Frugal In Florida

*With Cinco De Mayo coming up (and my birthday!), avocados will be in abundance in the stores ... so this little tip will come in handy if your household is anything like mine! Besides, I need to do a re-post of something since I'm still down with bronchitis ... * I wasn't a fan of avocados until, oh, a year or so ago ... I mean, like really a fan ... as in, every time I go to the store, I check out the avocado selection and price to see if it's worthy! By far, Aldis has been the BEST place and price to pick them up ... and they were 59 cents each a few weeks ago , so I picked up 4 ... not knowing that I still had FIVE at home in the fridge!! YIKES! THIS is how food waste happens in real life. See, we have upwards of 6 adults eating in this house, and friends ... so sometimes, usually most times, if I don't eat the avocado within a day or so, one of the other mini-adults will eat it and then I have none when I go back to eat it ... boo.. Cell phone picture ...

*I"ve been down with bronchitis for the past 10 days and well, figured I'd repost this little gem as it's fast approaching summer time and stinky shoe time!* Honestly, we have real good hygiene habits in my house, I can assure you of that! But, lets face it, living in paradise with 125% humidity can be a little trying sometimes ... my running shoes (which have NOT seen much running action for quite a while) get a little ripe smelling ... and oh man, you should smell the shoes that Hubby wears outside in the yard, patio, garage and boat that constantly get wet ... enough to suck the oxygen right out of your body ... whew! Then you have the Boy ... who works out pretty darn hard and doesn't always wear socks, nor does the Princess ... I mean, seriously, I've had to throw shoes away because you could smell them just sitting there. No one wants to be the person that people are wrinkling their nose at when they are walking by you! So when I saw the featured ...

I used to love to get the Mandarin Chicken Salad from Wendy's back in the day ... I thought I was being super healthy, you know? Of course, that was before I learned about reading labels and such ... amazing how something so "healthy" could be so very bad for you. So ... when I came across  THIS  salad at  My Natural Family  not too long ago, I knew I had to give it a try ... and, man, I'm so very glad I did! Talk about an awesome, flavorful salad ... and even better, when I opted to make it at the last minute, I had EVERYTHING on hand so it fit the bill! *With summertime fast approaching which in my world means Bikini Time, even at the soon to be ripe ole age of 52, I am pulling out my favorite, healthy salad options! Here's what you need: 2 boneless/skinless chicken breasts head of lettuce (romaine) chopped in bite size pieces (I used one artesian baby romaine head) 1 red pepper, sliced and chopped in bite size pieces 1 large carrot, coarsely s...

Hey, hey, here we are again! Time to get that menu plan and meal prep down and out of the way! Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail I can totally attest the above statement is TRUE. Oh, yes, sadly it's very very true. See, the past few weeks have just been crazy hectic, work, then after hours work (my side gig), then the house for sale and looking for a new house, and of course, family stuff, being my dad, Hubby and the grown kids and independent cats.  Oh. And throw in the taxes being due. Yes. Life has just been a barrel of monkeys and more!  Not really.   So. I plan the meals. And I do some prep work because I know how easy it is to fall down that hole.  STILL ... Hubby and I ate out (and ordered Pizza) no less than ... ::gulp:: 5 times. FIVE TIMES. Started with Sunday (pizza delivery, houseful of people, etc.) then Tuesday Hubby made an Instant Pot failure meal so we ran out ... then Wednesday I got home late so we ran to a little Italian joint down the str...

Hey, hey, here we are again ... time to plan out that menu and get your meal prep going! Can you believe it, the 2nd week of April ... the Tax Man is knocking on the back door very soon here (did anyone else have a disappointing return to file???) AND we are on the home stretch to Cinco De Mayo!!! That's also my birthday which generally, I'm not a big "birthday girl" but I am a BIG Cinco De Mayo girl!!  I'm going to try and stay very very focused on my food and drinking habits for the next few weeks ... saw a picture of myself in a swimsuit and was like WHOA who is THAT?? Uhm, yeah, that was ME.Whoops! And then I stepped on the scale and said, Oh Hell NO we are not going there!  So. With that .... it's time to get my act together since we all know life does not get any easier as we get older (uhm, hello 52!) So! How about you? Anything new going on in your life? Moving? Children in and out? Planning out your summer plans? Budgeting? All that good stuff? Me...

