As the song says, “Girls just want to have fun.” So do bigg girls and bigg boys.

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Spending time without spending money

One of the greatest joys in life is spending time with close friends. These days we’re being careful with our money which can sometimes create a challenge in spending time with friends.

For example, do you stay in or go out? If you go out, are you excluding some friends by going to a certain restaurant or choosing a specific activity? One or more of your friends may not be able to afford it.

The great thing about spending time with friends is that you don’t have to spend any money at all if you don’t want. It’s about spending time together.

A pantry potluck

One of our friends had a great idea. You can have some fun with friends and clean out clutter – in your cabinets and freezer – without spending any money. How’s that for a killer combination?

Organize a “pantry potluck.” Here’s how it works – Plan a date to get together. For your meal, everyone prepares at least one dish from ingredients they already have in their kitchen.

Get creative. Dig deep in your freezer. Check the back of your cabinets.

It’s essentially a free meal for everyone because the money’s already been spent!

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I think it would be hard not to spend money on something new.

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I’m not surprised to hear you say that, Mary-Lynn!

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Well, off the top of my head, I’m just thinking about what we have. Fritos but not even a full bag. Cake mix but no frosting.

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Boy, Mary-Lynn, I can tell I do most of the cooking around here. I think we have a lot of things that would be perfect for a pantry potluck.

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So we checked out our freezer. We have a bag of French fries but, just as I suspected, there was only about a third left.

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Yeah, but we also have a full bag of meatballs. They would be great for a potluck. And there’s a lot of chicken. In our cabinets, there’s a cream of mushroom soup can – that would be good with the meatballs. Oh, and cream of chicken and herb soup – I’m thinking chicken casserole of some sort. There’s marinara sauce so we could do the meatballs two ways.

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I also see a can of tuna and some tuna helper. I guess you were right, George. We do have a lot of options for the pantry potluck.

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Since Mary-Lynn was worried about frosting for the cake, I remembered that we had cream cheese in the refrigerator. So we looked up a recipe for cream cheese frosting; it turns out that we have everything we need – butter, vanilla, and powdered sugar.

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I’ve never made cream cheese frosting before. I sure hope our friends don’t mind being the guinea pigs!

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Ramp it up

Now here’s the bigg idea. If you want to ramp up the fun even more, have a contest. You may vote on the most original dish, the tastiest, the most home-made or any other category you might like.

You can even up the ante by choosing a theme and asking everyone to bring a dish that goes along with that theme. Now your creativity will get pushed even more but it might make it more fun.

That’s the whole reason we’re talking about this. You can have fun with your friends, clear out clutter and not spend any money all while improving creativity skills. That’s a lot of synergy. That’s bigg success!

What’s in your pantry now that you could take to a potluck?

Thank you so much for reading our post today.

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Please join us next time when we discuss a bigg question from one of our listeners. He wants to know if he should pay down his mortgage or make some home improvements.

Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

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(Image in today's post by gozdeo)