{"id":134,"date":"2025-10-28T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grownupish.com\/?p=134"},"modified":"2025-10-27T20:56:31","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T03:56:31","slug":"five-frugal-things-lets-talk-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/grownupish.com\/?p=134","title":{"rendered":"Five Frugal Things: Let&#8217;s talk turkey."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I did better this week&#8230;but also still have lots to work on, so we&#8217;re going to mix it up this week. Starting today, Tuesdays will be four frugal things and one frugal fail. That feels more real. If there&#8217;s ever a week when I cannot come up with a frugal fail&#8230;that&#8217;s when I have really figured this out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Successes first:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Turkey. A week ago, you could do the pre-thanksgiving sale thing where you could buy a turkey for $0.99 a pound. This is perfect for me right about now. I need to make turkey stock as part of the pre-Thanskgiving prep around here. (I take Thanksgiving very very seriously.) Rather than just roasting it and subjecting my family to a whole roast turkey feast less than a month before Thanksgiving, I did something most people would consider crazy &#8211; I deboned the whole thing, ground the turkey and put it in the freezer in one pound increments, then put all the bones in my crockpot and made stock overnight. I figure I saved about $15 as follows: <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table class=\"has-fixed-layout\"><tbody><tr><td>What I got from a 14 lb turkey<\/td><td>How much it would have cost me if I purchased separately<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>5 lbs ground turkey<\/td><td>$25 <\/td><\/tr><tr><td>10 cups turkey stock<\/td><td>$6 (for the cheap stuff)<br>but could have been as much as $14 (for bone broth)<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>Cost of turkey $14<\/td><td>Cost (cheap stuff) $31<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>So I got ground turkey and I know what went into it (nothing questionable), I got stock and you literally cannot buy turkey stock at my grocery store, I would have had to settle for chicken. And it&#8217;s closer in quality to the stuff that would have cost $8 more. So, I really (in my brain) saved closer to $25. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, it took some of my time, but not a lot. It&#8217;s hard to judge since I was also making dinner at the same time as I was breaking down and grinding the turkey, an hour at most. And mind you, I think this sorta stuff is fun, so I did not mind it at all. It&#8217;s not something I would do at regular turkey prices. But I can see myself jumping on another $0.99 per pound turkey at a later holiday sale. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>2. The other thing I did I mentioned on Friday. I planned meals that made a really low grocery budget this week. I actually did pretty well, considering there were still a few impulse purchases in there (I cannot pass up a bogo sale, so I may have bought several pounds of pasta.) But the whole grocery run was only $106 to feed all three of us for a week of meals, plus extra food. I&#8217;m pleased about that. (I also discovered Sunday that the pulled pork chili made 8 servings, and there are only 3 of us, so the rest went right into the freezer for the future).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>3. I saved on gas. I use grocery store points to get gas cheaper, but the way to make that really pay off is to always be as low on gas as I&#8217;m comfortable with, and use the points to get as much gas at a time as possible. Which, I did this weekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>4. I &#8216;bought&#8217; a free Amazon kindle book instead of deciding I needed it paperback. I kinda don&#8217;t love reading on my kindle, I&#8217;d rather have a real paper book in my hands any day. But this time I decided that I would just do it, because the kindle version was $0.00. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>5. I just realized (I know, I said 4, but 5 is better&#8230;) I also bothered to take the grocery store survey this week. Which gets me 50 fuel points for later. It&#8217;s not much, but if I start doing it every 7 days, I can save even more on gas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Frugal fail: I have to stop impulse buying &#8216;car treats&#8217;. Whenever I have a lot of driving to do, I am guilty of drive through stops for drinks or snacks on the way. This weekend I had several half hour drives (which is more than anything I usually do) and got a beverage here and a snack there&#8230;which add up. I have to start telling myself that I don&#8217;t get a treat just because I hate driving. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I do, I hate driving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is much better than last week. I&#8217;m proud of me. Even with the fail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I did better this week&#8230;but also still have lots to work on, so we&#8217;re going to mix it up this week. Starting today, Tuesdays will be four frugal things and one frugal fail. That feels more real. If there&#8217;s ever a week when I cannot come up with a frugal fail&#8230;that&#8217;s when I have really [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grownupish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grownupish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grownupish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grownupish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grownupish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/grownupish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135,"href":"https:\/\/grownupish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions\/135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grownupish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grownupish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grownupish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}