Quick, Easy, and Cheap! Instant Pot Ham with Duck Sauce Glaze Recipe

While poking around in the refrigerator,  I moved a little pile of Chinese takeout duck sauce containers aside on a shelf for the eleventy billionth time as  I was looking for dinner recipe ideas to make with what I already had in the pantry and refrigerator. 

Generally we think of duck sauce as a dipping sauce but as a sweet and sour sauce, it also makes fantastic glaze for chicken or pork. Just pour it out the packet and there ya go – instant ham glaze! You can’t get much lazier than that.

I had carrots and potatoes I needed to use and by chucking some ham from the freezer into the pot, I made a hearty and inexpensive 15 minute meal. What’s more to to love about that?

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Instant Pot Ham with Potatoes and Carrots Recipe

17 Things I Will NOT DIY to Save Money

When searching for tips on how to save money, reduce debt, and/or reduce your household waste, often the first suggestion is to stop buying things and start making them yourself.  I’ve tried many of them myself either in a pinch because either I ran out of my store bought option, to try it see what would happen, or in an attempt to save money, reduce waste or get a customized thing for a DIY price.

Many of these DIY things I’ve kept simply because I like them or they are more convenient.

While I’m willing to give almost anything the good ol’ DIY try (which is how the recipes on Lazy Budget Chef came to be) there are a list of things I will not make myself and always buy. As always, your mileage may vary. Tell us your list in the comments below!

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17 Things I Will Always Buy

1. Home improvements that involve a permit – I’ve remodeled rooms in my house, switched out light fixtures, toilets, faucets and a whole host of DIY projects but if it is something that involves a permit or something I’m not 100% comfortable of learning as I go such as anything involving natural gas lines I’m leaving it to the pros. That’s why they are pros!

Many of the things on this list are part of our High Low Household Budget. For example, we splashed out the cash on this floor tile for our bathroom (the High) because I did the labor of installing it (the Low.)

Peanut Butter Cupcakes with Maple Syrup Icing Recipe

There are days when you just gotta have a cupcake. Since I have a severe dairy intolerance, that usually means a cupcake that I have to bake.

I rifled around the kitchen for cupcake ingredient inspiration when my eyes landed on a jar of peanut butter. Peanut butter cupcakes?!

Oh yes please.

And since I was going to the trouble of making cupcakes, I figured I should do something a little snazzier with the icing. I made icing with the real deal so local you can visit the guy who taps the maple trees he uses to make it maple syrup for a taste combo that won raves from the friends I asked to eat the rest of my batch of cupcakes because I was only in the mood for one.

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Peanut Butter Cupcake Recipe

(Disclosure: I am including affiliate links for your convenience)

How to Clean Burnt Food from Pots and Pans the Easy Way!

Every once and awhile, I cook something and for various reasons food ends up sticking to the bottom of the pan (especially when I cook rice in the Instant Pot – whhhy?!) or lightly scorching my bake ware.

Or in this case, find the drip tray of my indoor smokeless grill (learn more about my winter grilling BFF here) looking like this - when I have little time and inclination to scrub it  like my life depends on it  to clean it. (Disclosure: I am including affiliate links in this post for your convenience.)

Yuck!

Of course merely filling the pot with water and dish detergent and letting it soak will not do any to budge it unlike every dish washing detergent ad in the history of ever wants us to believe.

Fortunately, there is a super easy, cheap, AND nontoxic way to clean those greasy, burnt pots and pans that also deodorizes your kitchen drain – really.

The Easiest Cookware Cleaning Hack You Need to Know Right Now!

17 Ways to Reuse Leftover Pieces of Bar Soap

When you use a bar of soap, it eventually wears itself down to a little scrap that is generally too small to use for hand or body washing even though there is still a nice chunk of soap left. Normally I’d wet the soap sliver and the new bar of soap it will replace and press them together to make one glorious Megazord of soap in an effort to not waste it.

Unless for some reason the soap sliver won’t stay stuck to the new bar of soap.
Which seems to happen more often if one of the bars has a slight curve or is apparently in the wrong airspace for optimal soap sticking togetherness.

In that case, I like to find a creative reuse or recycle for soap scraps and slivers rather than throw them away and risk being haunted by dead relatives tsk tsking me from the great beyond for wasting things. Tsk! Tsk!

17 Bar Soap Hacks You Need to Try Right Now!

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Coconut Shrimp with Thai Peanut Dipping Sauce Recipe

I did some poking around the internet and found a recipe for coconut shrimp. My husband is a big fan of all things coconut. However I’m not a fan of the mess involved with hand breading and frying things. Also I think I have some sort of breading food deficiency because I cannot for the life of me get any type of breading to stick to any type of food ingredient – ever. 

So this is one of the few cases where I cheat and buy frozen coconut shrimp (you can find a variety of types and brands here.  My severe dairy intolerance means I usually buy plain frozen shrimp because it makes shopping easier. Coconut shrimp is the rare exception. (Disclosure: I am including affiliate links in this post for your convenience.)

To prove I’m not completely useless in the kitchen, I whip up a Thai peanut dipping sauce for the coconut shrimp while it bakes in the oven. 

The Best Thai Peanut Satay Sauce Recipe in the World!

(According to my husband)

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22 New Ways to Save $1000 a Month (That Don’t Include Ditching Cable TV)

Sometimes when I read an article on how to save money I get frustrated because I see the same frugal hacks and ideas that I’m either already doing or don’t apply to us.

Then there are those tips on budget items they say you should to cut to save money that we use and want to keep like the gym membership my husband uses almost daily or cable TV – which is the only way some of you can watch television or might be a cheaper alternative to subscribing to a ton of streaming services to watch everything you like.

I get it I really do. I’m also probably guilty of writing blog posts that offer the same old same old frugal hacks myself.

Trying to find some new and different money saving ideas to share with you, I kept a running list of the big and little frugal things I did for a month and found I saved $1000 easy!

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Some these things may be seasonal. Some you may already do. Some may not apply. This is a list of budget living tips and ideas to jump start your brain to find solutions that work for you. It is a list of options, not absolutes.