When Frugality Fails

This past weekend we had family in town from the East Coast. The original plan was to have them over for dinner on Saturday, but on Thursday the plan was changed to lunch on Sunday. I am not the most flexible when it comes to changing plans, but I did have a two day notice to re-plan the meal. I decided to make Greek chicken with pitas and tzatiki and serve a salad. I also decided not to make the pitas and picked them up at Sam's on Saturday, but I would make yogurt for the tzatiki sauce. I forgot I needed plain yogurt to make yogurt and the slow spiral downward into mad chaos and frustration began.

I didn't actually need the container of yogurt until later that evening. So when I went to the library that afternoon, I stopped at the grocery store en route -- with a very TIRED 3 year old. The grocery store did not have a small container of plain yogurt, just large ones. Grrr. Wal-Mart sells them for $.40 so I knew they were available and was beyond frustrated that this store did not have them. I went home (not wanting to drag around a cranky toddler) and sent my husband back out after dinner (this is now the third trip to a grocery store in about 6 hours). He found a small container of plain yogurt at another store -- for $1.50 (I forgot to mention my price point)!! I could get an entire large container for $1.99! But I had it so I used it to make the yogurt and went to bed. The next morning, the yogurt had not set. I have never had any problem making yogurt, but of course, when it is timely, it fails me. Back out I went on the fourth trip to the store and bought a large container of yogurt for $1.99.

All that agony, running around and trouble. I ended up spending $3.50 on yogurt and wasted a 1/2 gallon of milk. Definitely not the costliest frugal mistake ever, but it is just so frustrating when you are doing everything you can to pinch pennies and you end up spending more money in the long run. Thankfully this doesn't happen to me often and I was finally to just throw up my hands and laugh at the situation.

The tzatiki turned out just fine!