Author: Precious

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Every Day

How I Do My “List” for Grocery Shopping and Purchasing

I prepared my “list” yesterday for my errands this morning. By list, I mean circling the good deals on the Top’s and Aldi’s ad. I don’t waste an extra sheet of paper writing out a list. I hate doing it on my phone. I am a paper and pen girl. Then I check the Walmart online site for the prices for the same items to determine if they are a good deal or not. I write Walmart’s prices next to the item in the ad. This was important especially for this ad because they had some B1G1F meat deals. Top’s raises their prices on the first item so I need to do the math at the store to see if they are a good deal. Some of the circled items were purchased and some were not.

I stopped at the Town Hall to pay our water and sewer bill on the way to the market. That way I save a stamp.

Next stop was the market. The pork tenderloins were on B1G1F. The price for one was $9.99. They are 22 ounces a piece. So I paid about $5.00 for each of them. The 85/15 ground beef was $ 6.19 a lb. I paid $ 14.79 total for the two packages which weighed 4.72 lbs. combined. That came out to $3.13 a lb. The Hot Italian sausage was on sale for $3.99 a lb. I got one package weighing 2.79 lbs. My total for that was $11.13. Today was senior citizen discount day so I got an extra 6% off my meat total and my other purchases. I love it when they have meat I need on discount day. It is the first Tuesday of each month. The last meat purchase was a new product to our store. That was a pound of beef crumbles that are frozen and cook up in about 7-8 minutes. They were on sale for $ 4.99 and I clipped a Top’s e-coupon for a $ 1.00 off so they totaled $ 3.99. These will be handy on a busy day when I forget to thaw some meat rather than have to do take out.

Hubby has not had Coke for a long time. It was on sale 3/$4.00 so I got him 3. The Ragu spaghetti sauce were 2/$3. after an e-coupon that I clipped. I also picked up 1 apple at $2.99 a lb. for a total of $ 1.29. I never thought that I would see the day I would pay that much for 1 apple but Hubby wanted it to make his waldorf coleslaw.

None of the rest of the items in the ad that I marked were purchased because they were either more expensive than Walmart or I decided that I just didn’t need them.

Top’s is running the Christmas deal on particular giftcards again this year. You can earn 1 point for each order of $50. or more. I had 2 points. The only card that even interested me was The Texas Roadhouse ones. I got 2 giftcards for $50. each discounted by $10. each for a total cost of $80. for both of them. When we visit my son and granddaughter in eastern NY, we will use them to take them out to dinner. I will get more of them when I earn more points before Dec. 24th.

I entered my receipt into Fetch and I got a $ .25 rebate on Ibotta for my receipt.

I had planned on picking up some Christmas cards too. I had 15 cards but I needed 21. But this morning before I left to go out, I went down to the storage area where everything Christmas is and I found another box of cards. So I am set.

On the way home, I stopped at the drugstore to pick up a $10. prescription. All of my errands were run in a circle to save on gasoline. However, I do have to go Aldi’s tomorrow for the $.69 a lb chicken legs or I may ask Hubby to do it since he has to go to the barber for his haircut.

How do you make your list? Any good deals this week for you guys?

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Every Day

2023 Grocery Budget and How We Will Do It (Continued)

For those who have not read my prior post, read it before you read this. This is a continuation.

As I mentioned yesterday, our 2023 grocery budget will be $300. a month or $3600. annually.

I want to go back and talk about meat, poultry and fish purchases. These groceries are the most expensive you will buy. We used to be able to buy NY strip steaks, filet mignon, prime rib roasts, and ribeye steaks. Not any longer! I refuse to pay $25.00 – $35.00 per pound and up for these steaks. The roasts or tenderloins for filet mignon are $40.00 per pound and up in my area. That isn’t going to happen. The last time I purchased a tenderloin and had it cut into filet mignon was when the price had reached $18.99 per pound. The quality was horrible. I have not paid for these things since.

On a $300. a month budget, I will buy sirloin tip steaks when they are on sale for $ 4.99- $ 6.99 a pound. I still have some in the freezer from a sale this summer. But they will now get used for stew beef or cut up for beef barley soup. We do not eat steak unless we can grill it outside. Our grill is in the shed for the winter.

I will buy sirloin tip beef roasts at a good price like I did last week. They were $4.99 a lb. One was cut up into stew beef and the other was ground for hamburger. I buy like this a lot when the price is lower than buying the ground sirloin or the stew beef. If you have a butcher shop in your market, grab one or two roasts when they are on sale and ask your butcher to grind it for you. Most of them will. That is what I did when I didn’t have the grinder.

