Month: December 2017

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Every Day

Preparing For Freezer Cooking

I will be going to Disney World the beginning of January. The closer it gets the more excited I get.

Hubby is not going so I know I have to prepare some easy meals for him. If I don’t he will go out and buy junk or eat snacks. He is not fussy about eating the same thing over and over again for days. So I have decided to make a lot of two different meals that he can pull out of the freezer and just nuke in the microwave.

I decided to make a large pan of lasagna because he loves my lasagna. And I will also cook some chicken so that he can just cut it up on salads. I will also make a chicken dish that he can throw frozen into the crock pot and cook all day. He loves salad and applesauce so he can do those for sides. There is always fruit and cut up veggies in the fridge for him to snack on. He will also have tortilla chips and salsa for snacks.  

I had no ground beef in my freezers. So I have been looking for a decent price to buy some. In yesterday’s flyer, Top’s advertised their 80/20 ground beef meal deal. You buy a 4-5 lb. package of the beef and you get 9 named items free. Now I know that the ground beef will not be a great price for this deal. And I rarely buy these deals because of that and the fact that the free items are things we don’t normally buy. 

So I set out to investigate whether this was a good deal or not. I called my Top’s meat department and asked what the price per lb. was that they were charging for the meat. They told me $ 3.99 per lb. Then I looked on Wegman’s website to see what they are charging for their 80-20 ground beef. I had already noticed that Walmart’s was $ 4.99 a lb. when I shopped there yesterday. Wegman’s was $ 2.29 a lb.
I estimated that a package would be 5lbs. So at Wegman’s that would cost me $ 11.45. The meat at Top’s would cost me $ 19.95. That is a difference of $ 8.50.

However Top’s was giving me 9 items free with my purchase that they estimated would be $14.00 if bought separately. I looked at the list and we could use all 9. If I used coupons with a sale price on those 9 items I estimated that on sale, I could buy those items for $ 10.95. So I am paying $ 8.50 more for the beef at Top’s but I am getting $ 10.95 in usable product. That is only a $ 2.45 gain. 

But Top’s is less than 7 miles round trip from my house and Wegman’s is 26 miles away round trip. With gas topping off at $ 2.60 a gallon, this was a no brainer. I also asked myself if there were other necessary errands that I could run down near Wegman’s. I could go to the bank and deposit six checks that I have sitting here. But I could deposit those checks via my mobile phone. So I opted to get the Top’s deal. This is the kind of thinking I do on anything I buy to make sure that I am getting the best deal.

I bought a 4.63 lb. of ground beef ($18.47), a dozen eggs for $.69 with a store Q, one family size bag of tortillas chips ($4.49), 2 large containers of cottage cheese ($2.79 each). The 9 free items were Italian bakery bread, Fresh Express lettuce shreds, a jar of spaghetti sauce, a bag of Mexican cheese, a can of chili beans, a can of diced tomatoes, a bag of taco wraps, 1 lb. of thin spaghetti, and a package of chili seasoning. My total grocery bill was $29.23. That leaves me $18.39 through December 9th to spend. I am done with the big shops for the week because we have snow in the forecast from tomorrow through Sunday. If we need something desperately like milk, I will send Hubby to the gas station which is close.

I came home and used my scale to measure out the meat into 8 oz. portions because that is what Hubby and I eat at a meal. I will use 16 oz. in the lasagna along with a lb. of Italian sausage that I am thawing from my freezer. To my surprise when I measured it, I got a full 5 lbs. of meat not the 4.63 lbs. that I paid for. So I will be using the 1 lb. tomorrow when I make the lasagna. Seven of the bags I put in the freezer. One I kept out for dinner. Hubby can pull one out if he wants hamburgers while I am away. I did not food saver the bags of meat because it will get used up over the next few months and Ziplocs are cheaper than food saver bags.

Tomorrow, I will make and bake the lasagna. When it cools, I will freeze it in individual portions for Hubby’s lunches and dinners.  I will post this meal with recipe when I make it. 

Tonight we will have taco salad using 8 oz. of the beef cooked with taco seasoning, the lettuce shreds, onions, fresh tomatoes, black olives, taco sauce, hot sauce and Mexican cheese. Hubby will have tortilla chips with his. I just eat it like a salad.

Categories
Every Day

Keeping the Groceries Under Budget

This morning I went to Super Walmart at 7AM to avoid the Saturday crowds. It was rather pleasant to shop with hardly anyone in the store.

We needed ingredients to make a dessert to take to a  Christmas party. I am making this Double Chocolate Mocha Trifle. I had planned on making this 
Peppermint Brownie Trifle. However I could not find the cream cheese pudding mix so I decided to do the other one that I had chosen. Hubby liked that recipe better anyhow.

So for the recipe I purchased:

Brownie Mix – $ 1.28
Heath Toffee Bits – $ 2.38
2 boxes of White Chocolate Pudding – $.98 each
Milk – $ 1.60
Instant Coffee – $1.00

I had all of the other ingredients. 

