Today's Super Frugal Accomplishments (And Shop)

At first I wasn't quite sure what I'd post about today, but then by the end of the day I realized I did so many frugal things that excited me and I simply can't wait to share them with you.
Last week I got 36 liters of soon to be expiring 1% milk. I attempted to get my family to eat it with their cereal but they all objected (other than my husband) because they prefer the 3% that I normally bought. I also tried making a milky potato soup but that was also a bust and I ended up giving it away to a friend.

The rest of the milk went into the freezer and yesterday I removed it from the freezer to make room for my extremely large batch of applesauce that I made. Today when they finally defrosted I had a marathon yogurt making session with 30 liters of milk.

Usually I make my yogurt and then insulate it in a cooler.
This quantity wouldn't fit, so I just covered it all with a few blankets to insulate it.

Only once the yogurt was made and culturing I realized that I didn't have nearly enough cheesecloth to turn all that yogurt into Greek yogurt, or the middle eastern style labane, spiced with zaatar spice mix and eaten as a spread, as I'd planned.
So in to town I went to buy some thin white cotton scarves, what I use in place of cheese cloth in my cheese making.

While in town I decided to swing by the open site air market, hoping to find some good sales.
In the end I left the market with only two things, both amazing.
I saw a big box of broccoli heading for the trash and rescued a few heads of decent if slightly old looking broccoli.
And then strawberries. It's been strawberry season locally lately but I've been waiting for strawberries to come down in price but it's taken so long. Finally, the other day, I saw people really excited about strawberries being sold at $1.30 a pound. 'Stock up!' everyone was saying. 'It's not going to get any lower than this.'
Tonight at the market I heard a vendor shouting '65 cents a pound for strawberries!' And his were organic! He offered to sell me 24.2 lbs for $11.42, working out to 47 cents a pound! My kids will be absolutely thrilled! Some we'll have fresh, and the rest will go into the freezer to use at a later date... They weren't in the most amazing condition, they're better for cooking and smoothies than eating fresh, and when I told the vendor that, that's when he threw in the last 2.2 lbs free... I decided I'll be making a salad with wild Swiss chard, strawberries, and balsamic vinaigrette.... Only I remembered that we were all out of balsamic vinegar.

After that, I was nearly going to go home, as I'd come to the city without my usual shopping cart, just a backpack, and I already had a big bag of broccoli and nearly 25 lbs of strawberries, but at the last second decided to make a detour to the scratch and dent store to see if they had anything good, and I'm so glad I did. They had balsamic vinegar for $1.42 a bottle when it's usually between $3.50 and $5, so I bought three bottles! Worked out perfectly especially as I was just thinking that I'd like balsamic vinegar.
When I went to check out, right at the register I saw them selling gluten free beer! Gluten free beer is hard enough to come by where I live (I don't think I've ever seen it actually) but even more amazing was the price. 57 cents a bottle! On top of that, each of them has a deposit included so once we finish them and return them we get 9 cents back so really 48 cents a bottle. Regular beer here costs $1.14-2.85 a bottle and my stock up price is when I see them on sale for 70 cents a bottle so 57 for gluten free beer is phenomenal. I bought 15 bottles and would have bought more if I wasn't already struggling to figure out how to carry all I had home.
And since my son wants me to be honest with readers about our junk consumption I'll share that I also bought 5 packs of taffy lollipops for 57 cents each.

I am so excited by today's frugal adventures you have no idea!!

P.S. I got home... and discovered that someone inadvertently (I hope) took one of my grocery bags from under the bus. So I only have 10 of  my 15 bottles of beer. But at least it was cheap things that went missing. I posted on our local community group asking if anyone had my beer, and hopefully someone will return it to me.

Have you had any great frugal successes lately? What were they? Any frugal purchases you're especially excited about?