When ground beef is too high, I will buy ground turkey when it is a better price. Right now, I can get a pound at Walmart for $ 2.54 to $3.98 a lb. I use it just like I would beef. I make taco meat with it for our taco salads, Italian meatballs, meatloaf and throw it in casseroles.

We both love lamb chops from Australia or New Zealand. The price is $9.99 per pound and I won’t pay it.

Boneless chicken breasts in my area are now $ 2.88 – $ 3.49 a pound. I will pick up a large package or two at those prices and either can it or freeze it. But my preference for chicken is to buy either whole ones, drumsticks, or thighs. Thigh meat is so much more flavorful than the breasts. I can usually get them for $ .99 – $ 1.39 a lb. We love the drumsticks done in our air fryer. Most of the time, I can get them for $.89 – $.99 a lb. However, Aldi’s has a 5 lb. bag of them on sale starting Wednesday for $ .69 a lb. You can bet I will be there when the store opens. These will go fast. Hubby used to love wings. But they have gotten too expensive and he loves the drumsticks better with wing sauce. If I am very busy out of the house, I will pick up a rotisserie chicken for $ 4.98 at Sam’s Club or $ 6.99 at Top’s. I make sure to pick every bit of that meat off the carcass and use it up. Then I save the carcass in the freezer until I have enough of them to make chicken bone broth.

Fish except for canned tuna and some frozen shrimp has not been purchased in quite a while in our household. I bought a whole salmon earlier in this year for $ 8.49 a lb. and many whole haddock at $12.99 a lb. I love the salmon and Hubby loves the haddock. I cut them up into 3-4 oz. portions and froze them. We still have some left. When you food saver them they keep at least a year if not longer. I continue to buy canned tuna when I see a sale because Hubby loves tuna salad. When I was a kid, I had tuna salad for lunch more days than I can remember. I hated it and do to this day. I love shrimp but will not pay more than $9.99 a lb. which is what I pay now. If it goes higher, we will not buy it. I can get two meals out of a pound.

I do buy bacon, sausage, or ham for our family Sunday breakfasts. Bacon is so expensive that I have started buying the pound sausage rolls because they are much cheaper. My family likes sausage better than bacon anyhow. I do have a number of pounds of bacon in the freezer right now so we will finish them up. We like ham too fried up for breakfast. I am hoping that the hams go on sale for Christmas. The cheapest price I have seen is $ 2.54 a pound at Walmart. I am hoping they go cheaper. But if they don’t, I will buy one or two. My son and granddaughter are coming the day after Christmas for a few days. I want to cook one that day. I like to slice up the leftovers with my meat slicer for other meals and for cold cuts. Cold cuts are so expensive that I have stopped buying them. I slice my own from hams, turkey tenderloins, and chickens.

If I find a good price on hot dogs I will buy those too. But it is not something that we eat a lot of.

So as you can see most of our meat and poultry will be ground beef, sausage, bacon, ham, hot dogs, ground turkey, the whole turkeys I have in the freezer and chicken this coming year. If the prices continue to rise, we will cut back on those by either using less meat or by going without. There are other options for protein like cheese, eggs, lentils, or beans.

We are still buying eggs but if the price gets much higher I will not buy them. I have many dozen frozen in the freezer and I also have powdered whole eggs. Instead of eating eggs everyday, we have been making pancakes and waffles every few days. I like oatmeal too and that certainly is the cheaper choice.

I watch the Niagara Produce specials every 10 days or so that the prices last. When they have produce or meat on sale, it usually beats everyone else’s price. They also mark down soon to expire meat early in the day which is when I am usually there. So I watch for those stickers. I never seem to hit the markdowns at Top’s or Walmart. I will have to find out when they mark them down.

I compare the prices of all Top’s sale items that I am interested in to the Walmart prices online to see if the Top’s deal is really a good price. Many times it is not. I do the same for the Aldi’s sale items. I actually will try to go to Aldi’s first to see how their prices compare to Top’s and Walmart’s.

The first Tuesday of the month that Top’s has their senior citizen discount of 6% is when I go there that week. Saving 6% is a big deal in this economy.

We do have a Sam’s Club membership but it is 45 minutes away from me. I usually just get items shipped to me from there that are cheaper than anyplace else. I can check their website for those prices. Perhaps when the weather gets better in the spring, we will go there for a quarterly shop.

