinner, you've got enough for leftovers the next day, and you've got extra and you don't want it anymore. That extra can be frozen and then you can throw a frozen mason jar of soup in your lunch box, take it
for lunch. It is probably defrosted by lunch. I don't know how late you're you're doing, but maybe defrost overnight, throw it in your lunch box and then it's fully thought out by lunchtime and it's you know, and you've got a meal to go. I would not freeze the tortellini. If you're gonna freeze the tortellini soup, I would freeze the everything and then just make it later. Make fresh tortellini. But the tortilla soup that's perfect for freezing.
Yeah. Oh, we finally made it. We made it to the end of the week.
Friends, We made it to Friday's Friday. We made it to Friday. And you know what if we were tired Wednesday, even more tired now. And you know what, this is a night that I might go out to eat, but not not on these two weeks. I don't need to not in no spend January. On Friday, we're pulling from the freezer. It's freezer Friday. And this is the stuff that you always have on hand in your freezer. You're looking in your freezer and you're like, how do I
have so much stuff in my freezer? I rarely eat out of this, not anymore, because now on freezer Friday, you're only eating from the freezer. You're just pulling stuff and putting it in the oven. Anything that's from the freezer, you just get it on something, throw it in the oven, and eat it.
What's that for you, Jen?
For me, it's Chicky nuggies and sweet potato fries. It's the Costco Chick fil A imitation, not Costco Sam's Club chicken nuggets, and the red bag three pounds at a time, well, not making three pounds at a time, but that's how. And sweet potato fries. Okay, and here's my splurge. I there are not generic sweet potato fries at my Walmart, so I have to buy the name brand, and I'm okay with it because I just enjoy them so much more than regular potato fries. I love a regular potato fry.
I am not above a regular potato fry, but I just love sweet potato fries. What's the name, especially the waffle. I think it's like Alexa or something. I don't want to say.
That doesn't sound name brand. It's the White Back Sweet Potatoes. I think that's it all right.
I could check in my freezer right.
Now, so mine my winner. When I'm digging in my freezer it's gonna be plantains and one of the following burrito enchilada, taketo something I've always got something, and you know, also from Walmart, art or Aldi, you can get those really inexpensively, one of those options, your burritos, your tiketos. I really like the Goya plantains, but maduros is what the bag says on them. I've tried to make my
own friends. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. What actually happened to me once when I tried to make my own plantains is they weren't quite ripe yet. But I'm like, well, here we are. We're going for it. This is what's on the meal plan. Was peeling them with my thumb, nail and thumb, and I got shoots of plantain because they like, they're not like bananas, They're not like banana peels. They've got these shards that went up and in between
my thumb nail and like the flesh of my thumb. Yeah, for weeks I had plantain peels this season, and you know what, that's when I finally said enough not working on the frozen. It's actually less expensive, less time consuming.
They always taste good.
They're not oh no, they're actually not ripe yet, and I got splinters in my thumb. So I keep the Goya frozen Maduros on hand and some version of the other thing. And then when you're doing this and you've got that leftover sour cream from your chili Monday, you put that on top of it.
So so good. Or if you don't have any of this, my.
Go to you know this gen is I will make caesidias. I keep my fame, my Fiesta blend cheese in the freezer. Cheese keeps great in the freezer, especially the shredded kind. Maybe you got to pound the bag a little bit, get your aggression out to break up that cheese and make a.
Yeah, and put it with I put some plapanios in there, leftover from those jalapeno corn bread on Monday. I love Okaesidia. Alexia is the brand of sweet potato fry. I was very close. And I will say so, I'm actually not one to keep like burritos or tiqutos or anything in the in the freezer, but I actually love tamales and I will eat tamales in the freezer, and yeah, and I will sometime. I honestly, I could eat tomales just like buy themselves, just like I'm not on them. But
the rest of my family requires sides. So I think last time I made them, I I cooked some chicken on the side of the chicken tomali. I just love tamale's. I love them. I don't know what amazing They're so good.
