Frugal In Florida

Presto Pizzazz Pizza Oven I bought this about 2 years ago for $39.99 at Kmart. The only reason I did was we used to do appetizers on Fridays at the office and one gal had one that she was using to make pizzas with. It was pretty darn neat so I kind of kept my eyes open. After Christmas that year, they went on sale. Woohoo. Honestly, haven’t used it that much until recently. I like it. Almost wish I had 2. You put the pizza on the tray. Put tray on the spinner thingy. Plug it in. Turn the dial to 20 minutes. Walk away. Come back in 20 minutes and you have a fully cooked pizza. I have a huge convection oven. This thing takes forever to get up to 450 degrees for a pizza. I can have a frozen pizza in 20 minutes. Doesn’t heat up the kitchen or house (big deal in south Florida). Easy cleanup. Not a big thing to deal with (stores easily in cabinet). Would I recommend one? Yeah, if you make pizzas frequently. I make a lot of homemade pizzas but have not tried to use the Pizzazz with t...

Homemade Granola (this recipe has been halved from the original) ½ cup brown sugar ¼ cup water 2 tsp vanilla ½ tsp salt 4 cups oatmeal (not the quick cook kind) Handful of nuts (if desired, I use almonds) Preheat oven to 275 and line baking sheet with parchment (or if you must, spray with non stick spray) Mix sugar & water in microwave cup, microwave 3 to 4 minutes til dissolved. Add salt & vanilla and mix well Pour over oatmeal & nuts in bowl. Spread as thin as possible on baking sheet. Bake 45 minutes to 1 hour til brown but still pliable. Allow to cool & store in airtight container or Ziploc bag. Originally, I only used this as a snack or to top yogart. But then DH fell in love with Special K cereal with the almonds. Since it hasn’t been on sale lately, I made this & had him try with milk and that’s what he’s been eating since.

That’s a strange, if not rude question, I suppose, BUT when I was driving home last night, a talk show on the radio was discussing that. Then this morning, I log on to the internet, which my home page is the Sun-Sentinel.com and there’s a headline titled: “Run On Rice Makes Way to the U.S.”. CNN.com basically has the same thing. There have been reports of Sams Club, Costco, and others, limiting the number of bags of rice, flour, etc that a person can buy. Hmmm. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen that disclaimer in any of their stores? And some stores are reporting that they do not have any left in stock. I KNOW that last time I was at Costco (2 weeks ago), they did not have any large bags of rice. I just thought that maybe there was a holiday coming up or something (we have a very diversified group of people in south Florida!) It's mostly restaurants, so they report. I’m thinking more in line with the fact that consumers are thinking, a: we are going to keep seeing the prices go...

I’ve been wanting to get to “Out of the Closet” for a few months now. Ok, maybe not that long as they’ve only been open for a few months. They were suppose to have opened last year but had issues with previous tenants (birds) and getting the place cleared out. Finally made it there on Saturday. Wow. I am so glad I went. We finally have a GREAT thrift store again! The lavender tickets were $1. I got me 3 skirts for work (see the photo) and 2 pairs of shorts. All name brands (Express, some Italian dude – made in Italy) and one pair of shorts are organic cotton and the other are from Old Navy. For $5, I got 3 work skirts & 2 shorts. Woohoo!! Had I had more time, I would have bought a lot more stuff. They do the ticket color markdown at the beginning of each month. I was impressed that it’s already the 12th day of the month & I was able to find that many lavender colors. This is done to keep the stock rotating so things don’t sit around for the next 5 years and get dated. You ha...

If you are frugal, chances are you are ‘green’. If you live green, chances are you are frugal. Simple enough. Those who are frugal are not wasteful, and the same goes for green living. It’s all about being more conscientious of the things around you and what is used and what is wasted. For instance: I conserve water in my home, along with electricity. Primarily because I want to keep the cost down. BUT in doing so, I am also being kinder to the environment by not wasting unnecessary water OR using more electricity, burning more fuel and leaving less of a carbon footprint by not using my dryer. As I’ve always been frugal, for the most part, I started to look into being greener. I was surprised that I am already green. Of course, there are some things that I should start doing that would make it more so, such as taking my own canvas totes to the stores instead of getting new plastic bags every time (but then what happens when I run low on the bags that I use as liners in the small ...