I have a free 30 day trial of Amazon Prime. I only signed up for it so that we could see the Buffalo Bills game last Thursday night. Twitch is quirky which is where Hubby has been watching the games on Thursdays. However after I signed up, the local station said it was going to be carried here. I plan on cancelling it before I have to pay for it. I check their prices against Walmart’s but most of the time Walmart is the cheapest. Meanwhile I am taking full advantage of the trial.

Ibotta and Fetch are my favorite grocery rebate apps. I use Fetch faithfully to get Walmart giftcards. I also have a cash back credit card that I use to get groceries. Those points add up to get me cash to buy more groceries or to just deposit it in our savings.

We do not get a newspaper but I do get some ads in the mail on Thursdays. The other ads that I don’t get I look at on Flipp and decide if it is worth a trip to the next town to get anything. This week I will be in that town for something else so I will definitely be looking at their ads.

Sometimes I get a coupon flyer with the ads. Most of the coupons I throw out because they are not things we use. Occasionally I get one that we can use. I also use the online coupon sites for coupons. I do clip e-coupons on the Top’s website.

Feel free to add things that you do to keep your grocery prices down or to ask a question by leaving a comment. We all learn from each other.

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Every Day

2023 Grocery Budget and How We Will Do It

Inflation has really taken a toll on our grocery budget the past couple of years. I would bet that it has also taken a toll on yours unless you are in the top 5% of income. But I suspect that none of my readers are in that top 5%.

Our family consists of just Hubby and I. So our budget has to cover all of our meals as well as any family or friends who we entertain during the year. We rarely go out to eat but when we do, it comes from our entertainment budget not our grocery budget.

What does our grocery budget include? It includes all food and beverage, cleaning products, and over the counter health and beauty products. It does not cover our prescription drugs.

We have a pantry that we have stocked up a bit over this year because of inflation. Knowing that inflation would keep going up and suspecting that prices will sky rocket right after Christmas, I would buy a couple of cans or other items each time I would grocery shop. That gives us a little bit of a hedge on inflation especially since we live on a retiree’s fixed income.

There have been months during 2022 that our food budget got out of control. There was even a month that I spent over $900. I would guess that many of you have gone over budget with these rising out of control prices.

But I do not want to do that in 2023. So I will be doing whatever is necessary to stay within budget. We have finished our budget for next year and our grocery allotment per month will be $ 300. or $ 3600. for the year. I believe that amount is doable no matter how high the prices go. To be totally honest with you, I am also starting the year with a $100. Amazon giftcard and $ 50. in Walmart giftcards. All of the gift cards can be used for necessary things we might need like OTC drugs, health and beauty aids, and/or food.

How will we accomplish sticking to this amount of $300. per month? First we will stick to doing portion control of our food. As I have said before, Americans including me eat too much food. So we are back to eating the way we did in the 1960’s and 1970’s. My grandmother always cooked up the proper portions for our meals. Obesity was not a big thing back then because we didn’t overeat. Just think how much money you will save by serving a 3-4 ounce portion of meat instead of a whole steak, or two hamburgers, etc. This is our portion for all meats, poultry, and fish. It is no bigger than the size of a deck of cards.

Then we have a half cup, a cup, or two cups of vegetables. If I serve leafy greens, we can have 2 cups a day. If I serve any kind of raw vegetable, we can eat 1 cup. The same goes for tomato or V8 juice. Eight ounces is enough. When we have cooked veggies, I serve 1/2 cup.

If we have rice or pasta, our portion would be no more than 1/2 cup cooked. If I serve potatoes, our portion is the size of a small potato. One half of a bagel or a slice of toast is what we will eat when we do bread. Since we don’t eat a lot of bread, I make a loaf when we want some and freeze it in slices. We eat our hamburgers bare or in lettuce wraps so I don’t need buns.

For cheese, we eat 1 ounce or the size of two dominos. For Keto ice cream or yogurt, we eat 1/2 cup.

We rarely eat fruit because it is not good for diabetics. If we do, we eat berries and just a small handful.

Sometimes, we only eat veggies and a protein portion for dinner. It depends on how hungry we are or how much exercise we have had that day.