Yesterday, Hubby was looking for a fresh tube of toothpaste. Do you think we had any? Nope, my stash is gone. Knowing that we only have a little left in a sample tube, I purchased two of the Crest Cinnamon. They were $ 2.97 each. I will be looking for a good sale to stockpile some but these will hold us until I do. 

Hubby still eats a little snack once in a while and some carbs. The only carbs that I eat are in my food that I eat at meals…mainly veggies and meat.  So he asked for tortillas for his lunch wraps. They were $2.14 for a 10 ct. package. The chips will last him for a long time. They were $ 3.98 for the family size. He also drinks Crystal Light Peach Iced Tea. I purchased 2 containers for $ 2.48 each. I spotted a Great Value  SF Peach Iced Tea so I bought him one to try. If he likes that I will buy it from now on because it is cheaper than the Crystal Light. It cost $ 1.98. 

Lastly, I needed eggs to make some baked goods for gifts. I did not want to spend $ 4.98 for organic eggs for that purpose. So I purchased a regular large dozen for $ 1.28. 

I had $ 75.00 set aside in my grocery budget for Dec 1st through the 9th.  I used a $ 1.60 E-Cert GC from the Walmart Savings Catcher program to help defray the cost today. So I paid $ 27.38 for everything. That leaves me $ 47.62 left to spend through December 9th. 

I had ground chuck on my list but it was $ 4.99 a lb. at Walmart. I won’t pay that price unless I get it at my meat market. I will check the ads tomorrow to see if it is on sale anywhere this coming week. If not I will get it at the meat market when I have other errands to run up that way.

My monthly budget now is $ 300. a month for groceries, cleaning supplies, toilet paper, napkins, HBA and Ziplocs or other wraps. Since I divide the $ 300. into 4 week sections of $75.00 a week, it works well for us. I add the few days at the front of the month to the next week and the same thing works for the end of the month.  I like having a smaller amount to work with when I shop. It makes me be wiser with our money and I really think about what I am buying. I ask myself: Do I really need it? Can I substitute something else? Where can I buy it the cheapest? Is it worth my gasoline to run around to a few stores if the price difference is only pennies? 

I also rarely use coupons anymore. Most of the things we buy don’t really have any. I shop mostly at Walmart and Aldi and they have great prices so it is not worth spending a lot of time cutting coupons. If they are at my fingertips on the computer and I can print them quickly then I do. If I have to spend a lot of time searching for one, it isn’t worth my time. Have you changed the way you shop since coupons aren’t as good anymore? Have you changed your budget like I have recently? 

Categories
Every Day

Keeping the Costs Low

Oh, the dilemma again over sending Christmas cards. Every year I try to knock down the number that I send out. I keep it down to family and really close friends. If I send a card to a family member 10 years in a row and I don’t get a response, then I feel that they don’t want contact and I take them off my list. I don’t send cards to anyone who I will see over the holiday season.

I would actually like to send e-mails instead but I don’t have most people’s e-mail address or they don’t use email. I know that is hard to believe but not in my generation.

So I sat down this morning and wrote them out. I ended up with 27 cards that are already in the mailbox. 

A few years ago, I caught a great after Christmas deal of $1.00 per box for very nice Christmas cards. So I purchased 10 assorted boxes. I am still using them so they were purchased and paid for long ago. The only other costs were my time and stamps. I am still working on forever stamps that I purchased before the last price increase. So they cost me $ .47 each instead of the $.49 they are today. Also when I purchase my stamps, I buy them in bulk at BJ’s and get a small discount. So mailing these 27 cards cost me less than $12.69 plus about $1.50 for the cards. So it is not an extreme expense.

A few things that I have been doing around here is cashing in 10 Coke code caps for $5.00 Amazon gift cards. I didn’t know that they were running this deal until my sister mentioned it. Fortunately, I still had some caps from Hubby drinking it.

All of my Christmas shopping is done. I have one more package coming today and when that is wrapped, I am all done. One of the last purchases I made was a Black Friday deal that I did online on Thanksgiving. Our Keurig is still running however I am afraid that it is on it’s last leg. It makes terrible noises. So when I found a Keurig on sale for $ 59.99 that included 40 K-cups and a bonus in the coffeepot box of 4 more plus  some iced tea ones, I jumped on it. I defrayed the cost of this by paying with some Amazon credit card points. I had been keeping my eye out for a deal like this since I did not want to wake up one morning and not be able to make coffee. I know that a Keurig is a luxury but it is one of the luxuries that we are willing to pay for but not at full price. We only drink one cup of coffee in the morning so it works perfectly for us. 

The only grocery deal I purchased this week was yesterday. Top’s had large roasting chickens on sale for $ .77 a lb. That is a really low price for my area so I purchased two for the freezer. One day when I am feeling better, I will take them out and roast them so that we will have lots of chicken already prepared. I will then freeze it until it is needed.


Not much else going on around here. We are just trying to stay warm. Anything new frugally with any of you?