Well, we got through Friday night and now it's Saturday. We're digging deep into the weekend, and you know what, we might have been able to sleep in most likely not, but still no energy or motivation to cook. We might have energy for other things. We're going out, or we're staying home, we're doing things on our task list, or we're getting together with friends, whatever it is, we still don't want to cook. So its sheet yeah Saturday. We're
gonna make it pan Saturday. Get a piece of sheet paan for dinner.
All right. Just because it's sheet pans Saturday, doesn't mean it has to be lame pan Saturday. You can make really good sheet pan meals, and this sheet pan pizza from budget bytes is an example. So yes, we love budget Bytes. We did way back in the day, episode seventy nine, our favorite frugal recipe blogs. It was another award show like this Budget Bites on there that was like twenty nineteen. They're still one of our favorite food blogs. And I love this sheep hand pizza. So I will
never make my own pizza dough again. It just takes too much time. And same with pie crust. I will the frozen pie crust is so good, come at me, bakers, but I'll never make a pie crust again. Like I'll make a pie, but not a crust. And the same goes with pizza. And you can put like literally throw this thing down, sauce, cheese, whatever toppings you have left over in your fridge from the week. This is what Saturday is all about, is using up the stuff from
the week, and we're just throwing things on it. This one in the picture jalapenios on it, halpenias and Pepperoni's right there.
You go.
You already had pep, You already had halapenios, You had pep from sharcotery week. Yeah, okay, so this is customizable. Kids can get involved. It's on a sheet pan. It is not as hard as you think. If you are just buying some pre made dough. Honestly, you don't even need to buy pre made dough Saturday. If you're not doing anything. There's the recipe for the crust is on here. It just requires a little bit of instant yeast. So do it. Try it out once, Try it out once.
Wow, I'm feeling so motivated and inspired. Mine is sheet pan chicken piheitas. Can you notice the theme for me? I really love those Mexican style dishes.
And you know what, it helps.
When you're cooking in one style of food, then you've got a lot of reusable ingredients throughout the week. Sometimes I will kind of make my meal plan based on themes, and that will help to make sure that you're using up these different ingredients, even if they're a little bit more specialty. So this one we will get the link. It's not entirely where Oh are you fixing the link?
Thank you?
Yeah, I'm fixing the link.
Yeah.
So, but essentially, this is your It's your chicken, onions, peppers, and your spices over top of it, all on one pan, straight into the oven. And then when it comes out of the oven, you're throwing that on a tortilla with your sour cream and with whatever, oh they're toppings. You want your cheese your sliced raw halapinos, if you still have any left.
And one of.
The things that I love to do with this because this is a regular for me, when I make these spices, I'm adding all of the different spices together for that fajeita seasoning. I'll make strap batches of it and put it into one of my glass containers in my kitchen that I can use in the future. So that's one of the most time consuming pieces I think for me, is blending all of these different spices. It's an ate of that and a quarter teaspoon of this and a
half teaspoon of that. But if you can batch it, then that makes doing these fijidas or yeah, anything else that kind of calls for this type of seasoning in the future, You've already got it prepped.
That makes it so so fast.
We didn't plan this, but one of the ingredients for the sheet pan fihidas is baby bell peppers and those are actually my favorite favorite topping for pizza, and so I will bake them while the ovens actually like heating up, and so they're a little bit sauteed. Because I like my peppers and onions very cooked. I don't like them
raw at all. But if you switch these around and you cook all of your peppers during faheta time and then save the other peppers for next week's sheet pan pizza, just throw them in the freezer, freezer freezer, and you're good to go. It's repurposing. All right.
Well, we've had a really great week and we're coming to the end. It's still the weekend, but now we're prepping for the next week.
So we're tired. We're fully aware that Monday's stumming.
We got those Sunday scaries, y'all, and we are meal planning for our next two weeks, right, and so I'm not picking groceries up to like Sunday afternoon Monday morning. So Sunday is pantry Sunday. And you know what's a great thing. You can switch sheet pans Saturday and pantry Sunday. If you do your grocery shopping like earlier and Sunday, you can do your pantry on Saturday and your sheet pan on Sunday. It's it's versatile. This is whatever you
call the ward ceremony. Yeah, but for us, it's pantry Sunday. We're using pantry staples. We're using what we got. We're not planning for Sunday. We are planning not to plan on Sunday. Right, We're letting Sunday come at us and out. We're letting Sunday tell us what to eat, right, and we're planning to eat from the pantry.