I think you get the idea. But we are older adults so we don’t need as much food as younger healthy extremely active adults. So check out this site to see what your portions should be for your family: https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2017/09/26/back-basics-all-about-myplate-food-groups

I have also dug out some old cookbooks that I will be using for our meals. Many years ago a reader of my blog sent me a depression era cookbook. I don’t remember who it was but I am thanking her again. I also have some old cookbooks from the 1960’s and 1970’s. One of my favorites is the Child’s Hospital Cookbook of Buffalo. My SIL gave me this one for my bridal shower. It got so worn from being used that it fell apart. After cutting out a couple of our recipes that we used all the time, I threw the book out. That turned out to be a big mistake. After we moved here, I was able to find a good condition used copy of it online. I immediately purchased it and have been using it a lot ever since. I also have the Living on a Dime Cookbooks that you can purchase here: https://shop.livingonadime.com/collections/print-book

I bought her first book, Not Just Beans, twenty years ago which is basically the same as her Dining Volume 1 and I have Volume 2. The reason I like her books is they are basic recipes that don’t use a lot of ingredients and they taste good. The less ingredients you use in your meals, the cheaper your meal will be.

I do have some Keto cookbooks that I use occasionally and I have a lot of local women’s club and school cookbooks that I have collected wherever we have lived. My MIL had a lot of cookbooks from after WWII that I inherited and use.

We now eat meatless meals at least once or twice a week and we will continue that. Meat has gotten very expensive so we eat a lot of salads with a cut up egg for protein. I realize eggs are also expensive but one egg is still cheaper than a piece of meat.

Dairy has also become a major issue in our area. Heavy whipping cream is almost impossible to find and so is half and half. When I do find it, the price is ridiculous. So we will be resorting to using powdered creamer or canned cream if the prices continue to rise. I buy eggs in the 60 count box at Walmart. But lately, I have been not able to find them. So I get them where ever I can find them the cheapest. We rarely buy ice cream except for family holiday meals. I make Keto peanut butter ice cream occasionally. It is not an every day thing.

We will buy fresh vegetables that are in season or on a fantastic sale. We do buy lettuce, carrots, onions and celery because we eat a lot of salads and soups. My stores have not had any lettuce for a couple of weeks until I found it at Aldi’s(finally) this week. I was beyond delighted. If this happens again,we will buy fresh spinach or bagged salads on sale. I always check the fresh price of veggies against the frozen price. Many times the frozen is a better deal especially at Aldi’s.

I always buy our meat on sale. When there is a good sale on chicken, I have been known to buy 20-30 lbs. and freeze it in portions. The same goes for ground meat, lamb chops, pork, any kind of roast, and fish. When you buy it in bulk on sale, you never have to pay full price for it. If I run out, I won’t buy that particular meat until it goes on sale again. An example was when I purchased two extra turkeys at Thanksgiving at $ .58 a lb. I hadn’t purchased whole turkeys since last Thanksgiving. Those will give us a lot of meat this winter.

Ever since we got married well over 50 years ago, I have always stocked my freezer and pantry with sale items. Then I have made my meals from what I have stored. I never plan a menu plan and then shop for it. I really don’t like making menu plans but have done it occasionally especially if I know that we have a busy week. The only exception is holidays and then I still try to buy my needed items on sale. Otherwise, I decide the night before what we will eat depending on what we are craving and just take it out of our freezer to thaw or our pantry. Knowing what I have on hand, I can peruse my cookbooks for a recipe.

This post is getting very long so I will continue it tomorrow.

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Every Day

My Weekly Grocery Haul and Upcoming Posts

Yesterday, I went out and did my weekly grocery shopping. I needed the berries and the avocados which I purchased at Aldi. The berries were $1.99 and the avocados were $ 2.69. The avocados will be eaten with my eggs for breakfast. The berries will be put in sugar free jello for dessert.

My best deal was at Top’s. They had sirloin tip roasts for $ 4.99 a lb. The larger one will be cut up into stew meat which will give us 8 meals. The smaller one will be ground into hamburger with my Kitchen Aid mixer grinder attachment. That will give us 5 meals. I paid $ 11.03 and $ 19.41 for the roasts.

The bacon cost me $4.99 and will be used for a Sunday breakfast when my family comes. The tuna was on sale for 3 cans for $ 5.00. I bought 6 cans.

My total was $ 50.11.

While I was out I filled our SUV up at the Top’s station using $.30 off a gallon in Top’s points. I paid $ 3.40 a gallon after the points. The per gallon price was cheaper after the points than my cash station.

I also finished my Christmas shopping. It feels good to have that done.

This week we have no appointments which is amazing. So I plan on doing some laundry, cleaning, and a lot of work on my finances and budgeting for the 2023 year. I hope you all are working on your budgeting for next year also. Posts on what we are doing will be coming up in December. It has been a rough year for all of us with inflation. I want to save as much money as possible next year and stop giving it to these large businesses who are making ridiculous profits. They are getting rich while the rest of us are getting poor. We are experiencing the largest transfer of wealth that I have ever seen. We can’t do a lot about what they and our government are doing but we can tighten up our households and hang onto some money.

