Tag Archives: instant pot

A Day in the Life of a Cheapskate

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I spent the weekend living like a cheapskate.  I didn’t try to.  I just kind of lived my weekend life as I normally do, and it turns out my brain kind of defaults to less expensive choices.

The highlight of fall weekends for me is watching Penn State football games on TV.  But I don’t have cable.  I do have an assortment of streaming services, but none of them were carrying this week’s game.  I usually subscribe to one of the “watch live TV” services at some point during the football season (and carry it through bowl games), but I was trying to put it off as long as I can.  I won’t be home for next week’s game, so if I could find a way to watch this week’s for free I would be good until mid-October.  So I signed up for a one week free trial for one of the services I’m not planning to use for the full season, but had the Penn State game.  The next day I canceled the service so I wouldn’t be charged.  I feel a little bad for taking advantage of the service like that….but not that bad.  I usually do this once a year, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

For dinner on Saturday I was thinking about getting a slab of barbeque ribs from the warehouse club.  But the $18 price tag made me rethink that.  I also thought about ordering a pizza.  But ultimately I pulled out my Instant Pot and made a pot of soup.  It was a lot cheaper than the other two options.  And likely better for me.  And we have leftovers.

I also needed to buy some jeans this weekend.  Apparently the Covid-19 pounds that I gained have morphed into the Covid 29, and now my pants don’t fit.  But I like the jeans I have.  I just need the next size up (until I can get myself back on the treadmill to get my weight under control).  Rather than buy new, I went to my favorite resale site, Poshmark.  I found a bundle of three pair in my new (hopefully temporary) size for a good price, so I bought it.  I like buying used clothes.  It’s less expensive to buy better quality that way.  And it’s better for the environment to reuse like that.  So much fast fashion ends up in the world’s landfills, so I just feel better about reusing an item somebody didn’t want anymore.

I guess I have the mindset of a cheapskate.  And I’m fine with that.  I can dress it up and say that I’m “choosing a frugal lifestyle” or something like that, but the reality is I’m pretty cheap in regular life.  And I’m pretty sure that’s a good way to be for this era of super high inflation.  If my default is to keep costs low, that makes it a lot easier to get to the next paycheck.

Do you default to the less expensive options?  Should you?

Kitchen Gadgets and the Money Saver I Never Saw Coming

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I can’t help myself.  I love a good kitchen gadget.  If it’s supposed to make cooking easier, healthier, or more fun, I’ve got to have it.  So, on Black Friday when the shopping discounts were flying madly, I grabbed myself an Instant Pot.  Everybody seems to have one these days, so I had to have one too.  I laid out my money, hoping this wouldn’t turn into one of those gadgets sitting on top of my cabinets collecting dust and kitchen grease.

Now that the Instant Pot has been unboxed for a couple of weeks, I have my doubts about whether this thing will ever leave my kitchen counter.  I have long loved my slow cooker and my rice cooker.  And this can replace both of those and do so much more.  The first experiment was a batch of macaroni and cheese.  Way better than the box and in about ten minutes.  The Instant Pot had my attention.  My next go-round was Thai peanut chicken ramen.  And if someone had told me a month ago that I had the ability to make Thai food that good I would have laughed.  Yet here I am…somehow a master one-pot chef!

Since I now have the ability to cook a lot of food really quickly (this is where the Instant Pot really excels!), it dawned on me that I should join the meal prep movement.  I love the ability to just grab a dish from my fridge or freezer for the day’s lunch.  But Lean Cuisine has grown a bit tiresome and I can certainly do without the extra sodium that comes in those convenient plastic dishes.  So Sunday afternoon I grabbed a five-pack of those infamous meal prep containers from my local Wally World and got to cooking.  I started with a jumbo batch of brown rice, which the Instant Pot makes perfectly in about 30 minutes.  Then I whipped up a big batch of my Asian favorite, chicken and broccoli.  And just like that I had lunch for the week, with a few extra cups of cooked brown rice on reserve in my freezer.  I’m sure the total expense of the ingredients was significantly less than I would have paid for five Lean Cuisine entrees, and I feel like the food is better for me.

I’m a gadget girl.  But with this particular gadget I somehow fell backward into the money-saving world of bulk meal preparation.  Right now my plan is to continue that trend.  I’ll probably slip up at some point.  But this week I’m loving my own cooking for lunch!