So for my might be cereal, that's fine.
It might be cereal. It might be cereal, right, it's okay. For my contribution, what I always go to when I'm using just pantry staples is Spanish rice and beans, or so Spanish rice and beans uses like like the pinto beans. Sometimes I'll use black beans, but I are not pintobeans. I'm sorry, kidney beans, I'm so sorry. So I love a beans and rice. It is my son's favorite favorite dinner and it's so easy. So we've got all of these,
like canned goods. Right, So we've got vegetable or chicken broth which I use to concentrate that I keep in the fridge. We've got our canned kidney beans, our canned fire roasted tomatoes, are white rice that's always there, A bunch of different spices. So these are all things that I have on hand. Slice green olives. I will get the slice green olives that have the halapano inside. You don't have to. I think you're noticing a theme with me, But I love a good I also love a good jambalaya,
but that's not a pantry meal. So beans of rice mine.
You all know this, if you have, if you've been a member in our membership, if you've gotten the letter, if you've really just interacted with me at all, you know fried rice. It's my go to. I'm gonna make some fried rice. Rice is a pantry staple for me. But also if you, too, like me, will put chili over top of rice, you've already got some made. You don't even have to dig in your pantry. You just
dig into your fridge, pull out that leftover rice. And then what you're also gonna do is pull out some of that frozen veggie mix that you've got in a bag, because you're smart and you know that frozen veggies are just as nutritious as fresh veggies, and they're already chopped and prepped for you, and they're one of the least expensive things you can buy from the grocery store. So just always have a bag of frozen veggie mix and That's all you really need is rice, frozen veggies. You
can use this recipe as a guide. It comes from give me some oven. It's my face favorite frozen or fried rice recipe. But I don't use obviously the fresh veggies. I just when it says here's the veggies you use, I just pull out my bag of frozen veggies and I'm like, here's the veggies I'm using.
Yeah, that's almost with any recipe for me.
Yeah, pretty much. You need soy, sauce and garlic to add to it. For me, those are some pantry staples. If you have leftover chicken, you can add that into this. You don't need to an egg. Calls for an egg, egg or two for some protein. Oh, this is such a good one. This one freezes too. I know people say, don't freeze rice.
I do it. I freeze it. I freeze everything.
I have rice in my freezer right now, Like it's rice from the store, So the store freezes it. Why can't we right? Oh, thank you so much for attending the first Annual Dinner Awards from the Frugal Friends podcast. We hope that you will honor our honorees by making them.
Yes, and you can make them by getting the friend letter Frugal friendspodcast dot com. Sign up for that newsletter. You're going to get all of these recipes to your email, and then you can respond to that email and tell us what's your favorite. What do you want to see on the next Dinner Award show? Because this is it's the first one we've done, but it's going to be annual. We love dressing up. We love putting on our Kirkland and talking about.
Food, sweatpants and hoodies and like our Kirkland streetwear and coming out here and meal planning, our yard sale clothing.
Absolutely, you know what else we love. We love coming out and you're dressing up for not just.
Every year, but every day.
Honestly, it's the bill that's right.
It's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is Williams. Maybe you've paid off your mortgage, maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. That bills, Buffalo bills, Bill Clinton, this is the bill of the week.
Hi Jen, Hi Jill. My name is Kelly, and my bill of the week is my dad.
Bill. He is the definition of frugal.
He taught me everything that I literally know to this day.
I grew up on a farm.
We grew our own food, we raised our own meat. He was very adamant about shutting off the lice and reusing everything. And he is.
The frugal Bill that I would like to dedicate this week too. I've been trying to get him to call in, but he won't, so I am calling in for him. So here's my dad, Bill, the frugal friend and father of the week.
He's our mascot, Kelly. Tell him he's our mascot.
If you won't call in, hopefully he'll at least listen to us. Honoring Kelly's dad named Bill. You're an industrious one. You raised a good one. Also, I love all of those different way to go Bill and the frugality that leads to life could chew wow.