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Every Day

My List of How I Think About Frugal Things

I think about how to do frugal things as I go along with my day. These are some of the things I do as a result of that.

  • I woke up at 4:30am which is very normal for me. The heat in the house is at 62 degrees. I did wrap a throw around me.
  • Then I got up and made my coffee using cheap on sale coffee that I purchased over 6 months ago. I add Irish Creme Syrup and heavy cream. The Irish Creme I purchase a case at a time when Skinny Syrups has a great sale or a coupon. I use a reusable cup in my Keurig.
  • I turn on the lights above the counters in the kitchen because they are the cheapest to run.
  • When it becomes daylight out, I turn the lights off.
  • If the sun is shining, I open the energy saving shades on the windows that have the sun on them. I follow the sun around our home and close and open as needed.
  • Next I deposited two checks into our savings that came in the mail yesterday. The more interest we earn on that money the better.
  • Then I sat and enjoyed my coffee and worked on my blog posts.
  • The heat which is on a timer comes up to 68 degrees at 8pm and stays there until it goes back down to 62 at 10:00pm.
  • Next I changed the sheets and made our bed. I will not wash them until my son leaves and I can do his bed and the bed that West slept in. Those will give me a full load.
  • I closed the door to our master bathroom to contain the heat so I can shower. I take a navy shower and I want to stay warm while I do it.
  • I use watered down shampoo and body wash. I don’t use conditioner.
  • My hair is short. I do not blow dry it unless I am going out somewhere.
  • I squeegee the shower so that I can lower the time that I use the vent that exhausts the moisture out of our bathroom. We also have a window in that room so that helps in the nice weather.
  • Next I cooked scrambled eggs in the microwave. It is 80% more energy efficient to cook them in there than in a skillet on my gas stove. I just put 2 eggs and some grated cheese in a coffee mug(butter it first) and heat and stir in 15 minute increments until it is to my liking. If you don’t do this, the eggs will be rubbery and no one wants rubbery eggs.
  • Then it was time to make my homemade cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving. It was so easy to just pulse the cranberries, orange zest and orange sections from one orange, monkfruit sweetener, and cinnamon in my Vitamix. It is now in the fridge waiting to be served tomorrow.
  • I made an apple pie for Thanksgiving. I did not want to heat up my big gas oven to cook one pie. So I baked it in my toaster oven.
  • Then Hubby and I watched the FBI’s that were on last night while enjoying a serving of Keto Blueberry Dump Cake that I made yesterday.
  • We use a lot of canned diced tomatoes. I can tomatoes but my garden is small so I need to buy more. Since tomatoes are one of the ten items that are going to be in short supply soon, I ordered 2 cases of diced from Sam’s Club. Because of the snow storm, all of our mail and orders have been delayed. Finally the tomatoes arrived today. Sam’s Club had the best price of all of my local and online options.
  • We are having easy cheeseburgers for dinner tonight. I will make my son some mac and cheese to go with it. We just eat our hamburgers with lots of toppings like sauteed onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, and lettuce. BTW, today is Wednesday.
  • I will run the dishwasher after dinner tonight with a full load. I use the energy saving cycle.
  • Yesterday, I roasted the turkey in the big oven but used the convection so that it would use 25% less natural gas. It came out with crispy skin and moist meat.
  • Last night I took all of the meat off the turkey. Then I put all of the skin and bones into the crockpot and cooked it overnight. I got a gallon of nice rich turkey bone broth for soups and other dishes.
  • My son left today( Friday) and I will miss him. But he and Alexa will be back to visit for a few days after Christmas. But anyhow my son is as observant for a deal as I am. He got a free turkey at B.J.’s because he shops there for a lot of his meat and other groceries. I think you had to spend $150. to get it. Also he filled up his gas tank at the station near him in the Eastern part of NY when he came out. The price he paid was $ 3.89 a gallon which was the average in his area. He noticed on his way out that the truck stop about 30 minutes from here was $ 3.35 a gallon. So on his way home this morning, he filled his car up at that price. That is a $.54 per gallon savings. I just wish that this station wasn’t so far from my home. It is not worth it for me to drive there. But the next time we go visit him, we will check out the prices before we leave.
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    Every Day

    Happy Thanksgiving To You and Your Families

    I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving today! Enjoy time with your families and have a peaceful day. We will be eating and watching the Buffalo Bills.

    My son arrived safely and we are so enjoying his company.