It's been a LONG time since I've been inside an Olive Garden restaurant ... the unlimited salad and bread sticks used to always get me ... I am a sucker for warm, soft bread, you know? Oh, and I just love that salad too ... the dressing, luckily, is easy to replicate, as is the salad itself. The salad is simple: 1 head of iceberg lettuce, rinsed, dried and torn into bite size pieces half of a red onion, sliced thin and rings separated out 2 tomatoes, cut into wedges handful of sliced black olives handful of banana pepper rings (or pepperoncini) handful of shredded carrot Layer all in a large bowl, cover and refrigerate. The most important part of this salad is the dressing ... here's my ORIGINAL recipe , but I've since modified it as follows and personally, prefer THIS now! The main difference is NO corn syrup or garlic AND I used avocado oil instead of the previously called for vegetable oil! In large wide mouth jar, add the following ingredients...

Hey hey ... it's that time of the week again AND look at that, we are in April! How did that happen? So. Did you miss last week's plan? I did too ;-)  I had a menu typed up and ready to go and then life just interefered.  It didn't help that I had a headache for 4 days straight which finally cleared up on Wednesday. I had to stop taking Advil, Aleve amd  Sudafed as I started to think maybe, just maybe, I was taking too much and that was why it wasn't going away. Nope, I still suffered for 2 more days after I quit, but thankfully, all gone now. Whew. It was tough. I did a few trips to the grocery store this past week ... the last one, at Walmart, pretty much knocked the budget out of the ballpark. It's ok though, we have more protein and I feel a little better about the state of our freezers ;-) Hubby, on the other hand, may flip out when he gets home Monday night as our goal has been to eat down what we have for the upcoming, hopefully sooner than later move .....

It's been a while since I've shared a Grocery Cart Sunday breakdown ... partly because I haven't been shopping that much and partly because I've been BUSY ... but since this last week was a spectacular (NOT) week, I figured, I had time so why not type it all up ... Pictures? Uhm, sure there are a few here! So. It all started on Sunday. EASTER Sunday, I might add.  I was home. Alone. And just felt like crap. Migraine headache (as in, toss my cookies when I got up out of bed first thing that morning and there was NO booze for 36 hours prior to this!) and weak and just ick.  I cancelled my plan to go over to some friends for dinner as Hubby was out of town, Princess was working and the Boy was with his girlfriend. All I wanted was some food to have for that night and the week ahead. I just had a bad feeling, that's all ... So off I went ... Trader Joe's They were open on Easter! 2 pkgs of frozen waffles (one GF and one blueberry) $1.99 each ...

This recipe comes from Paleo Girl 99 who I found on Instagram ... doing the Whole30 had introduced me to a whole new class of bloggers! So. The first time I made this, I didn't have the deyhdrated shallots, but had dehydrated onions, so I improvised and used the onions. Yeah. Hubby was in love.  Asked me for 3 days if this was really the only thing that I did to make it taste so good. Was I sure it was just the dehydrated onions and not the "fried onions"  and on and on. Good grief. He just can't accept that something so simple would be so tasty. I did NOT share that this was Whole30 approved as some things just don't need to be said out loud. Then I put this on the menu again and said, hmmm, let me just order some shallots from Amazon. Well. The first thing that popped up was $1xx.00 to buy. No thank you ... so I kept shopping and finally came across a $12 bottle . Thank you one click ordering! So, here's how I made it the first time with GREA...

*This is a repost and since Hubby's traveling this week, I want to make him something sweet to eat when he comes home on Monday. Since I have everything on hand, I'm making this and wanted to share the recipe again!* We usually watch FoodTV in the morning both Saturday and Sunday as we putz around getting the bedroom cleaned up and in the kitchen doing stuff ... sometimes I get a little inspiration and other times I get a complete recipe ;-) Another keeper that I picked up from  FoodTV's Trisha Yearwood show  ... most of her recipes are super simple to make and use everyday ingredients that you probably already have in stock!  That's what makes this one another winner! I'm trying really hard to NOT buy premade sweet stuff for the house as I have a HARD time saying no ... but if I have to mix up a bunch of ingredients and PREPARE the sweet treat, I'm ok with that ... at least I know exactly whats in there! This recipe is really simple, and chances are,  yo...