Way to go, Kelly, Way to go, Bill, good stuff all around.
We love a person named Bill, and we always say, if your name is Bill, it doesn't even matter what you're doing, how you found yourself here, just call in. But man, is this is this a sweet, sweet, glorious surprise that this Bill, this person named Bill, is just a frugal gem.
You didn't have to be, you chose to be.
You cultivated a mindset and a lifestyle that is stewarding your resource as well. And we couldn't be more ecstatic. Thanks Kelly for sharing about your dad. If you all listening have a dad named Bill, a son named Bill, brother uncle? What other kinds of relationships are there? Husband named Bill?
Let us know about it is Bill.
If you can't poke and prod them into calling us, that's fine. You can call on their behalf and just talk about them. We can talk about them behind their back, and that's what we love to do here. Or if you've paid off Bill, whatever whatever else, it's Bill profriendspodcast dot com slash Bill. We are ready for whatever you have for us, and now it's time for.
All Right, So what's a dish you've been meaning to try making but haven't yet? And I I couldn't come up with one for this one because I you're tired, just I'm tired.
I'm tired, and I I make a lot of different things, and I make them pretty quickly, right like I'll see something and it immediately goes on my meal plan.
I'll make it the next week.
So like, I there, I don't know. I here's something I'm not really meaning to try. I would love to do this one day, but I'm never going to do it at home. I'd like to make fresh pasta. Oh, I would love to go somewhere that has the tools to do that, because I'm going to buy the stuff to do it. I'm not going to buy cheap stuff because it's just harder to do. I want to make fresh pasta with quality stuff, tools and ingredients and learn from somebody who makes fresh pasta often.
So I'd like that beautiful goal and dream. Yeah, thank you, Wow, we used to make you're reminding me. My grandmother is Polish and we make pierogis at least once a year, and with leftover it's basically the Polish style of Ravioli's. I mean every culture kind of has their version of this, where it's a version of a homemade pasta than that you fill with something else, usually cheese, and with the leftover dough. We would make pasta, but never with tools.
We just roll it out, slice it, boil it and that's fun too. I could do that with you, but that's not quality tools. That's just me with a rolling pin and a knife.
Yeah, I know it's possible for me to do it without tools. But if I'm gonna make like if it's between like that and just I have like six pounds of dried spaghetti in my pantry, I want to If I'm not going to do it right, I don't want to do it at all.
Okay, Okay, heard mine is since I'm in my sour dough era, everyone are I'm three and a half years late to this trend, but I'm here, Okay, I do everything a little bit late. I got my smartphone seven years after after what would have made sense. I still don't understand Instagram, so maybe, and three and a half years later, I'm doing sourdough, but I only have made bread because you know me, I just love bread. And so if I've got an opportunity to interact with my
sour dough, it's gonna be bread always. And I don't really want to experiment yet because I'm loving the beautiful, warm loaves that I'm making. However, eventually I do want to try making sourdough pretzels. I think you can do that with your discard. Boy, am I going to get a lot of emails? About that, not angry emails. Just I know the sourdough community is strong. I mean, feel free to email me about sourdough like whatever you have to say.
Yeah, if you have a good sourdough pretzel recipe, send it to Jill at Google friendspodcast dot com.
Oh yeah, that'd be so kind. Thanks everyone.
Yeah, I do want to make sourdough bread with you. That is something I do want to do with you. I don't want my own sourdough Starter. I know you're giving it out. I don't want it. I would like to make bread with you.
I won't do that to you. All right, let's do that this week. I'll thanks Starter.
To care for. I'm maxed, I'm tired. We're tired, Jill, I'm tired. If you're tired too. I hope that you got a lot of enjoyment and use out of this two week meal plan. Again, all links are going to be in the friend letter tomorrow and we will eventually get it up on our Instagram page too. So thank you so much for listening. We love, love, love reading your kind reviews, and we especially love this one from a friend of Jill. And I'm gonna let her read it.
Yay, Chelsea Sourman, you are a gem and a beautiful goddess that she gives two thumbs up, says great podcast. I love the humor and realness of Jen and Jill as they shared tips that are actually useful and easy to start implementing. Thanks Jay and Jay for changing the world one wallet at a time. Maybe we all spend less and vacation more. Cheers Chelsea. I did not go to her or force her into leaving this review, nor did I steal her phone and write this review.