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    Every Day

    Snowmegaddon Buffalo And Some Savings

    Well the first snow of the season has come and gone. We only got 9.5 inches of snow which is not anywhere near the 50 to 77 inches of snow that they got in the southtowns. But I am sure the skiers are happy. The snowplow guy showed up on Saturday evening about 8pm. He did a fantastic job of plowing the driveway. Of course shortly after, the town plow came through and then again the next day. So we had quite a pile of snow at the end of the driveway. Plus a lot of the snow blew back in the driveway overnight because of the high winds. However on Sunday, the sun melted most of it except at the bottom. But I looked out Monday morning and one of my neighbors had either shoveled or snowblowed the end of my driveway. I have no idea who did it. I have the best neighbors ever! They take good care of us. One of them had come over on Saturday afternoon and started snow blowing my driveway without even telling me. We were playing cards in the great room in the back of the house. By the time I saw him, he had already done half of it. I thanked him but told him that we had hired a plow guy for the winter. But I also let him know how much he is appreciated.

    My grandson came to stay with us on Saturday and left late afternoon on Monday. His parents decided to celebrate my son’s birthday which was Sunday at the moved Buffalo Bills game in Detroit. So they left for the border crossing into Canada after they dropped him here. It would have been impossible to go south and over to Detroit. I was worried about them because it was snowing pretty heavily when they left. But once they got into Canada about half way to Hamilton, it stopped snowing. They made their way to Windsor, Ontario which is right across the river from Detroit. The hotel room they stayed in was there. This beautiful picture of the skyline of Detroit was taken from their room in the hotel. They had a great view. They had a nice dinner that night at the Loose Goose in Canada. The next morning they left early to take the tunnel into Detroit so that they could go to the special parking lot to leave their car for the day. They then went to a bar that offered everyone a special deal of open bar for four hours before the game including a wonderful buffet for flat price. My son and daughter-in-law were thrilled that they had wings on it. The bar limited entrance to 200 people and when they reached that no one else could go in. My son said that it was full of Buffalo fans as was the game. The Bills won which made it even nicer. So they had a wonderful weekend and so did we.

    We played lots of gin rummy while West was here. He did some shoveling of my sidewalk and porch twice. He also got my Thanksgiving turkey out of the freezer downstairs and into the pan in the refrigerator to thaw on Saturday night. Yesterday, I asked him to go grocery shopping with me so that I could get a few last minute things for our Thanksgiving dinner. I decided that $ .58 a lb. was too good a price not to get another turkey. So I picked up a 20 lb. one. I had to spend at least $ 30.00 but that was easy because I was purchasing a gift card for a Christmas gift. I now have the one turkey in the fridge and two in the freezer. I will cook the extras over the winter: one in January and one in March. It is the cheapest meat right now and I believe meat prices will skyrocket soon. So keep your freezers stocked.

    We cooked all of our meals over the weekend except for stopping at the McDonald’s drive thru after we went grocery shopping. I just purchased a 10 piece chicken nugget and a medium french fry for West as a lunch treat for helping me at the store.

    Today I received our natural gas and electricity bill. It was $ 170.58 for 399KWH and 55.7 therms of natural gas. Last year’s bill for the same period was for 453KWH and 75.2 therms of natural gas. That bill was for $172.35. As you can see our bill was just $ 1.77 less than last year’s but we used 54 less KWH and 19.5 less therms of natural gas. Part of the reason that we used less gas is because we had an unusually warm couple of weeks in October. However this should easily tell you that utility costs are rising and this is going to be a rough winter especially for those of us that heat 24 hours a day.

    We are doing everything possible to try to keep these costs down but we can’t do anything about the rising supply and delivery charges. I think about every KWH of electricity that I use and every therm of natural gas and how we can lower them every day.

    Now that my grandson has gone home and it is a new day, I have to get ready for family to arrive tomorrow for Thanksgiving. I think I will make my homemade cranberry orange relish today so that I don’t have to do so much tomorrow. Instead of buying a bag of oranges at the market, I only bought one orange because that is all I will need.

    Have you saved any money over the last few days or have you been getting ready for the holiday too?

    Categories
    Every Day

    Rationing Your Food

    Before I talk to you about rationing, I have to tell you that my site was down when I got up yesterday. It told me that the site wasn’t secure. So I contacted my son who is my tech guy. He has it fixed. It had to do with the cert. It needed to be validated again. It is all taken care of and it is safe to come here now.

