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 .....