I know that sounds sarcastic like I did. I did not.
She did this of her own volition and I'm so thrilled to be reading it now.
Thanks Chelsea.
Yes, thank you, Chelsea. We love it when our friends leave reviews, and you're all our friends if you're listening to this, so please, if you enjoyed the show, take a minute to leave a rating a review. If you like this episode, specifically say it so the potential new listeners know which episodes are the best to queue up for them.
Thanks everyone, see you next time.
Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni Jill. I just have to laugh. I've been thinking about this. I wasn't going to say it, but I was like, if I'm still thinking about it, it's Tuesday, this happens Saturday. If I'm still thinking about it, We're gonna talk about it in the after show. So thank you so much for inviting us to the boat parade on Saturday. It was It would have been so fun to go with you next time. Maybe if you think about.
It a little earlier than fifteen minutes before it starts, I would I mean, we would not have been able to go because we were removing wallpaper.
I understand this, But at I got your text at five forty, I look down and she's like, Hey, we're going to the boat parade downtown, downtown, golf court granted, golf court granted, golf courts Downtown is much quieter, but still, and she's like, it starts at six. And then I look at the time and it is by forty five and I have two children. I have two children. I yeah, I mean, I'm so down to do things last minute
because I appreciate being invited anywhere. I'll drop anything for anyone as long as I have at least an hour's notice, preferably two to three.
I was wondering if you're gonna be a hard time about that. No, to be fair, I'm pretty sure I did text at five forty. I think it was twenty minutes. Notice. Uh oh, you can go back and fact check me.
Cant I can I have the receipts. Okay, I want the receipt seats.
Now here's the thing. I fly by.
Oh it is by forty. I guess I didn't get it. I guess I didn't get it on my watch until forty five. Okay, it's delayed.
I fly by the seat of my pants.
I probably didn't know an hour beforehand if I was going to be going to the boat parade or not.
I didn't think he did. And in my head, I was like, she just decided. I mean in my head, I was like, this gem of a human just decided she's going to the Gulf Court boat parade just like a few minutes ago. And she's like Jen's and Golf Court all innte her And I'm like, that's a gem. That's you being a gem. And I'm like it's me though, with two kids.
Yeah no, no, it's totally fair. But I felt like better late than never, because if you are just kind of like wrapping up, sitting around and you can throw your kids in the car, or like walk there. I don't know, I forget how far you are from from.
I will not walk. I got four eight month old and a four year old.
Who goes for a stroller. They make scrollers for that gem. Yeah, but I also you.
Are the gem of knowing all the free things that are happening in the community. So I was also like, surely she knows that this is happening this weekend. She's removing wallpaper. She might not want to be tempted again with this, but you know what, maybe she needs a break and I'm just gonna let her know that I'm going to be there.
I live and I'm to join. I'm happier that you let me know versus not. We actually went to the Saint Pete Beach boat parade the week before. Oh no, so we did get a boat parade in Yeah, you got to do a boat parade if you live on the coast, like, you got to do at least one holiday boat parade. And I think Gulf Ports was probably better.
I think it was really fun and so low key. I will say you would have been fine to have taken an hour, because by the time the boats actually came up to the water side where we were, it wasn't until about seven o'clock.
M okay, yeah. The Saint Pee Beach ones started right at I think it was six six thirty and it lasts for fifteen minutes. It was not great. Yeah, okay, nobody, Yeah, I'm yeah, you're just like a fly on the wall in our conversation. But I was covered in wallpaper adhesive at that time. Yeah, you know, but before and after pictures to come to social media then.
Yes, yes, we've been talking about our renovations for all of the time that we've been doing renovations, which is about three and a half years, and we're finally going to be ready to give you some before and afters.
Yes, we can't wait for.
That, which Chelsea Soerman loves. Speaking of my friend who left us a review, please also leave us a review. If you're like Chelsea Sermon, you're like before and afters, follow us on Instagram.
Yes, yes, all right, see yeah, okay, bye,