    We started rationing a lot of our food over the past couple of months. I am concerned about a few things that may be in our future: war and empty shelves in the grocery markets. But the most important worry is the escalating food prices. They actually were shocking at the beginning of the week when I shopped. Many things that I wanted had risen so high in price that I won’t buy them. I hope that many of you have stocked up at least a few months worth of food. Hopefully much of it was purchased before the prices started escalating. If not you can start today because prices will be much higher in 2023.

    I try my hardest to stick to proper portions on everything especially meat, poultry, and fish. They are the priciest foods that I buy. We try to stick to 3- 4 oz. a day for our daily serving. It has been hard because we are on Keto so we usually eat bacon or sausage with our eggs or Keto pancakes. But we have decided that if we eat meat for breakfast, then we won’t eat it for dinner. We can have pancakes or eggs with avocado. Keto is hard to stay on and it is expensive. Plus I lost a lot of weight the last time I was on it but the minute I went off it I gained much of the weight back.

    I am starting to think that we should just eat healthy and count calories instead. We haven’t made that decision yet.

    We Americans eat too much food. The portions in restaurants are huge. No one needs that much food. So rationing may help us lose a little weight also. Hubby and I rarely go out to dinner anymore. It is cheaper to eat at home.

    We are cutting back on everything we can. When we make meatballs for soup or a recipe, I usually use 1/2 lb. instead of 1 lb. ground beef that the recipe calls for. But I do not cut down the other ingredients. That way we can get two meals from that recipe. I do the same for hamburgers using 1/4 lb. instead of 1/3 lb. for each and put more toppings on like tomato, lettuce, onions and mushrooms.

    When you buy your meat, poultry or fish, freeze it in the portions you should have not what you want to have. When you open a frozen veggie, check to see what portion you should be eating. The same goes for anything you eat. I just measure out a portion for us and keep the rest frozen or freeze the rest from a can.

    I try to keep my meat purchases under $5.00 a lb. I really like chicken breasts at $2.99 a lb. or drumsticks at $.89-$.99 a lb. We love turkey. We have purchased two: one for Thanksgiving and one for over the winter. However when I put the turkey in the refrigerator to defrost on Sunday, I may buy another one to replace it. That depends on how bad the snow gets here. But at $ .58 a lb, I am tempted. It will be such cheap meat and bone broth. But we were craving the shrimp the other day for $9.99, so I bit the bullet and purchased it. It will make two meals for us. But that price is not happening a lot in this home.

    We can use less spaghetti sauce for pasta meals. One half of a jar or can should suffice for us. We can use less of a lot of items to stretch them out and bring the cost of a meal down.

    We also try hard to incorporate meatless meals into our weekly menu once sometimes twice a week. Beans, pasta. and salads are cheaper than meat.

    I make a lot of soups especially over the winter. They are cheap and delicious. We love turkey, chicken, bean and ham, beef barley, onion, taco, and homemade tomato meatball soup.

    So seriously consider rationing your food to make it last longer and cost you less per meal for you and your families. Our ancestors did this and we can too.

    Yesterday I pulled all of the whole tomatoes from our garden out of our freezers to thaw. I will be making homemade spaghetti sauce to freeze today. It lays flat in quart freezer bags so it will take up much less room than the whole tomatoes. That leaves room for meats that I find at a great price.

    Let me know in the comments if you are doing this and any tips that could help the rest of us defray these costs.

    Categories
    Every Day

    Stocking Up For Current Meals and Future Meals and Our Dental Savings

    After all of the medical issues here, our diet has changed. Because of that I donated a lot of food that we will no longer eat. Instead we are stocking up our current weeks meals and stocking for the future with the items that we now eat. That is why you are seeing so many grocery hauls.

    Because prices are rising so rapidly, I am trying to get stocked now. I believe that prices will continue to rise well into 2023. If the rail workers or trucking workers go on strike, we could also see really empty shelves in the markets.

    I am already seeing massive shortages in dairy. You all know how I looked for a long time for heavy whipping cream. None of the grocery chains had it. Even the local family run business where I found it, is getting low. Eggs are also in short supply here again. A lot of other items are hit or miss!

    So over the past couple of days, I have been shopping while running other errands. Yesterday, I had my 6 month dental check up and cleaning. As some of you know, we had no dental plan for a long time. Our dental bills were outrageous. Then our dentist started offering a dental plan that includes Hubby and I. It has saved us so much money. My total out of pocket for yesterday including X-rays was $ 36. Hubby has an appointment next week and I assume his will be the same amount.

    The dental office gives us these samples every time we go. We have electric toothbrushes but these other ones are easy to use when we travel. We have at least two years of floss stocked up and plenty of denture brushes. The small samples of toothpaste also get used for travel. When I see that we are getting a large amount of them, we start using them up daily. These all save us money in the long run.

