Stephanie is as proud an "Extreme Cheapskate" as you're likely ever to meet. Her boyfriend Patrick, on the other hand, is embarrassed by it. And Stephanie certainly goes to extreme measures to save a buck. To cut down on energy costs, her family has one light bulb that they bring around the house with them to light up the room they're in. If they separate -- say to go to the bathroom -- there's a candle they can use. At the grocery store, she unpeels bananas and takes grapes off the vines so they'll weigh less when she goes to pay for them.
Stephanie has small children, and any uneaten food gets put back into the containers they came out of to be recycled later. Thank goodness she didn't tell that trick to Patrick's guests. He invited some friends over for a football party, which Stephanie was not excited about, and she made a lasagna. She used recycled pasta sauce, and then cooked the lasagna in the dishwasher ... in the dishwasher with her dishes! Stephanie did say she had to wrap it up tight to keep water from getting into it, but Patrick's guests seemed to indicate that the dish tasted like water. Or perhaps that was all the beef fat she used to make the beef go further. It certainly seemed gross.
But the negative reviews couldn't phase Stephanie. "I get the utmost satisfaction being the cheapskate that I am. it's for me and my family -- not anybody else," she said. "I don't care what nobody says. It was the Stephanie way, and the Stephanie way's the better way."
"Extreme Cheapskates" airs Wednesdays at 9 pm. EST on TLC.
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