Happy Monday! I hope
it hasn’t been too rough so far.
This past weekend, Zach and I had our friends, Decatur and
Deana, over for a couple days. They
traveled from the far away, exotic land of Indiana. We found some great ways to pass the time
without breaking the budget.
To begin, you need friends that understand your
situation. Keeping it a secret will
only make your weekend awkward, and it’s guaranteed you will go over your
budget. If you need big events to get
your friends to visit you, they’re probably not great friends. The star of the show should be you! Well, this time it was us and Tutu. She’s the brightest star in our house these
days!
So, once you have good friends on lock, you have to feed
them! Usually this entails a flurry of
restaurants. Well, if you cook for them
you not only save money on food, but on gas as well! It’s a win-win. Zach wanted to have a food theme: Mexican. For lunch, Zach made a spread consisting of
cilantro-lime rice (a la Chipotle), beans, guacamole, salsa, lettuce,
tortillas, and a fake taco “meat” (we’ll discuss that in another post). It was
a little taco bar. None of these items
cost a lot, but everything was delicious and super filling (plus all the
leftovers will make awesome taco salads throughout the week!). For dinner, we had Taco Soup. This is a Weight Watchers recipe my grandma
gave me years ago. It is so quick and
easy. You just put 2 cans of black
beans, 2 cans of chickpeas (aka garbanzo beans), and a half packet of taco
seasoning in a pot. Then add V8 juice
until you get the consistency you like.
We eat it more like a dip with chips, so we don’t add a lot of V8. Put it on the stove till it’s hot. Done.
Serve with tortilla chips. That is
my cheapest recipe. It also feeds an
army. We make it vegan, but you can also
brown ground sirloin (that’s what the original recipe says) and add it to the
soup. After the four of us had dinner, I
ended up refrigerating about 8 servings that we can eat throughout the week.
So, the Mexican theme only lasted through Saturday (our
Kroger didn’t have eggs because of the snow last week, so breakfast burritos
were a no go). Sunday morning brought a
baby that slept in till 6:30 (!) and pumpkin spice muffins. We stole this one from my best friend,
Kiley. She brought them over at
Christmas, and we fell in love. Stir one
can of pumpkin pie filling into one box of spice cake mix. Bake them for about 20 minutes at 350 and
you’re done! I could eat them just like
that, but everyone seems to like chocolate chips in them. Again, inexpensive, and we have muffins for a
couple days.
Decatur and Deana were nice enough to bring some beer (they
work next to an amazing brewery). We
played games, watched Game of Thrones (I tried to keep busy. That show is waaaaaay too violent for me.),
and talked. It was relaxing and no
fuss. We needed that after our first
holiday season with the baby.
To top off our weekend, our wonderful friends took us to
Flat Top for lunch on them! We have the
best friends.
Do you have any money saving tips for entertaining
friends? We went easy with games, but
I’m sure you have more creative ideas!
With love,
Tara
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