    On the way home from the dentist, I stopped at Niagara Produce again. I wanted to replace a quart of heavy whipping cream that we had used up. Hubby wanted strawberries. They of course are not in season so they were expensive just like the heavy whipping cream. The cream was $ 6.29 and the strawberries were $6.99. We also have not had shrimp in a long time. This package was $ 9.99 but it is giving us two meals. Last night we had shrimp cocktails and salad for dinner. I will use the other half of the package in shrimp fra diavolo one night. I always check their meat for markdowns because it is the only store in my area that once in a while I can find them. Both the burgers and the steak tenderettes were reduced for quick sale because they were expiring in 2 days. They quickly got put in my freezer for future meals. My total was $30.51 for all.

    Walmart had a heck of a deal on broth! I ordered 8 of the beef and 8 of the chicken below. They were $ 1.00 each. I have Walmart + so they ship for free. I haven’t seen them at that price here in years. I only use them a little bit at a time in meals. An opened carton keeps for a very long time in my refrigerator.

    They are good for over a year.

    On Sunday, I went to both Aldi’s and Top’s. This time of the year, I like to stock up on cranberries. We make our own cranberry orange relish and we also make muffins with them. Aldi’s had them for $ .99 a bag so I snagged 4. Fresh brussel sprouts were $ 2.29. The bacon was $ 3.99 a package which is a terrific price for here. I got 3. I picked up my last 3 lbs. of butter that I needed to stock my freezer for a year and 3 lbs. for my son who uses a lot of it too. His 3 are not pictured. They were $2.49 a lb. The bag of shredded sharp cheddar cheese was $ 2.99. My total was $ 36.15.

    At Top’s I picked up 2 zero sugar Reddi Wip at $ 2.50 each, 1 Hellman’s mayonaise for $ 3.49 after a doubled $ .50 coupon and 2 Brown and Serve sausage for $ 1.50 each. My total was $ 11.49.

    Ninety nine percent of the time, I buy sale items. But sometimes you just have to pay full price for things that you want. I am using the heavy whipping to make Keto ice cream and Hubby really wanted the strawberries. If those things make him happy, I am willing to pay the price.

    Are you seeing shortages where you live? Did you save any money on groceries this week?

    Categories
    Every Day

    Errands Today

    This morning after getting some office work done, I went out to run the errands. Hubby wanted me to pick up some reflectors for the mailbox. Our town has a habit of taking it out when they snow plow. The weather people are predicting snow for here on Sunday. So I went to Home Depot to find the red ones that he wanted. They were only $5.27. If that saves us money from having to buy a new mailbox this year, it will be well worth the cost.

    Aldi’s was about half a block up the road. I went in and got 6 more butter at $ 2.49 each. Next week, I only have to pick up 3 more to have a year’s worth.

    Last stop was Niagara Produce. I was so happy that I went there. You all know that I have not been able to find heavy whipping cream for a couple of weeks. I got 3 for $ 6.29 each. Expensive, but Hubby has been asking me to make some peanut butter Keto ice cream. Finally, Jif has the sugar free peanut butter back on the shelves. I got some but have not been able to find the heavy cream I needed to make it. Now I will make it this weekend and he will be a happy guy.

    I picked up a large package of ground round for $ 11.68 and a package of cube steaks for $ 5.24. I found a Keto recipe that I want to try next week with those. I also got a pound of radishes for $ 1.99, a block of cheddar cheese for $ 2.69, 4 tomatoes for $ 4.22, and a bag of romaine lettuce for $ 1.69. My total was $ 46.38.

    Late afternoon we watched CSI: Las Vegas that Hubby had taped last night. Dinner tonight was salad and jalapeno cheddar smoked sausages. Hubby loves these and I think he would eat them every day if I would let him.

    Yesterday, I went out into the 2 car garage to clean it about 9am. I got everything cleaned up and organized on the shelves and workbench and tool drawers. I cut up 2 large cardboard boxes and got those in the recycle bin. Hubby came out in the afternoon when I was done to pressure wash the floor. It cleans up so beautifully since we had the floor enameled. By the time the floor was dry and we could put everything back in it, it was 4pm. So we went in the house and called our eldest son. It was his birthday. I felt bad that we couldn’t celebrate it with him but at least we could talk to him. But my granddaughter is there and they went out to dinner at Texas Roadhouse so I am sure they had a nice celebration. We are looking forward to seeing him for Thanksgiving.